AFTERWORD

Hello, this is Reki Kawahara. Thank you for reading Sword Art Online 7: Mother’s Rosary. (Please be warned that the following will contain major spoilers for this book!)

Nearly a decade ago, before I seriously began to write, I became acquaintances with a professional novelist and had the opportunity to chat about writing on a number of occasions.

I am still grateful for all of that advice and encouragement, but the strongest memory I have of everything I heard was, “Even in a novel, if you’re going to write about someone’s misfortune, you have to know exactly why it is that you’re writing it.”

I will admit that I have a bad habit of ignoring improbability in order to prioritize certain plot developments—some might call it “plot convenience.” In particular, I often saddle a character with terrible misfortune in order to provide them direction in terms of personality or motivation. For example, Kirito, the protagonist of the SAO series, lost his parents in an accident as a child, but I have not revealed anything about that accident yet. In other words, in order to give Kirito a reason to distance himself from others, I decided to kill off his parents through the statistically improbable traffic accident death. (The same might be said of Sachie, the heroine of the “Red-Nosed Reindeer” story in Volume 2.)

Recognizing that this was a bad writing habit of mine, I decided that when it came time to publish this seventh volume, I needed to do some rewriting of the original material. This gave me a lot to think about: Just because this book has a theme of VR technology and medical science, does that still mean that Yuuki has to die? Could I have gone with an alternate ending? Was that conclusion nothing more than a cheap attempt at soliciting tears from the reader?

But while I did agonize over these questions, a part of me also believes that a story can only be written in the way it is meant to be. It’s absolutely nothing more than an excuse, but my own habit of making light of a character’s misfortune is part of the story; in which case, all I can do is think very hard about all of the characters (including villains) who meet with misfortunate events in the story. As long as the readers are able to imagine something of what Yuuki’s fifteen years in the world gave to Asuna and the others, I couldn’t ask for more.

My heartfelt thanks to my editor, Mr. Miki, who had to deal with my complex and confusing holiday schedule, to my illustrator, abec, for rendering so many new and unfamiliar characters, to my friend Vag for the medical expertise and advice, and of course, to all you readers! Hope you stick with me throughout 2011! Thank you so much!

Reki Kawahara — January 27, 2011