Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 8 - Chapter 3

Scene 3. As You Loathe It

Romeo and Juliet: a play penned by the English dramatist William Shakespeare. Though generally classified as a tragedy, it wasn’t quite heart-wrenching enough to earn a place alongside Shakespeare’s Four Great Tragedies, those being King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and Hamlet. Its central theme, in short: forbidden love.

We lay our scene in fair Verona, a metropolitan city of Italy. There lives Romeo, heir to House Montague, and Juliet, the sole daughter of House Capulet. A chance encounter at a party ends with the two falling instantly and madly in love with each other...but their houses are the bitterest of enemies. In this era of Verona’s history, noble houses were divided based upon their support of either the Holy Roman emperor or the pope. The Montagues are supporters of the emperor, while the Capulets side with the pope, and as a result, the two houses have spent years and years engaging in an intense, often bloody feud.

Within all that open antagonism, the two houses’ progenies fall in love. Fate, however, stands in the way of that love ever reaching fulfillment. As if to laugh in the face of the young couple’s budding romance, relations between the two houses deteriorate further still. It seems inevitable that the irresistible tides of destiny will tear them apart...but that’s when a plan is hatched.

Juliet chooses to drink a poison that will cause her to appear dead then awaken some time later, a plot that will unshackle her from the bonds her family have imposed on her and free her to live with Romeo. Romeo, however, is never informed of this plan. Convinced that Juliet has truly died, he makes his way to her body and poisons himself with a truly lethal toxin, choosing to join her in death. When Juliet awakens and realizes that her plan has caused the death of her one true love, she falls into despair and throws herself upon Romeo’s sword. Finally, when the Montague and Capulet houses learn of Romeo’s and Juliet’s deaths and the irresistible love that burned between them, their leaders choose to bring an end to the feud. So ends the lovers’ star-crossed tale...

“...is the essence of the story, broadly speaking,” Sayumi said, pausing for a moment after she concluded her explanation. Our usual members had once again gathered up in the club room after school. This time, each of us was holding a sheet of paper with information relating to Romeo and Juliet written on it.

After deciding that we’d be putting on a play the day before, we split up for the afternoon to go home and think about which play we wanted to put on. When we got back together again, however, most of the proposals people brought to the table—“Snow White,” “Cinderella,” “Momotarou”—weren’t exactly the sort of stuff that you’d expect from a high school’s cultural festival. We reached a consensus that it would be nice to do something a little more highbrow, and that’s when I proposed that we do something by Shakespeare, which prompted Sayumi to suggest that Romeo and Juliet would be appropriate. She threw together the documents we were perusing, gave us an explanation of the play’s story, and that brings us back to the present moment.

“Huh,” I said. “I guess I never really knew what Romeo and Juliet was like as a story, actually.” I’d known the title, of course, and I’d known what happens in very broad strokes, but I’d never read the script nor watched a performance of the play before. The only details I’d been aware of were the “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo” scene on the balcony, and also that a series of misunderstandings led to the two leads dying in the end.

“I gotta say, I was pretty surprised to hear you suggest Shakespeare. Kinda intellectual for your usual taste, isn’t it?” Tomoyo commented.

I could tell that she was making light of me, but I responded with a chuckle and a smirk anyway. “‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,’” I recited.

“...Excuse me?” said Tomoyo.

“Shakespeare said that.”

“Right, okay. And?”

“...”

“Shakespeare said it. So what?”

“No, I mean... You can’t just... This is just one of those things, you know? Like, where I drop a really great Shakespeare quote and then we just move along, right...?”

I really loved Shakespeare. I’d never read even a single one of his works, I hadn’t seen any of his plays either, I had no interest in his personal history, and judging by his portraits, I wasn’t exactly into his looks either—but nevertheless, I loved him. Why? I couldn’t say. I just knew that something about him being the author of the Four Great Tragedies, something about the meter of his name, was just...just great. Shakespeare: hella cool.

“Oookay, I get it now,” said Tomoyo. “This is one of those ‘Quoting Shakespeare makes me hella cool!’ things, isn’t it? You’re being all pretentious even though you don’t actually know crap about him.”

“Agh!” I choked. I had nothing to say against that. It was, well, just one of those things.

Characters who quoted famous sayings of pieces of literature just looked so erudite and awesome and stuff! Not just Shakespeare either—it worked with Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Pascal, Ortega, Thomas Aquinas, Dazai Osamu, even the Bible! The urge to pluck a particularly apt sample of their words and use it to argue someone into submission or cheer up one of your friends was overwhelming! Not to mention the ability to go the opposite route and say something like “So-and-so said this, but you know what? I think the opposite,” arguing against the words of one of those eminent figures! Famous quotes: hella cool!

“You don’t know crap about Shakespeare, do you? I’d totally bet on it,” said Tomoyo.

