“Just cut that bitch from the movie.”
“Yukimura. Please tone down your language.”
“What does she think this is, a love hotel? What the hell is she doing on a sacred film set? Unbelievable.”
“Yukimura. Please tone down your language.”
After furiously rattling off her complaints, Yukimura took a deep breath.
She had realized that if Kano left, the three remaining members would have to shoot the entire movie by themselves, which was not realistically possible.
Yukimura met Kano’s eyes. Then she opened her mouth. She intended to give Kano a brief warning before resuming the shoot.
“But Touji, my improvisation was appropriate for the movie.”
Kano spoke first.
“I said we should cut that bitch from the movie.”
And before I could respond, Yukimura immediately fired back.
The corner of Yukimura’s mouth rose slightly.
Restoring someone’s smile with a single remark. That was Kano for you. Perhaps she had been born with the makings of an entertainer.
Yukimura spoke.
“I told you that a movie is not a place for you to indulge your personal interests.”
“That’s strange. I don’t remember agreeing with you.”
The corner of Kano’s mouth rose as well.
Restoring someone’s smile with a single remark. That was Yukimura for you. Perhaps she had been born with the makings of an entertainer.
Yukimura explained in a gentle tone.
“All right, Tachibana. Since you apparently didn’t understand me, I’ll explain it again. A movie is not a place for you to indulge your personal interests.”
“I haven’t indulged any personal interests. Didn’t I say it was improvisation appropriate for the movie? Touji, did you not hear me?”
“Guys! Why don’t we take a break? I think we’ve filmed plenty!”
“Riku. We haven’t even filmed for one minute.”
Riku suddenly said something bizarre.
We had barely filmed anything. Why would we take a break already?
Of course, I understood how Riku felt. He had probably blurted out the first thing that came to mind because he wanted to mediate between them.
But saying something completely detached from reality would never resonate with the other person.
In other words, this required an approach based on empathy.
That was my specialty.
I was a novelist, after all.
Novelists were people who carefully observed what others empathized with and constructed their sentences accordingly.
I slowly addressed Kano and Yukimura.
“Yukimura. First, let’s hear Kano out. I’m curious too. Why exactly was that strange behavior appropriate improvisation for the movie?”
“‘Do you know why stories where a beautiful girl falls from the sky are becoming less common? It’s because the theme of destiny is dying out. Stories have to eliminate coincidence now. Every element has to be connected.’ Here’s the question! Who said that?”
“I know! Touji!”
Riku shot his hand into the air.
Since he had answered correctly, I would reward him with more work later.
I would help him, so there was no need to look miserable.
I rubbed my lips with my fist.
Let us briefly examine S#6, the scene we had just filmed.
S#6 began with the protagonist visiting the astronomy club room while carrying a stack of A4 pages, after a teacher asked him to deliver them.
He had no idea that he was about to encounter a bizarre incident there, or meet the brilliant detective who would solve that bizarre incident in an equally bizarre way.
Hmm.
“There certainly are a lot of coincidences.”
“Right?”
The reason he visited the astronomy club was a coincidence.
Meeting the detective there was another coincidence.
The entire world was made of coincidences.
It was difficult for a creative work to contain no coincidences whatsoever. The real world itself operated on coincidence, so there was no helping that.
Even so, creators had to control coincidence as much as possible. At the very least, they needed to reduce the number of coincidences.
The fewer instances of “just because,” the more polished a work became.
That was part of my personal theory of creativity.
I merely lacked the ability to follow it perfectly. I still tried to adhere to the theory as much as possible, and from that perspective, looking over this youth mystery scenario again revealed flaws in several places.
Kano twirled her finger.
“Wouldn’t it be better if the protagonist came to the astronomy club because he knew one of its members, instead of just showing up? They could be dating, for example.”
“It would definitely be smoother if they already knew each other.”
My agreement immediately put Kano in a better mood.
Yukimura flinching was an added bonus.
Now full of confidence, Kano glanced at Yukimura. Her gaze poked at her as though to say, Do I still look like someone who was only indulging her personal interests?
“Sorry, Tachibana. I was judging you unfairly.”
Yukimura surrendered under Kano’s pressure. The fact that I, the screenwriter, had acknowledged it as an entirely reasonable suggestion seemed to have played a major part.
But you had to listen until the other person was finished.
I had agreed with Kano’s suggestion, not with Kano’s improvisation.
I spoke calmly.
“Kano. I’m impressed you remembered that.”
“You said it, Touji. Of course I remembered.”
“And yet the act of straightening my tie was clearly something you improvised on impulse without any thought. You only attached my previous statement to it after I asked why you did it. Still, you managed to justify it remarkably well. You may have an unexpected talent for storytelling.”
The truth was revealed.
Kano had not acted after considering destiny, coincidence, or anything of the sort…!
