Our Other Place In The Sun

Chapter 27 (Our Words Are Backed With Nuclear Weapons)

Rem and Subaru were back at school after their week long trip to Lugnica. Things went back into their normal day to day routine. Lately the weather started to get colder. Each morning felt like the temperature was dwindling down further and further.

The season of winter was coming close, unfortunately Rem wasn't prepared. Subaru had yet to go out and get her some winter clothing. Everytime he told himself that he would get around to bring her to the mall on a particular day, he would always end up procrastinating.

Rem didn't seem too bothered yet by the cold weather. But that could soon change when the snow eventually came down. She only had sweaters to keep herself warm, and that seemed to be holding her over everyday Subaru didn't know if Rem was just built differently and could take the cold, or she just never complained.

On this particular afternoon, Rem and Subaru were in their English class. It was the start of a new unit, and Subaru nearly slammed his head on the desk when he heard that they would be going over an old English play.

Students would be handed a study book of the play of which they could take home and use to study until they finished the unit. Every class they would read over the entire play from act 1 all the way to act 5. The teacher was hoping to read over one scene each class. Then after that act is finished, do a test on it.

Luckily students weren't going to be asked to act out the play. They just had to sit at their desks and read out the dialog from the book they were given of a character of their choosing.

At the front of the class the teacher had up a giant sheet of papers with all the characters' names. Students got to choose a character they liked and speak out their lines to the class. Even though this was optional, the teachers wanted some participation.

There were three types of characters. Characters written at the top in black marker were main characters that spoke often. They had the most lines out of any other characters. The characters in the middle that were written in green marker were side characters. That only really had a lot of lines during a specific act of the play. Then at the bottom were fringe characters that didn't even have a name like, the clown, officers, porter, harold, and senators 1 2 and 3. These characters only had one or seven lines at most.

The teacher knew students were not going to be keen on voluntarily picking main characters that talked a lot. Mainly because the play they were reading was in a different language and they didn't want to embarrass themselves. But he also didn't want to force students to read out loud in a language they were uncomfortable speaking in.

So he came up with a solution, giving bonus marks to whoever read out loud a character's lines. The characters in black received the most bonus marks, and the characters in purple received the least. Even though they only spoke one or seven lines, they deserved some credit for actually voicing a character.

The second Rem heard the word bonus marks she immediately wanted to voice a character written in black. She also wanted Subaru to play a character since she wanted him to get bonus marks as well.

"Now do we have a volunteer who would want to play the main character, Macbeth?" The teacher asked the class. His response was crickets as nobody put their hand up to volunteer. Even as the many seconds went by. "Alright then, I guess we will come back to that. Now does anyone want to play his wife, Lady Macbeth?"

Rem immediately shot her hand up in the air, claiming the character for herself.

"Ah Rem, do you want to play Lady Macbeth?" The teacher asked.

".. Y-Yes, Rem wants to play... Lady Macbeth" Rem responded somewhat nervously.

"Very well then. Excellent choice. She is the wife of the main character and is essential to the story's plot early on" The teacher said as he wrote Rems name down in black marker next to the character she chose.