Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 8 - Chapter 2

Scene 2. Much Ado about Fantasy

“Well then, let’s begin brainstorming ideas for what we can do for this year’s cultural festival.”

A day had passed by, and we were once again gathered up in the literary club’s room. Sayumi, our president, stood at the head of the table to lead the discussion. Almost everyone else was sitting down—I had lost at rock paper scissors, so I was standing by the whiteboard, ready to take notes on all the ideas that were proposed.

“As Miss Kudou so kindly explained to us yesterday, we of the literary club will have free rein over the music room on the fifth floor on the day of the festival,” Sayumi continued.

To sum up the news that Kudou had delivered: normally, the school’s brass band club would use the music room in question during the cultural festival. This year, however, they would be participating in a competition on the very same day, and even the members who wouldn’t be playing in the competition would be attending to cheer their clubmates on. That left the music room up for grabs, and somewhere along the way, somebody proposed that the literary club could figure out something to do with it.

Our school’s music room was about twice the size of the standard classrooms. One would think it’d be the sort of space that students fight tooth and nail to occupy for the festival, considering how many different groups need plenty of space to put on displays and performances...but the issue was complicated by the fact that the music room was an oddly difficult space to use effectively, even in spite of its size.

I mean, it was big, but not big enough for a band to perform in, or to run a beauty contest in, or whatever. It was also tiered, with steps gradually raising the floor level upward as you moved toward the back of the room, which meant that pushing desks together to make tables and sell food wasn’t really an option. All those inconveniences resulted in nobody specifically requesting to use the room, and that’s how it ended up getting handed to us.

“We’re not being compelled to use the room, so naturally, turning the offer down is an option,” said Sayumi. “However, considering we’ve been handed such a golden opportunity, I believe it would be a shame to not make the most of it. Is everyone all right with utilizing the room?”

The rest of us quickly consented to our president’s proposal. The literary club, well...to be brutally honest, we’d never really done much in particular. The better part of our meetings was spent just chatting with each other, and it was only very rarely that we engaged in any of the activities of a proper literary club. We’d never been particularly motivated when it came to the cultural festivals either—the previous year, we’d put out a literary magazine, and that was it.

Why, then, were we now willing to put some real teen spirit into doing something big for the festival? The answer was as simple as could be.

“Basically, the fact that they’re proposing this at all means that in their eyes, we’re a buncha slackers with nothing better to do,” I said. “Yeah, we can’t exactly take that lying down, can we?”

“I...suppose that’s more or less accurate, yes,” said Sayumi, her expression distinctly pained.

Kudou had done her best to not explicitly frame it in those terms, but her whole speech has practically exuded an aura of “You don’t have anything else to do, right?” Considering the state of our day-to-day activities, I couldn’t really blame her for seeing us in that light...but that didn’t make the fact that she saw us that way rankle any less, somehow. It was just one of those things.

“I propose that we begin by voicing as many ideas as we can muster, then narrow them down to the most practical or appealing options,” said Sayumi.

Tomoyo ended up speaking first. “I mean, there’s nothing stopping us from just making a literary magazine like last year and putting it on display in the music room, is there?” she asked.

“True,” said Sayumi, “but if at all possible, I would rather avoid doing so. We can file that as our last resort.”

Yeah, fair enough. We’d been handed the chance to use the music room on a silver platter, and setting up a bunch of magazines in there would’ve felt like a boring waste of potential. It was a valid proposal, though, so I figured that, as the meeting’s secretary, I should note it down on the whiteboard. I uncapped my pen, wrote “Unveil the accursed grimoire of King Solomon” as the first item on our list of options...and was immediately and unilaterally stripped of my position as recordkeeper. Sayumi shot me a scathing glare, twirled a finger in the air, and just like that, I was out.

“But why, dang it all...? Should I have called it the Lemegeton instead of a grimoire? Is that where I went wrong? Or maybe I should’ve ditched the Solomon theme and gone with a book from the Cthulhu Mythos? Like the Book of Eibon, or the Pnakotic Manuscripts...?”