“What?”
Once the truth came out, Yukimura spoke in an icy voice.
This time, it was Yukimura’s gaze that stabbed into Kano.
Unlike Kano’s earlier, playfully provocative look, this one contained pure murderous intent.
Kano casually ignored Yukimura’s glare and asked me a question.
“Didn’t you say I was right too?”
“The current structure is definitely weak. That much is true. But it is also clear that you did not improvise because you thought the structure was weak.”
“How do you know that?”
How did I know?
How else?
Everything came from the details.
I had understood Shiori’s writing from the very first paragraph entirely because of the details.
In other words, a single line of dialogue was enough to understand Kano’s intentions.
“‘What brings you to the astronomy club?’ is clearly something you say to a stranger. If your improvisation was genuinely meant to establish that the characters already knew each other, wouldn’t the dialogue have been different? Do you speak that way to someone you’re dating?”
“Maybe they were secretly dating?”
“Tachibana.”
Yukimura growled.
Kano laughed.
“Sorry. I was just joking.”
“Tachibana. Is making a movie a joke to you?”
“The quality improved because of it, didn’t it? Creative work always turns out better when you relax.”
“…It did improve.”
I was slightly impressed by how quickly Yukimura accepted that.
More precisely, I was impressed that Kano had already figured Yukimura out.
Yes. Kano had read her correctly.
As long as the quality of the movie improved, Yukimura would not care how many times someone teased her.
“Kano, Yukimura is that serious about movies. If you keep interrupting the shoot, she may turn into a demon. Restrain yourself if you want to keep your hair.”
“Got it.”
I put the brakes on Kano and sank into thought.
At the same time, Yukimura asked a question.
“Hiiragi. Then are you changing the protagonist and Astronomy Club Member A so they’re dating?”
“No. That would make it too light. It wouldn’t suit the tone of the scenario. I carefully controlled every element so the audience wouldn’t sense romance between the detective and the protagonist. I can’t let all that effort go to waste.”
The audience could still sense a subtle romantic undercurrent.
The faint bond between the protagonist and the detective could easily be interpreted that way.
But it was never confirmed.
In other words, there could be no scenes where the detective blushed or whispered, “Idiot.”
Elements like that would suddenly make the story much lighter and break the audience’s concentration.
Had we wanted that, we should have chosen the second scenario, which was simply a youth love comedy, rather than the third scenario, the youth mystery.
The conversation had strayed slightly, but the point was that although I agreed with Kano’s suggestion, I did not agree with all of it.
“It would be best if the protagonist and Astronomy Club Member A were merely casual acquaintances. They shouldn’t be dating.”
“How about childhood friends, Touji?”
“That would still make them too close. A childhood friend is automatically a heroine. It even makes people imagine marriage, so we absolutely need to avoid that.”
“So that’s how you see childhood-friend characters?”
“I was only speaking in terms of the associations they create.”
There were plenty of variations on childhood friends. They were not necessarily confined to that interpretation.
In fact, these days childhood friends were increasingly destined to lose…
In any case.
After organizing my thoughts, I addressed everyone.
“Give me one day. I think the scenario needs major revisions.”
***
Normally, changing Astronomy Club Member A’s background would not have required many revisions to the scenario.
The detective was ultimately the core of this story. As long as the detective remained unchanged, most of the scenario would stay the same even if Astronomy Club Member A’s background changed.
It would have been a different matter if Astronomy Club Member A had secretly been the real detective or something, but that was not the case.
So the change to Astronomy Club Member A was something I could have handled on the spot.
Nevertheless, I deliberately asked for a full day.
As I had said, it was because I wanted to make major revisions to the scenario.
Perhaps because this was my first time working as a screenwriter, the scenario seemed to contain signs of inexperience.
There was a term called metacognition.
It referred to the ability to recognize, understand, regulate, and control your own thoughts, learning, and memories.
Put simply, it meant the ability to view yourself objectively.
And there was an amusing thing about metacognition.
If someone else examined your work for you, that was effectively one hundred percent metacognition.
[Hiiragi Touji]
Shiori. Please review the scenario based on what I just told you. I need an outside perspective.
[Mochizuki Shiori]
All right.
I was truly fortunate that Shiori had agreed to participate in the movie scenario.
Otherwise, I would have had to seek out Ryota.
Just imagining Ryota forcing romance into everything made me shudder.
[Hiiragi Touji]
What do you think, Shiori? How is my scenario?
[Mochizuki Shiori]
Well…
[Hiiragi Touji]
You can be honest. We’re fellow creators, aren’t we?
Perhaps the phrase fellow creators had stirred something in her.
Shiori finally began to speak.
[Mochizuki Shiori]
It’s a little…
[Hiiragi Touji]
A little? A little what?
[Mochizuki Shiori]
Isn’t it a little ordinary?