Chapter Text
“Alright, class, what are we thinking of doing for this year’s Cultural Festival?” the class teacher asked as he picked up a piece of chalk to write ideas on the board with. Immediately, students began to shout out different concepts and thoughts, others either voicing their agreement or groaning in distaste.
“Oh! A Maid Cafe!”
“No, so many classes are already doing that!”
“What about a haunted house?!”
“Didn’t we do that last year?”
“Let’s do a fashion show!”
“No, we should do a planetarium!”
“Boring!”
This banter went on for many minutes, the teacher starting to lose his patience as his hand tried to keep up with scribbling every single idea thrown at him.
"How about a play?" a quiet voice from the back of the classroom asked. Everyone started to calm down and look back at the student who had just spoken after realizing who it was. It was Langa. Reki turned to his side, surprised at how someone who usually never talked in class had just participated in their class conversation.
As expected, many of the girls started to voice their approval of this idea since Langa, who was very popular due to his “foreign appeal,” was the one who came up with it.
“Yes, that’s such a good idea, Hasegawa-kun!”
“I didn’t know you were so creative!”
“Let’s do it, Sensei! Let’s do a play!”
“Alright,” the teacher said as he clapped his hands together, “we’ll do a play! Now, what do we want it to be about?”
“Let’s make it about a mystery!”
“Oh, what about a comedy instead?!”
“No, no, let’s have it be a horror story!”
“Ew, no! What is with you and haunted stuff?!”
“Let’s do a romantic story!”
“Ah, yes! A play about a cute couple!”
“Yes, romance based on stories we already know!”
A majority of the girls, and boys, started to nod their heads in agreement. It seemed as though stories revolving around romance were well-liked in this particular classroom.
“Let’s do Beauty and the Beast!”
“What about Snow White? Or Rapunzel?”
“We have to pick Sleeping Beauty!”
“No, let’s do Cinderella!”
Reki’s eyes instantly darted across the room to the girl who had suggested the particular fairy tale. “Cinderella…” he mumbled under his breath as his thoughts began to wander back to the dream he had had a couple of months ago revolving around that very story. He had imagined himself as Cinderella while Langa was the Prince, and they had both happily skated together on the magical path Reki’s—or Cindereki’s—glass skateboard had created for them. Joe had been the “Fairy Godmother” while Shadow had been the “Stepmother,” leaving Cherry Blossom and Miya as the “Step Sisters.” It was embarrassing just to think about the dream, so Reki shook his head and tried not to dwell on it.
Apparently, Langa had heard what he had whispered since he turned to Reki and asked, “You like Cinderella?”
Once again, girls began to repeat after Langa to show their support for whatever he had uttered. Reki grimaced as a flood of flattery towards Langa quickly ensued.
“Yes! Yes, yes, let’s do Cinderella!”
“Cinderella sounds good!”
“Oh, we should make Hasegawa-kun the Prince!”
“Hasegawa-kun as the Prince would be so nice!”
"Yes, Hasegawa-kun would look so handsome in a prince costume!”
“I wanna be the Cinderella then!”
“No, I’ll be Cinderella!”
“Okay, class, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves!” The teacher quickly jumped in before the argument could get more heated, “We’re just going to finalize our idea today, so I can submit it and make it official for the Cultural Festival. We’ll worry about casting tomorrow.”
He then looked at Langa and said, “Hasegawa, since we’re going to need someone to come up with a character list and script for the play, and you happen to be the student that brought up the idea of a play—”
Reki could visibly see Langa gulp, looking very nervous over what was about to be asked of him.
“—would you mind taking charge?”
“S-sure,” Langa stuttered before glancing towards his left, “Can Reki work with me, though?”
“Huh?!” Reki gawked. There was no way he would be any good at writing a script for a play, that too one based on romance. What was Langa thinking? Just then, Langa turned to him, leaned in, and whispered, “You know I’m not that good at Japanese... I could really use the help.” Instantly, the expression on Reki's face softened. The least he could do was guide Langa when he asked for assistance with something. Besides, maybe writing a whole play with his best friend would be nice.