“Okay, we get the picture. Move along, chuuni boy,” Tomoyo said as she took my place at the whiteboard and scrawled out a perfectly uninspired “Literary magazine exhibit” on our list of proposals.

Now that I’d been released from my secretarial duties, I took a moment to try to come up with an idea of my own. “We’re working with the music room, huh...? I guess the normal thing to do would be some sorta musical performance? Like, we could do a chorus sorta deal, or even play instruments,” I eventually proposed. Holding a full-on band-style concert would be impossible in terms of both equipment and scale, but I figured that a smaller recital would be doable enough.

“Singing’s one thing, but instruments...?” Tomoyo said with a raised eyebrow. “You’re making this sound like it’d be a piece of cake, but can you even play anything to begin with?”

“Mwa ha ha! I see the state of your memory is grim, Tomoyo—or should I say, grimoire?”

“That makes literally no sense!”

“Surely you haven’t forgotten that I’ve already introduced you to my soulbound partner in crime? That is to say...Infinity Maria?!”

For a moment, Tomoyo stared blankly at me. “Oooh,” she finally said, “right, that did happen. You brought a guitar you couldn’t even play to school with you.”

“Indeed, it feels like it’s been an age since that fateful day... The day you stole the title of Tidings of the Moonlit Evangel away from me. It was a storied name, passed down through the generations at the cost of the lives of all its previous bearers, but alas, I could lay claim to it no longer...”

“Since when did that title have that grim of a backstory?! It’s a name, not some ultimate old school martial arts maneuver! And also, I did not steal it! You forced it on me!”

“But such a petty setback was nowhere near enough to break the bond between me and Maria! No, we’ve stayed together, shedding blood, sweat, and tears as we’ve expended every ounce of effort we could working toward a shared goal...”

“Oh, huh. You mean you can actually play that Mustang of yours these days? You couldn’t even tune the thing, last I heard.”

“Heh heh heh!” I chuckled. “I suppose that would be the natural conclusion, wouldn’t it?”

“Well, color me surprised. Good for you,” said Tomoyo. She sounded genuinely impressed, and the look of respect she gave me felt incredible, even if it was so slight it was barely perceptible. People just started looking at you like that when you could play an instrument, it seemed, and the sensation was powerfully appealing. I didn’t have all that long to bask in it before it all came crashing down, though.

“Huh? But wait, Juu,” Hatoko interjected. “I thought you said that you haven’t been playing your guitar at all lately, so you sold it back to mmphmnhph?”

I tried to cover her mouth before she ran it in an unfortunate direction, but tragically, I was just a little too late. The damage was done, and the look Tomoyo was giving me now was anything but respectful.

“There’s nothing worse than a guy who’ll lie to your face like it’s nothing,” Tomoyo said, her voice dripping with contempt.

“I-I wasn’t really lying,” I said. “I did put in a ton of effort, and I really could play it, just a little...” There’s no single clear, specific standard that you have to achieve in order to be able to claim that you can play the guitar, so technically, I hadn’t lied at all...though I was also perfectly aware of how pathetic of an excuse that was.

“Why would you pawn your soulbound partner in crime?” Tomoyo pressed.

“No, it wasn’t like that, honest,” I said. “I mean, you don’t have to put it that way! That makes it sound so much worse than it was! It’s because our souls are bound, really. Sometimes, you just need some time away from the people you’re closest to, right? They say that if you really love someone, you should let them go—it’s like, y’know, the same sorta mindset that got Ash to give up his Charizard, I guess...”

Of course, if I were being blunt, I’d have said that I just got bored with it. I’d sold it right back to the thrift store I’d bought it from in the first place. I’d barely used it at all, and it was still in just as good of a condition as it had been when I’d bought it, so I got a really good price for it too...

“Of course, I just sold the actual guitar. I still have the case, so no worries there!”

“Why would you possibly need a guitar case if you don’t have a guitar?!” Tomoyo snapped.

“’Cause it means I can still walk around town with it slung over my shoulder every once in a while, duh.”

“You’ve been walking around with an empty guitar case?! Oh my god, stop, you’re seriously gonna make me cringe myself to death! Showing off the fact that you’re a musician when you aren’t is the most pathetically desperate thing I’ve ever heard!”

