The dark gym stage lit. After a narrator’s intro, Shirogane-san — playing the Witch — addressed the mirror. The play started.
Shirogane-san had begun the run looking script-tethered, but she was much better now. Shiraishi-san’s surprisingly Spartan direction had paid off.
Stage went dark. Curtain up on the Witch-feeding-Snow-White-the-poisoned-apple scene. My first lines.
“You are Snow White, aren’t you?”
“Old woman, do you need something?”
The instant I spoke, the audience reacted. The visibly-female Snow White had a visibly-male voice; the gap was exactly the impact Reona had predicted.
“Wait — that’s a guy?!”
“Visual-audio gap is too much.”
“Mute the voice and they’d actually be datable.”
I could hear this commentary from on stage. Heavy impact on the audience. I caught at least one slightly creepy comment in there but ignored it.
Thanks to Shiraishi-san’s repeated abandon all shame coaching, I was performing fully without embarrassment.
The play moved. I had been bracing for it to feel long, but it was — actually — flying by. Final act approaching: the Prince-kisses-Snow-White scene.
Reona-as-the-Prince approached me lying on the ground. After Dwarves’ and Prince’s lines, a faked kiss. Faked, per the rehearsal.
“What a beautiful princess. She looks asleep — but is she actually deceased?”
“She ate the cursed poison apple. That’s why.”
“Maybe my kiss could break the curse?”
After Reona’s line, she crouched and closed in slowly. Per the practice, a few more lines, the close, then narrator wrap.
Then the unexpected — Reona actually kissed me.
”!?”
This was not a got too close and brushed. This was — contact, and there was an attempted tongue. Deliberate. In front of an entire gym of people.
The audience started murmuring. The front rows had caught what was happening.
Reona finally pulled back, looking satisfied, while I was fully frozen. Then Reona — face slightly flushed — whispered to me at a volume only I could hear.
“Ryouya-kun, I know the kiss made you happy, but you need to say your next line or this scene doesn’t end.”
“W-what was I doing? Oh — you’re—”
I scrambled back into the scene, fumbled the line. If I’d delivered it like that during rehearsal Shiraishi-san would have destroyed me.