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

CHAPTER 123: Slip-ups

Before Thursday ended and all the participants of the school plays and presentations finished their rehearsals, the representatives of each play were called to the Executive Committee's meeting room to determine the order at which tomorrow's plays would commence. There would be lesser performances than originally planned because many classes backed out at the last minute due to lack of preparation. Most of the third year classes opted not to participate because of the busy schedules of the third years and those that did participate consisted of people from different classes who formed a single group to present one performance. The founding ceremony was then narrowed down to just ten performances which included 30-minute short skits and 45-minute screenplays. Fitting them all in one day is a strenuous schedule and they would have to finish late in the afternoon before they can proceed with the voting.

Ayase Mami was perhaps the most nervous among all the representatives. In her opinion, the order at which the plays and skits would be presented could play a vital part in determining the winners. After all, the winners would be chosen via poll voting once all ten performances finish and thus, the order at which the audience would see each performance matters a lot.

If they were first to perform, they would have to be extremely impactful to the point that their play would still be etched in the minds of the audience even after the next nine performances finish. Moreover, there would be an hour-long breaktime at half past twelve until half past one o'clock in the afternoon to make way for lunchtime. It is not as though Mami thinks that their play is not impactful. It's the span of human memory that she is worried about.

The capacity of the human memory can be quite scary. It is generally short-lived and easily distracted. Mami played witness to that specific medical and psychological phenomenon everyday of her life.

A lot of people around her forgets even the most recent events that happened hours ago and even she is a definite part of this population for she somehow ends up unable to remember what was discussed for math class right after she comes home from school. The same can be said for English and History. Ah, the frightening short-term memory... It is to be greatly feared...

Ifever any of the fifteen individuals sitting around the conference room could read what is running about inside Ayase Mami's mind, she would've been smacked in the head right there and then just for the mere crime of thinking that every other humans have the memory span of her own brain capacity. Despite being the weird person that she is, Mami still continues to believe that she is the perfect example of an 'ordinary person', a model-like part of the general average population. Seems like she deluded herself too much.

While the others made casual conversations and small talk, Mami kept quiet and sat stiffly as she pondered over the order of the performance again. No matter how much she thinks about it, the tenth and final performance would be the most ideal for their play. The greatest danger to performing last would be the chances of getting compared to the past nine performances that were ahead of them but thanks to the short-term human memory capacity and their play's capability of hyping the excitation levels of the crowd, she's positive that the acting, the storyline and detailing of her Robin Hood would still reign superior over the other plays and skits. After all, people would be likely to forget the details of the earlier performances and the chances of their class to be voted the most would increase.

The final performance, the perfect spot for her Robin Hood... Even if she has to resort to dirty tricks, she must get it! They have to perform as the tenth presentation, or at the very least, they should belong to the last three presentations to stand better chances of winning! Ah, the crisis, the torture! Filled with anxiety, Mami started biting her nails.

Just in case the readers are wondering why Ayase Mami is brooding over this matter to the point of nail-biting when she had successfully manipulated several of the festival's events in the past chapters by abusing her power in the Executive Committee, let me brief you in with the reason.