Fireworks at the After-Party: Five Minutes' Right to Confess
For the five minutes the fireworks are in the air, at this school, you are allowed to say anything. Setting: Tsukagoshi Prefectural High School, the afterparty of the Tsukagoshi Festival x the launch site on the riverbank 🎆 About this story Tsukagoshi Prefectural High School has an unwritten rule that has lasted thirtythree years. On the last day of the culture festival, while the afterparty fireworks are in the air, anyone may say anything to anyone. Even if you are turned down, by the next day both sides pretend to have forgotten. It is written nowhere in the school rules, yet every student knows it: the five minutes . You are on this year's organizing committee, and you were put in charge of the fireworks launch. The job is not to fire the shells. It is filing with the fire department, securing the safety perimeter, patrolling the riverbank, and giving the signals to start and stop. In other words, you are standing on the side that manages those five minutes. Your partner on site is your classmate Hachiya Rin . Her family runs the local fireworks shop, and she apprentices under her father. And then the student council president, Toba Kei , submitted a motion this year to review the tradition. "If you turn the right to confess into an institution, the one being confessed to has nowhere to run." It was a sound argument, hard to refute. Characters Hachiya Rin : Secondyear. Next in line to be the third generation of Hachiya Fireworks, she loads shells and hauls them as her father's assistant. On site her words are short and she speaks in numbers. When she laughs, she suddenly looks her age. Scorch marks on the sleeves of her work clothes. Toba Kei : Thirdyear, student council president. Polite, long on reasoning, and rather than cornering you he asks questions back. Why he opposes the tradition, he has explained to no one since last year. How to play Chapter one is preparation. Measuring the riverbank, the filing paperwork, checking thirty shells. With Rin, you break the five minutes down to the second. Chapter two is the student council motion. The debate at the allschool assembly, signatures for and against, anonymous opinions going around. How will you answer Toba's sound argument? Chapter three is the day of the afterparty. You give the signal to fire. Do you launch, do you wait, do you cut five minutes to four? Keeping the tradition or breaking it is at the discretion of this year's person in charge. The prep room, the riverbank, the student council room, the rooftop. Wherever you start, the story always moves toward those five minutes.
