"Since we're about to rehearse a stage play, and it's rare to have a professional around, why not ask Tamanosuke to give us some pointers?" Suzuki Sonoko was very interested in this old-fashioned Traveling Theater Troupe. She said to Jiang Xia, "We're planning to skip club activities after school and visit Tamanosuke's troupe. You should come too."
Although exams were approaching, the stage and the theater troupe were obviously far more interesting than studying.
Besides, they had a perfectly legitimate reason this time: Ito Tamanosuke had only recently taken over as troupe leader, so as his good classmates, of course they had to go support him.
Suzuki Sonoko had originally planned to take a detour after school to find Jiang Xia and invite him along. To her surprise, Jiang Xia had actually come to school today.
As expected, Jiang Xia was quite interested. He looked at Ito Tamanosuke. "That's impressive. You're already the star of the troupe at such a young age. There must be quite a few people in the troupe, right?"
Ito Tamanosuke sorted the remaining flyers in his hands, looking a little embarrassed. "I wouldn't call myself the star. But before the official performance this time, I'll be singing a piece where I play three roles by myself to warm up the crowd. It's my first time performing in that position, so I'm a little nervous—if you come visit, I can practice in front of you a few times first. Then I won't panic when the real performance starts."
Though he said that, Ito Tamanosuke had actually been performing with his little troupe all over the country for years and was already highly experienced. He was only saying it to give his classmates an excuse not to stand on ceremony.
The other students were clearly curious about