Tuesday, June 20, 2000

【Hotel Castle: Hitoshi Honda & Yoshie Sugano】

“Who are you calling Chocoball Mukai!”
“Geez, you didn't cut that part?”
Tsuyoshi Tomita let out a sigh of disappointment as he stared at his own image projected on the screen. This is the Kumamoto Hotel Castle. Currently, the wedding reception for Hitoshi Honda and Yoshie Sugano is being held in the banquet hall here. Since both of them are former adventurers, many adventurers are in attendance, along with a large crowd including their middle school, high school, and university classmates, as well as relatives. Furthermore, since Sugano was active on television and other media as a popular celebrity until recently, reporters from television stations and various news outlets have also arrived with large cameras, making it quite a large-scale reception. Because of this, while it is grand, the ceremony proceeded solemnly, and until the first part ended with the mid-reception costume change, it was a textbook-perfect, serious wedding reception. The second part, following the costume change, was scheduled to feature speeches and performances, and as the first item on the program, a video of the moment Honda proposed to Sugano was shown on the large screen.
“I don't think it was necessary either, but well, isn't it just like you, Tomita-san?”
“What do you mean ‘just like me’?”
Tomita retorted after hearing the words spoken by Hitoshi Otsuka, who was sitting next to him, regarding the video just shown. After Honda proposed, a large number of acquaintances celebrated him in a performance modeled after the finale of a certain famous robot anime. Honda had smiled and said thank you to that, so originally, it should have ended there. There was no need to use the slightly awkward part that followed, and there was certainly no need to broadcast that line on the big screen. The guests at the reception were buzzing and chuckling at the words Tomita had spoken that were just projected on the screen. However, since the video had already been played, he decided to just move on.
“Next, we have a speech from the bride Yoshie-san's friends.”
After this introduction by the emcee, her friends and former members of the Machida Fan Club, Arisa Himemura, Rui Goto, Megumi Yamanouchi, and Nana Tamiya, went up to the stage. They delivered congratulatory speeches, and since these four also went to the same high school as Honda, they wove in stories about Honda from their high school days, making for a warm and enjoyable speech.
“Thank you very much. Next is the speech from the groom Hitoshi-san's friends, seniors, and juniors representative.”
Hearing this, Koji Harada, Otsuka, and Satoshi Nakao put on determined expressions and moved to the stage. When they gave their speeches in the order of Otsuka, Nakao, and Harada, the venue was filled with roars of laughter.