Heart-Pounding Cultural Festival (2)
The Cultural Festival Executive Committee.
All title, no authority—a middle-management post that was a nuisance to accept and nothing but irritation once you had. The work came down to shuttling between one's own class and the committee, checking that festival preparations were on track, and carrying out the student council's orders. On the day itself, there were patrols to walk as well. In short, an executive committee member's job was to see that the rules and promises laid down by that body called the student council were properly kept.
And so every class—the Liberal track above all, where resentment of the student council ran deep—made a habit of dumping the role on whichever student had little standing and even less of a say. Failing that, students desperate to boost their internal grades volunteered in droves. They were jerked this way and that, soaked up every kind of stress there was, and afterward regretted it sorely, resolved never to take on anything of the sort again. Of course, they were saddled with it a second time more often than not, for the sole reason that they already had the experience.
Sacrificial lambs, in a word, in a battle of wills. It was a structural problem of the school, the sort of thing a teacher would find awkward to step in and fix.
Every so often, though, something unusual occurred.
The conference room where the Cultural Festival Executive Committee had gathered. Before the student council arrived, the members held a brief round of introductions among themselves.
"Sakuraba Sakuya, Class 7, first year. I look forward to working with you."
"Shin Tae-il, Class 7, first year."
He couldn't even be bothered to add the usual correction—that if the name was hard to pronounce, they could just call him Taichi. Tae-il mumbled it in a voice no louder than a crawling ant, and fortunately Sakuya's halo buried him so completely that not a single person took notice.
It was no different after they sat down.
"I-I'm a fan, Sakuraba! I've been rooting for you since middle school! Goddess of the middle-school nationals!"
"Ahaha. Really? Thanks. You'll keep cheering for me, right?"
"Yes!"
"M-me too! I've been a fan since middle school too!"
"I only became a fan this time...!"
No sooner had the introductions ended than people came pressing in on Sakuya from every side, proudly declaring themselves fans.
"Hey, mind shifting over a little so I can get through?"
"Ah, sure. Go ahead."
The moment Tae-il stepped back, the gap he opened filled in a rush, the whole crowd pouring toward Sakuya. A truly refreshing case of the cold shoulder.
Well. This is about right.
Tae-il shrugged. Lately he had forgotten; now he was being made to realize, all over again, just how high Sakuya stood.
He was quietly watching the impromptu fan meeting when the door opened.
Bang!
Slammed spectacularly into the wall, it yanked every gaze in the room its way. Everyone in the conference room understood at once. The student council had arrived.
A heartbeat later, multicolored confetti drifted through the open doorway like pollen on the wind.
"Oh yeah!"
A young man with faintly dyed hair made his entrance, sunglasses still on, moonwalking in with surprising skill and no small amount of flash, for all the world like Michael Jackson. Behind him, a girl in twin-tails—a style hard to carry off young or old—hurled clumps of confetti, irritation naked on her face.
Student council president, Ueno Shin. Student council vice president, Yamamoto Lily.
It was the monumental entrance of the gag duo who, in the original, had thrown the original protagonists back onto the Eve Festival stage after they failed the teachers' recommendation screening—for no reason other than that it would be funny.
Vice President Lily swept past Ueno, who was striking one of his ridiculous poses, and rapped the blackboard.
"All right, everyone, please take your seats. We're about to begin the first meeting of the Cultural Festival Executive Committee."
At the vice president's order, the crowd around Sakuya dispersed of its own accord. Finally given room to breathe, Sakuya tilted her head toward Tae-il.
"Tae-il, the president's name is Shin. You know—shin, a god. Funny, right?"
"Yeah. Hilarious."
Sakuya grinned, murmuring that it would have been funnier if Rena were here.
And so the meeting got underway. From the very first moment, the character known as Ueno Shin pounded the podium and struck a ridiculous pose.
"Gentlemen! As you are all well aware, I am Ueno Shin, student council president of Yuuma High School!"
