AFTERWORD
AFTERWORD
Originally this volume was supposed to be a long-form story, but that got unscrupulously abandoned, and this collection of short-and medium-length pieces wound up getting put out instead. The pattern so far is long, long, short, long, short, and the addition of another short collection means we’ve established a kind of heterogeneous repetition, but it’s a total coincidence, so don’t read anything into it.
“LIVE ALIVE”
It always bugged me that with all the buildup to the school festival, we never got to see the festival itself, so eventually the urge to turn the story I’d been thinking about into actual written words caught up with me. Either way, Haruhi is the main character in this one.
“THE ADVENTURES OF MIKURU ASAHINA EPISODE 00”
Will we do The Revenge of Yuki Nagato Episode 00, followed by The Awakening of Itsuki Koizumi Episode 00 to complete the trilogy? I can’t really say. I guess I just wanted to try my hand at directing. There’s neither hide nor hair of Haruhi in this story.
“LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT”
This happens after Disappearance but before “Snowy Mountain Syndrome.” I love American football, and I watch quite a bit of it, but it’s hardly ever on broadcast TV in Japan, so I often wind up knowing the results before I can see the games, which is too bad. Nagato’s definitely front and center in this one.
“WHERE DID THE CAT GO?”
I wound up writing this story because Koizumi mentioned the cat in “Snowy Mountain Syndrome.” I worked seriously on this one because I wanted to give people something to think over. Somehow it feels like Haruhi and Tsuruya are the main characters here.
“THE MELANCHOLY OF MIKURU ASAHINA”
Chronologically speaking, the next long-form volume will follow directly after this story. Fortunately, thanks to my slaving away to connect the short magazine pieces to the longer stories I’d already written, this new long section is proving easier to write, but the important thing is whether or not it will be easy to read, and that’s all I wish for, truly.
Thus has the sixth volume of this series come to pass, and for that I am both honored and deeply grateful. It is only thanks to the assistance of many people, along with the ongoing support of the readers, that this book exists. They have my deepest thanks.
See you again.
Nagaru Tanigawa