🧙 WHO: Izumi Tachibana (currysseur) & anyone and everyone who wants to see her act!
⚔️️ WHAT: #izumiavalonactingdebut0505!!! After a difficult battle against Hanahaki, Izumi and Kaika Company band together to give her the lead role in her very own play on her birthday! Come see how she does, chat to friends, give her birthday presents? IDK it's a mingle log, you can top level and do whatever you like (but warn where necessary!)
🕒 WHEN: 5th May.
🗺️ WHERE: Kaika Company
⚠️ WARNINGS: I have Lots Of Feelings about Izumi acting ok


( she speaks the last line to the audience, (prop) sword in hand — it's a small part of a longer monologue, something Tsuzuru seems to have tailored especially to her own circumstances, about falling and getting back up, never letting your dreams die — and the words come out smoothly. For the first time since rehearsals started, her voice doesn't waver. There's no ache in her lungs or flowers in her throat suffocating her words.

For the first time in almost two months, she feels free.

Still, as the lights, the curtains, fall, and the world around her descends into silence and darkness for a moment, that worry comes back. She had managed it, hadn't she? There were mistakes — of course there were, that was the charm of a play — but nothing like the blunders she made back home. She didn't recite an entirely different part's lines, or pants anyone. She stood on stage and delivered the kind of performance she had long believed was out of her grasp as an actor.

... But what if she's just fooling herself? What if the audience saw the same clumsy, hammy girl who was told point blank she'd never improve. The girl who simply didn't have the raw, birthright talent to bloom on stage like others.

The seconds between the curtain descending and the first sounds of applause seem to be a lifetime. But soon enough, they're there. They're loud. As loud as they've been for any play they've hosted here in Kaika Theatre, and the heat of tears immediately pricks at her eyes even as a smile breaks out over her face.

She did it. She finally delivered a performance she can be proud of. One where the audience laughed because she wanted them to laugh, not because she tripped into a scene she wasn't meant to be in. Stumbling back out to take her bow feels hazy, dreamlike, and her hands clasp tightly around those of her costars, as though to keep herself upright as they make their way back out for that final hurrah.

It's only once she gets back to the wings that she stops fighting the tears pricking at her eyes, bursting into a relieved grin that's so wide it looks like it could break her face even as she cries, and immediately flings herself at the nearest Kaika member for a bone-crushing hug.

She'll catch up with the lingering audience members in a bit, but for now... )

Thank you, all of you...!