Tatakau Shisho

Volume 8 Afterword

Hello, this is Yamagata Ishio. I present the eighth installment of the Tatakau Shisho series, “Tatakau Shisho to Shuushou no Kemono”. I hope you have enjoyed it.

Let’s start with some PR.

“Tatakau Shisho to Koisuru Bakudan” has turned into a manga.

The one in charge of drawing it is known as篠原九-san. This is read “Shinohara Kokonotsu”-san; it’s not “kyuu”[1] so pay heed.

He is a person who draws amazingly gorgeous pictures. He allows me to enjoy the world of Tatakau Shisho as its creator in an altogether different way than with Maeshima Shigeki-san.

The manga is published in Shueisha’s web magazine “Ultra Jump Egg”.

You can find the link in the homepage of Ultra Jump or Dash Bunko’s site. Since it’s a web comic you can read it free of charge. Feel free to access it.

Please do enjoy it.

The other day I went to eat hot pot and meet up with the aforementioned Shinohara Kokonotsu-san. My editor and the editor of Ultra Jump were also present. It was obviously paid for by the company.

Since I cannot eat good food unless being treated to it by other people, I don’t usually eat a lot. However, some of my unpleasant habits made their appearance there.

When about three fourths of the hot pot were gone, my editor sitting on the other side spoke.

“Excuse me, but you’ve been eating all of the tofu and shiitake for a while now, Yamagata-san.”

My first unpleasant habit:

Since I am needlessly timid, I have not brought my chopsticks to the meat. Furthermore I did it unconsciously. Both the editor and Shinohara-san have eaten so much meat that I couldn’t help but admire their tolerance.

The second:

If I’m going to be timid I should have also held back in quantity. However, my gluttony for delicious food meant I couldn’t stop my chopsticks. Just how stingy am I about tofu and shiitake?

The third:

Since I was given delicious food, I will frankly write about how tasty it was. I’ve already wasted one page in this afterword on this silly rant. It’s only a stream of sentences with neither the reader, the writer nor anyone else gaining anything out of it. A waste of ink and paper. And I’m a self-proclaimed novelist about to get paid for this to be published.

The fourth… how long can I keep on ranting? Five or six pages are probably too little.

Since it would be endless I shall stop here.

Shinohara-san and the editor from Ultra Jump, thank you very much. I look forward to working with you from now on.

And finally some thanks.

I thank Maeshima Shigeki-san who took care of the illustrations this time as well. I am extremely grateful for your work even while you become increasingly busy.

My editor, people of the editorial department, designers, I thank you this time as well.

Even the “Tatakau Shisho” series nears its conclusion. Dear readers, let us meet again in my next work.

Yamagata Ishio

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[1] The last kanji of the name would normally be read as “kyuu”. “Kyuu” and “kokonotsu” are different words for the number 9.