With every line he delivered, he fidgeted and postured. He was practically a comedian. Any ordinary person would have died of shame before doing something that conspicuous. Ueno Shin, as if shame were not even a concept to him, followed it with a string of bizarre hand gestures, steadily drawing every eye in the room onto himself.
"Welcome to the glorious executive committee! From this day forth, you shall labor day and night so that our school's honor does not fall into the dirt!"
Marveling at the bizarre student council president, Sakuya whispered to Tae-il.
"Whoa. He kind of looks like he popped out of a video game..."
"Right?"
Tae-il agreed, a look of genuine wonder on his face. The man had seemed like an eccentric in the original novel and in the anime, but he had never imagined it would be to this extent.
"Mm-hmm! This year, quite the company of heroes has assembled, I see! I, Ueno Shin, am moved to the depths of my soul!"
"Shut up and get to the explanation already, you idiot!"
"Guhk!"
The vice president, fuming, kicked Ueno from behind. He went down, brushed the dust from his uniform, and immediately struck another ridiculous pose.
Is this guy an actual JoJo fanatic?
Watching the student council president fire off one eccentricity after another, Tae-il sank into confusion.
"As you all know, the Cultural Festival of Yuuma High School boasts a renown on the level of a regional festival. Outside guests are many. What matters most at such a time is controlling the environment so that no accidents occur."
"In other words, with so many outside guests, our top priority is keeping people moving in an orderly fashion."
"Sadly, last year's festival saw a number of unfortunate accidents in various respects, and so our student council intends to devote even greater care this year to the safety of our guests and to preventing clashes between clubs!"
"Let us strive to achieve a zero-accident festival this year."
Whenever President Ueno plastered on every flowery phrase he could find and spouted useless noise, Vice President Lily cut him off with surgical precision and summarized it cleanly beside him. Thanks to that, a process that should have ended in a single pass was repeated twice over or more, and time dragged. Strangely enough, no one complained.
Perhaps out of boredom, Sakuya had been quietly reading the room; the moment her eyes met Tae-il's, she tilted her head and whispered again.
"Tae-il, Vice President Lily is really pretty, isn't she?"
"You're on a first-name basis?"
"She doesn't like being called Yamamoto."
"You know her?"
"We just said hello a few times, when she came to cheer at away games?"
From the graceful way she moved all the way to the way she spoke, she was far more of a proper young lady than Iris, Sakuya said, grinning.
"Above all!"
Ueno threw both arms wide and shouted.
"This year, our school is home to several special-class freshmen! Which is to say, we expect an unprecedented number of guests! The reservation site has already been overwhelmed once, and the server went down!"
Every eye in the room snapped, in an instant, to Sakuya, who occupied one corner of the conference room.
"Sakuraba! A tremendous celebrity! It would not be strange if stalkers lurked on every side!"
"Huh?"
Hearing her own name come out of the president's mouth, Sakuya pointed at herself, thrown.
"There are various other celebrities as well. Astonishingly, most of them are beautiful girls! Oooh, beautiful girls!"
"Shut up and move this along, you girl-crazed freak!"
Lily kicked Ueno again.
"Cough! That hurts! But our vice president is a beautiful girl too...!"
Down he had gone, and up he popped again, a roly-poly in a school uniform.
"At any rate, guards and teachers alone have their limits if these beautiful girls are to be protected. Which is to say, your efforts are of the utmost importance!"
"You're all intelligent people, aren't you? Kindly filter this garbage out for yourselves."
The vice president threw cold water over the whole performance.
But the room was hot.
Tae-il could feel, without quite knowing why, that the conference room was heating up. He took in the faces that filled it. Eyes were blazing. Lit by some inscrutable sense of mission, their gazes burned like hellfire.
Don't tell me this is because of the stalker talk...?
The boys, he could understand. Why the girls were burning just as fiercely, Tae-il could not begin to fathom.
"Very well, gentlemen! Then let us proceed to the next matter!"
What followed was trifling, point-by-point business. Progress reports for when a class's festival preparations spent beyond the budget submitted on paper, or when something else got mixed in. Reports for when a club used its particular fame and clout to lean on smaller clubs. And beyond that, how to respond when all manner of unexpected accidents struck, along with memorizing first-aid procedure.
