Rakuin no Monshou

Volume 9, Afterword

Thank you for waiting. With this, we conclude the ninth volume of Rakuin.

Although I encountered various hardships while writing it, there is little avail in going into detail about that here; and if you, the readers, take pleasure in reading this work, I will be happy. Let us meet again in the next volume!

...Since you will probably be annoyed if I left the afterword at that, I had better do my poor best to add more to this.

When starting a new work, an author of course thinks about how things will develop beyond the first volume and they imagine something like an outline in their head.

But, again of course, the entire course of events from the opening to the ending are not set in stone (and besides, if the sales are bad, there are also cases in which you can forget about a series as it will be ended at a single book.)

When I started “Rakuin no Monshou”, and even though it was vague, I pictured how it would develop.

For example, something along the lines of, “If the main character, Orba’s, situation changes like this, then the next development would be this.”

And, although I did have an overview of the essential parts of the story, my mental image beyond that was no more than a great many different ideas; such as, “When this character appears, I want them to be connected to Orba in this way,” or “I want there to be a development that will make Orba say this kind of line.”

As to why I am deliberately bringing this up, that’s because when I was standing at the starting line for this series; among the key points that I established then and there was one from this volume that was absolutely central. I knew that one of the things needed to push the story forward was a big event that would have Orba say those lines, or at least murmur them inwardly. Those of you who have already read this volume will understand what I mean.

I wrote this in the afterword of the first volume:

“While experiencing battle, intrigue and love, Orba, this boy who was a sword-slave – what will he gain, and what will he lose?”

The day we have an answer to that might be approaching.

--Sugihara Tomonori

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