Afterword:
When You Fail to Say the Most Important Thing
to the Most Important Person
I’m not the best with people; I’ve always kept them at arm’s length, never been one to care about things outside my interests, and have worked with people for years without knowing how they feel or details about their lives (who they’re in love with, which boss they can’t stand, whether they’re actually already married with kids) until well after the fact, and always find out about these things not from the person themselves but secondhand—which always makes me think, “Man, I should have talked to them more.” But another part of me thinks, “Asking them would have been more trouble than it’s worth,” which leaves me shaking my head at my own lack of social skills. But still, a particularly vexing part of me is going, “Why didn’t they just bring it up themselves?” Some things, you definitely want to know.
(Maybe that’s just a long-winded way of saying I’m lonely.)
(Oh, well.)
BGM “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.”
Hello and welcome. I’m Shippo Senoo.
My favorite ultimate move is Gunbuster’s Super Inazuma Kick.
My favorite weapon is the Hummingroll’s Black Hole Ocarina.
My favorite High Mobility Type is Black Sarena.
My favorite kaiju is Biollante, and my favorite ten thousandfold is the Super X-II’s Fire Mirror.
Well aware that I’ve now made basically everyone mad, from this point on it’s time for the real afterword.
First, there’s something I must tell you.
Division Maneuver is complete as of this volume. To everyone who read both novels of it, I have nothing but gratitude.
Genuinely, thank you.
I would have liked to write this until Kuon grew as tall as Hanabi, but this is out of my hands. At least I got to write that last scene.
In better news, like I mentioned in the afterword to the first volume, I also won a new writer prize from Shueisha’s Super Dash Ex Bunko, and the work I won with should be published shortly before the release of this volume. And like I mentioned last time, there are a few small links between the two settings. That title (it’s a long one) is Though I Am a Terminal Witch, Is It Strange That I Am in Love Twice with Brother? We’re shortening it to WitchLove.
Certain types of stories have a main character whose role boils down to, “If it weren’t for them, it would have been a tragedy” but I thought of both a success and a failure route, changed the time and place, and wrote two books—and they both won prizes at the same time, for which I am twice blessed.
At the end of this volume you catch a glimpse of the Jave’s fury, and well, there you have it. If you’re interested, give it a read.
Since this is the ending, I thought I’d go into the setting a little more. Think of it like a behind the scenes extra they do for movies. If you haven’t read the novel yet, probably best not to read the rest of this. Unless, of course, you don’t care about spoilers.
☆ The locations of the Gates—with the exception of Aohime Island—are all locations destroyed by a certain king of monsters: Sapporo, Sendai, Yamagata, Ashinoko, Owakudani, Mount Myoko, Matsumoto Castle, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka Castle, Seto, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka.
As a massive Biollante fan, I now feel I should have included Mount Mihara and Wakasa as well, but…at least I got Ashinoko in there.
☆ Shichisei Kenbu’s Hidden Eight Forms:
1st Form: Reject World.
2nd Form: Bubble Wall.
3rd Form: Crystal Cannon.
4th Form: Foresight.
5th Form: Void.
6th Form: Pleiades.
7th Form: Life Sight.
8th Form: Resonate.
Of these, the 2nd and 3rd Forms are the same as those that appear in WitchLove. There may be more.
Master Kaede can use the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 7th. She’s basically a witch.
☆ Queens live quite short lives and die after only ten years.
☆ The following are some mystery numbers for those of you who haven’t read the main story.
20 years=240months=7,200 days.
7,200 minutes=120 hours=5 days.
13 years=156 months=4,680 days.
4,680 minutes=78 hours=3¼ days. Essentially 1,440 times.
That’s how I did the math. I messed up a bit along the way and the proofreader had to fix it, but let’s keep that secret. They had really beautiful handwriting.
☆ Sentences I had to cut for one reason or another:
If asked why this school’s girls’ dorm had only female gorillas in it, the natural answer was “because it’s a military school”—an elite one, at that, gathering only the strongest cadets the human race had to offer. The fact that Hanabi came equipped with a Maiden Mode made her rather an exception. Basically everyone else was pure female gorilla.
Humans born with a magic rank of 4 or above were mostly naturally beautiful, but since nearly all of them were either voluntarily or forcibly enlisted in military schools, after a year or so they’d all turn into unusually attractive female gorillas. If you turned a blind eye to the whole “cheating at mahjong” thing, Nao was a rare gentle-looking girl, and Fuji had done well to land her.
☆ About Fuji-kun:
He started out as a flawlessly handsome type, but this volume elevated him to co-protagonist in my mind. Seriously. The “flawlessly handsome” and “tragic backstory” combo is unbeatable.
What Nao said to Rin wasn’t asking Rin to date or marry Fuji, just help him through everything as a friend. You know: “He’s too serious, so help him relax sometimes.” Or “Make sure no weird women get their clutches on him.” That sort of thing. In fact, he’s become quite popular with a certain type of girl, you know. “Ohh, he must be sad, but he never shows it, a flawlessly handsome guy with a dark side!” So we can certainly assume he has plenty of girls after him.
Finally, I’d like to thank my editor, Kurida-san; the illustrator, Nidy-2D-san; everyone involved in publishing; and everyone reading this book.
I pray that we will meet again in the near future.
Until then.