“D-D-Don’t be ridiculous!” I shouted. “Of course I do! I know tons about him! Like, I know that he was way balder than you’d think he’d be!”

“Suuure,” said Tomoyo. “In that case, why don’t you tell me a little more about that quote from a minute ago? Did Shakespeare himself say that, or was it a quote from one of his works?”

I gasped. How dare you! That’s the worst possible question you could’ve asked me! I’d found the line on the internet when I was looking around for cool Shakespeare quotes, and I had no clue whatsoever what its context was. If she’d asked me about the quote’s meaning, I could’ve gone off on a tangent about my own personal interpretation of it and thrown her off the trail, but a question about its origins allowed me no such easy out.

And, actually...the way she figured out what question would put me on the spot the most with such instant, pinpoint precision has gotta mean something, right? She’s been here too, hasn’t she? That girl’s definitely looked up famous quotes online herself, for sure!

We didn’t do things in the proper “Read a book → Find a famous quote → Show it off in conversation” order. No, our procedure looked more like “Feel a desire to show off quotes in conversation → Go out proactively looking for them.” In other words, the opposite of how the rest of the world did things. Tomoyo had to be in the same boat—otherwise, she wouldn’t have known that questions about the quote’s origins were my weak point.

A thousand curses... Just look at that grin on her face! Is messing with me that fun for her?! For a moment, I seriously considered shouting, “Objection! The fact that you’re asking me that question is undeniable proof that we’re birds of a feather!” and dragging her all the way down to hell with me, but before I had the chance, Sayumi let out a sigh.

“‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’ is not Shakespeare’s own words. They’re a line spoken by Jaques, a character in the Shakespeare play As You Like It,” she explained.

I felt my eyes widen. “Wh-Whoa, seriously? It sounded so much like something that a playwright would say, I totally assumed that Shakespeare just said it himself...”

“I imagine plenty of people are under that same misapprehension. The line has become so famous that it’s taken on a life of its own. That being said, I don’t think one would necessarily be mistaken to attribute the words to Shakespeare himself either. Quite a few people interpret the line to be Shakspeare speaking to the audience through one of his characters. It was far from the only time that he related life to the stage in one of his works, after all.”

“Oooh, huh! Cool... I mean, wait! Y-Yeah! That’s it! That’s exactly what I was about to say!”

“You could hardly be any less convincing,” Sayumi said with a roll of her eyes.

“Look, Andou,” said Tomoyo. “Let’s try to learn from this and stop quoting books that you haven’t even read, okay? If you wanna quote Shakespeare, then at least read his plays first!”

“Don’t get me wrong, Tomoyo... I don’t give a crap about Shakespeare at all. All I want is for people to think that I’m a superintellectual who knows all about Shakespeare!”

“Admitting that does not make it better!” Tomoyo shouted, but I chose to ignore her nitpicking and instead glanced across the table, where Hatoko and Chifuyu were striking up a conversation of their own.

“So, do you know about Shakespeare, Chifuyu?” asked Hatoko.

Chifuyu cocked her head. “Is that a new McShake?”

“Ha ha, no, no, it’s not a drink! Shakespeare was a person’s name!”

“Oh. Did he invent the McShake?”

“No, not quite! Shakespeare was—”

“Hatoko. Sandwiches were invented by the Earl of Sandwich.”

“Uh. Y-Yeah, I’ve heard that! Well, I’ve heard that’s just one theory, but—”

“So McShakes must have been invented by Shakespeare.”

“U-Umm... I-I wonder about that?”

Why’re you letting her argue into a corner, Miss High Schooler? I had to admit, though, that watching the two of them talk was charming in a very particular sort of way. Chifuyu was way more stubborn than you’d think, judging by her looks, and Hatoko was prone to cave to the slightest pressure (unless you were talking about comedy), creating a really backward sort of conversational power balance between them.

It felt easy to assume that Hatoko would make a good childcare worker, considering her personality, but I had a feeling she might actually not have been cut out for that sort of job at all. From what I understood, real childcare workers needed to know how to lay down the law when push came to shove. If you couldn’t shout when the situation called for it, the kids would just end up looking down on you.

Losing your voice was an occupational hazard in that line of work, apparently. Everyone knew that announcers and singers had to deal with throat pain, but surprisingly, childcare workers were right up there with them. The source for that bit of trivia: my sister. Yes, that’s right—my berserker of a sibling’s dream job was, somehow, a nursery school teacher. It didn’t suit her at all, but she would definitely murder me if I said that, so I kept it to myself.

“So, anyway... Now that I’m actually looking at its story and all, Romeo and Juliet’s not really anything like how I imagined it,” I said as I skimmed through Sayumi’s summary again. “I think the most surprising part’s that the whole story takes place over the course of less than a week.”