Oh, come on! It’s so much fun! Walking around town with the case slung across my back and stopping out of nowhere every once in a while to pretend to jot down ideas for lyrics in a notepad was a blast, no two ways about it. Coming up with lyrics in a fit of sudden inspiration: hella cool!

“Speaking of Andou feigning musical talent,” Sayumi said as if she’d just remembered something, “I’ve always found the way you make a point of showing off the pick you carry around in your pencil case each and every time you open it to be profoundly irritating.”

“Ugh!” I grunted.

“I was under the impression that you really were keeping up with your guitar practice, and I refrained from commenting out of respect for your efforts. I never would have believed that you were actually walking around with a pick on hand in spite of the fact that you don’t even play the guitar at all.”

“I-It’s not like I was going out of my way to keep it around! It just sorta ended up in there, and I, umm, well...”

“Then there’s the matter of the occasional moments when you close your eyes, smirk, and start playing air guitar. If I may be frank, those were rather difficult to watch. The spectacle was simply so tragic, I couldn’t even bring myself to laugh about it.”

“Th-That was me playing a melody I came up with in a moment of inspiration to make sure I didn’t forget it, that’s all...”

“Watching you look so insufferably smug as you strummed away to your imagined rhythm, not even realizing that your chords and fingering were nonsensical at best... Words would fail to describe how intensely pitiable you looked. I cannot stress this enough: if your skill with the guitar is so abysmal that anyone can tell at a glance you’re making it up as you go, then you should not—under any circumstances—make a show of pretending to play in public.”

“...”

“Oh, and you should know that according to your homeroom teacher, Miss Satomi, the girls in your class consider your little performances discomforting and obnoxious.”

“Wait, the girls think I’m a nuisance now?!”

N-No way! It wasn’t supposed to be like this... This isn’t what I wanted at all! The whole point of me casually flashing my pick and taking every chance at lunchtime or after school to lounge on a window frame and strum away at an invisible guitar was to make everyone think, “Oh, is Andou a guitarist? That’s kinda cool, isn’t it?” Now, however, I’d been struck by a revelation so unexpected, so profoundly humiliating, that all I could do was collapse to the floor and writhe in shame.

Tomoyo shot me a fed up glance. “You know, if you spent less time posing with your stupid props and more time actually practicing, you’d probably be able to play the guitar by now.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Tomoyo,” I said. “This has never been about me wanting to play the guitar. It’s about me wanting everyone to see me as a guy who can play the guitar!”

“Well, at least you’re friggin’ honest about it!”

So, yeah—I’d proposed the idea of putting on a musical performance in spite of the fact that I didn’t actually have any skills in the area to speak of. Not just in terms of instruments either—the best I could say about my singing ability was that I went to karaoke every once in a while.

“I mean, I’ll put it on the board, I guess...but I really don’t think these are realistic at all,” Tomoyo said as she jotted “Chorus” and “Concert” onto the whiteboard. “I can’t play anything either, and I don’t think I’m up to learning an instrument in the next month. Oh, but now that I think about it—didn’t you say you took piano lessons, Hatoko?”

“I did,” said Hatoko, “but that was when I was in elementary school! I haven’t played at all lately, so I think I’ve probably forgotten how. What about you, Sayumi?”

“I’ve taken piano lessons as well, and I imagine that I could play a simple song competently enough. My grandmother taught me the basics of the koto and the shamisen as well,” Sayumi said. She was downplaying her ability with the instruments, but I knew very well that if she said she knew “the basics” of something, it probably meant that she was outlandishly good at it.

“How about you, Chifuyu? Play any instruments?” I asked.

“I play a little piano too,” said Chifuyu.

“Oh, huh! I didn’t know that.”

“Cookie goes to a piano school, and I took a lesson once. It was about an hour long.”

“Okay, so you really weren’t kidding about the ‘a little’ part!”

“They taught me a song called 4′33″.”

“So that’s where you picked that up!”

