A few days after the trip, we second-years had transitioned into Festival Mode. Seventh period today was the festival-related homeroom.
We had today and tomorrow to decide everything, and from the day after we’d be in full prep mode. Today’s agenda: select the class leader, pick the play topic.
The class-leader role boosts your conduct grade significantly, so a handful of classmates with university-recommendation aspirations had stood up — Reona was among them. The vote outcome was predictable.
“Of course.”
Reona had blown out the other candidates. Some had withdrawn the moment Reona’s hand went up, realizing they couldn’t win. School-caste top tier is strong.
Needless to say I did not stand up. I would not want the role even if offered, and would have received exactly zero votes.
“Play topic next — I’m crew either way, so whatever they pick is fine.”
Reona and Riona had said something during the trip about me playing a main role, but that was clearly a joke. The class would never accept a Mob Character B in a lead.
Reona, now leading the class meeting, began the discussion. After brainstorming, the class started debating.
The current debate was existing fairy tale vs. original story for the play. Whichever it landed on, the cast would be the class’s good-looking people.
I started getting drowsy. Late night last night dungeon-grinding gacha — fully my fault. I fought the sleep, failed, and came to exactly as homeroom was ending.
“Snow White, then.”
The blackboard had Snow White written in large characters. Apparently they’d landed on a safe existing fairy tale rather than the difficult original.
“Oh — Ryouya-kun, you’re awake.”
“Just got up.”
“I worked hard on this, and you slept — gutsy. I stood up for class leader specifically for you, Ryouya-kun.”
“Wait — what?”
The unexpected phrasing surprised me. For me?
“You know, as class leader I can drag — er, support — Ryouya-kun more effectively.”
“You almost said drag.”
“Don’t worry about details.”
Three days of being dragged through Kyoto wasn’t enough for her. The pre-festival window was clearly going to be the same.
“Right, there’s a lot ahead — hang in there.”
“What does that mean?”
“Look at the left side of the blackboard.”
She pointed; the cast list was there. Snow White row…
“Wait — Snow White is Yagami Ryouya?!”
“Yes.”
“Explain it like I’m five.”
I was in genuine confusion. Why would I, a guy, play Snow White? Our class is a humanities class and skews female; there was no need to draft me.
“You’re Snow White because I strongly recommended it.”
“Even with you behind it, that should not have flown.”
“There was resistance, sure, but I posted Ryouka-chan’s photo into the class LIME group and the resistance evaporated.”
“What did you do!?”
That was catastrophic. Wait — was the crossdressing day specifically to harvest that material? Surely not — no, that’s too elaborate. Or is it.
Side note: I had not known there was a class LIME group. After half a year as a class-second-year I’d been left out of yet another group. Of course.
“And to support you, I am playing the Prince. Look forward.”
“This is crushing.”
We were on day-zero of festival prep and I was already deeply depressed. This year’s festival was clearly going to be eventful.