"We shall educate you on all of it in due time, so there is no need to lose your nerve before we have even begun, gentlemen! Incidentally! Should you not know something, raise your hand, and Vice President Lily will kindly explain!"
"You're selling me off again!? Is there truly not a scrap of shame to be found in this man!?"
"Behold! Is she not herself overflowing with joy!"
"Split in half and die already...!"
The vice president dropped into a boxing stance and drummed her fists against the president's forearm.
"Ow, that hurts! That hurts! O-of course, should the girls prefer otherwise, I, Ueno, will personally— ow, owowow!"
Pfft.
Someone who had been watching burst out laughing. Had that lit the fuse? At the pair's little sketch, people around the room began, one after another, to cover their mouths and snicker.
Tae-il looked over the handout the vice president had passed around.
This is seriously thorough...
He knew the school boasted grounds on the scale of a university, and that the festival was large to match. At a glance, it looked like more than a college festival. In practice, too. Befitting that scale, they sometimes extended special invitations to singers with a fair bit of name recognition. Not the sort of thing that happened at an ordinary high school.
As expected of a world inside a manga...
For the first time in a long while, Tae-il muttered that old familiar line to himself.
The Cultural Festival preparation period.
The stretch when the Public Morals Committee was at its busiest had arrived at last. And that was no empty phrase. Right now was when the workload peaked.
"Haha. So the day really did come."
Hayate, dead on his feet, sprawled out on the sofa.
"Those Liberal track kids really don't know when to quit..."
Sakurako, having stowed every confiscated item in the storage room and locked it, nodded.
"Open flames are strictly banned on campus, and I still never thought they'd already be smuggling in gas burners. Classic Liberal track. Look at those kids and you finally understand what it means to go past freedom and straight into license."
She clicked her tongue, granting that you really did have to hand it to that damned Liberal-track get-up-and-go, if nothing else.
Ayane, fresh from a quiet round of patrol, compared the list of seized items against the performances each class had reported they would stage.
"Hmm. But why a gas burner, of all things?"
Sakurako stopped dusting off her hands and gave Ayane a strange look.
"Huh? And what's this out of nowhere?"
"Well, Class 9 in second year is doing a haunted house."
"And?"
"Is there a reason a haunted house would need a gas burner?"
"They're probably trying to sell food."
"Food?"
"Happened last year, too. A club opened a haunted house, built the thing so you could see clean through to the inside, and sold popcorn so people could watch."
"Whoa..."
"Mostly they sweet-talked couples inside and then watched the show. Idiots."
If there had been no demand, no one would have caught on. The demand was so high they got nabbed on the spot.
Human greed has no end, and the same mistakes get repeated.
The Public Morals Committee always drove straight into that soft spot and came away with results.
"Anyway, our Cultural Festival is crawling with kids like that. You'd better brace yourself."
"Haha. Don't scare the kid too badly, Sakurako."
"Oh, please. If a morals officer loses her nerve over this, she won't survive festival duty, Chair."
"You think so?"
"And besides..."
Sakurako let the sentence die, side-eyeing Ayane, who was studying the list with open curiosity.
That one's plenty unhinged herself...
Sakurako was convinced nothing much would come of it.
And in fact, Ayane's entire impression was that it was interesting. She couldn't hold ensemble practice, busy as the festival had made her, but so what? Because of that, she could take private lessons with Tae-il at home even more often.
"Oh, right. Ayane, your boyfriend's on the executive committee, I hear?"
"Yes."
"Wow. Not even denying it anymore."
Sakurako was thoroughly revolted by that world-class shamelessness—treating him like a boyfriend when he wasn't one at all. Ayane, face perfectly calm, asked as lightly as if she were inquiring what had been for breakfast.
"So, senpai. Have you gotten a boyfriend?"
"You want to die?"
"Chair! Senpai is about to use violence!"