Shockingly enough, the total time elapsed between Romeo and Juliet falling in love at first sight and the two of them meeting their tragic, coincidence-driven demises came out to a grand total of five days. Considering that it was one of the world’s most famous love stories of all time, I’d sort of assumed that their romance would be, you know, deep or something, but as it turned out, it actually barely took any time at all. I’m talking JoJo’s Part 5 levels of pacing here.

“The fact that the whole thing took five days is just the start,” Tomoyo said, sounding a little perturbed. “I mean, they went from strangers to married in two days! That’s crazy in its own right.”

I nodded in agreement. Romeo and Juliet met and fell in love one day, then were married the day after. Then a bunch of stuff happened, a couple days passed by, and five days from their first encounter, their feelings for each other had gotten them killed. If some love affairs burned like a flame, then theirs exploded like a can of lighter fluid.

I know it might sound ridiculous to say this about a world-renowned masterpiece, but, like...from a modern perspective, the whole story was a little hard to take seriously at face value. Oh, and for bonus points, in the original work, Romeo was sixteen years old, and Juliet was fourteen. With that fact in mind, it was hard to see the story as anything other than a youthful indiscretion blown way out of proportion. A couple teens going wild, if you will. I sure as heck never would’ve guessed that Romeo was supposed to be younger than me, anyway.

“It is hard to focus on anything other than the timeline when viewing the story in the form of an outline, yes. When viewed as a play or a ballet, however, it’s much easier to not be bothered by that aspect,” Sayumi said, then she seemed to realize something. “Come to think of it, I suppose I didn’t even think twice about revealing the twist in my summary. I hope none of you mind?”

“Wait, mind what?” I asked.

“I mean, I hope you don’t mind that I spoiled the play’s ending.”

Ooh, I get it now. Yeah, I guess that is technically a spoiler, isn’t it? “Nah, it’s cool. I already knew how Romeo and Juliet ended anyway.”

Tomoyo, Hatoko, and Chifuyu all confirmed that they’d already known as well. I wasn’t super surprised to find that the one thing all of us had known about the play was that the main characters died in the end.

“I can’t explain why, but that’s the one part you just sort of end up absorbing,” I said. “I don’t even remember how I learned that.”

“It is a world-famous play, I suppose,” said Sayumi. “It’s referenced in all sorts of works, spanning all mediums and genres all across the world, and there are countless parodies of Romeo and Juliet as well. There’s no end of opportunities to learn about the play’s particulars. The fact that its ending being spoiled is more or less an inevitability is an unfortunate byproduct of its popularity, I suppose.”

Hmm. So even fame has its drawbacks—or, you might say, fame makes works fall short on a certain criterion! The more famous a work grew, the more people would learn about it, and the more spoilers would fly all over the place in unexpected forms. You could end up learning all about a work without even realizing it, which was pretty unfortunate considering that in my book, the best way to enjoy a work was to approach it with a totally blank slate.

“Oh, you know, I think I know what you mean,” said Hatoko. “I watched Titanic for the first time the other day. It was really good, and I was just sobbing by the end of it...but, well, I knew that the boat was going to sink from the very beginning, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, there’s no way you couldn’t know,” I said. I’d never even seen Titanic, and even I knew that the boat sank in the end. I’d seen it referenced so many times in manga and TV shows that I’d just passively absorbed the knowledge. This was, indeed, a criterion upon which famous works came up lacking. “It really just happens, doesn’t it? You learn all sorts of things about the big masterpieces without even realizing it. Like, I’ve never seen the first Gundam series, but I already know about the ‘Amuro! Launch!’ line.”

“Oh, yeah! I know that one too!” Hatoko exclaimed. The fact that she was familiar with it really went to show how much the line had entered into the public consciousness.

“Yeah, people in our generation kinda just end up learning this stuff,” said Tomoyo. “Like, I only got into JoJo’s because of all the parodies I ended up getting exposed to.”

“I get that. Man, I totally get that,” I said. I couldn’t have agreed more, really. To borrow a piece of kinda dated slang, I really knew that feel.

JoJo’s was a true classic of a manga that had been running since before I was born, so it went without saying that I hadn’t been following it in real time until long after it began. As a result, I was exposed to the countless manga and anime that parodied JoJo’s long before I’d actually begun reading the original work. I saw all the most famous lines—like “But I refuse,” “Oh? You’re approaching me?” and “It was me, Dio!”—in the form of memes long before I saw them in context. You’d think the process would go “Read the original work → Understand the meme,” but instead it was flipped on its head, turning into “Where did this meme come from? → Read the original work.” In this day and age, you couldn’t really blame anyone for approaching the classics in that manner.

“When you really think about it, that sorta stuff happens all the time, doesn’t it?” I said. “Like, by the time I started reading Dragon Ball it had already ended, and I knew about Super Saiyans before I even picked up the first volume. I was actually looking forward to seeing when Goku would turn into one as I read through it.”

In a certain sense, the existence of Super Saiyans was a ginormous spoiler for that series...but at this point, nobody bothered treating it that way at all. Super Saiyans were all over the place in the trailers for the movies, even.

