Spice and Wolf - Volume 2 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD

It has been a while! This is Isuna Hasekura. Well, here’s volume 2. I know; I’m shocked, too.

But if you wish to know what is most shocking of all, it’s that when I started to write this second volume, I utterly forgot the personalities of the two main characters.

I know it sounds unbelievable, but it’s true, even though I myself can barely believe it. You always hear about birdbrained people who forget everything after taking three steps, and that definitely fits a chicken who reads a horror story on the Net and gets so freaked out he can’t even go to the bathroom, right?

Now that I think about it, there’s one more surprising thing. What is it, you ask? Well, I bought stock. Having won a prize for writing a novel with a merchant as the protagonist, I put half the prize money into a certain stock. I wrote about it in the afterword for volume 1, too, and I get this evil grin on my face when I think about multiplying my money in the stock market. This time my delusions have just gotten wilder, but perhaps as a consequence of some shadowy group’s trap, the stock dropped steadily for two weeks. It even fell on a day when 90 percent of the stocks on the market rose. Right behind the window I’m writing this afterword in, there’s a stock tool that tells me every minute change in the price, and today it seems to be trading in a very narrow range. Although it is dropping. It seems that it’s not going well, just like the novel. How odd…

I’m a sad piece of work, but I hope you’ve enjoyed this book.

Once again Jyuu Ayakura provided wonderful illustrations; they fit the images in my head perfectly. Thank you so much. Also, to my editor—I am so sorry for all the mistakes in my Japanese. Next time—next time, I promise!—I’ll try to write the novel so we can finish in a single meeting.

And of course, to all those who hold this book in your hands, my heartfelt thanks.

I hope to see you all again in volume 3.

—Isuna Hasekura