It’s been about a year since I moved to Tokyo, and when you have this many people in one place, you’re bound to run into a few strange ones.
Once when I was standing at a stoplight staring into space, a guy on a bicycle shouted “Congratulations!” as he rode past. At the gym, strangers will come up to me and be like, “Is it okay if I use that machine over there?” And one time, a young woman walking by me on the street abruptly struck a mie pose (a thing from traditional kabuki). So, like I said, it takes all kinds.
Then again, I spend my days talking to my cat in a falsetto kitty-talk voice, wandering around my apartment, singing with the cat on my back, and lurking around behind the cat trying to get it to turn around while it’s looking out the window—so maybe I’m not in any position to judge. Didn’t Nietzsche say something about how when you stare into the weirdo…you’re also a weirdo, or something?
Oh! Sidebar! When my cat is looking out the window, the curtains are wide open (by definition), and anyone looking in would probably just see a total freakazoid doing weird stuff by the window. Maybe it’s only a matter of time until someone reports me to the police.
I pray and pray no one reports me to the police.
Speaking of praying! Thank you so much for buying Volume 2 of Riviere and the Land of Prayer! I’d like to make some comments on the stories in this volume, so make sure you read the book first if you don’t want spoilers! All right, ready? Let’s go!
Chapter 1: Welcome to Riviere Antiques!
A short chapter that serves as this volume’s prologue. Freja also gets a moment to show up. I like her. I like those sort of ethereal girls.
Chapter 2: Sentiment Soap
Linabelle gets to be the star here. I think that when you wish for something very convenient, and get it, you have to have the wits to get the most use out of it. All the stuff around us is ever-evolving, but I can’t shake the sense that that isn’t the same thing as human progress.
Chapter 3: A Simple Solution for a Sleepless Night
Several years ago when I was still doing this as a side hustle, I used to mainline energy drinks so I could keep pushing. Then when I started to have stomach problems from lack of sleep, I took digestive medicines to try to get that under control… So I know all about living a life where doing one silly thing causes you to do something else silly, which causes you to do something even sillier… Kids, don’t try this at home!
Chapter 4: The Secret Party
It turns out there’s no part of this story that’s just straight comedy, is there? In the mass-market paperback version (the one that came out five years ago, before the reboot), I tried to write in such a way as to conceal MacMillia’s gender, but in this newer version, I’ve been explicit about the fact that she’s a girl. That lets me do stories like this one, which are really fun in their own right!
Chapter 5: The Right Way to Use a Mirror
A side story about Elaina earning a little money. I mean, more or less. By the way, the Elaina of Riviere and the Land of Prayer is roughly where she is between volumes three and four of Wandering Witch.
Chapter 6: An Ideal Story
This one focuses on Henri. When I was roughing out the plot, someone was going to die in this story, but when I finished writing it, I discovered that everyone had survived. Much as with chapter two and the final chapter, this is a kind of story I couldn’t write in Wandering Witch, so it’s a new experience to be able to tackle it here.
Chapter 7: The Doll Exhibition
The famous twins finally appear. They were around in the mass-market paperback version, so readers of that book might have been surprised that “the famous twins” weren’t already a part of this story. The reboot gave me a chance to reintroduce them, and I wanted their story to focus on Riviere and MacMillia, so I made it the climax of Volume 2.
Chapter 8: Welcome to Riviere Antiques! (Reprise)
A kind of epilogue to the second volume. Personally, with the twins having now appeared, I think of the first two volumes of Riviere and the Land of Prayer as sort of forming a single “book.”
As I keep pointing out, the book you hold in your hands is a reboot of Riviere and the Land of Prayer published by GA Bunko five years ago. Although I use the word reboot, I redid everything—the story, the world—from the ground up, so you might almost be better off thinking about it as a separate work that happens to pick up the same characters. For me personally, these are all stories I couldn’t tell in Wandering Witch, so I’m enjoying trying some fresh new things.
What with all this writing and trying new things and so on, we find ourselves past April 2022, and the Wandering Witch series is celebrating its sixth anniversary already. That means six years since I made my debut as an author. A lot has happened in that time!
Wandering Witch has also sold a fair few copies. I hope to keep cranking out series in the future, including Riviere, so I hope you’ll be there to cheer me on!
By the way—this has already been announced, but one of those series I want to crank out is the upcoming Wandering Witch Academy.
Every time I meet with my editor, it’s been, “Let’s do it! A drama-CD-type thing! Something totally new that has nothing to do with Wandering Witch!” And each time, I just go, “Hmm?” (as I stuff my face with jingisukan-style grilled lamb). But now that I’m in Tokyo and things have settled down a bit, I started thinking to myself, You know, a drama-CD-type-thing in novel form would be interesting… and so it was that my new project, Five Seconds Before Nana Makes It, got its start. Jougi Shiraishi, everyone… The man who doesn’t listen at all.
Once I started that project, there was talk about doing a Wandering Witch special as well, so that’s how I started working on Wandering Witch Academy at the same time. If you’re wondering, I was eating jingisukan during that discussion, too. So you can thank the grilled lamb for all of it. Mm, grilled lamb…
I would expect Five Seconds to release in early 2023, probably alongside Wandering Witch, Volume 20. I think Wandering Witch Academy might serve as a special reward for people who buy both books. I expect both of them to be pure comedy, like the Wandering Witch drama CD. That’s just the plan, mind you. Things could change!
So I’ve got plenty of plans brewing, but I’m also going to keep pumping out Riviere and the Land of Prayer, so I hope you’ll keep reading!
Let’s share the fun as Wandering Witch and Riviere both get bigger and better!
What about a Riviere drama CD? I’d love to do that…!
Different subject. Now that I’ve been living in Tokyo for more than a year, I’ve been challenging myself making lots of different food. Still just the most basic of basic stuff, but it helps remind me how much fun it is to learn to do new things. That stupid ass of an author who confused sake and mirin is gone. Gone!
And if you’ll forgive a personal aside, starting in April 2022, I’ve temporarily become a full-time writer. Was it because making all my deadlines with all these new projects, including Riviere, seemed like it was going to be impossible unless I dropped everything else and focused on the writing? Well…that was part of it. But personally, I don’t really intend to spend my entire life as a full-time author; this is just a temporary change of profession. I expect to go back to office work after a while. That’s just the plan, though. Things could change!
We’ve covered a lot of bases in this afterword, but so long as I continue to draw breath as a writer, I want to keep conjuring new stories, including Riviere and the Land of Prayer. I’d like to thank everyone involved in the publication of this second volume of the series, as well as all my readers. Thank you all so much! And I hope to see you next time!
This has been Jougi Shiraishi.
I’ll see you in Volume 3! (Note: Volume 3 doesn’t have an actual publication date at the time of writing, but I super, super, super want to write it, so…)