Horizon:Volume 1A Afterword

Afterword

Okay. If you are here for the first time, welcome. If not, I’m glad we could meet again. (Right!? Right!? You don’t have any bad memories about this, right!?) This is Kawakami Minoru.

As always, I have ended up creating my usual type of fairy tale that you can’t call science fiction but can’t call fantasy either. I actually had the idea for this world quite a while ago, but my lack of knowledge prevented me from gathering the architecture of the entire world together properly. This is my revenge match twenty-odd years later. I have the plot prepared to the end, so I hope I can write it all. In fact, I feel like I will have overcome my old self a bit if I finish it.

Oh, about the illustrations. This volume’s illustrations have a lot of spoilers, so watch out if you like to look at them ahead of time. When we make them, we don’t plan on you looking at them in advance, so a lot of people fell victim to them in the previous series.

Also, please understand that the world history, Japanese history, phenomena, etc. in this novel are my personal interpretations which are focused on the fictional story I am writing. The people and military commanders from different countries in world history and Japanese history also show up in video games a lot these days. I just hope that and this novel will get you interested in them.

Now for the customary chat. This one is an email conversation.

“I’m not going to let you all read it ahead of time anymore, but say something. Maybe you can talk about memories from your school days.”

“A story from my school days? Well, the other day…”

“Wait, wait. You’re ignoring my request right off the bat? Are you an afterword destroyer? I really got a terrible draw this time!”

“Just listen. The other day, it was really hot, so I stripped naked and started cooking some yakiniku in a frying pan on the kitchen stove. When I got to the main event, the Japanese Black beef, the accumulated oil flew onto my penis. I was in so much pain that I held my crotch and rolled around on the floor.”

“Don’t tell me to ‘just’ listen when you’re going to tell me something like that.”

“I don’t care. Anyway, I shouted out ‘ouch!’, but my tongue instinctually rolled up in just the right way to pronounce the word like a fluent English speaker. I think I might actually be British.”

“Do you have any idea how the middle and high schoolers who read this are going to feel? Also, wear an apron.”

“You’re right. I think I’ll go cool off my penis by equipping an ice apron with fire elemental resistance.”

I’m not sure I want to know why he said that as if it was an ongoing event. He also needs to stop saying “penis” so much.

Anyway, this book was a mostly peaceful beginning. I listened to Yuki’s “Nagai Yume” (I love the lyrics, but also wish I had the same energy) while writing it. I wrote the following while listening to it just now:

“Who is most bound by who they are?”

And I’ll leave it at that.

The second half should be coming soon. Wait for the efforts(?) of Toori and the others in about a month.

July 2008. A morning with an inaccurate weather forecast.

-Kawakami Minoru

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