High School, Chapter 9

High School, Chapter 9 is a chapter of the sixth volume of the K-ON! Manga by Kakifly.

Summary
The second term of school has started at Sakuragaoka High School, and that means one thing - the school festival. Azusa is getting really worked up about the concert. She realised that even though Yui never bothered to call up to meet her despite being on summer break. So Azusa wants to surprise all of her old senpais at the concert with a new song. Jun, however, is always the downer. She reminds Azusa that not only is their drummer, Sumire, not entirely up to scratch, but the song Azusa wrote isn't exactly spectacular either. There's only one solution: record a drum track, and have Azusa lip sync the song.

Well, the only other solution is to stop moping about and get practicing. But Ui and Jun seem to have something to do, though Jun looks as if she's being dragged away against her will. Without Ui and Jun, however, the club activities for the day are essentially halted. Sumire made tea, but without Ui, there'll be no sweets, and Nao managed to write ten whole songs over the summer, but it's not use showing them to just Azusa.

Azusa casually mentions that the meetings leading up to the school festival are particularly important, but her juniors don't quite know why. She tells them that the club performs live during the festival. Sumire works herself into an anxious breakdown, thinking she's not yet ready to perform live yet. Although Nao is sitting still, presumably calm, a closer inspection reveals that she's shaking since she's so nervous about her songs being played live.

Azusa quickly grabs the recording of last year's concert. She thinks that if Sumire and Nao know what to expect, they'll be more prepared and less anxious. It has the opposite effect. Suddenly, Azusa snaps. She realises that in her quest to make her band as great as it can be, she ended up neglecting her two new friends.

Azusa wraps up practice for the day, so that they can just relax for a while, over some tea. While the girls just chat, Sumire brings up an odd topic. She heard that Azusa's nickname used to be 'Azu-nyan'. Azusa quickly makes Sumire shut up, and tries to stop Nao from recording the conversation on her laptop. While being scolded by Azusa, Nao brings up an odd point - Azusa always seems to call her by her surname. Azusa is happy to start calling her by her first name, and the situation is settled.

As Azusa walks home from school, she starts to really feel how good friends she's become with both Sumire and Nao. She spots Ui and Jun just by the school. It turns out it was their plan all along for Azusa to just have a nice afternoon to sit down and chat with Sumire and Nao. They all resolve to work hard for the upcoming school festival.