Spice and Wolf - Volume 21 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD

Hello, it’s me, Hasekura. I’m sorry it’s been such a long time…I’ve been starting all my writing with that sentence almost every day now. I’m really sorry it’s been such a long time…

A great writer once recommended that we write short stories every month or at other set intervals, because it will become a book before we know it, and I now truly feel like that was 100 percent accurate. It’s a little strange—I had no idea I had written so much for this short story collection, either.

Also, this time I got to use some topics that I had been hoping to bring up but never really had the chance to, so I am happy. I am sure that anyone else who is interested in the Middle Ages has wondered about the story of the bees, as well as the original story in this book! The related articles on Wikipedia said that they were all thrown away in Europe, but they were such a valuable source of protein, so I really wondered if that was true, but I finally stumbled upon some literature that detailed how they were used. Well, to tell the truth, when I later did a search on related terms, I immediately found the answer on Yahoo! Answers, so I kind of became engrossed in a sense of emptiness…I keep telling myself that the joy of stumbling across something you want to learn about while reading through a thick book is something we can’t experience through Internet searches!

By the way, the Spice and Wolf series has mostly been inspired by books about things north of the Pyrenees, but as of late, I have been reading books that are set more recently and farther south about the modern Mediterranean region, as well as about the Middle East. They are so full of things I don’t know, and it is very interesting. I have not decided if Holo and company will be going to the desert, but I have been dreaming lately of maybe writing about it in a different series or something.

Also, I have been recently pushing forward with creating content in VR. That’s the main reason why there haven’t been any books coming out…

And the currently in-development project is also now being called Spice and Wolf VR! I have been making this by taking full advantage of my position as the original author, while also gaining the cooperation of everyone else involved. In addition to the original VR animated scenarios, there are also some mini games where you can pet Holo’s tail.

Please feel free to search for it.

And so, now that I have filled up this page, I will be taking my leave for a time.

I hope to see you again in the next volume.

Isuna Hasekura