“That’s fine with me,” the teacher replied, “Just send me a list of characters tonight, and have a draft of the script done by this Friday so corrections and alterations can be made over the weekend.”
“Yes,” Reki and Langa said in unison, nerves still running through their bodies. This was going to be quite the experience.
-
After school, the pair headed to Reki’s home together on their skateboards, only stopping once when Langa noticed that his shoelaces were untied.
“I guess… we can make this fun, right? Writing a play together?” Reki said, half-smiling as they neared their destination. He pushed off his right foot to gain more speed before glancing over at Langa, who was skating right by his side.
“Yeah, I’m sure it will be,” Langa answered, showing Reki a smile of his own, “I’ve never written a script for a play before, though.”
“Neither have I... we’ll figure it out together, though!”
“Yeah!”
They skated the rest of the way in comfortable silence and came to a stop in front of Reki’s house. Reki opened the door, and they stepped inside, taking their shoes off and resting their skateboards on the wall.
“I’m home!” Reki called out. Like always, he heard the pitter-patter of tiny footsteps as his youngest sisters ran to come and greet him.
“Welcome home, older brother!” they said excitedly, turning to flash Langa toothy grins. Langa grinned back.
“Welcome home,” Reki’s mother greeted from the family room, his other sister waving from his mother’s side.
“Mom, Langa and I are gonna be working on a school project, so we’ll be in my room.”
“Okay! We won’t disturb you two then,” she said kindly before shifting her focus to Langa, “Langa-kun, would you like to stay for dinner?”
“Uh… s-sure,” Langa stuttered, looking around only to see Reki and his family pleased with the fact that he was staying.
Reki lead Langa to his bedroom as Langa shot his own mother a quick text about having dinner at the Kyan household. His mother was fast to respond with a thumbs up, which Langa smiled at before tucking his phone back in his pocket and taking a seat on the floor. Reki closed the door and grabbed a notebook and a pencil before sitting down next to Langa.
“Okay… the character list,” Reki started as he flipped open an empty page of his notebook, “I think we should start by writing down all the characters we know off the top of our heads. Then we can maybe watch or read the actual story to see who we’re missing or to account for background characters.”
“Sounds good!” Langa replied earnestly.
The two begin to write down the characters they could think of, coming up with a list of seven characters: Cinderella, her stepmother, her two stepsisters, the Fairy Godmother, the Prince, and the Prince’s Royal Advisor.
“I guess we could put the Prince’s father, the King, on the list,” Langa added, “I watched a version with him in it once.”
“Okay! That makes eight main and side characters. And we’ll probably need a narrator too,” Reki contributed, “Our class has twenty-five students, including us, so that leaves us with... sixteen more roles to make up.”
“Maybe we should watch some Cinderella scenes now to see where we’ll need background characters.”
“Sure, let me pull it up on my phone.”
They began watching the Disney live-action version of Cinderella, which they happened to find on a website for free. Langa scooted closer to Reki, so they were practically shoulder to shoulder, eyeing the screen on Reki’s phone. They started forwarding through most of the movie, pausing to watch scenes where they noticed characters outside the eight they already thought of. They decided not to include any of the animals throughout the film and just focus on the additional characters during scenes at the royal palace and such.
“So, we’ll need extras for the ballroom scenes, shoe fitting scenes, and the wedding scene at the end,” Langa concluded as Reki started taking notes.
“I thought we could have around ten extras, and they can be rotated throughout multiple scenes,” Reki suggested.
“I agree! That’d leave six people working solely on behind-the-scenes stuff. They’d always be able to get help from other students and teachers, though, so I think they’ll be fine.”
“That’s true! Cool, we’ve got a list now! Let’s type this list up and send it to Sensei.”
“Yeah!”