That title took me right back to Maestro Chifuyu’s ultra-ultra-avant-garde impressionist painting, The Air...which one could also describe as a blank sheet of paper. She’d submitted it as her summer homework assignment for art class the year before, supposedly, and according to Kuki, she’d used the existence of 4′33″ as an example to argue that her “painting” was a valid piece of artwork.

That being said...I had to imagine that there was quite the story behind a kid showing up at a music school and being taught a piece so unusual it involved playing precisely no music whatsoever. What on earth did you do, Chifuyu? What sort of behavior could’ve made your teacher throw up their hands and say, “Okay, Chifuyu, try playing 4′33″ next! It’s a real song, I promise!”

“4′33″ is my signature piece,” Chifuyu declared proudly. Considering that Miss Satomi told me that Chifuyu had taken a bunch of lessons overtime but had never kept any of them up for long, I had to assume that she couldn’t really play any instruments at all—or at least not well.

“Hmm. So the only real musicians here are me, Hatoko, and Sayumi,” I said thoughtfully. “Yeah, you’re right. This might not be very realistic after all.”

“You didn’t really think you could casually slip yourself into the musician column without anyone calling you out, did you?” Tomoyo jabbed. I, however, was already moving on to try to find our next idea!

“What about you, Chifuyu? Is there anything you want to do for the festival?” I asked.

“Hmm. I wanna do something fun,” said Chifuyu.

“Not exactly specific, huh...? That’s true enough, though. Whatever we do, it’s gonna be fun.”

“Hmm...” Chifuyu muttered. She spent a moment stroking Squirrely’s head and tugging his tail as she mulled the question over, then she mumbled out a proper idea. “In that case, I wanna try comedy.”

“Comedy? Like a manzai act, or stand-up, or something?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh. Yeah, that makes sense, actually. Nothing says ‘fun’ quite like comedy, and all.”

“Yeah,” Chifuyu agreed with a nod. “It sounds fun, and easy too. The comedians on TV just run around and act stupid, and everyone laughs—”

It was instant. No sooner had the words left Chifuyu’s mouth than the gargantuan hand of a monstrous demon came crashing down upon her head, locking her in its inescapable grip.

...Wait, no, scratch that. I’m not sure where that overpoweringly sinister, demonic image came from, but it was actually Hatoko who’d grabbed onto Chifuyu’s head. And really, it was less of a grab and more of a gentle pat.

“Chifuyu?” said Hatoko with a flawlessly amiable smile. “You shouldn’t say that sort of thing, okay?”

“Huh? But—”

“You shouldn’t say that sort of thing, okay?”

“...Y-Yes, ma’am.”

The kindness of Hatoko’s expression was worthy of that of a veteran kindergarten teacher, but the sheer, irresistible intensity behind it? That could only be described as dreadful. Chifuyu shrank back so immediately, you’d think she’d been stared down by a mythical monster straight out of a particularly ghastly fairy tale.

“H-Hey, Andou...? What was that all about? Since when was Hatoko that scary? And I’ve never heard Chifuyu talk that politely to anyone before,” Tomoyo whispered into my ear. Judging by the look on her face, she was really freaked out.

“Yeah, uh... Chifuyu kinda touched a nerve, I guess. You might say this subject’s taboo, as far as Hatoko’s concerned,” I explained.

Hatoko adored comedy in all forms, and making light of comedians or their industry was a surefire way to set her off. To put it bluntly, she’d flip at the slightest provocation. Hatoko’s freak-outs didn’t involve any enraged tirades or anything like that, though. Her anger was quieter—less aggressive than that. She’d just stand there, smiling away as she told you off...and that was scarier than any amount of shouting could have ever been. If she were a manga character, there was no doubt in my mind that her flipping out would be accompanied with a “RUUUUUUMBLE” sound effect looming in the background.

“Back in elementary school, I said something along the lines of ‘Maybe I’ll be a comedian when I grow up! I mean, they get to make money and go on TV just for acting stupid—how easy’s that?’ in front of Hatoko...”

“Ahh, yeah. That sure sounds like something an elementary schooler would say,” said Tomoyo. “So, what’d she do?”

