Tennis no Ojou-sama: A Prince of Tennis Fan Fiction

CHAPTER 110: Fleeting Happiness

"Cut!" Mami hollered, making Horio and Miyako look up from their scripts.

"Sheesh, how many times do I have to tell you? Put more emotion into it!" Mami added, approaching them and brandishing a rolled-up script to their faces.

"What do you mean by emotion? We're villains. We don't need to be overly dramatic," Horio said, narrowing his eyes.

"And did you just say 'cut'? We're not filming a movie," Shuu pointed out. He had barely recovered from losing out the position of Ryouko's stage-lover. That would've been such a great experience. Everyone would surely be jealous of him. He sighed internally for the thousandth time in the two hours that they had started with the script-reading.

Mami hit him in the head with the rolled-up script. "Ouch!" Shuu exclaimed, quite shocked. "What'd you do that for?" he cried out, obviously triggered.

"That's for you being stupid. Of course this isn't a movie filming. Once you're up onstage, there's no retake. What you'll act out will be the performance itself. That's why we're rehearsing, so you can do everything in one take. Thus, everytime you hear me say 'cut', that means you already messed up onstage. Get it?" Mami told him, every corner the arrogant director.

"Now, now... Calm down, Mami-chan. It's only the script-reading. We're just getting started. We have to familiarize ourselves with the lines first before we can put some emotion into it," Miyako said, playing the peace-maker.

"Miyako's right. First of all, the cast needs to familiarize themselves with the flow of the scenario and the individual lines. That's the first and most important step," Ryouko added.

"Then the next step would be memorization. That includes not just the memorization of the lines but the sequence of the conversations. If someone screws up and says their line in the wrong time, it would mess up the scenario completely," Ryoma said, voicing his opinion.

Mami looked thoughtful. "You have a point," she said.

"I think we're doing quite well. We can try out practicing lines like what we're doing right now and proceed to the explanation of the individual scenarios afterwards. It's best that we can hear out how the writer wants the scenes to play out," Ryouko said.

"I also think it's best to do that. And maybe we can try out a few tongue-twisters as well. These lines aren't exactly easy to pronounce since the words are formal and old-fashioned," Ryoma added.

Her classmates looked at Ryoma and Ryouko in a peculiar way. They noticed their stares and scanned the faces with confusion. "What?" they said, perfectly synchronized.

"Oh, nothing... It's just that you're taking this more seriously than anyone thought you would. I thought both of you had no passion in anything else but tennis," a girl classmate replied.

Ryoma and Ryouko smiled and caught each other's eye. "If there's one more thing that we're passionate about, it's succeeding in everything we do," Ryouko answered.

Ryoma shrugged. "It doesn't really matter what activity it is. Makezurai dakara (Since we don't like losing)," he said.

Ryouko held out a fist at his side. He bumped his own fist with hers.

Mami put her hands together in a single clap. "That's great! If the two leads don't like losing, then the more chance we have in winning this thing."

"Winning?" Shuu repeated. "What do you mean by 'winning'?"

"We're just making a performance to honour the founding ceremony, aren't we? All the classes are always required to do so. There's no competition of any sort," Jun added.