One thing before we continued: the world had a concept called a money source.
What was a money source?
To explain it simply, it was the person who paid, and in this world, there existed basic manners one had to show that money source.
For example, if the other person paid for meat, then you grilled it yourself.
Manners toward a money source ultimately came back to common sense. In other words, social skills.
Because in this capitalist world, where even happiness could be bought with money, manners toward a money source meant considering what services the person who paid the money deserved to enjoy.
And I observed those manners better than anyone.
“Yukimura. Do you perhaps have money overflowing out of your pockets?”
But this time, I could not hold back and stepped outside the bounds of courtesy.
That was how unexpected the sight in front of me was.
I carefully picked up the camera.
The blunt yet weighty feel of the body fit snugly in my hand.
As for this camera, it was a product that had completed the DSLR revolution begun by the previous series, optimized for producing the shallow depth of field unique to full frame and cinematic colors.
In other words.
To explain the impressive part of this product more simply, it was this.
It cost 350,000 yen.
I also inspected the three types of lenses, microphone, recorder, glidecam, and so on placed in Yukimura’s room.
In other words.
I was inspecting equipment worth around 1.3 million yen in total.
“1.3 million yen?!”
Riku was horrified. 1.3 million yen. The weight of that amount was better understood by high-school students who could feel happy just drinking beverages at a family restaurant.
From a high-school student’s perspective, it was an amount of money that could buy the world.
Kano also looked at Yukimura as if surprised. Apparently, she had not known Yukimura was this serious about movies.
One good thing about capitalist society: sincerity was easy to confirm.
If someone spent money, that was sincerity. Nothing else was sincerity.
At our reactions, Yukimura frowned.
“Hiiragi. Don’t you remember where you met me last time?”
“We met at a movie theater. You also murdered my ham sandwich, Yukimura.”
“...Not that. After that.”
After that would be the Western-style restaurant.
Yukimura had indeed been working part-time at a Western-style restaurant. She was the type of human who earned money herself.
Therefore, it was reasonable to think she had purchased the filming equipment with her own money.
However, there was one point that needed to be considered here.
Our age.
I asked,
“If you wanted to buy this equipment with only a weekend part-time job, you would need to work for two years, but you wouldn’t have been working part-time since your second year of middle school. Don’t tell me you worked part-time on weekdays too?”
“Only weekends. How would a student work part-time on weekdays?”
In fact, at present, we were forbidden from working part-time.
More precisely, until March 31. Until the time we legally graduated completely from middle school, we could not work part-time.
Well, it was not as if everyone strictly followed that. A nationwide chain would be one thing, but it was not as if the government paid attention to every neighborhood shop.
So if a neighborhood Western-style restaurant you had been close to for a long time paid you in cash, then yes, even now, part-time work was possible.
Even so, there were limits.
Maybe a third-year middle-school student, but no one would use a second-year middle-school student as a part-timer.
Yukimura answered.
“Obviously I started working part-time in my third year of middle school. About half a year ago?”
“Even if you had worked weekend shifts for an entire year, the physical working hours wouldn’t be enough. How did you save 1.3 million yen in half a year?”
“Hiiragi.”
“Yes.”
“Restaurant work isn’t the only way to earn money in this world.”
I understood perfectly what she meant.
“Fitting-model work?”
“They paid a lot.”
Yukimura was a beautiful girl. On top of that, she was a rare cool-type beautiful girl whose short hair suited her perfectly.
In the modern age, appearance was power. Naturally, Yukimura would have had many more options.
And as a third-year middle-school student, she was at the peak age for a student model.
At Yukimura’s level, it would be more surprising that she was working weekend shifts, given how much money she could earn.
At my question, Yukimura tucked her hair behind her ear and opened her mouth.
“It’s not great for my face to get too widely known either. So I only did it in moderation.”
“If you become an actress anyway, your face will be known nationwide.”
“Actresses live off their image. If a model image gets attached to me, it’ll be a disadvantage when I act.”
She was right, but calculating that thoroughly from the amateur stage was absolutely not easy.
It was something only someone truly serious about becoming an actress could do.
To put it another way, that was the same thing as a twelve-year-old aspiring professional gamer using pretty language in solo queue.
Yes, I meant that the difficulty level was high.
The future was difficult because it was unknown, and all the more so because it was hidden and therefore something to look forward to.
Thinking, surely not, I asked,
“You didn’t buy all this equipment because you were going to film a movie with me, right?”
“No. I saved up little by little whenever I got money.”
“Why?”
I was someone who did not care at all how other people spent their money, but this time, as an exception, I was too curious.