“And y’know those ‘masterpiece scenes in animation’ TV programs they put on sometimes? Those are just treasure troves of spoilers,” I continued. “They spoil the scene where Clara stands up in Heidi, Girl of the Alps, they spoil the scene where Nello dies in Dog of Flanders, they spoil the big confession of love in Touch, and they spoil the ‘He stole your heart’ scene in The Castle of Cagliostro!”

“Well, what else are they supposed to do? You can’t exactly talk about that sort of famous scene without spoiling it,” said Tomoyo.

“Well, I mean, yeah,” I admitted. “And if you don’t wanna get spoiled, I guess you can always just not watch it.”

Then there was the fact that if it weren’t for programs like that, younger generations would probably never be exposed to or develop an interest in those old classic shows in the first place. So, the question was—just how far does one have to go in being wary of spoiling stuff? Do spoilers have a statute of limitations?

Hmm. Yeah, this is a pretty tough one. I guess that’s a criterion that parody ethics don’t quite live up to.

“It kinda gets you thinking, doesn’t it?” I said. “Like, there’s clearly a spoiler gap between the previous generation and us, so it stands to reason that there’s gonna be another gap between us and the next generation, doesn’t it?”

“I mean, you’d think, yeah,” said Tomoyo.

“Like, doesn’t it feel like a lot of kids these days don’t know the first thing about Yu-Gi-Oh! the manga, even though they still love the card game?”

“I guess, yeah, but that’s just how it goes. Times change.”

“Y’know how that one tutoring company used Heidi as their mascot for a while? Makes you wonder if kids these days think they’re the ones who invented the character.”

“Yeah, as if! Probably!” Tomoyo jabbed, albeit with a bit less confidence than she usually did.

We’d sunk very deep into the dilemma of parodies, spoilers, and the generation gap. As we paused to ponder the issue, however...

“Well, as long as spoilers aren’t an issue in this context, I suggest we return to the topic at hand.”

...Sayumi stepped in to set us back on track, at long last.

“First, to confirm: is everyone in agreement that we’ll be putting on Romeo and Juliet as our play of choice?” Sayumi asked, restoring a degree of presidential formality to the proceedings. All of us nodded, and nobody voiced any objections, so Sayumi moved us right along. “Very good. In that case, I believe we can make this decision official.”

“Oh, but Sayumi—can we actually pull Romeo and Juliet off? Like, practically speaking?” I asked.

“Pull it off in what sense?”

“Like, in terms of having enough time or people. We only have the five of us, right? And this play’s a full-on masterpiece, so memorizing the script sounds like it could be pretty rough...”

“There are plenty of ways in which we could compensate for those issues,” Sayumi explained. “I’ll grant you that staging the play precisely as written in the original script would be untenable, but with sufficient cuts and adjustments, I believe we’ll be able to manage.”

“So, like, we’ll abridge it?”

“Correct. You’re far from a rare case in terms of your knowledge of Romeo and Juliet, Andou. Plenty of people are vaguely aware of the play’s broad strokes and ending, despite having never read the original work or seen it staged. As such, so long as we can portray the most important scenes—the famous ones that everyone knows about—and omit the rest of the story, covering details through narration as necessary, our audience will be able to understand the story in spite of its abridged nature.”

“Yeah, okay, I get it now. We can just summarize the bits we skip, yeah!”

“In terms of time, I imagine that a twenty-minute production would be just about right. Any longer and our audience is likely to lose interest, and considering how long we have to prepare and our current level of acting ability, a twenty-minute play is probably about right to begin with. Assuming we can time the play properly, I believe we could fit...oh, three or four performances in a day.”

Sayumi moved from one topic to the next, presenting her ideas one after another, and I was honestly really impressed. It really did all make sense, and I understood now why she’d proposed we put on Romeo and Juliet in particular. Choosing that play meant that we could shorten its run time as much as possible, making it a much less heavy undertaking for both us and the audience. After all, the fact that it was a world-famous masterpiece meant that we could assume that our audience would more or less know the story already, letting us trim the fat pretty ruthlessly.

As soon as people heard the title, they would already have the right ideas in mind. Sayumi, I imagined, had chosen the play based on precisely that reasoning. She hadn’t tried to shove it down our throats either. No, she’d gone out of her way to ask for all of our opinions every step of the way. Our club’s president really was a woman to be respected—she had once again displayed her truly remarkable talents, yet she’d done so in a way that hadn’t made it feel like she was showing them off in the slightest.

“I’m pretty impressed, Sayumi,” I said. “I have to admit, when you proposed Romeo and Juliet, my first thought was ‘Oh, huh, I guess Sayumi’s into some surprisingly girly stuff after all.’ Allow me to formally apologize for my terrible misapprehension!”

“Oh...? Is that what you thought?”

