Baccano! - Volume 4 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD

First, my sincere thanks for reading this afterword, too.

…And so: Hello, this is Narita.

My goal this time? “Write a heartwarming story.”

After I had the manuscript checked, when I said, “The theme this time around is ‘heartwarming,’” my editor, Chief Editor Suzuki, said, “……Huh?!” and his eyes got really wide. That concerned me a bit, but at any rate, I tried to make this story heartwarming.

When I reread it, even I thought, “Heartwarming?” and had slight doubts, but, well… Everybody has their own standard for “heartwarming,” so whether you—the readers—find it warm and fuzzy or gritty, I hope you enjoy it.

This story deals with a certain incident in Manhattan that’s separate from the other stories, but some of its timeline overlaps with the previous story, Baccano! 1931. They’re linked in places, too, so if you read it together with the previously released volumes in the Baccano! series, I think you’ll probably enjoy it more. If you don’t enjoy it…I’m sorry.

When I was creating the story for Baccano!, I imagined a spiral, and for the sequel 1931, I visualized two parallel train tracks.

Just when I was thinking about what to do next, I got the opportunity to see the video Endless Dominos. I thought it was really neat how the ring of dominos fell and rose again, around and around, and that led me to the story for this volume. I added “information”—an element that is, in a way, less realistic than the immortals—to that ring of dominos, and the result was this structure.

In this story, the protagonist is even less clear than before, but in any case, for the group of stories that have “Baccano!” in their titles, even I don’t have one particular protagonist picked out. If I get the chance to release more Baccano! books, completely new characters may take the stage, or I might write stories that focus on familiar characters or on characters that have only appeared in a few lines up until now. I hope you’ll expect a different character to be the protagonist every time and look forward to it… Assuming they let me keep writing the series, that is. As a matter of fact, at the time when I’m writing this, Volume 2 hasn’t been released yet, so I really have no idea how it’s going over.

This time, all sorts of things happened, and they let me release three months in a row. When I finished writing the second book, I casually mentioned wanting to try doing a three-month series, and a few weeks later, I got a call from my editor, Suzuki…

“Uh, they green-lighted the three-month serial release.”

“No way?! Seriously?! They’re actually going to let me write that?!”

“Yeah, actually, the president gave his approval, so if you don’t send them in, we’ll have problems.”

“…Right.” (P-presidential approval?! What’s up with that?! What would have happened if he hadn’t approved it?!)

And so I kept on writing with trickles of cold sweat running down my spine, but Suzuki the editor and Enami the illustrator probably had it a whole lot rougher than I did. While I was writing, I heard other writers and editorial staff members saying, “Suzuki looked like he was having a tough time,” and “Enami’s working really, really hard,” and while I did feel guilty, I was also very grateful. I hope my writing was able to live up to that…

In any case, I plan to work on a non-Baccano! one-shot story and simultaneously keep writing Baccano! as I get new ideas.

At the very least, my current objectives are to study hard every day and work to create my own style, so that the PR department staff doesn’t tell me, “It’s not humanly possible to advertise your books!” and come after me with chainsaws… And I get the feeling that not only have I written this sort of thing three times, but the objectives keep changing on me… It must be déjà vu.

* As usual, everything from this point on is thank-yous.

To Chief Editor Suzuki and the people of the sales, PR, and editorial departments, for whom I caused even more trouble than usual with this three-month serial release.

To the copy editors, who checked my vast number of typos, dropped characters, and ungrammatical sentences, and also to the designers who made the book look good.

To my family, friends, and acquaintances, to whom I’m indebted for all sorts of things, and particularly to the good people of S City, who helped create Samantha’s mixed dialect.

To “T,” who was kind enough to tell me about their experiences for certain descriptive passages (no more “experiencing,” a’right?).

To the great Katsumi Enami, who, during this three-month serial release, was terribly busy with three books’ worth of designs for mostly new characters and with illustrations for Dengeki hp posters and still managed to make them all fantastic.

To you, the readers who picked up this book, too.

And to the people who hadn’t read one of my books before.

My apologies for saying something similar to what I said at the beginning, but everyone mentioned above has my deepest gratitude.

July 2003, at my place

Listening to the noise that plays in the background of Eraserhead (directed by David Lynch).

Ryohgo Narita