It was just past eleven o’clock at night when my doorbell rang twice. Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
The apartment building I live in has an automatic lock, and the doorbell rings a different number of times depending on whether someone has come to the front door or to the door of my room. Just by the sound, you can know where they are at that moment. If the person is calling from the entrance, the chime rings once. If they’re right outside your door, it’s twice.
So I was pretty surprised when the doorbell rang twice at darn near midnight. If I was right about the number-of-rings thing, then my caller was already through the front door and standing right outside my room.
That seemed, well, strange. Was it one of the other residents? What could they want at this hour? Ever so gingerly, I went to the door and looked through the peephole.
That only made things even more confusing—because there was no one out there. I opened the door experimentally, but I was right; there was no one on the other side. Was it just a prank? Or—and here a nameless dread began to grip me—a paranormal phenomenon?
That kind of thing has actually gone on about ten times since I moved into this apartment. It’s weird, sure, but it’s not the only unexplained thing that’s happened to me in this room.
For example, once, late at night, I was asleep when I was awakened by a knocking at the window. Maybe one of the cats was playing around over there? I looked, but to my surprise, I found them both sleeping soundly by my bed. Must be someone’s idea of a joke, I thought groggily, and I pulled the covers up over my head. On reflection, though, I realized my room is on the fourth floor, and there’s nowhere for anyone to stand outside the window.
After that and similar things happened a number of times, I started to think, Hey, is my room one of those places with, you know…a history? I decided to move.
I’m officially going to get out of here in May, so hopefully this kind of stuff stops happening…emphasis on hopefully! Wandering Witch, Vol. 21, should come out in October, so if I’m still complaining about my living situation then, you can think to yourself, Ah, poor guy got another bad place.
So there you have it! This has been Jougi Shiraishi! With that, I’d like to comment on each of the chapters. Readers who’d prefer to avoid spoilers, this is your chance to turn around and read the book!
Chapter 1: Rain
Volume 3 starts off with a pretty heavy conversation, huh? (Okay, I don’t have any particular comments on this one…)
Chapter 2: Look-Again Cigarettes
You’d almost expect to see a certain Moguro F****zou around. Being the center of attention means a lot more things might happen to you, both good and bad. It’s easy to long for a life of fame, but maybe we don’t realize how precarious it is at those vaunted heights—you never know when you might slip up and fall down or even die.
Chapter 3: The Weird House
This chapter is based on my own experience… Okay, no it’s not, but there are a couple of details that match up with things that have happened to me, which occasionally sends a shiver down my spine. You think maybe my room is possessed, just like this house?
Incidentally, I cribbed the “punch line” of this story from a hoary old classic of the horror genre.
Chapter 4: The Memory-Guiding Specimen
This story compares and contrasts people who survive their present lives by imagining the past as more beautiful than it was with those who use the past as a stepping stone to a better future. Maybe you sensed this—but I really had a blast writing Chapters 2, 4, and 6, where Carredura appears, and they came very easily.
Chapter 5: Burning Love
Ah, a story of students in love! I wanted to do something lighthearted before we began the final arc (it being pretty long and pretty grim), and this is what I came up with. I wrote this right after I’d been hard at work on a comedy series, Nana ga Yarakasu Gobyou-mae (“Five Seconds Before Nana Does It”), and my initial draft was even more over-the-top. A little too over-the-top, I figured, so I walked it back a bit during revisions.
Chapter 6: A Silence Obtained
Once you block out one voice, the next starts to grate. When you block out that voice, there’s another to get under your skin. The more you seek perfection, the more sensitive you become to the smallest sounds. We all know that compromise is essential to living our lives, but these days it sometimes feels like no one remembers that anymore. Maybe it looks to us like perfect idealists live simple, easy lives.
Chapter 7: On the Founding of the Land
Here, we find out where Riviere came from. I knew that once I wrote this, I would have to pair it with Carredura’s story, and I wasn’t able to do that in Volumes 1 or 2, but I finally got to it here in Volume 3. The background for Riviere’s physiology might make a bit more sense if you read this book in conjunction with Wandering Witch, Vol. 18. When I wrote that book, I actually had something different in mind for Riviere and Cururunelvia’s travels, but when it came to writing this one, I decided it might be more interesting if Riviere was still at a young age as she journeyed—and so here we are. That means there’s actually a slight conflict between this book and the text of Volume 18 of Wandering Witch. Just chalk it up to Cururunelvia playing it fast and loose with the facts…
Chapter 8: Night
This chapter parallels Chapter 1, “Rain,” and also serves as a sort of prologue to the final arc. (No particular comments!)
Chapter 9: Prayer and Curse
This is the tale of Carredura’s past. I originally wrote everything from Chapter 9 to Chapter 11 as a single sprawling chapter, but the tempo just wasn’t working, so I split it up. I won’t lie—writing this wasn’t easy. Poor Carredura just gets nothing, nothing for all her efforts. But that happens, right? You can be working yourself to the bone, just like she was, and then suddenly one day you think, You know what? Screw it. By the time you’re thinking that, it’s usually as if your HP is already at zero, but you’re still being attacked—so when you have that thought, I encourage you to listen to it and get some rest!
Chapter 10: Antiques Carredura
This is the chapter that sees the confrontation between Carredura and Riviere. The battle isn’t actually the main point of this story, so I figured this would be a short one, but it turned out to need some more material for flow.
My original idea was that Riviere would be able to bring Carredura (the sancta) around, but that just as she had a change of heart, one of her former victims would kill her. But then I thought, she doesn’t seem like she could be killed with just a bit of stabbing, so I ditched that idea. Also, corpses would be considered objects for the purposes of sancta, and we know that Carredura (the sancta) changes form depending on the time and place. So in some of my original materials, I had the idea that immediately after Riviere disenchanted Carredura, a bunch of human bones would pour out—including the original Carredura’s. But honestly, the image is just…unpleasant. So I nixed that, too. There’s a lot of stuff around Carredura that I sort of backed away from on ethical grounds.
Chapter 11: Riviere Antiques
I positioned this story as an epilogue to this volume. It serves as at least a partial resolution to the story about Cururunelvia, so just like in Chapter 1, I devoted the second half of the chapter to Riviere’s POV.
And that’s Riviere and the Land of Prayer, Vol. 3!
It took about a year after the publication of Volume 2 for this to come out. Sorry for the wait…!
Riviere is different from Wandering Witch and Five Seconds in that it skews heavy, and that takes a bit more time to write. I’m really sorry about that…
I don’t have many friends or acquaintances in the light novel industry, but even I’ve been hearing how frequent early cancellations have become—series that don’t even get to Volume 2 before they’re axed. In that context, I’m so happy to have been able to put out three volumes of Riviere. When I first started writing this series, I said to myself that I wanted to include a kind of ending in Volume 3, so having gotten to do a “reboot” after the mass-market paperback edition, I’m so glad I was able to write about the country’s name (which I changed) and the details of Riviere’s background.
If I get to put out a fourth volume and beyond, I’ll be very happy indeed!
And if there were to be a drama CD, well, I’d be tickled pink!
I’m a greedy author, and I want everything.
All right, a brief word of thanks!
To Azure-sensei, Miura-san in the editing department, and everyone who helped make this book a reality. I know I say this every time, but thank you so much! I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to have your support and assistance even though Riviere is so different from the general run of light novels. I only hope you continue to stick with me for a long time to come!
To all my readers: Thank you so much for reading three volumes of Riviere and the Land of Prayer! I certainly hope we can meet again in Volume 4.
All right, hope to see you another time! Jougi Shiraishi, signing off.