Why had Yukimura, an aspiring actress, purchased movie filming equipment? Was she a double rider aiming to become both an aspiring actress and a film director?
That was the question I had.
“Hiiragi.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know how someone becomes an actor?”
Like most fields in the arts and sports, there was no particularly fixed way to become an actor. There was no certification exam or anything like that.
However, also like most fields in the arts and sports, there was at least a normal route of entry.
“Auditions, isn’t it?”
“Auditions. Now, Hiiragi. What do you think the probability is that I get chosen at an audition?”
“Wouldn’t it be fairly high? You have a very pretty face, Yukimura.”
Auditions were ultimately a battle of impact.
They were a battle to make the director think, “That one has a good feel,” and for that reason, Yukimura was highly advantageous in an audition environment.
Because she started by making an impact with her face alone.
“...”
Suddenly, Yukimura shut her mouth. At that reaction, I blinked.
Was I wrong?
I wondered whether Japanese audition sites worked a little differently from what I knew and started turning my brain. I was trying to think of variables.
“Touji.”
And Kano gently called my name.
Riku also cried out in a panic.
“Touji! No matter how Yukimura looks, getting accepted at an audition is hard! Do you know how high the competition rate is?”
“Is it?”
“Yeah! It’s hard! Right, Yukimura?”
“Yeah. It’s hard.”
Yukimura nodded, then slowly continued speaking.
“There’s a joke a film director made about auditions. Do you know what it is?”
“No.”
“Every audition applicant either cries or curses. One of the two.”
As I said before, auditions were ultimately a battle of impact.
You had to show yourself in roughly one minute, and how many ways could there be to do that?
Cry or curse. It was an extremely natural phenomenon for things to convergently evolve into those two.
“I really wanted to become an actress. So polishing my acting skills was the basics, and I tried to prepare everything else too. I absolutely didn’t want to entrust my life to luck.”
“So the option you chose was filming movies yourself?”
“It’s more effective to show myself for fifteen minutes than for one minute.”
The modern age was the age of self-promotion. It was an age where people actively persuaded others not merely by saying “this is who I am,” but “why am I necessary for your company?”
It was an extremely accurate signal that the world had become a red ocean, and certainly, filming movies herself would raise her chances of becoming an actress more than clinging only to auditions.
Anyway.
After hearing everything, there was something I became curious about regarding Yukimura.
“If that’s your goal, then you must have footage you’ve filmed so far. That works out. Send it to me so I can use it as reference.”
“...I sent it already.”
“When? Did you send it this morning? Sorry. I didn’t see it.”
“...I’ve been sending it to you all along.”
All along?
......
Aha.
I quickly opened my mouth.
“Don’t misunderstand. What I just said wasn’t a roundabout way of insulting Yukimura’s footage as substandard. It’s just that the footage you’ve sent me so far wasn’t filmed with this equipment, right? It’s understandable that I’d be confused.”
Wait.
Now that I had said it out loud, there was something I did not understand.
Why had the footage she had sent me so far had such crude visuals, as if it had been filmed with a home camera?
When she had this kind of expensive equipment?
I had a guess.
I asked Yukimura,
“Yukimura.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know how to use this equipment.”
“...Yeah.”
I knew it.
I knew Yukimura’s deviation score exactly.
But an actress only needed to have a pretty face and act well.
She did not need to be smart too.
“You bought good equipment despite knowing nothing. Did someone help you?”
“I just bought what internet recommendation lists told me to buy.”
“Next time you buy something like this, consult me.”
Let us roughly conclude that at least her passion was incredible and stop talking about this. If we went any further, I would end up unintentionally saying bad things to Yukimura.
Anyway.
I inspected the filming equipment Yukimura had gathered like a squirrel.
Originally, I had planned to handle all equipment within roughly 200,000 yen.
If I covered everything with equipment at the absolute peak of cost performance, I could get a decent result even with that much.
Even equipment prepared for 200,000 yen would make it hard to notice the difference unless it was being shown in theaters, and at the amateur level, the flaws would be acceptable enough. That was why the option had been possible.
But if expensive equipment was here, there was also no reason not to use it.
I modified several pieces of direction I had prepared in advance. The true master was someone who modified their actions to fit the actual situation.
After deciding everything that way, I spoke to the members of the movie group.
“Shall we make the filming plan now? Does anyone have questions so far?”
“Touji.”
“What is it, Kano? Do you have a question?”
“Do you contact Yukimura every day?”
“Touji! What do I need to do during filming? Cameraman?”