I think I’ll tell you a story about the cat that lives with me.
In January of this year, I began working from home, and I spent twenty-four hours a day shut inside my home with my only conversation partner. Her name is Anne. She’s got a very cute face and a very strong hold on me, my darling princess who never leaves the house.
Now, whenever I do go out, she blows her top and is so angry at me when I get back, like, “Huh? Hang on. Whose smell is this on you? I can’t believe you saw someone like that! Honestly!” At this point, except for the times when she’s asleep, it’s no exaggeration to say that she’s usually angry at me.
Recently, she’s started calmly barging in when I’m in the middle of a work-related phone call just to ask, “Right. Who are you calling?”
And even when she does that, she’s the absolute cutest.
As a general rule, she is always hungry, and even after she’s eaten her own meal, if I’m eating anything, she follows me around licking her lips like, “Oh? Hey, buddy, you’re eating something good there, huh?”
Maybe she was a street punk in her former life or something. The way she knocks her shoulders roughly into me is just like the mobster character in the Yakuza video games, after all. As the one she hassles, I’m shaking with fear on a daily basis. She is really a frightening young lady.
My cohabitation with Miss Anne also began in January, around the time I was writing this afterword.
I found myself at my wits’ end.
“She won’t sleep with me at all…”
When it comes to cats, having them sleep with you is a major event, isn’t it? And actually, the cat I kept when I lived at my parents’ house was a little more regular about getting into the futon with me.
But Anne is different.
First of all, she doesn’t even approach the bed. Even when I lift up the blanket and try loudly announcing, “Okay! I’ve got an open spot right here!” she completely ignores me. Far from joining me, she just looks down at me with cold eyes, from the highest point on her cat tower. Maybe she hates me?
When it comes to my value in Anne’s eyes, she probably thinks of me as nothing more than a fully automatic food dispenser. Despite how much I love her!
How can I communicate this overwhelming affection to her?
I immediately searched the internet for help. A guy in his twenties who halfheartedly Googles up some information whenever he doesn’t know something, then repeats it with a smug face as if it was his own original thought—that’s your man Jougi Shiraishi.
“Did you know this? There’s actually a special meaning behind it when cats blink! Blinking is one way cats express affection. If your cat blinks at you when you stare at each other, that’s proof that they trust you!”
All right, I’ve got this.
The cliché wording that is characteristic of low-content sites that always start articles with Did you know? did give me pause for a second, but the information was actually beneficial.
That meant, to put it another way, that if I blinked enough at Anne, it would convey my affection to her, isn’t that right??????
“Anne, sweetie! Look over here!”
And then I immediately started blinking.
Blink, blink, blink, blink, blink, blink.
“……”
Anne stared back at me with her cold eyes.
“Whoooaaa!”
With all my heart, I kept on blink, blink, blinking.
“……”
Anne slowly lowered her eyelids straight down.
“There it iiiiiis!”
I continued desperately blinking. I hadn’t blinked that much since the time my contact lens slipped away from the front of my eye.
“……”
Then Anne closed her eyes.
“All riiiiiiiiight!” Yeah, I won!
“……”
Anne kept her eyes closed.
“…………? I…huh?”
“……”
“…She’s asleep.”
Anne stayed like that and didn’t wake up for a little while. My feelings probably didn’t make it through to her.
The battle between Jougi and Anne has only just begun.
By the way, the inspiration for Anne’s name was the name of an actress I like.
So anyway, that was my little digression before the afterword. Now it’s time for me to get into my comments on each chapter. As usual, they’re packed full of spoilers, so anyone who hasn’t read the main book yet, please turn right around. Okay, enjoy!
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• Chapter 1 Ashley, Chasing Her Dream with a Bow in Hand
I guess this is a story about the gap between ideals and reality. Personally, I don’t think Ashley’s father was a bad person at all. His viewpoint was just different. A character like Ashley, who single-mindedly pursues her dreams, seems dazzling from my perspective as well. Once people grow up, they tend to forget how they felt back when they were innocent…
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• Chapter 2 The Traveling Killer
One of the characteristics of serial killers is that they have a tendency to take their victims’ personal belongings or other things with them as souvenirs. That idea was basically the source for this story.
It would be tasteless to offer too much commentary on this story, so I’ll leave it there. The events of this story have a subtle lingering effect on the next chapter.
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• Chapter 3 A Conversation About Rain Between an Umbrella and a Broom
So this is a story about a weird little boy.
I feel like when you’re young, it can be very difficult to spot the boundary line between good things and bad things. That’s because the basis for drawing the line between them isn’t set in your own mind yet. In order to develop your standards for assessing things around you, it’s a good idea to live your life with a broad outlook, don’t you think?
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• Chapter 4 A Record of the Struggles of a Girl Who Couldn’t Win
This is a story about a girl who couldn’t be honest and her friend. It turned into a total comedy episode. In situations like these, Saya demonstrates her tendency to make a mess of things. They say that the difference between a fool and a genius is razor-thin, and ultimately, even among strange people, there are ordinary weirdos and genius-level weirdos out there…
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• Chapter 5 The Land of Diversity
I don’t think the word diversity is the kind of word you use when you are negating your existing value system. I’d like to become the kind of adult who is in a position to use it and who can command an accurate overview of where I dispatched that word from.
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• Chapter 6 The Ashen Witch’s Weight-Loss Plan
This is a reworking of the script for a voice play that they let me write for the fifteenth anniversary of GA Books. I had just put out the compilation volume, so it didn’t seem like I’d get a chance to use this retelling anytime soon, so I got them to let me put it in here.
I really, really love writing drama CD scripts and voice plays, so I hope I get to come up with a lot more of them in the future when the time is right. Yeah!
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• Chapter 7 Twilight Helbe
I first thought up the idea for this story a long time ago, but I just couldn’t manage to write it until now. Part of it was because the plot was a little too grim, but more than anything, well, when I first started writing The Journey of Elaina, there was another story dealing with reincarnation that was a huge hit, so I wasn’t sure what I should do, and I tabled my material until now.
I don’t necessarily dislike stories about reincarnation, and the reason why I wasn’t able to write a story about it until now, despite wanting to, became the inspiration for this story. Though I’m sure I would have been happier not worrying about things like that and just enjoying the story.