I could sense the beginnings of a glare coming on, so I frantically moved things forward while I still could. “U-Umm... Right! Okay, so, we should decide which scenes we’ll be putting into our abridged play next!” I shouted, then gave Sayumi’s documents another quick skim. “Okay, so, the bits that we definitely can’t leave out are the ‘Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?’ balcony scene—that’s the most famous one and all—plus the scene where they die at the end,” I muttered to myself.

“Andou...?” Chifuyu said, sounding utterly crestfallen. “Do Romeo and Juliet die?”

“Uh...”

“Do they die?”

“Yeah, umm... I mean, that’s just how the story goes. They kinda have to. This is a tragedy about star-crossed lovers, so no real choice.”

My attempt at an explanation just made Chifuyu look more upset than ever. “I don’t want them to die,” she eventually said. It sort of sounded like she was throwing a tantrum, but there was also a hint of stubborn insistence to her tone. “I don’t want them to die. It’d be better if Romeo and Juliet live.”

“But that’d ruin the whole—”

“I don’t like sad stories. I like happy stories.”

“I get that, but it’d be a total betrayal of, like, Romeo and Juliet’s core—”

“It’s a story, so everyone should be happy in the end.”

“...”

“I want to save Romeo and Juliet.”

“...?!”

I felt like...I don’t know...like my mind had been totally blown, I guess. The look in Chifuyu’s eyes was so innocent, so unblemished by the harsh truths of reality, that I found myself at a loss for words. She was pure—overwhelmingly pure! Purely pure, even! Puarly pure, even!

...Okay, this is getting silly now. The point is that, in the face of her exceedingly pure and innocent ideology, I found myself completely unable to mount an argument. I felt like I’d just been forced to look myself in the mirror and acknowledge how base and unsightly my own worldview was.

“Chifuyu...how are you so, so nice?” I whimpered. “Compared to you, I’m... I’m just plain...”

“Wh-Whoa there, Andou, melodramatic much?”

“Tomoyo... I feel so petty right now... How could I be so pathetically narrow-minded? When did I become the sort of person who thinks ‘You just know nobody’s going to die in this story, so it has no stakes at all’ and ‘Man, it kills all my hype for a series when characters come back to life’ when I read shonen manga? How did I never see what a sad little man that makes me?”

“On second thought, maybe you should try to do better!”

Indeed—I could do better. I had to. I had been an utter, disgraceful fool. It was high time that I discarded sad, cynical viewpoints like “It’s fun when main characters get killed off left and right.” After all—why would you ever want your friends to die? Isn’t that the last thing that should be desirable? Why would you complain about plot contrivances bringing them back to life? That’s something to celebrate! And if nobody dies in the first place, then all the better! Who among us can truly say that they’d prefer a heart-wrenchingly tragic ending over a touchingly happy one?

“Mwa ha ha... It seems I might be losing my edge,” I muttered.

I had allowed myself to be bound by prejudice—snared by preconception. I had abandoned the notion that Romeo and Juliet could ever be saved from their tragic fate. I had unwittingly sank into the prescriptive framework of common sense, but Chifuyu, a girl whose ideas could never be so easily shackled, had set me free once more!

“Who says that every tragedy has to end poorly?! If that’s a rule, then I’ll smash it with my own two hands! Who the hell decided that Romeo and Juliet have to die?!”

“I mean. Shakespeare?”

“...”

Tomoyo’s retort was short, swift, and lethally simple.

Well, I mean...yeah. True enough. If that’s how the author wrote the story, then that’s how it goes. I guess tragedies really do have to end poorly. That’s just how entertainment works. My energy levels had skyrocketed, then just as swiftly came crashing back down to earth in catastrophic fashion.

In the meantime, however, everyone else seemed to have more or less accepted Chifuyu’s idea.

“A happy ending where Romeo and Juliet don’t die...? Yeah, I like that! Nice idea, Chifuyu!” Hatoko said with a broad smile.

“I think it’s a good idea, but, well... What do you think, Sayumi?” asked Tomoyo. “Is messing with the plot that much on the table?”

“I would venture to say it certainly is,” said Sayumi. “Furthermore, modifying the script—or rather, making our play into a derivative work based on the original—makes the activity even more appropriate for the literary club than ever, so I would outright endorse the decision. In a certain sense, toying with the script is a privilege unique to rank and file amateurs like us. The drama club certainly doesn’t have the freedom to play that fast and loose with their scripts.”

Tomoyo and Sayumi, it seemed, were fully on board as well. Our youngest member’s innocent idea officially had the full club’s endorsement.

“All right, sounds like a plan!” I said. “Sorry, Shakespeare, but our play’s gonna end with Romeo and Juliet alive and well!” The next step, however, would be the tricky part. Changing the ending was all well and good, but if we changed the core hook of the story too much, then you could argue it would cease to be Romeo and Juliet altogether. “How do you think we should change the ending, Chifuyu? Any ideas for how we could make this work?”

