Afterword
IT’S BEEN TWO YEARS SINCE I BECAME A SHELF owner at a shared bookstore. Every time I mind the store, many people ask me about how it really feels to be a shelf owner, and I’m amazed at how much attention bookstores as a community space still get.
I think that turning the act of buying a book into a form of communication is a type of entertainment that’s one of a kind. Until a book that’s on a shared bookstore’s shelf is sold, that book is still the shelf owner’s property. The way you imagine a shelf owner when you look at their shelf, like “I think I’d get along with this person,” or “What sort of person collected these books?” might be another peculiarity they have.
The thought that people would probably be amused if someone stocked a novel written about people’s involvement at a shared bookstore on a shelf at a shared bookstore was what made me want to write this book.
This book was published with the help of many people.
The illustrator, Wamizu-sama. Thank you for your lovely cover illustrations in succession after “Tea, Cats, and Magic Soup.” The scene where Chiyo jumped up on Rintarou’s shoulder was written after I saw the illustration. I love the times where we influence each other while creating a story’s world view.
And to my editor Saitou-sama, thank you again for your help. Maybe it’s because you’ve read the drafts I’d usually never let anyone else see, but now you feel like an old friend. Wanting to do a job that I couldn’t do with anyone else, I made one of the settings in this novel your home, Okayama. I got interested in the area after hearing you talk about the views with the irrigation canals, and I visited it myself. Feeling the city’s transition and getting a peek into the lives of the people who lived there made my imagination go wild, and I enjoyed it.
I also got some help from residents of Okayama with the dialect used by the three-generation family inside the story. I got even more help this time than I did with my last work, and a story I couldn’t have written alone was born.
To my family, who supported me while I wrote, and my friends, who didn’t desert me, even when long periods passed without us seeing each other, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. And to the people who have read this far, thank you all so very much. This time I only wrote short stories, but I wrote them while paying attention to the little links between the stories, building up the slight changes in the everyday. I’d be thrilled if even a single word stayed in your hearts.
—SATORI SATORI, OCTOBER 2024