Chapter 96

………… Sneak, sneak, sneak… It’s been, um, eleven months since the last volume. I’d like to apologize to all of you who’ve been waiting for the next chapter of the story. Because I got to do a volume of something that I’ve been pestering my editor to please, please, please let me write for a long time now in between Volumes 6 and 7 of Kieli (I think you’ll see it listed in the back of this book, but, anyway, they let me write my first non-Kieli new work, Custom Child), a bit of extra time ended up going by. At any rate, here we are at the seventh volume of the Kieli series. A journey takes center stage here for the first time in a long while—before I plunged into the series climax, I wanted to do one more “traveling story” like I’d started off with in the beginning. What’s more, it’s a story about falling in love with a giant structure that puffs billows of smoke from a bunch of smokestacks (…is it really?). It’s a story about a man with a tiresome personality distressed by the plunge-in-headlong tendencies of girl with a complicated personality, and about a man who’s tired of living finding meaning in life again. Somehow this stock line is starting to get less and less comprehensible with each volume… Um, I’m not sure if it’s okay for me to write about my plans here…but I plan to finish the Kieli story in one more episode. I’m not sure yet if that final episode will be one thick book or if it’ll be split into two books, but right now I’m constructing the story with the idea of doing it in two volumes if possible, for a total of nine volumes. Long stories take a huge toll on me mentally and physically, so I’m already intimidated, but I intend to give this all I’ve got and write the whole thing through to the last scene so that I’ll have no regrets. Okay, let’s do this thing. Oh, and also, before the next volume comes out, I believe I’ll be releasing a Kieli “visual novel.” It will be a stand-alone volume structured like a picture book. And since it’s a picture book, naturally it will be brimming with Taue-san’s illustrations. Tee hee. It’s still in the works, but I hope to make it a book worth treasuring, so please check it out when it’s released. Still, how is it that I’ve already put out eight books at this point, yet I still haven’t been able to write a single one of them smoothly, without causing any trouble for Taue-san? In fact, it feels as though our meetings are actually getting longer…This is the fourth (maybe? I think?) year I’ve been working with the editing department, and yet it’s also the first time I’ve literally sobbed through a meeting. A-and I’m a grown woman, too! The next day I was completely down in the dumps and I couldn’t get any work done, so I decided to make curry. (I have a habit of making a giant potful of curry right before crunch time, because that way I don’t have to think about what I’m going to eat for several days.) And so I went out and bought the ingredients, came home, and got more or less to the final stage, to the point where all I had left to do was add the roux, when suddenly—it hit me. I’d forgotten to buy roux. After a while spent being dumbfounded by myself (“What did you think you were going to cook, exactly?!”), I mechanically dragged my coat on, called up Hiro Arikawa in Hyogo, and one-sidedly blabbered out all my woe at him as I walked through the night to the supermarket in front of the train station. I-I’m really sorry about that. I swear I’ll return your kindness someday. As you can see, I pretty much fail at adulthood, but I like writing about people who fail at adulthood, so I tell myself maybe it’s all good. So all told, I’m taking a laid-back attitude about it and getting along pretty happily in life. Anyway, to my managing editor who buckled down and suffered with me through endlessly long meetings, to Tauesan, who made me pleased as punch savoring the return of his wonderful illustrations, to Reiko-san and Fujiwara-san who always help me polish my writing, and to all the rest of you whom I owe so much to, I thank you once again for this volume. And above all, I give my very finest thanks to you who are holding this book in your hands and have come so far with me. I hope…well, I hope you’ll follow this story just a little longer. Yukako Kabei