“Well, she...she... Huh? What did she do?” Huh. That’s weird... It’s almost like that’s a chunk of my memory that’s just...missing...? “Haah...haah...haah... H-Huh, weird... For some reason, I can barely breathe... K-Kinda starting to tremble a little too...”

“H-Holy crap, what’s wrong, Andou?! You’re sweating like crazy!”

“I-I... I can’t remember. I have no idea what Hatoko did to me... C-Could it be? Is my own psyche blocking the memory of ‘that moment’ away? Are my instincts rejecting it?”

“It was scare quotes-worthy?! You know you can only get away with putting those around something like ‘that moment’ if it’s foreshadowing something really major, right?!”

“I-It’s no use... All I can remember are scattered fragments... A few isolated images, at most... I remember...a crayfish, an incredibly hot bowl of oden, and a bath filled with boiling-hot water...”

“Aren’t those all things they use to torture comedians for laughs on variety shows?!”

“But even though I made such a huge deal about how hot the oden was, when I actually ate it, it was cool enough that it didn’t burn me at all...and the boiling-hot bathwater didn’t end up being all that hot in the end either...”

“Cut that out! The comedians on TV do all that stuff for real! It’s definitely not staged!”

By the time I managed to seal my forbidden memories away and quell the overpowering terror that’d threatened to overwhelm me, Hatoko had let Chifuyu go. We did put “Comedy” on the list, just for the sake of completeness, but realistically speaking, I knew it wasn’t happening. Hatoko would never allow us to put on a comedy performance that was anything less than professional in quality...though as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I realized something.

“Wait a sec, Hatoko. Couldn’t you write the script for a manzai sketch or a stand-up routine?” I suggested.

“Hmm...” Hatoko paused to think. “No, probably not. I love comedy, but that doesn’t mean I can write it myself!”

That answered that question pretty definitively. She had no interest whatsoever in making her own material. Hatoko was all about consuming comedy, not producing it herself.

“Huh...? But wait—didn’t you used to have a notebook that you carried around so you could write down any jokes you came up with? Like, toward the end of elementary school?” I mentioned as another old memory came back to me.

A look of shock came across Hatoko’s face, and she stiffened up. Her eyes were wide, and her gaze shifted wildly from one end of the room to the other. “Huh? U-Uhh, umm, err... D-Did I? I don’t remember at all!”

“Yeah, you totally did! I think you titled it ‘Hatoko’s Super Sidesplitters,’ or something like that. Sorta feels like you were setting the bar pretty high for yourself, now that I think about it.”

Hatoko let out a strangled gasp.

“Yeah, and you asked me to read your material one time. I’m pretty sure I remember all the jokes you wrote being blatant rip-offs of popular comedians’ material, actually...”

“A-Ah, ah, aaahhhhhh! Stop it, stop it! Cut it out, Juu, you jerk! Just forget about that, pleeease!” Hatoko wailed, her face bright red and tears pooling in her eyes as she lightly battered me with her fists.

It seemed that, in Hatoko’s mind, her old attempts at writing comedy were an unfortunate stain in her personal history. To be fair, I think pretty much everyone has a notebook buried away somewhere that they never, ever want anyone else to see, or at least some equivalent thereof. My Bloody Bible, for instance...was, uh, totally different! Not the same thing at all! It was a tome of ultimate truth that detailed the world’s most secret principles! That’s the only reason I didn’t want to show it to anyone!

“So, anyway, do you have any ideas, Hatoko?” I said when she finally got tired of hitting me. She had yet to contribute any ideas of her own, after all.

“Hmm. Let me think,” Hatoko said, then crossed her arms and spent a few seconds pondering with a very thoughtful look on her face. “Oh, I know!” she finally said, her expression lighting up again. “Why don’t we do an act?”

“An act...? Like, a play?” I asked.

“Yeah! You know, like what you had us do yesterday, where we all acted like our powers were going out of control? I thought everyone did a pretty good job at that, so I figured it might be fun to do something like that for the festival!”

“We’ve been over this! That wasn’t an act! But, anyway...did that seriously look like everyone doing ‘a pretty good job’ to you?” I muttered, but then decided not to delve too deeply into that line of thought.

An act, huh...? “You know, that might not actually be a bad idea,” I said.

