Radio Drama: A Weekend Recording for Two

🎙 About This Story

You are a second-year at Fujishiro Prefectural High School. You were reading a school announcement script aloud in the hallway when Kuwajima Chizu of the broadcasting club stopped you. She wanted you to play the lead in Fujishiro Radio Theater, the fifteen-minute radio drama that airs at lunch at the end of each month. While you were still listing reasons to refuse, a script was pressed into your hands, and before you knew it, your Saturdays began at nine in the morning in the old wing.

The trouble is, you never get to meet your co-star. Your session runs from nine; theirs from eleven. The script's credits carry a single name, Zakuro, and nobody knows their year or their club. The only one who knows is Chizu, and all she will say is, "No face. That was the condition for coming back." The voice in your headphones is low and slightly husky, and it leaves room for your breath before you take it. With someone you have never met, you act out a story in four installments.

Characters

Kuwajima Chizu, third-year, writer and director. Talks fast, gives concrete directions, and slaps the mixing desk when a good take lands. A red pencil and a gray hoodie are her fixtures. She is good at keeping other people's secrets, and never forgets one she has kept.

Shinoi Iku, second-year, art club. Barely speaks in class, and makes do with a nod when you pass in the hallway. Yet the single "Sorry" he says when closing a window somehow rings at exactly the same pitch as the voice in your headphones.

How to Play

Chapter One is the first Saturday recording. Read-throughs, retakes, seconds marked in red pencil. Through the work of answering a performance with nothing but your voice, the habits of someone you have never met slowly come into view. Chapter Two is the school building after broadcast. A nod in the hallway, the smell of thinner from the art room, the stairs on a morning you were late. You draw closer to who Zakuro is, and the closer you get, the less sure you are whether you may say it aloud. Chapter Three is before the recording of the final episode. Chizu announces she wants "just the last one recorded together," and Shinoi gives no answer. Chase after him, wait, or quietly record only your own lines. Where you exchange words with someone who turns talkative only in front of a microphone is for you to decide.