Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 13 - Chapter Pr

Prologue

“All’s well that ends well” is a phrase that seems to come up all the time, isn’t it? It comes up so often, in fact, that I’d hesitate to call it a saying or an aphorism, and I’d certainly never think to look up its origins. It’s a common phrase—a conventional one. A phrase that spreads from person to person as naturally as could be...which you might say attests to the fact that it expresses a broad and general truth.

All’s well that ends well. It sounds like a positive sentiment, at first blush—like it’s saying that no matter what trials and tribulations you may go through, they’ll all be water under the bridge when everything’s over. It’s very easy to read another implication into that interpretation, however: that when all’s said and done, the results are all that matter. It implies that no matter what incredible things may have happened over the course of the process, if the ending doesn’t satisfy—if the results don’t live up to expectations—then everything that came before is rendered meaningless.

We only get to be judged by how hard we work—by the effort that we put in over the course of an endeavor—until we graduate from school. After that point, we’re thrust into society at large, where results are everything. Yes, I’m still actively living out my student years even as I say these words, and yes, it’s a little embarrassing to monologue about what it’s like out in society considering that...but I think this is something that even students like me can understand. Nobody’s naively optimistic enough not to catch on to these things eventually.

People—especially celebrities and fictional characters—love talking about how hard work is always rewarded, but from another perspective, wouldn’t that mean that hard work that isn’t rewarded can’t be counted as hard work at all? It’s a concept that hints that those who never produce results have no right to be proud of the effort that they put in. Kinda puts the harsh reality of society on display, doesn’t it?

In the end, everything is defined by results. It’s only by achieving clear success—by reaching an ending—that the process of putting in hard work is recognized as hard work.

All’s well that ends well. Results are everything.

But there’s one thing...just one complaint that I’d like to raise about that idea. Indeed, I hold a single objection to this particular truth of the world—namely, I believe there’s an exception to the otherwise universal rule that is “all’s well that ends well.”

That exception’s identity: fiction.

When it comes to manga, anime, novels, light novels, and on and on—to fiction of all shapes and sizes—I believe that results are not, in fact, everything. I believe that a story’s result—in other words, a story’s ending—doesn’t define that story in its entirety.

This is really hard to put into words, but there are a lot of stories out there with endings that, well...suck. I mean, maybe saying that they suck is taking it a step too far, but there are certainly no small number of stories that make you cock your head and say “Wait, what? That’s it?” when you read their final chapters.

There are absolutely stories out there that found popularity, made the jump into multimedia franchises, became beloved by fans far and wide, carried on for years on end, laid out all sorts of grand mysteries and layers of foreshadowing...then threw it all away at the absolute last second by ending in such a perfunctory way that not even the most diehard fans could defend it in good faith. Death game series are particularly prone to that, as most of their endings— Actually, scratch that. I probably shouldn’t get too specific about this, on second thought.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that a fair percentage of stories have endings that are kinda hard to give a passing grade. That said, the mere fact that those works got endings at all means that they avoided being a lot worse off—after all, there are also plenty of fictional works that were never able to end at all.

Some stories just never reach their endings, for one reason or another. I can think of all sorts of circumstances that could lead to that result, the most common of which would probably be getting canceled on account of poor sales. Then there are stories whose authors get sick or die, or stories published by companies that go under or magazines that get discontinued. Then you have those works in the light novel world that sell decently enough, by all appearances, but for some inexplicable reason just never put out another volume.

That’s only scratching the surface of potential reasons. Take, for instance, works that were perfectly popular up until their anime aired, but which then had their publication rate drop straight off a cliff the second it finished. Did the anime airing somehow lead to the author burning themself out? Or maybe seeing their work in adaptation was a debilitating shock? Maybe the editorial department dialed back the pressure after the anime ended, or maybe the author had a new series start doing really well and turned their attention to it instead? I’m no author, so I can only speculate, but I have to assume that every author has a unique set of circumstances like those that they have to work under.

The point I’m trying to make is that there are a ton of series out there that were never able to end on account of one real-world issue or another. Actually, “a ton” might not do it justice. These days, I have a feeling that unfinished stories might outnumber the finished ones. We live in an era that’s spoiled for entertainment, after all, and a countless number of stories are beginning and ending at any given moment.

I have to wonder: Just how many of those stories ever come to a satisfying conclusion? If I had to hazard a guess as to how many stories have reached an ideal ending—running for exactly as long as they should have without getting prematurely canceled or artificially dragged out, concluding only after the author finished telling the story they wanted to tell, including a perfect final chapter that could truly satisfy each and every reader—I would say that we’d be looking at a grand total of less than one percent of stories, most likely.

