≫Master Must Murder
Yuta’s favorite late-night anime. Its abbreviation is MMM. A suspense and crime action show with lots of pretty girls’ blood flying everywhere. Yuta particularly likes the heroine, Zonko.
≫The Tree of Life
A symbolic diagram used in Kabbahlic mysticism. It consists of ten spheres with twenty-two channels between them, and is said to represent the universe and the human body.
Afterword
Readers of Overlap Novels, members of that group of maniac fans of Chiyomaru Shikura, as well as the Committee of 300— thank you for reading. This was my first time writing a light novel, and it was difficult in many ways, but we’ve managed to successfully release it.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of the staff who worked on this project with me.
Now, how did you enjoy the first volume? It would make me happier than anything if there was something inside that got stuck in your mind in even the smallest way. To be honest, though, I’m not satisfied with it at all! I mean, who wants a novel that ends like this? Man, I hated to end it this way. I could’ve gone on for 1500 pages if they’d let me.
My stories are always incredibly long to begin with. All the descriptions are rambling, and a lot of it isn’t needed at all.
I realized when I was working on this that pro authors are a whole different breed, aren’t they? They write exactly what they need to, and no more. Their stories are beautiful and polished, like a poem, and the scenes go naturally from one to another. My stories aren’t like that at all. I’m no good. No good at all, no.
Just typing in all this text is making me feel depressed. What should I do? I should talk about something else.
I know. I’ll talk about something that readers would probably enjoy. Some kind of behind the scenes thing...
Like I just said, the stories I write are really rambling. Most of the big reveals tend to take place in the second half, and I don’t reveal much about who’s really behind things. I always think that if some big villain shows up all of a sudden, it makes things feel fake and less real.
I thought about this problem up until the last minute for this book, and right before the deadline, I added in the scenes marked “MMG.”
In other words, they didn’t exist not that long ago, lol. I’m not sure if adding them was the right thing to do, but this work has a lot of information in it, and my goal this time was to keep that information from being tilted too much in any one direction. If I reveal too much they’ll probably get mad at me, but the ideology motivating the villain this time is vast in scale, and something big enough that it could potentially deny all the world’s religions.
Of course, since I’ve called this a “science” novel, it can’t just be cheap fiction. It takes place in a very plausible world line, so I hope you’ll look forward to the latter half. If any reader can guess their ambitions from what’s been revealed so far, send me a message on Twitter.
I’ll ask you to delete it immediately, lol.
Now, since I’m here, I may as well talk about some things other than the villain. The scariest part of the book is the prologue, isn’t it?
You know, the scene where piles of bodies are being pulled from the lake in Inokashira Park. What was that? It’s hard to be sure if it was a dream, or real.
But if you look at the world news, you’ll see scary phrases like “mass hysteria” and “mass suicide.” Most of these are the result of mind control, or religious groups with twisted ideologies. Will that be the case here?
Since this is the most critical part of the book, of course I can’t talk about it in the afterword. So look forward to the last half of the story! Lastly, a word about the special powers the protagonists have. The devil in Aria’s part especially seemed to speak in an everyday, slangy manner, didn’t it?
Was that really a creature that could be explained by science? Or was it some sort of pinpoint fantasy? Keep that in mind, as well.
Oh, of course, it’s also equally likely that this afterword itself is an attempt to mislead the reader, too.
Also, was there anything else in Volume 1 that stuck out at you as a potential plot point or foreshadowing?
If there was, tell me on Twitter. I’ll ask you to delete it, too.
Anyway, that’s all the time we have! I’m praying for the end of summer (I hate summer) as I get to work on the second and further volumes of Occultic;Nine.
See you next time! Poh-yah-yah me on Twitter!
—Chiyomaru Shikura
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Copyright
Occultic;Nine Volume 1
by Chiyomaru Shikura
Translated by Adam Lensenmayer
Edited by Alicia Ashby
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 Chiyomaru Shikura
Illustrations Copyright © 2013 pako
Cover illustration by pako
All rights reserved.
Original Japanese edition published in 2014 by OVERLAP, Inc.
This English edition is published by arrangement with OVERLAP, Inc., Tokyo
English translation © 2016 J-Novel Club LLC
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
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The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Ebook edition 1.0: December 2016
Occultic;Nine: Volume 1 Page 23