(Joint) Afterword

On a certain day of a certain month, at a certain location. The voice of Editor S— Excuse me—The Honorable Judge S resounded.

“The defendant, Tsubaki Himana—shall step forward.”

The prosecutor—Kamiya—read out his charges: “The accused did nothing with the plot that I, Yuu Kamiya, had long since passed over to him at the beginning of the year for an entire six months—”

“Objection!” Himana shouted in defense of himself. He felt like he had heard the quote “A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client” in some foreign drama on TV before, but unfortunately, he had neither any allies present nor did he really have any basis to deny that he was a fool.

And so, he continued in a strong tone, “Your Honor! The prosecution is wantonly trying to slander my character! It’s true that I had received something from him back at the start of the year, but you can’t call a short memo that can fit on a single piece of A4-sized paper a plot! In addition,” Himana paused to glare at Kamiya before continuing, “I strongly contend that Kamiya should also be charged if the purpose of this trial is to determine whose fault it was for the manuscript being delayed!”

Hearing the defendant’s claim, the prosecutor shook his head and sighed as he offered his rebuttal. “Your Honor. With regards to the matter at hand, in the first place—the content of the third volume was originally intended to all fit in the second volume, and yet, here we are. From that fact alone, I believe it goes without saying that my plot outline for the third volume was more than elaborate enough.”

“Objection, objection! The content that was originally intended to be put into the second volume was greatly altered all the way back when it was decided that the volume would be split into two! This was done in order to agree with the cliffhanger that I wrote for the end of the second volume! To suggest that the plot summary was already prepared is a blatant lie!”

“You were the one who changed the original plot! Take some damn responsibility and fix the plot holes that you created yourself!”

“You already told me that before! And when I did just that, the story ended up falling apart immediately! Do you deny it?!”

“Don’t admit your own incompetence so boldly!! Why can’t you just come up with alterations that don’t lead to plot holes?!”

“Hah— Your Honor, did you hear that! Kamiya was the one who told me that he’d leave the editing of the plot of Clockwork Planet to me. When I had asked him for help, he replied, ‘NG*L’s workload is killing me right now so ask me later.’ ...This was clearly a breach of contract—”

—The courtroom flared white-hot with drama. Claims were being thrown out from both sides! Alas, with whom does the fault rest?! What would be true justice?! Fully in swing, they continued to exchange lines in a heated debate *(the contents of which have been omitted) just like actors in a courtroom drama—!

“—Are you two done screwing around yet?”

““Yessir.””

Hearing the cold tone of The Honorable Judge S— Excuse me— Editor S, Kamiya and Himana immediately kneeled humbly onto the floor in unison. Matters like crime and punishment or who was right and who was wrong were all summarily answered with, “Both of you are guilty.”

It was an awful script. But well, one could argue that, at its core, a courtroom drama is nothing but— “I don’t care about the fruitless blame game you two have been playing... More importantly,” Editor S paused after declaring the pure and unadulterated truth as he took out the cover of the manuscript and pointed to one spot, “right here—why does it now say ‘secondary author’ instead of ‘co-author’?”

—Author: Yuu Kamiya, Secondary Author: Tsubaki Himana

Himana looked away from the cover as he answered, “Ah— Well, you know how... you often hear about artists breaking up due to ‘creative differences’?”

“Why are you spouting out lines like band members do when they’re interviewed about a break up? What’s with that air of newfound enlightenment?” Editor S quipped with an unamused glare.

To which Kamiya bravely replied—while inevitably turning in the other direction as he did so, “Creative differences, huh... now isn’t that a convenient way to put it. It’s been a nonstop cycle of me fixing all the plot holes that pop up ever since Tsubaki started writing volume one...

As this went on again and on again, before I knew it, I was the one coming up with the developments, the settings, and even the text itself down to every single line of dialogue... And ultimately even a considerable amount of the narration was my own, as well.

When I realized all this, I was shocked. It led me to think that if Tsubaki can be called a co-author, then we might as well add your name to the list of authors as well.”

They then turned their eyes towards each other and began harmoniously in unison, “We had other candidates too, like ‘Yuu Kamiya with Tsubaki Himana.’”

“Yeah, there was also ‘Kamiya featuring TSUBAKI’ and ‘Yuu Kamiya~with help from Tsubaki Himana~ haha~just kidding~!’ as well.”

“—Haaah, well, I do apologize but I’ll have to interrupt this report of past buffoonery that is somehow occurring with you two’s entirely serious faces. Anyway, I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that on account of you two having the sense not to choose any of those in the end. Though, if both of you agree that it was Mr. Kamiya who wrote practically all of this volume—then why not just remove Mr. Tsubaki from the list of authors altogether?”

“I would have loved to do that... but the problem is that I can’t say that Tsubaki didn’t contribute anything either,” Kamiya continued with eyes like those of a dead fish as he continued to kneel on the cold floor. “Aside from offering interesting ideas, he almost completely rewrote the parts I wrote. But, I guess you can say that when the developments of the story become as grand and convoluted as they did in this volume, reining things in just ends up being my job, somehow.”

Hearing that, Himana gazed up at the heavens with exactly the same look in his eyes as he muttered, “Yeah, the volume could barely be called co-authored at that point. That’s why we came to the conclusion that for the future, if we can’t divide the work of each volume up exactly fifty-fifty, then there’s no choice for us but to finally accept that we’ll have to assign separate roles for one another.”

“In summary—” Kamiya began, and which Himana finished for him, “—we learned that things that haven’t been attempted aren’t that way because they haven’t been considered, but rather, it’s because those things have been considered a bad idea.”

“That can’t be true, there have been those who think of something and only realize that it’s impossible after attempting it as well. After all, I see two such people in front of me right now,” Editor S said in tired amazement as the two in front of him were showing expressions of Zen-like peace.

He looked like he was having trouble coming up with the words to express himself as if a migraine had come on, but somehow managed to form coherent sentences in the end. “You two turned the manuscript in way too late. Could it be that the two of you are idiots?”

—You’re just figuring that out now—?! The two gasped in genuine shock; however, just as they were about to voice that thought, they swallowed the words back down upon noticing Editor S’s stabby gaze.

Editor S then sighed, looking worn-out as he asked to confirm, “...Umm, so just hypothetically, how would the two of you handle things if Mr. Tsubaki were the one who ended up doing most of the work for the next volume?”

“Eh? In that case it’d be just as you would expect.”

“We’d simply credit Yuu Kamiya as the secondary author next time then.”

“...What happened to the talk of assigning separate responsibilities to each other?” As Editor S rubbed his temples, the two answered with great pomp and circumstance and even with a certain sound effect added behind them for a little extra drama:

“Assigning separate roles to each other. It’s true that we did say that we would do that... buuuuut!”

“We didn’t go so far as to say~that we’ve decided~how we’ll divide those responsibilities up yet... diiiid we?”

Zawa... Zawa...*(Unintelligible muttering in the background that makes the ensuing silence of the three feel all the more tense...)

“Looook here now, you two. I’m about to slap both of you guys sideways, even being as kind and gentle a person as I am,” Editor S said with a smile, glancing back down at the manuscript in his hands. “...Well, fine. I don’t really mind as long as the manuscript is turned in on time. So, where are things at for the fourth volume—”

—At that moment, a cold, strong wind blew right in his face. As he looked back up, there was no trace whatsoever remaining of the two who had just been there. They had left two stuffed animals behind in their seats, as if to suggest that the animals would take their place instead.

Facing that fact, Editor S sighed ve~ry deeply. “...If only they would show that kind of total unity in mind and spirit in their work as well...”