Once we finished lunch, we sat across from each other.
"So, how's the Representative Friend's Speech coming along?"
Yamamoto asked, rubbing his stomach with a look of satisfaction.
I took some time to explain how we’d spent the previous day agonizing over it. Even as I spoke, I realized how little progress we’d actually made despite all those hours. Would I even finish in time for the wedding ceremony? A wave of anxiety hit me.
"Basically, we thought about it a lot, but we have almost nothing to show for it."
"Hmm..."
Yamamoto rested his chin in his hand and fell silent for a moment.
"...First, why don't we look at why you didn't make any progress yesterday?"
"What?"
My response was a protest—why would I want to dwell on a failure experience? It would only be painful.
"It’s because it was a failure experience that you need to face it, right?"
"I guess..."
"Do you think failing is just a bad thing? It isn't. Failure just means there was a specific problem. That makes it the easiest thing to handle when you're trying to lead yourself toward success the next time. If you succeed despite having problems, you'll never be able to replicate that success because you won't see what went wrong. But if you fail and pinpoint the reason, you'll never make that same mistake again."
I see.
He was saying that the clearer the problem, the easier the path to future success. When he put it that way, it made sense.
If you bombed a test because you accidentally shifted your answers by one row on the answer sheet, the fix would be easy: just make sure you didn't do that next time. But if you studied hard and prepared thoroughly yet still got a low score, you wouldn't even know where to begin. If you somehow managed to have a success experience under those circumstances, improving would be even harder.
"...But I don't think the reason we couldn't get the speech together is that simple."
"True. But I already know what needs to be improved."
"And that is?"
"What was it that you actually wanted to convey to Ishida?"
What I wanted to convey to I-chan?
I-chan had asked me to give the Representative Friend's Speech. Since then, I’d researched Representative Friend's Speech etiquette. Akari had taught me the proper way to handle a formal speech, and I had been trying to follow that speech format.
According to that format, the goal was to praise the other person.
"I don't know."
When I-chan asked me to give the Representative Friend's Speech, had I really just wanted to praise her?
No. That wasn't it.
But I didn't know the real answer either.
I had read all those articles and convinced myself that was how it was supposed to be done. That was why I had been so stubborn about finding ways to praise her.
"...That’s why you couldn't get it together."
"Yeah."
Yamamoto was right. Of course it wouldn't come together.
Personally, I didn't feel like I just wanted to offer unreserved praise to I-chan. I had spent the whole time obsessing over how I should praise her, rather than what I wanted to say.
What did I actually want to convey?
Yamamoto’s words seemed to loosen my rigid thoughts. The guides all said a Representative Friend's Speech should be about praising the bride. So, I had focused entirely on that.
But that wasn't right.
The task I had been entrusted with wasn't just to give a Representative Friend's Speech that praised I-chan. My real job was to tell her something.
To convey a message.
One way to do that was through praise, but that wasn't the only way.
"What do you want to convey to Ishida?"
"...I..."
What was it that I really wanted to tell I-chan...?