Secrets of the Silent Witch - Volume 1 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

Thank you very much for purchasing Secrets of the Silent Witch.

The web version of this book comprises sixteen parts in all, and I wrote it imagining it would be a single story from chapter one through chapter sixteen.

With the novelization of the story, the first book will contain chapters one through three.

However, this volume would have lacked the excitement and coherence to stand alone if I’d kept the web version as it was.

So I thought hard about what edits and retouches to make so that this volume could be enjoyed as a single book.

I hope both those who are reading the story for the first time and those who have already read the web version enjoy this novelization of Secrets of the Silent Witch.

The retouching work was a battle against character limits.

Writing is so incredibly fun for me. Keeping my eye on the remaining character count, I’d find myself getting greedy—I’d want to write this, and that, and also this other thing, and even more of something else. It was honestly a lot of fun.

If I wanted to, I could easily write plenty of scenes about Monica’s daily life in her mountain cabin. (But then she’d never make it to the academy.)

And then I’d write pages and pages of Lady Isabelle praising her elder sister. (But then they’d never make it to the academy.)

Just the scene where Louis Miller rubs in his boundless love for his new wife in front of Monica threatened to fill up half the book. (But then they’d never… Well, you get the point.)

…I think the biggest problem to tackle was how to best set the pace leading up to their arrival at the academy.

During the retouching, I revised the web version to be kinder to Monica in general.

This was because the editor, a very kind person, is fond of Monica and always calls her cute.

If Monica should ever get into an even more terrible situation than in the web version, please think to yourself, The writer must have insisted on this.

The editor is very kind to Monica. The writer is the one who is unkind to her.

Finally, thank you for the exquisite, warm, beautiful illustrations, Nanna Fujimi-sensei. I looked at them many times over while writing and always grinned and chuckled to myself.

I’d also like to thank everyone at Kadokawa for working so hard on the novelization, as well as my editor, who gave me—someone who barely knows right from left—a lot of good advice.

And I’d like to once again thank everyone who has read this story, as well as anyone who has even been remotely involved with my creating it.

It’s thanks to the efforts of many, many people that this story was able to reach the world in book format.

I cannot thank you all enough.

I’m also incredibly grateful that this book will be getting a continuation. I’ll continue to do my best with my writing, so please look forward to the next volume as well.

Matsuri Isora