“Yeah. It’s easy,” said Chifuyu.

“Huh? It is?”

“They can just come back to life.”

“They can come back?” I repeated, cocking my head.

Chifuyu pointed to the outline in her hands. “In this part, Juliet drinks a potion and falls asleep,” she said confidently.

“Right. That’s how she fakes her death.”

“Then Romeo shows up and drinks poison.”

“Yeah, since he thinks his one true love is dead and all.”

“Then Juliet wakes up.”

Normally, that would be the part where Juliet realizes her plan went off the rails and resulted in her own lover’s death, so she decides to stab herself in the chest. Chifuyu, however, had a different idea.

“She can just smooch him instead,” she said, her tone perfectly serious even as she said the word “smooch.”

“U-Umm,” I stammered. “So, she just...kisses him? That’s it?”

“Yeah. They smooch, then Romeo comes back to life.”

“Ooh, I get it now! So it’d be like how Sleeping Beauty ends? A kiss brings him back with the power of love?”

It was a well-established trope, that was for sure. Kisses having the power to break curses and revive the dead was a concept that turned up in fairy tales all over the world and throughout all eras of history.

“Smooching makes everything better,” Chifuyu explained. In her innocent little world, kisses were all powerful.

But, I mean...man. I sure wish she’d stop saying “smooch” so much. Getting really hard to keep a straight face over here. I’ve been going out of my way to steer her toward “kiss,” and it’s just not happening! Something about seeing the word “smooch” pass through her little lips just felt, well...wrong, in a way that made me feel weirdly guilty. It was, like...tantalizing, I guess? Or maybe suffocating? Instigating, possibly?

“A-A kiss, huh...?”

“Yeah... A kiss...”

“A kiss, is it...?”

Tomoyo, Hatoko, and Sayumi were all blushing, and they all looked equally uncomfortable with the suggestion. Chifuyu’s idea had been driven by pure, childish innocence, but the fact of the matter was that a kiss was both a pure, holy gesture and an act with an overt sexual nuance at the same time. All of the high schoolers present—me included—were seriously shaken by this turn of events. It was just...purely awkward. We were almost shockingly at the mercy of our adolescent hormones.

“I-In any case!” Sayumi said, raising her voice in an effort to overcome the uncomfortable mood settling over us. “Before we decide anything specific about how we’ll be altering the play, I suggest we assign our roles. Focusing in on one aspect of the production too much would be inefficient, after all...and how we choose to change the story will likely be impacted by who we assign as our scriptwriter and what parts each of us will be playing.”

She was absolutely right, and the rest of us quickly switched gears. We couldn’t just sit there and be awkward about the word “smooch” forever.

“Our roles, eh...? Well, I guess I’m Romeo, to start,” I said, gesturing toward myself with my thumb. “I don’t think anyone else here could fill those shoes.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” said Hatoko. “You’re the only boy in our club, after all!”

“I mean, I sorta assumed you’d end up in the role...but still, I’m surprised,” said Tomoyo.

“Surprised by what?”

“Well, you always talk a big game and go to wild extremes when you’re with us, but then you take one step outside the room and turn into a mild-mannered little wuss. Figured you wouldn’t be into acting in front of a big crowd.”

“Wow, rude!”

“I guess you could say you’re a shy showoff, in a word.”

“Since when was my personality a paradox?!” And how dare you make all these claims that I can’t really bring myself to disagree with? Just because it’s true doesn’t mean you can just come out and say it! “I mean...it’s not like I’m chomping at the bit to play the role or anything. I was actually thinking along the same lines as Hatoko—I’m the only guy in the club, so it just makes sense for me to do it.”

Saying that the role had fallen to me by process of elimination made it sound kinda bad, but, well, that was more or less exactly what had happened. I’d figured it would be better to show some spirit, step up, and volunteer for the role rather than waiting for someone else to punt it my way. I was hoping it would help everyone else feel motivated, and...honestly, a little part of me really did just plain want to give it a try.

“I mean, if somebody else wants to be Romeo, I’m okay with talking it out,” I offered, but nobody took me up on it. Nobody had said a word, but it seemed everyone had been assuming I’d be Romeo from the get-go.

“Okay, that’s settled. Andou’s Romeo,” Tomoyo said as she wrote my role down on the white board.

“Andou’s Romeo,” Chifuyu quietly repeated the words to herself. “Andou comes back to life after a smooch.”

“Wait, no, no—we haven’t set that plot point in stone yet, Chifuyu,” I quickly clarified. And really, would you stop saying “smooch” already? Like, for real? The more you say it, the more awkward the mood gets! “But, huh... I guess playing Romeo does mean that if we go with Chifuyu’s ending, Juliet and I will have to kiss in the end?”

I hadn’t really meant to mutter that out loud, but the second the words left my mouth, Tomoyo and Hatoko blushed beet red.

