Double Planet Episode 2

Double Planet
Episode 2 : "Slurping on a Strawberry Shake"
Tamaru Luka (Furuta Jun & Kanda Yota / Radio Shonan Personality)

I was a child who loved to read books.
Maybe it wasn't to the point where I could say I liked it.
It had reached the point of being completely addicted. I was the kind of girl who would prioritize reading as many printed words as possible if she had time to talk to someone. My decent parents, worried about me, sent me to the Boy Scouts. A dramatic change of environment from indoors to outdoors. This was a gamble-like drug. Of course, at first I hated getting my shoes dirty with mud, but as I struggled with nature, I gradually stopped caring about it and became more human. Naturally, I stopped reading books as much. One day, I had to spend a night in the snowy mountains in winter, and the night sky was filled with beautiful stars I had never seen before. 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 when two planets of similar size revolve around a common center of gravity. To be honest, I didn't understand it 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 a high school student.

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

After school, I go to the club room together with my classmate Natsuki.
This has been my routine since entering high school in April.
There is an actor I like (I won't tell you his name), and when I found out he was in the drama club in high school, I somehow thought I should 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. That might make it seem like we were pretty strict, but that wasn't the case at all. In fact, it was pretty lenient. Some club members would imitate the teachers so well that they'd burst into laughter, while others (like me and Natsuki) would just chat away while eating all the snacks we'd brought to school. Our acting skills hadn't improved, but our talking skills were improving by leaps and bounds.

In the meantime, the third-year students graduated.

In high school drama, there is a drama competition that leads to the national competition. In September, we entered with a performance mainly composed of third-year students, but we lost at the regional competition. It was so unexpected that it was disappointing. I don't really understand why people compete in drama in the first place. After the defeat was decided, when the members saw the tears of Yamamoto-senpai, who is also known as the King of Imitation, they were all in a frenzy, asking, "What are these tears...?" Yamamoto-senpai hadn't practiced at all for the competition, and even during the actual performance, he was causing trouble by doing improvisations that were not in the script. There was no way he had any attachment to the competition. So it was a fake cry. In fact, there were rumors that he liked Natsuki, so maybe he was trying to appeal to her in some way.

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

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

Natsuki said she wanted to see a play, so we decided to go to KAAT. Since I joined 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 was an ambitious piece that a Japanese director had created by transposing a masterpiece play from overseas to a Japanese setting. After watching it, the usually talkative Natsuki was completely silent. I wondered what had happened to her, and then I noticed tears in her eyes.

"I started crying"

The way he said it jokingly made it clearer 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 would say I was not satisfied because there were a lot of things bothering me.
Even though the setting was good, I can't help but think that 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 about stories and have a tendency to analyze them.
Of course, I couldn't say something like that to Natsuki, so I just agreed, saying something like, "That's good."

It was from that day.

Natsuki left the group of people chatting and started repeating her Uirouri routine in silence. Not satisfied with that, she grabbed a serious second-year senior and exchanged opinions on how to express emotions. I couldn't believe it. She was serious about doing theater.
As I glanced at the serious look I'd never seen before, a feeling of impatience began to grow within me.

"What should I do...?"

Leaving Natsuki in a frantic state, 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 available.

While sipping on a strawberry shake, I scroll through my Twitter timeline. To be honest, I've never thought that social media was fun. I'm only using it because everyone else is. Maybe it would be much more fun to read a book like I used to. While I was 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 became curious and followed the tweets, and came across a radio station called Radio Shonan.
Apparently, the station's program "Love & Music" had started a segment to support high school students. The personalities were two older men who were involved in music and theater. I decided to try listening to the 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'm a high school student in Fujisawa City.
I found out about this program last month when I happened to be passing by a radio station.
Kanda's guitar talk really hit home. Actually, that day I was thinking about buying a guitar. Maybe that's why I felt like it was fate, and I've been listening to his music every week since then.
I've decided to buy a beginner's guitar that comes with an electric guitar and an amplifier. I'm the same as 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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