Chapter 154

Afterword This is actually the first long novel I’ve written in seven years, since I put out Another: Episode S in 2013. The idea for this book came to me not long after I finished penning Episode S. I had been working on a different concept for an Another sequel for a while, but I decided to put that idea on hold and write this one instead. I started serializing it in Shosetsu Yasei Jidai magazine in autumn of 2014. At the time, I had planned to finish it up in two years, three at the longest, if all went well, but as usual, my prediction was entirely too optimistic. Writing it was really rough going, and I ended up having to suspend serialization for a whole year, so it took more than five years before the serialization was finished. After that, I had to somehow polish the manuscript, which had grown to a considerable length, into something satisfactory. Then, as soon as I had finally managed to publish it in this format— As I was writing, I felt like I was constantly anxious about whether I would be able to make an interesting novel and about whether I would get this one done. That was probably because, in a certain sense, the stories I had written before had taken a very different structure. On top of that, I was no longer a young man and had little confidence in my stamina or vitality. As the serialization dragged on, I was (quite earnestly) haunted by anxiety over what would happen if I should drop dead before completing the work. To be honest, I’m incredibly relieved now. It probably goes without saying, but allow me to give a little bit of background on the story’s historical setting. Another and Episode S were set in 1998. As the title indicates, this book is set three years later, in 2001, so the cell phones that appear in the story are, naturally enough, flip phones (now we would call them retro). At that time, it wasn’t yet common to use phones to exchange e-mails, and the “photo mail” service had just started to take off that summer—a new feature allowing devices with cameras built in to take pictures and send them to other users. “E-mail” largely referred to messages sent using a computer, and Internet lines were still mostly narrow-band… That’s the era we’re dealing with. Circumstances have changed quite a bit in the past twenty-odd years. I’m so happy to have you visit the Yomiyama of 2001—both those of you with memories from those days and those who will simply have to imagine them. Anyway, back to 2020, a year of ongoing history-making chaos, when an unexpected pandemic has covered the entire world in the blink of an eye. The fact that this happens to be the same year during which I am publishing my first long novel in seven years must be some meaningful twist of fate. It’s an unsettling, shameless book in which people die one after another at the hands of an irrational “calamity”—but, well, if somehow you can forget our stressful “reality” for a short while and enjoy yourself a little in this fabricated world, that would bring me great joy as an author. As I touched on at the beginning of this afterword, I have a concept for one more sequel to Another (probably the last entry in the series). I’ve laid several bits of groundwork in this book that would lead into that sequel, but…the truth is that at this point, I haven’t decided when I’m going to write it or even if I can. I’m a bit worn out, in body and mind, so I think I’ll take a step back from Yomiyama for a while to pull myself together and wait for the right moment. Lastly, the acknowledgments. To all the successive editors at Shosetsu Yasei Jidai responsible for keeping up with the writing of this book over a long period of time—Mai Fukushima, Ryou Nakamura, Makoto Ishibashi. When it was time to turn the story into a single volume, the aforementioned Ms. Ishibashi, as well as Kaoru Ichiji, lent me their assistance. And to my good friend of many years, who I should call my general adviser on this whole series, Aki Kaneko. To the cover designer, Kumi Suzuki. And to the many other people to whom I am indebted in a myriad of ways. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. Summer 2020 Yukito Ayatsuji