Afterword

“...From the shadows, that man draws ever nearer. Yes, that man. The man who’s been looking a lot meaner recently. The man who’s stopped letting people in his room. And indeed, the man about whom there are various other such rumors floating about recently... And bringing you the commentary for the end of this volume is none other than I, the global idol and wandervogel of the fin de siècle! The one destined to defeat Gracie! (Getting a little off-track here) It’s-a me, Stephanie! Ohh, here he comes! The man we’ve all been waiting for! He’s about to take center stage!”

“(Appearing on stage) ...Hi. It is I, the author.”

“...An author with no sense for the dramatic, it would seem...”

“I might normally be a bit happier to play along, but I’m actually quite exhausted right now...”

“Ahaha. Well, it took you a whole year to write up the first serialization of your debut work! After that, you spent two years working on your next project! But this time, against all expectations, you wrote up the whole volume in a mere eight days!”

“It’s no laughing matter.”

“Hmm. Well, that’s entirely your fault for convincing your editor, M, that you could pull it off somehow.”

“Well, eight days was just the base of the work. That doesn’t include the re-written parts, or fixing up the mistakes, or pretty much any of the work to actually make it publishable. Plus I had to work on weekdays, so I could only work on it every now and then. Altogether, it took me about the same span of time as the previous volume to actually get done. That being about a month and a half.”

“Such is the terrible talent of being a writer on the side.”

“...I wouldn’t really call it a ‘terrible talent.’”

“You’re right. I just felt like saying that. Anyway, how long are you planning to spend working on the next volume? Considering how much you shortened your writing time compared to the first volume... I’m guessing it’ll be eight hours next?”

“Not happening! I’d like to work on the next volume at a more comfortably stable pace (I hope).”

“I wonder about that. Can you even do a comfortable pace? It sounds to me like if you try that, you’ll be working on ten pages a day, every single day.”

“W-well, yeah. I get nervous if I’m not constantly writing something.”

“Goodness, you’re such a coward... Anyway, do you have anything to tell the readers about your plans for the story going forwards?”

“Naturally, I do have some ideas in mind. Like, for example, the Protagonist O and his Companion C will get into a big argument, Disciple M will get bullied by everyone, then the Protagonist will lose his temper and snap at everyone, and before I know it I’m cutting it close to my upper page limit...”

“Who asked you to work us through your thought processes?!”

“Every time I try to write a story, I find myself drawn to the allure of the two-volumes-per-arc format.”

“You’re incorrigible (mumble grumble)... So basically what you’re telling us is, you haven’t planned it out yet at all?”

“Sorry about that♥”

“An apology isn’t really helping anyone... And stop trying to look all cutesy by punctuating your sentences with hearts.”

“For this series, I’d really like to take each volume as it comes. I feel like it will be more interesting if I let the story grow a bit more organically instead of planning the whole thing out from the beginning.”

“Really?”

“It’s also partly because I keep procrastinating whenever I need to come up with what happens next.”

“You’re incorrigible...”

“W-well alright, but in exchange, I have been putting a lot of thought into the grander scale of the setting. Stuff that I could use for a different series, or one-shots or the like...”

“I’m curious what counts as ‘putting in a lot of thought’ for you...”

“(Urk...) Anyway, that’s enough of that. For the next volume, I’d like to try out something a little bit different. So far we’ve had two back-to-back stories with major plot elements tied to the ancient Sorcerers, so for the people who were expecting the rest of the series to continue the way it’s been going thus far...”

“?”

“Don’t get your hopes up♥”

“Wouldja cut that out, mate?!”

“Anyway, that’s the plan! I hope to see you all next afterword, too!”

“Seeya, folks!”

— Akita Yoshinobu