The instant Sakurako raised a fist, Ayane bolted behind the sofa where Hayate lay. Whatever else she might forget, it had been seared into her that Sakurako's fists were decidedly spicy.
Hayate pushed himself upright and tried to soothe her.
"Sakurako. Don't be so rough with Ayane. Once I graduate, she'll be the only junior left who takes your side."
"I'm only like this because the Chair is here!"
"Shh— shh...!"
Hayate looked alarmed. The Public Morals Committee room sat right beside the second faculty office; get too loud, and the teachers heard every word. The chair, who was supposed to uphold public morals, was dating. An older college student, no less. It wasn't as if dating were forbidden, but if the head of morals—one of the pillars holding the school up—got tangled in gossip, the cleanup afterward would be a miserable hassle.
"I know how you feel. Just be a little more careful until I graduate, Sakurako. All right?"
"Okaaay..."
"You could land a boyfriend whenever you felt like it, anyway."
"Th-that's true!"
As expected. A truly simple creature. One scrap of praise from the chair, and Sakurako turned to preen at Ayane, insufferably pleased with herself. Ayane was so past disbelief she didn't even spare her a glance.
"More importantly, Chair. During the Eve Festival, I..."
"Ah. Almost forgot."
The one anxiety Ayane carried was precisely this: being unable to take the stage because of morals duty.
Fortunately, Hayate smiled and nodded.
"Don't worry about it. Go enjoy that stage to your heart's content."
"Thank you!"
"Don't thank me. We're looking forward to it ourselves."
"You mean our cheeky junior's stage?"
Grumbling, Sakurako snatched Ayane by the nape of the neck.
"Get out there and crush the spirit right out of those Liberal track brats!"
"If you take me and Iris out, our whole band is Liberal track, though...?"
"The vocalist's Arisugawa, isn't she! Then we're good! A band's all about the vocalist anyway, right?"
"Augh..."
It wasn't untrue. It wasn't quite true, either. Ayane smiled, awkward.
"Miss Honjo, I'm counting on you?"
"We are not losing to Class 7, not even if it kills us!"
"I get it, so move. You're in the way of my work."
"Sorry! Then I'm counting on you!"
The class president, whose name she couldn't even remember, pressed her palms together as if that made it a proper request and scurried off.
"Haa."
Rena sighed and set the hand holding her brush in motion.
Did they know? That the grades of a girl who had failed every single time had climbed thanks to Sakuya and Shin Tae-il from the class next door.
Did they know? That whether Class 7 won or Class 8 won, neither Rena nor Sakuya nor Shin Tae-il cared in the slightest.
"What a pain. Should I just half-ass it?"
Class 8, astonishingly, had resolved to stage a musical. Wasn't there a former child actor in the class, or something? Rena was so uninterested she couldn't even recall who.
There was a somewhat pretty girl in the class, at least.
That was the whole of her impression.
In any case, they had no shortage of talent in music and acting, and so it had been decided to play to that strength. Costumes and props were left to the girls with skilled hands, Rena included, and the heavy work to the boys.
If I finish fast, I can scrape together even a little more practice time.
The hand guiding the brush moved faster and faster. Her body was in the classroom. Her heart was already in the art room, pounding out a beat on the drums.
One thing was certain. The experience of playing live had helped her enormously. She could understand, now, how Tae-il had been able to push everything else back and trust the live shows alone. Performing live excited Rena even more than painting did, even more than being evaluated by other people.
And there was this, too. The moment she tried to give form to what she had felt while playing the drums, the inspiration that had gone quiet lately surged up all at once.
"Huu."
Maybe preparing for this year's year-end exhibition would be easier than she had thought. With that in mind, Rena kept her hand moving.
First, get the design side finished as fast as possible.
Being part of Class 8, she had a role of her own. There were no lines to memorize, though, and all the part required was that she stand still, so there was nothing to practice.
Good.
For once, she had time left over, and legally, at that. It was the season when everyone else was at their busiest. For the sake of a more comfortable future, Rena decided she would portion out her hours with care.