AFTERWORD

Thank you, truly, for reading another volume of The Irregular at Magic High School. For everyone who has just purchased it for the first time, I’ll be looking forward to your continued support in the future, if it pleases you.

This eighth volume consists of the “Reminiscence Arc,” placed as a sort of episode zero, and a short story that goes back even further. I actually wrote that short story, “The Untouchables,” as a preamble to the “Reminiscence Arc,” which is why it’s fairly short even for a short story. Putting it at the end of the book was thanks to my editor’s advice, and I do think this ordering makes the differences between Miya and the Yotsuba much more distinct.

Speaking of short, when I first submitted the draft for this book, I asked my editor if it was too short. The question surprised him; he told me physical books were supposed to be about this length. That was my ignorance as someone still early in his career. I’ll need to reflect on my mistake…though even if I’m sorry for it, I may not be able to put that knowledge to good use in the next book.

It isn’t as though I believe it’s more worth it to read longer books. It just so happens that whenever I finish something, it ends up being long. With things like Dengeki Bunko’s magazine serializations, I can create a story short enough, since I’m conscious of the character count from the beginning. But when I’m not thinking much about character limits, I tend to cram a lot in.

One good example (or perhaps it’s a bad example) is the audio drama on sale this month. When they requested that I draft the script for a drama CD, I suggested it be the storyline from the past section of the “Reminiscence Arc.” They agreed, which I’m thankful for, and I mistook that for making the entire past section of the arc into a drama. I knew the whole thing would never fit on a single CD but figured, blissfully ignorant to cost concerns, that they could just make it three or four disks long.

Luckily for me, they could handle it with a normal DVD, but I was on the edge of my seat until the media issue was decided. I’m sure the people working on its production were worse off than I was—so I’d like to take a moment and apologize for that again.

Still, I believe that thanks to the strenuous efforts of those concerned, we’ve created an audio drama that all the fans will be able to fully enjoy.

This sort of turned into an advertisement for the audio drama CD, but of course, I think you’ll be satisfied with this book, too—and I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that those who purchased it thought it was interesting.

Please look forward to Volume 9, “Visitor Arc (1).”

(Tsutomu Sato)