“Wh-What the hell are you talking about, Andou?! O-O-Of course you won’t actually kiss! It’s called acting!”

“Th-Th-That’s right, Juu! K-Kissing for real in a play is, umm...umm... I-It’s just not okay!”

“I-I get it, jeez!”

“Andou,” said Sayumi, “I believe this should go without saying, but the kiss scene would, in fact, be staged. If your expectations were raised for something untoward, then it would be in your best interest to readjust them immediately and abandon whatever outrageous fantasies you may be imagining.” Her tone was as cold and scathing as a blizzard, but she also said the whole spiel at a suspiciously breakneck pace. It wasn’t hard to tell that she was just feigning calmness and was actually thoroughly shaken on the inside.

I was coming to a striking new realization: all of the high schoolers in the literary club were really bad at dealing with even vaguely indecent topics. I was no exception to that, by the way. Literally all of us were blushing at this point...

“O-Okay! Let’s keep these role assignments moving!” I shouted, forcing all of those thoughts out of my mind and dragging the conversation forward. “Romeo’s all settled, so I figure it only makes sense to do Juliet next!”

Juliet was the other leading role—the main heroine, as it were. In a certain sense, she was the most standout role in the entire play.

“Okay! Everyone who wants to play the main heroine, raise your hand!”

A mere moment after the words left my mouth, I was blown away.

The scene before me made my jaw drop. There was Tomoyo, shyly glancing away from me. Hatoko, smiling in that awkward, embarrassed sort of way. Chifuyu, posture inexplicably proud and perfect. Sayumi, silent and stone-faced. They were all handling it in their own distinct ways, but they were all performing the same gesture: each of the four had raised their hand.

“Wha—?!”

“Huh?!”

“Oooh.”

“Ah?!”

The four prospective Juliets gasped as they noticed they weren’t alone. They glanced around at each other with looks of surprise and apprehension in their eyes. The role, it seemed, was more sought-after than any of them had anticipated.

“O-Oh, huh... Guess everyone wants to give it a try,” I said.

This came as a bit of a shock to me as well. For better or for worse, none of the members of our club were particularly assertive people. I hadn’t thought that all of them would want a chance in the spotlight—in fact, I’d half expected nobody to step up.

But then again...maybe saying that they weren’t assertive wasn’t quite right. It was more like none of them wanted to stand out in a bad way, or like they were all unusually capable of reading the room and acting accordingly, I guess?

If I had to put it into words... Basically, they were the sort of people who wouldn’t put themselves out there and proactively participate in class activities, but who also wouldn’t try to ditch them. They’d fill their role as well as was expected of them, making sure that they slotted nicely into the class dynamic. They were the sort of people who valued social harmony, basically. Chifuyu was the one arguable exception, but even though she was moody and gave up on things at the drop of a hat, it did seem plausible that her whims would lead her to get in the spirit of events like these.

“More than anything, I’m surprised you’re up for this, Tomoyo,” I said. “Never thought you were the type.”

Tomoyo took in a sharp breath. “A-And? Got a problem with that?! So I wanna play Juliet—what’s it to you?!”

“I never said it was a bad thing. Jeez...” And anyway, you talked a big game about me being a mild-mannered wuss in public, but how do you have the right to get on a high horse about that? I’ve seen you in class! I know how ridiculously well-behaved you are there!

When Tomoyo was in public, she made very sure to never let any of her nerdy interests slip out and put her usually razor-sharp comments and comebacks on ice. Her rhetorical blade was kept permanently in its scabbard. In other words, she was just like me: when she wasn’t around people who she knew well, she clammed right up and stayed that way. It was almost unthinkable for someone like her to step up and volunteer for the leading role in a play.

“L-Look, just drop it, okay?! It’s none of your business anyway!” Tomoyo yelped.

“I mean, it really is? I’m gonna be playing Romeo, you know? That means that if you end up playing Juliet, we’ll have to act like we’re in love.”

Tomoyo let out a strangled, wheezing gasp. “I-I know, duh! That’s why... I mean, no, like... Agggh, just shut up, okay?! Who gives a crap if I want to play the lead part?! Shouldn’t you be supportive when someone who’s usually shy tries to put themself out there?!”

“Okay, but...wouldn’t it be worse if I tried being all supportive? It’d be like I was rubbing your face in it,” I countered. When someone who’s usually shy tries to put themself out there, it’s good manners to play that fact up as little as humanly possible. Being all “Well, somebody’s in a social mood today! Good for you!” is a good way to make your friends want to murder you.

Anyway, Tomoyo was in a pretty frantic frame of mind, obviously...but the weird part was that this time, it wasn’t just Tomoyo.

“I-I’ve, well... I’ve never played the lead role in something like this, so I thought, hey, maybe I should give it a try this time! I-I mean, I’m the one who said we should do a play in the first place, right?!” stammered Hatoko.

