This Warmth Of Yours

Chapter 24 - Reluctant Steps Into the Spotlight

The dawn of the school festival was to set sail soon! The entirety of Niji High's spending day and night on their respective class projects!

"Let's do a play!" Haru suggested.

"Ooh! What kind of story should we do?" asked another girl.

"Can we even write a play? That sounds hard," chimed another.

Haru smiled, pointing towards Kyoya. He froze, sensing what she was about to do. "He has a loooooot of experien-"

Rika puts her hand over Haru's mouth. "What about a maid cafe!? I can help out with the costumes, the boys can wear em too!"

Suddenly, Kyoya found himself between a rock and a hard place. He had difficulties thanking Rika for averting the topic to something else when the topic she changed it to was this.

"Oh, what about both? The class next door wants to do a maid cafe too, so we can have a play where the audience is being served food by maids if we decide to merge together."

The class next door, Yuki and Kana's class? Kyoya didn't know who that was that just said that, but they were lucky he was no longer as short-tempered as he was before. That sounded like a horrible idea. What if people were making sounds while eating? That would inevitably disrupt the play! Regardless, this meant that if he signed up for the play side of things, he didn't have to dress up in a maid outfit.

Voluntarily, he hesitantly agreed to becoming the playwrighter without explaining his actual job. He had no experience in playwrighting, so the likelihoods of this going well was low, but he was sure that it was better than having no experience in writing at all!

The entire class was reluctant on letting him in charge. Rika's voice rang out. "It's okay, he's not alone! The rest of us will help him, okay? Plus, you should give him a chance! He'll surprise you, I swear!"

Kyoya looked at her in surprise. He didn't care what others thought of him, as he deserved every last part of the scrutiny he's under. Yet, something inside him felt warm, even while the rest of the class still seemed hesitant.

Haru added, "He helped me, so I'm sure he'd help us too. At the very least, don't you trust me?"

Kyoya turned towards Haru. He had a bad feeling. He wasn't particularly against people finding out his true identity anymore, as long as it never made it to the public ears. His readers think he's a cute female highschooler, so his public image would be shattered if the truth was revealed.

On the other hand, if people dug into his past, it was likely his career would end. The public doesn't forgive, after all.

A boy responded. "Well, whatever. As long as it's good, I guess."

"Mhm, I'm looking forward to something Kyoya might write!"

Kyoya stood up, addressing the entire class. "... Our class will have the best performance in this school festival."

Woah, intense. The mood in the classroom was shifted immediately.

...

One sigh after another. He'd been staring at an empty page for a while now - an overly decorated "The" being the only word on the page. Rika and Nami plopped another stack of books on the library table. "More inspiration!" the girls said in unison.

"Nami, don't you have club?" asked Haru.

"Ah, oops," Nami casually said. She packed up her stuff and left within seconds without so much as a goodbye. Rika laughed. "Kana usually invites her to go with her. She must've forgotten to do that today so Nami was on autopilot and followed me to the library like we always did."