The way I see it, a story being canceled before its time on account of circumstances surrounding its production—in other words, a story that readers will never be able to enjoy all the way to its conclusion—is a tragic thing indeed. Even then, however, there’s a yet more tragic way for a story to conclude: for readers to stop following the story by their own initiative. Sometimes, readers will simply drift away from a story before it reaches its conclusion. I suspect that, more so than anything else—more so than godawful endings and premature cancellations—that is the saddest and most unfulfilling way for a story to possibly conclude.

It’s inevitable that not everyone who starts buying a series will read it all the way to the end, of course. No matter how popular a series gets, its first volume will always have higher sales than every volume that follows it, meaning that there will always be a certain number of people who read a single volume and drop the series on the spot. Literally every series will lose some number of readers, without exception.

I’m by no means innocent myself—I’ve stopped reading plenty of stories over the years. Sometimes I’ll read a single volume and decide a story’s not my thing, and sometimes I’ll get really into a series while its anime’s airing, only to kinda just lose interest as soon as the anime’s over. These are stories that I liked—stories that I was super hooked on—that for some reason I stopped reading before I knew it, usually without even having a clear reason like “it got really boring” or “I couldn’t stand that one character” to justify my estrangement.

When readers drift away from a story they used to like, they usually don’t have a clear reason along those lines. It sort of just happens. It’s not an obvious, instant, binary thing, like the flick of a switch—the line between love and hate is fuzzy and ambiguous, and it’s within that realm of ambiguity that people fall off stories as a matter of course. I’m convinced that that’s the most common way for stories to end: by quietly, naturally passing on.

Now then. This speech has dragged on for an awfully long time at this point, but what I’m really trying to say is that most stories don’t end up wrapping up nicely. Authors will get bored, give up, and half-ass a lame conclusion. Publishers will abandon stories and cut them off without warning. Readers will take their leave of stories on their own terms before they have the chance to end. All things considered, stories that come to a natural conclusion—where the relationship between story and reader can end cleanly—are far rarer than stories where that just doesn’t happen.

If, over the course of your entire life, you find even a single work of fiction that you fall in love with, that keeps running for as long as you want it to, and that concludes with a final chapter you have no complaints about at exactly the moment you thought it should go ahead and wrap itself up, I think you should count yourself lucky. Most stories aren’t so fortunate, and so end in a manner that is, at least to some extent, difficult to accept.

Thus, I protest. Such stories are precisely why I raise my objection—in fact, I would deny the idea of “all’s well that ends well” altogether.

I mean, like...who even cares how stories end, right? I’m not saying it’s a bad thing for a story to end in a clean, satisfying manner, of course. That’s great, when it happens! There’s nothing better than stories getting endings that satisfy everyone! The thing is, though, that stories are not defined by their endings. Even if a story’s conclusion ends up being super lame—even if it loses popularity and gets canceled—if its readers found themselves enjoying that story from moment to moment before it came to an end, then I believe it’s those moments that define it.

I believe that’s true even if it’s the reader who ends up walking away from the story in the end. Even if a series runs for so long that you lose interest and stop reading, even if you lose the time to keep up with reading as a hobby after getting into a new school or starting a new job, even if you lose your passion for a story after its anime ends, even if the author just stops putting out volumes post-anime and you lose interest before the final volume comes out, even if you never see a story through to its conclusion, or even if you simply grow up and the stories you love become the stories you loved... In all those cases, I believe the moments that you spent reading and enjoying a series can never be invalidated. In my eyes, the single split second in which a story touches your heart can last an eternity.

In truth, nothing is defined merely by its ending—not even humans. How we live is far more important than how we die. In the same manner, how a story develops is far more important than how it ends. The process leading up to that ending—the individual moments that readers enjoy—is more important than anything else.

From here on out, my story—our story—will reach an ending of its own. This long, drawn-out tale will come to a clear and definite conclusion. Whether that conclusion will be a genuinely spectacular finale that will satisfy everyone or a miserable, half-assed disaster that will make everyone want to demand their time and money back, I can’t say. That’s something that will vary wildly from person to person, of course...but nevertheless, there’s one thing I want to say: No matter how this ending turns out, and no matter how this final volume concludes, the tale we’ve spun up to this point was by no means a fabrication. We were by no means just fiction. We lived out each and every moment, each and every volume, to the best of our ability. All the feelings that blossomed within us as we experienced all the events thrown our way were, without exception, genuine. Even if all of it was an intricate plot devised by a third party, even if we were nothing more than characters in a story woven by someone else entirely, and even if our story was a work of fiction with no relation to any real people, places, or organizations... Even still, I’ll stand up and shout it out as loudly as I can: We are real.

Now then, I think this prologue’s gone on long enough. It’s high time for us to get started. Time for us to wrap together everything that’s come before as we wrap up our final volume.

Now—let us begin the end of the beginning. The ending that will allow all else to begin...begins now.