“Per ordinary standards...as both the president of our club and the eldest among us, I believe it would be appropriate for me to play the leading role. Moreover, I’m confident that my acting and vocal projection abilities are more than a match for anyone’s,” Sayumi said, her tone unyielding.

Sayumi and Hatoko both preferred to avoid conflict whenever possible, and I’d been operating under the assumption that in times of conflict, they’d be the first to step back and make concessions to bring the dispute to a close. Today, however, neither of them showed any intention of backing down. They were attached to the role of Juliet to a kind of crazy degree.

“I’ll play Juliet,” said Chifuyu. She was, well...honestly, this was pretty much normal for her, as much as Chifuyu’s behavior could ever be called normal.

Silent sparks flew between the four girls of the literary club. Each had laid down their intent to claim the leading role in our play, and now they were caught in a four-way deadlock, keeping a careful and constant eye on each other but unable to make a move.

“Well, this is kind of a pain,” I muttered as I scratched my head. I’d never anticipated that anyone would end up fighting over their roles in the play. I’d figured we’d be trying to push the leading roles off on each other, if anything, but instead, they were vying to claim it for themselves. “So, how are we gonna deal with this?” I asked, thinking that we could play rock paper scissors, draw straws, talk it through a little more, or maybe even hold auditions.

“You decide, Andou,” said Chifuyu as she pointed directly at me.

“Huh? Me?”

“You’re Romeo, so you should pick a Juliet,” Chifuyu explained.

I stared at Chifuyu in horror. Okay, now that’s the most unreasonable proposal she could’ve come up with! I’m supposed to pick a Juliet? She wants to let me make the call on who should be our main heroine unilaterally, with nothing more than my own personal biases to base it on, while everyone seems like they’re at least half ready to come to blows over it? Nooope, nope nope nope nope!

“Ch-Chifuyu,” I said, “Just because I’ll be playing Romeo doesn’t mean that I should have to take responsibility for a choice that—”

“No...she has a point,” Tomoyo said before I could finish explaining why there was no way in hell I’d be making that decision. “You playing Romeo is set in stone, so I don’t think anyone would complain if you made the call.”

“H-Hey, Tomoyo...?”

“I like that idea too!” Hatoko chimed in.

“Seriously, Hatoko? You too...?” I sighed.

“I think everyone here would be able to accept it if you decide, Juu, no matter who you pick,” Hatoko continued. “So? Who do you want to play Juliet?”

“Yes, why not? Let’s have Andou decide,” said Sayumi, jumping on the bandwagon.

“E-Even you, Sayumi...?”

“Dragging out the debate any longer than we already have would accomplish nothing aside from wasting time, and making the decision randomly—say, with rock paper scissors—would leave everyone unconvinced that we’d made the right decision. And, moreover...”

“Moreover?”

“I must admit—I’m curious to see who you’ll choose,” Sayumi said with a slight smile. It was the same sort of smile that gamblers put on when they were really into the game—a somewhat inflammatory smile, even.

Okay, this is weird. This is really weird! Sayumi’s supposed to be fair and impartial, no matter what! She never lets her personal feelings interfere with her ability to make clear, rational judgments, regardless of what situation she’s in...but I’m pretty darn sure that was a super personal-feelings-driven decision right there! Why, though? Is she going crazy? Is everyone going crazy?!

“Come on, Andou,” said Chifuyu, who had walked over to me while I was too busy freaking out to pay attention. She gazed up at me, her eyes shimmering with anticipation. “Hurry up and choose. Who would you be happiest to have playing Juliet?”

“Huh?!” Wait, did the goal here just totally change?! When did this stop being “Who’s the best fit for the Juliet role?” and start being “Who does Andou, personally, want to play Juliet?” We’re clearly shifting away from the original point of all this!

Nevertheless, nobody bothered to call out the blatant shift. They just looked at me, their gazes full of hope and expectation.

“Andou?”

“Juu?”

“Andou.”

“Go on, Andou.”

I didn’t even realize they had been driving me backward until I bumped up against the corner I’d been herded into. You’d think that having four girls compete for my favor like this would make me feel like the master of a harem, but no, that was the farthest thing from my mind. This was no harem—it was a war zone. What other words could you use to describe being surrounded by girls and forced to choose one over the others?

Wait, wait, no, this is all wrong! Why am I being treated like some sort of four-timing sleazebag right now?! “H-Hey, wait a second, everyone! Just calm down, okay? We can talk this through!” I said, sounding for all the world like the cheating sleazebag I’d just mentally insisted I wasn’t. Huh. Guess that explains one thing: when guys are pressed into the corner, lines like that really are the best we can do.

Part of me wanted to run away, but the sheer earnestness of their gazes held me in place. I couldn’t go the full-on participation prize route and suggest that everyone share the lead role either. I had to choose someone, no matter what. She would play the cultural festival’s heroine, Juliet. She would get up onstage and act like she was in love with me.

And so...I chose...