All right, I'd like to kick off this meeting to discuss the play that will be Hanamaru's playwright and actress debut!

Th-This is a temporary thing, zura!

Hanamaru, thank you for deciding to do this. Let's put on a great show together!

I'll do anything I can to help you, Hanamaru!

Thank you, Ruby. I'll do my best too, zura.

I haven't done a play since our kindergarten school recital, but I do think it'll help me write the play if I'm performing in it too.

All right, let's dive right into it. What kind of play should we do? What kind of plays have you done so far?

Mainly period pieces like Shakespeare. We've also done plays depicting the lifetimes of famous people from all over the world, and we've adapted fairy tales and other stories.

The upperclassman who wrote the scripts for us also wrote a completely original fantasy play that we put on as well.

Completely original? Wow, whoever wrote that must've been amazing!

Hmm. If we base it off an existing work, then the story is already complete. That makes it a little easier, but…an original story feels like it'd be really worthwhile too.

I haven't read many plays, zura… I wonder if the school library has some. I'll have to check next time.

I'd be so thrilled if you fell in love with plays too! Let me know when you check them out. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Sure! Do you have any plays you recommend, Shizuku?

Mmm, that's a good question. They're all masterpieces, so it's really hard to narrow them down. But perhaps we could try by picking some famous ones.

You mentioned Shakespeare before, and he's famous. For the classics, I can think of Molière and Corneille, while for fairy tales, there's like Maeterlinck's “The Blue Bird”.

Right. We've also challenged ourselves to traditional Japanese performance art as well, like Noh and kabuki. The most recent one we did was Monzaemon Chikamatsu's…

The Love Suicides at Sonezaki?! You put on a masterpiece like that, zura?!

No, we did a different one.

It kind of feels like Hanamaru and Shizuku are in their own little world.

Eek…

[Fade in/out.]

Um… So after some discussion, I think we should go with an original play that's either a romance, an adventure, or a mystery!

All of those are three classic genres you can't go wrong with!

Well, Hanamaru, which one do you think you could write the best?

Hmmm… I'm not sure… I've never gone on an adventure, I've never been involved in any mysteries, and I've never been in l-love either…

But you can use your imagination for a fair amount of it, right? There's tons of romance, adventure, and mystery tales out there! They can't all be 100% based on fact!

But I do think it would be pretty hard to write something entirely based on your imagination. It's easier to create if part of the story is based on your own experiences…

That's a good point. In that case… Let's go get you some experience!

What? E-Experience?

Yeah! Let's fall in love, go on an adventure, and solve a mystery!