Clockwork Planet:Volume3 Afterword

Afterword

On a certain day and month, at a certain place.

The editor-in-charge—correction, the judge S's voice rang.

“The accused, Tsubaki Himana. Step forward.”

The prosecutor Kamiya declared the charges,

“The accused had received the proposed plot from Yuu Kamiya, me at the beginning of the year, and left it straggling for 6 months—”

I object! Himana tried to protect himself.

Though 'those protecting him are fools' apparently was a line he heard in foreign dramas, there was none on his side, and he had no reason to deny the 'fool' part. Thus, Himana continued with feistiness,

“Judge! The prosecutor intends to create a bad impression here! I did receive a plot outline at the beginning of the year, but an A4 sized 'memo' can't be called a plot!'

Furthermore—till this point, Himana glared at Kamiya, and rebuked poignantly,

“Since this jury is inquiring the charge for the late submission of the script, I strongly insist Kamiya should be included!”

The accused firmly insisted, but the prosecutor shook his head, sighed, and answered,

“Dear judge, this case, the 3rd volume, was meant to continue on from the 2nd volume's contents, and the completed script was already done when the 2nd volume was being sold. It is apparent that there is sufficient material—”

“I protest! I protest! While the story was to continue from the 2nd volume, there was a major change to fit the ending at the last minute when we divided the volume! It's a lie to say that the original manuscript existed!”

Himana swung his fist onto the witnesses' table to insist, but this time, Kamiya hollered,

“You're the one who changed the story! You should be the one responsible for the fallacies in the settings!”

“I started free writing because of those words of yours, and that's why I couldn't end it. You dare deny it!?”

“Stop being so preposterous here! Can't you just come up with a setting without any fallacies!?”

“Haah! You hear that, judge!? Kamiya was the one who said at first 'leave the reconstruction of the story to me'! And then he said 'we'll talk later. No **** No Life's killing me now'...isn't this a violation of the agreement—!?”

—The court got heated up as both sides insisted back and forth! Phew, where is the sin!? What is justice!?

And while the volley of words rang in this court drama (leaving aside what happened)—!

 

“—You had enough of this farce?”

““Ah, yes.””

After hearing the voice of the judge, correction, editor-in-charge S, Kamiya and Himana sat in unison.

The so called sin and punishment, good and evil, was summarily deemed as 'both sides guilty' when considering the fact that the manuscript was delivered late.

Such a terrible script. But in the extremes of a court drama—

“This ugly show of pushing responsibilities back and forth isn't important. Speaking of which...”

The editor-in-charge S stated the cold truth, took the cover out, and pointed at something,

“Here—why is it not 'co-written', but 'collaborator'?”

—Author: 'Yuu Kamiya', collaborator 'Tsubaki Himana'.

“Ah—...erm, you see...this is just a case of different frequencies. It's common, isn't it?”

“So what's with the Oblaat-like encompassing way of words in this ruckus no different from a quarreling band?”

The editor-in-charge S retorted with his eyes half opened, and Kamiya replied, still not daring to look at the editor-in-charge S in the eyes.

“The creativity doesn't match...I guess it really fits here. We kept emphasizing since the first volume that 'I'll correct anything Tsubaki can't end off with'—and by the time I realized it, the plot, setting, structure, and even the individual lines were written by me, to a point where most of the narratives was written by me, so I really was very shocked. If this is 'cowriting', the editor-in-charge name should be placed under it, so—

The two stares met each other as Kamiya and Himana spoke amicably,

“There were still other choices, like Yuu Kamiya with Tsubaki Himana'.

“Yeah, or maybe Kamiya featuring Tsubaki, or maybe Yuu Kamiya~with Tsubaki Himana~.”

"--Hm, well, I do apologize interrupting both of you while you are seriously trying to tell me this, and I'll not pursue the matter any further since none of you spared any conscience over. Anyway, since it ended up that Mr Kamiya practically finished everything in the end, and this is the common understanding between both of you, can't we simply exclude Mr Tsubaki's name from the column?"

"I hope so…the issue here is that Tsubaki didn't exactly do nothing at all."

Kamiya added on, and continued to show fish eyes as he stared at the icy floor,

"He provided some interesting ideas, and practically wrote all my lines. Once the story gets large and complicated like this though, ending this story somehow became my work in the end, no?"

And Himana too gave a similar look as he looked up to the sky, muttering,

"This is the limitation of collaboration. Since the workload for every volume isn't going to be 50-50-, we concluded that we can only split the work somehow."

In conclusion, both of them took turns declaring,

"The reason why there aren't things done isn't because nobody thought of doing it, but that they chose not to do it."

"This isn't correct at all. There are those who thought of it and tried it, only to find that it doesn't work. There are two such people here."

Upon seeing the Zen-like look both of them showed, ostensibly enlightened, the editor-in-charge S looked peeved.

He was almost unable to say anything, ostensibly enduring a major migraine as he eked out the words,

"It's kinda late, but are you two idiots?"

--Eh, what have you been thinking about us all this time--?

Both of them were literally stunned beyond gasping, but barely managed to swallow their words in response to the editor-in-charge S.

And then, the editor-in-charge sighed with lethargy as he said,

"...Eh, assuming that, Mr Tsubaki's workload should be increased the next time, no?"

"Eh! It'll be normal next time."

"We'll just change it as collaborator: Yuu Kamiya the next time. Is there a problem?"

"...What did we just say about 'dividing the work'?"

The editor-in-charge S pressed his temples, and the duo had a boom behind them as they declared poignantly,

"We'll divide the work...we did say that...but…!"

"We never said that...we decided...on what we first…"

Zaa...zaa…

"Both of you, even this amicable, peaceful me is about to start punching people here❤."

He declared this with a Noh mask-like face, and immediately looked away towards the script in his hands,

"...Well, I'm fine with it as long as you can finish the script. As for the 4th volume--"

 

--At that moment, a gust blew.

The editor-in-charge looked back, and found that the 2 people who were supposed to be there were no longer around.

 

--They escaped.

And in the face of this fact, the editor-in-charge let out a deep, deep~ sigh,

"...They show such chemistry only when running away, so can't they apply this on writing the script?"