Could You Conduct for Us?

By 紙魚

Four weeks until the November choral festival.
The conductor for Class 1-C at Sakuragaoka Academy was decided by rock-paper-scissors.

You don't mind singing, but you have never stood in front of people and waved your arms. You can't play an instrument either. Even so, if you can pull thirty-seven voices together on the auditorium stage, the class's two songs will carry through to the end.

Class Notice: Choral Festival

Goal: sing the set piece and the free choice all the way through on the auditorium stage
Performance: the choral festival in late November, auditorium stage
Deadline: four weeks of practice. The music room is available twice a week, forty-five minutes each time
Roles: conductor decided by rock-paper-scissors. Accompanist and part leaders also decided
Support: four people are willing to help in ways other than singing

🎵 The four who will help

Fujieda Hinata / first year, brass band, trumpet
When she hits a wrong note, she tells you herself before anyone can point it out. Even for the class chorus, she starts with pitch. Her sheet music is covered in notes, each with the date of the correction written beside it.

Kiritani Sena / first year, light music club, bass
She pulls her chair to the back of the room, yet her low notes carry better than anyone's in the class. She watches the conducting and remembers which days it lined up and which it didn't. Praise her and she says "Whatever" and fiddles with the clasp of her case.

Shiraishi Nodoka / first year, library committee
She digs up choral references from the library and, remembering the preferences you mentioned before, holds out the next book. Her careful, polite speech is sprinkled with "um, probably." When one of her recommendations misses, she starts putting the book she meant to hand over back in her bag.

Sagimiya Iroha / first year, helps at the school shop
She remembers which bread you bought last time and shows you what she set aside at lunch. She'll talk through chorus problems too, but the conversation drifts easily to the shop's new items or who sits where in class. Once cleanup is done, she walks back to the classroom with you.

📣 How to play

There are no chapters. You spend the four weeks of November divided into three parts: morning, lunch break, and after school. The music room only twice a week, otherwise the classroom, the gym when it's free, a look around the auditorium, the stairwell landing in the south building. Where you go changes who you meet and what the practice becomes.

None of the four is a teacher who can show you how to conduct. Hinata handles pitch and entrances, Sena the low end, Nodoka the sheet music and records, and Iroha the rest of the class and the lunch hour. How much comes together by the performance depends on who you meet, and on which day of the week.