Reki switched over to his desktop and opened up a blank document, typing all the information he had on the notebook page into a more formal-looking character list.
“Oh, Langa, I’ve been meaning to ask,” Reki said as he was typing.
“What is it?”
“Why a play? Like, what made you think of doing that for the festival?”
“Oh…” Langa contemplated before answering, “It’s just that my mom was telling me about the time her class did a play for their school festival, so I thought it might be cool to do.”
“Ah, well, we can definitely make it cool!” Reki assured him, and the pair stared at each other, smiling for a while.
“Boys!” they suddenly heard Reki’s mother call out to them, breaking their eye contact, “Dinner’s ready!”
“We’ll be there in a second!” Reki called back as he finished typing up the last details.
“Okay! We’re all good!” Reki exclaimed as he sent the document to their teacher, “We should go eat now.”
“Yeah,” Langa agreed, “And Reki?
“Hm?”
“Thanks for doing this with me.”
“No problem, man! That’s what best friends are for!”
-
Langa had actually ended up sleeping over at Reki's place as the duo had decided to start working on the script after dinner, getting as far as the scene where the Stepmother and sisters go off to the ball before calling it quits due to sleepiness. That night, Reki had yet another dream about him and Langa as Cindereki and the Prince, this time with a happy ending as Adam was not in his dream to ruin it. Reki woke up to the sound of his alarm, embarrassed, as the ending of his dream—which he could barely remember now—had eluded to him and Langa getting married. He scratched his head with a grumble before stretching and getting up from his bed. He nudged Langa awake, who was still sleeping cooped up with blankets on the floor. They both got ready and headed to school on their skateboards, Reki trying his hardest not to think back to the dream he had just woken up from.
-
“Since Hasegawa and Kyan were kind enough to work on the character list yesterday, we can now start the casting process,” the teacher announced that morning at school. A scatter of oohs began to spread amongst the students, the excitement of being cast taking over their minds.
The teacher brought out a box from under his desk. It was black and opaque and had a slit at the top, big enough for someone to slip their hand through. Inside the box were chits of paper, each with a character or role from Reki and Langa’s list written on it.
“I thought it would be fairer to have you all randomly pick a character, so I made this,” he continued as he gestured to the box, “Some of the chits do not contain a character on them but rather a behind-the-scenes role pertaining to costumes, makeup, set designs, etc. These roles are equally as important as the characters, so please do not be disappointed with what role you happen to draw today.”
Despite what the teacher had just said, the classroom filled with complaints at the thought of working behind the scenes rather than actually being on stage.
“Alright, alright, enough of that!” the teacher snapped, “Hasegawa, since this is basically your play, why don't you draw first?”
“Okay,” Langa responded hesitantly as he got up from his desk and made his way over to the box. Reki watched him curiously as he picked a random chit out of the box, unfolded it, and began to read what it said out loud. “The Prince,” he murmured without looking up from his paper.
His words caused an outburst of cheers and squeals from many students as Langa was favored to be the Prince by most of them.
“Oh, I knew it!”
“You were destined to be the Prince, Hasegawa-kun!”
“Since you’re the Prince, I want to be Cinderella!”
“No, it should be me!”
“Settle down, class. Other students still need to be assigned to roles.” the teacher interjected.
With this, students started to pick out paper chits at random, drawing roles like “The King” and “Background Character 4.” Soon, it was Reki’s turn. He paled as he looked across the room to where girls surrounded Langa, all of them beaming over him being the Prince. Langa seemed awkward as he tried to respond to all of their comments while simultaneously looking for a way to escape. Ignoring the scene, Reki walked up to the front of the classroom and stuck his hand inside the box, pulling out a slip of paper. The second he read what it said, his stomach did a flip. He looked at it over again and again, but the text on the chit would not change no matter how much he wanted it to. Swallowing down his nerves, he read the name aloud in a small yet careful voice.
“C-cinderella…”