Double Planet Episode 2

Double Planet
Episode 2 : Sipping a Strawberry Shake
Tamaru Luka (Furuta Jun & Kanda Yota / Radio Shonan personality)

I was a child who loved to read books.
Maybe it's not to the point where I could say I liked it.
It had reached the point of being a complete addiction. I was the kind of girl who would prioritize reading as many printed words as possible over spending time talking with others. Worried about me, my sensible parents sent me to the Boy Scouts. It was a dramatic change of environment from indoors to outdoors. It was a gamble, a powerful drug. Of course, at first I hated getting my shoes dirty with mud, but as I struggled with nature, I gradually stopped caring and I became more human. Naturally, I stopped reading books as much. One day, I ended up spending a night in the snowy mountains in winter, and the most beautiful stars I had ever seen twinkled in the night sky. Looking up, I remembered a certain word.

"Double Planet"

I learned this word in a book about the mysteries of planets. I liked the sound of it, so I remembered it.
A double planet is apparently two planets of similar size that revolve around a common center of gravity. To be honest, I didn't understand the meaning at all. But now I understand it a little better. I know about revolution and rotation. I guess it's only natural now that I'm in high school.

"Luka, let's go to the clubroom."

After school, I go to the club room with my classmate Natsuki.
This has been my routine since I entered high school in April.
There's an actor I like (I won't reveal his name), and when I found out he was in the drama club in high school, I somehow decided I wanted to try acting as well.
We were learning things like vocalization from our seniors. We were also made to memorize a spell-like phrase called Uirouri. Writing this might make it seem like we were pretty strict, but that wasn't the case at all. In fact, it was pretty easy. Some members would do their best to imitate the teacher and get laughs, while others (like me and Natsuki) would just chat away while eating the snacks we'd brought to school. Our acting skills haven't improved, but our talking skills have grown by leaps and bounds.

In the meantime, the third-year students retired.

High school drama clubs have a theatrical competition that leads to the national finals. In September, they competed with a play mainly composed of third-year students, but were eliminated at the regional tournament. It was a disappointingly unfortunate result. To begin with, I don't really understand why people compete for superiority in drama. After their defeat was confirmed, when they saw Yamamoto-senpai, nicknamed the King of Impersonation, crying, the club members became restless, asking, "What on earth are those tears...?" Yamamoto-senpai hadn't practiced at all for the competition, and even during the actual performance, he was causing trouble by improvising unscripted acts. There was no way he had any emotional attachment to the competition. So his tears were fake. There were rumors that he actually liked Natsuki, so perhaps he was trying to make some kind of impression on her.

Well, with everything being like this, my enthusiasm for the drama club was limited.

"There's a play I want to see... do you want to go?"

Natsuki said she wanted to see a play, so we decided to go to KAAT. Since joining the drama club, I had gone to see plays put on by alumni, but this was my first time going to see a commercial play.

The play in question was an ambitious adaptation of a famous overseas play by a Japanese director, set in Japan. After watching it, the usually talkative Natsuki was completely silent. I wondered what had happened, and then I noticed tears in her eyes.

"I started crying"

The way he said it jokingly made it even more clear that his tears were genuine.
I thought it was an interesting play and there were certainly some moving moments.
But...if you ask me if I was satisfied, I was worried about a lot of things and wasn't satisfied.
Even though the setting is good, I can't help but feel like it could have been made more interesting.
No, no, no, no.
This may be the result of reading too many books as a child.
Anyway, I am very critical of stories and have a tendency to analyze them.
Of course, I couldn't say something like that to Natsuki, so I just agreed, saying, "That's good for you."

It was from that day on.

Natsuki left the group of people chatting and began to silently repeat the Uirouri. Not satisfied with that, she grabbed a serious second-year senior and exchanged opinions on emotional expression. I couldn't believe it. She was serious about acting.
Looking at his serious gaze, which I had never seen before, I began to feel a little anxious.

"What should I do...?"

Leaving Natsuki frantically behind, I decided to go home alone. Not wanting to go straight home, I ran up to the second floor of the McDonald's at the north exit of Fujisawa Station. The window seat where I usually sit next to Natsuki was empty.

While sipping on a strawberry shake, I scroll through my Twitter timeline. To be honest, I've never found social media fun. I'm only on it because everyone else is. Maybe it would be much more fun to read a book like I used to. While thinking this, I was scrolling through the silly tweets out of habit, when a tweet that a friend had retweeted caught my eye.

[We are looking for high school students who want to express themselves! Love & Music supports high school students who want to express themselves!]

"...Are you a high school student who wants to express yourself?"

I was curious, so I followed the tweet and came across a radio station called Radio Shonan.
Apparently, a program called "Love & Music" broadcast on the station had started a segment to support high school students. The hosts were two older men who were involved in music and theater. I decided to try listening to a recording of the program with headphones.

"Well, I received an email from a high school student. His radio name is Subtle Blue."

"Nice to meet you. My radio name is Satoru Blue and I attend high school in Fujisawa City.
I found out about this program last month when I happened to be passing by a radio station.
Kanda's talk about guitars really struck a chord with me. In fact, that day I was thinking about whether or not to buy a guitar. Maybe that's why I felt it was fate, and I've been listening to his talk every week since.
I've also decided to buy a beginner's electric guitar and amplifier set, just like Kanda-san. It will arrive soon. I'm looking forward to it. I'll email you again.

It was then that I learned about a high school boy named Subtle Blue.

"to be continued"
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