“Yeah, agreed,” said Tomoyo. “Not exactly original, but classics are classic for a reason.”

A play. Drama. It was a staple among staples in your typical cultural festival’s schedule—as clichéd as cliché could be—and as a result, it hadn’t even occurred to us to consider it as an option.

“Man, that one didn’t cross my mind at all!” I said. “You’d think that would’ve been the first idea on the board too!”

“Probably because the drama club’s doing a full-blown play on the stage in the gym,” said Tomoyo. “That kinda had me thinking that plays were off the table from the get-go.”

“Oh, yeah, I get that. You end up thinking they got to it first,” I said with a nod.

“Indeed—but that does not, in fact, mean that the drama club has the exclusive right to put on a play,” Sayumi said. “As it so happens, there were classes that decided to put on plays both last year and the year before that, both in addition to the drama club’s performance.”

Sayumi then began running through the proposal in more concrete terms. “With only the five of us available as our cast, it would have to be a rather small-scale play...but considering that the music room is rather cramped for a play to begin with, that limited scale may prove to be just what we need. And most importantly, drama is an indisputable form of literature in its own right. In other words, it’s an option that would be truly suitable for a literary club to choose, one we can execute without fear of judgment.”

“Yeah, good point,” I agreed. “If we’re doing a play, we can get away with so much more than if we were doing a concert or comedy or whatever! Even if it kinda sucks, people will say the jank just adds to the charm!”

“I would prefer not to agree with such a pessimistic viewpoint...but I suppose I can’t deny it either,” Sayumi said with a distinct wince. “The fact that it’s such a common option means that most people have some degree of experience with acting, so they will be inclined to judge us less harshly than they otherwise might.”

I’m not trying to make light of plays, or acting, or anything like that, to be clear! The fact remains, however, that when it comes to performances that a bunch of rank and file amateurs could attempt, putting on a play is a lower bar to clear than trying to form a band or a comedy group. And then there’s the fact that when bands or comedians suck, the reactions they tend to get are, well, brutal. I was kinda terrified of having to face that myself.

“What do you think, Chifuyu? Could you act in a play?” I asked.

“...Ugh!” Chifuyu grunted out of nowhere. “Ugh! Ugh!”

“Chifuyu... I think you’ve been stuck on that bit for a little too long, now. It’s been a whole day already.” I had never been able to figure out what got her into these moods, and it was clear that wasn’t going to change anytime soon. For the moment, though, it seemed like a clear enough sign that she was down for the idea. “Anyway, looks like you’re raring to go, huh?”

“Yeah. I wanna try it,” Chifuyu said, laying off her fake grunting to clench her fists with determination.

“Have you ever acted before?” I asked.

“I played the princess when we did Sleeping Beauty at school,” said Chifuyu.

“Oh, dang! That’s really something—you had the starring role! Did it go okay?”

“Yeah. It was great. I fell asleep partway through, and when I woke up, the play was over.”

“You mean the princess never woke up in the end?!”

In the context of Sleeping Beauty, an ending in which the princess doesn’t wake up would turn the play into a tragedy, no two ways about it. Considering Chifuyu said the play went well, I could only imagine what sort of emergency measures they’d had to take to cope with their unconscious star. Maybe Kuki improvised a new ending on the spot?

In any case, we’d all had the chance to express our opinions, and nobody had shown any opposition in particular to staging a play. Hatoko, it seemed, hadn’t expected her proposal to go over that well, and she was now feeling quite a bit of pressure, judging by the anxious look on her face.

“I-Is this really okay?” she asked. “I was just throwing out ideas—I didn’t really think it through at all...”

“No worries there. I think it’s a great idea,” I said. Meanwhile, Tomoyo wrote “Play” down on the whiteboard, which would prove to be the final idea that she had to record.

“I believe we’ve reached a decision, then,” Sayumi said as she glanced around the room, taking note of our expressions. “Our literary club will stage a play for this year’s cultural festival.”

A circle was drawn around the word “Play,” and our plan was set in stone. We’d decided to put on a play...but what play would we decide to put on? Find out after the commercial break!