Wah, wah, wah.

What should I do, now I've done it?

Hello, this is Konno.

You often read, "The character just wrote themselves" in other afterwords.

"The character wrote themselves, and as the author I just had to hold on."

- Something like that.

That does occasionally happen to me too, but typically that sort of thing doesn't happen walking down the story's main street, it's one of the characters in the side-alleys, so it doesn't really have much of an impact on the overall story.

But this time they really did write themselves. Well, to be precise, she would suggest things like, "How about I act like this here. What do you think?" and I'd agree, "Ah, that sounds good." (Feel free to call this a wild delusion.)

Oh no. It's not connected to what I thought I'd write in the next story, and the one after!

Wah, wah, wah. What should I do, and so on.

Well, that includes short stories too. I think when a character writes themselves, it's because that's the most natural course of action for them. Right, Noriko?

Setting aside that glimpse backstage, let's discuss "Maria-sama ga Miteru: Big Door, Small Key."

Readers that are reading this after the novel may be thinking "Huh?" because there's something different about this volume.

What is it that's different? None of the stories are told from Yumi's point-of-view.

Up to now, we've seen Noriko's point-of-view, Shimako's point-of-view, Yoshino's point-of-view, Rei's point-of-view, Sachiko's point-of-view, the graduated onee-sama's points-of-view, and others, but I don't think there's been a volume of "Maria-sama ga Miteru" that hasn't had at least one story with Yumi as the main character (excluding the Premium Book and Illustration Collection).

In exchange, about half of this volume is told from Touko's point-of-view, which we haven't seen much of before (except in small parts like Joanna).

I'm sure the back cover and advertising for this volume will probably have "Touko's secret!" As for what the secret is, read the main story and enjoy (although saying "enjoy" feels a bit awkward).

The food and drink that appear in this volume didn't make me feel all that envious, either writing about them or reading about them. Especially Kashiwagi Suguru's souvenir. I hate feeling like I've been tricked.

Occasionally, I find myself craving cola. It's like I'm after the "beer after work" feeling, although I'm not a regular drinker so I don't really know what that's like. But, like beer, it's not the sort of drink that's there when I open the refrigerator (although I'm sure there's some households that would always have cola), so typically I'll just trick myself with cool tea, thinking "If only there was a convenience store right outside our house." Naturally, our refrigerator doesn't have beer either.

Right, right. Be careful, because drinking too many carbonated drinks can be dangerous (too much of anything is not good). About ten years ago, I got soda-addiction and ruined my health. What sort of symptoms did I have? If I didn't have soda, I'd start feeling withdrawal symptoms, and I didn't want to drink anything other than soda. My stomach would hurt, but I still kept craving those sweet fizzy drinks. I'd get on my bike to go to the corner store to buy them. Soon I'd be back in soda hell. Getting free was tough. Hearing that story, most people's first thoughts are, " That's scary," followed by, "That doesn't sound like you, Konno," finally leading to the question, "So, did that make you put on weight? Lose weight?" I mean, come on, the point wasn't whether I lost weight or not. My life was in danger -

On to my illustrator, Hibiki Reine-san.

As everyone already knows, Hibiki-san has been drawing wonderful covers and insert illustrations ever since the first volume of Maria-sama ga Miteru (which I'm told fans call "Untitled"). For the last couple of years, she's been doing autograph sessions with me, for which I am eternally grateful.

There's a lot of autograph sessions out in the countryside, and when we're traveling there we'll always sit next to each other and chat away like a pair of schoolgirls. Whether it be in a plane, on the bullet train, or in a taxi. About the only time we're quiet is when one of us is sleeping. The editor from Cobalt publishing who travels with us doesn't say anything, but I'm sure they're thinking, "Won't they ever run out of things to talk about?"

I think a large part of why we can continuously chatter is because of Hibiki-san's sociable personality, but part of it is that she and I have widely diverging topics we can talk about. As a result, Hibiki-san has introduced me to a lot of interesting manga, as well as showing me pictures of cute cats.

On a recent trip, Hibiki-san let me play a game on her handheld game console, and it was so much fun that when I got home I bought the complete set (hardware and software) from a big camera store.

Now, even with this good a relationship, there were a couple of matters left outstanding for many years.

I think it was Hibiki-san that noticed it first.

"I don't have a book signed by you, Konno-san !"

Despite all the autograph sessions we'd attended together, despite the hundreds of books we'd signed together, we didn't have a single one with the other's autograph. But the idea of the author and illustrator lining up at the register to purchase a number of "Maria-sama ga Miteru" books (whatever they were selling!) was just too foolish so we gave up on it.

"Then, next time (we'll bring along some books)."

We said this when we parted, but then the next couple of times we both completely forgot until we saw each other and said, "Ah." But then last summer, we finally stopped the string of "Ah."

At the "Lillian's Midsummer Festival" anime event we lined up two copies of the latest book, "Illustration Collection," signed them both, and each took a copy home (finally!). The paper in the "Illustration Collection" is glossy, so our signatures were a bit different to normal (and probably not all that good), but these are the only two books in the world with both our signatures that have never been opened at an autograph session.

Then, this summer, there was another advancement in our relationship. We exchanged email addresses.

"Huh - after all this time?"

Ah, what a joke, so funny. But it's true. Despite being such good friends, the opportunity hadn't arisen, so both of us had been too naive to ask, "Can you tell me your email address?" Whenever we had to meet for work, it would go through the Cobalt editorial department, so we were never inconvenienced by it. But then a friend I knew through the anime said to me, "I'd really like to get in touch with Hibiki-san, but " so I acted as an intermediary between them and became Hibiki-san's email-friend too.

So with that, I was going to get Hibiki-san to write some of the afterword too, and even got agreement beforehand.

- But, wouldn't you know it, she didn't think she'd be able to fill two and a half pages:)

Konno Oyuki.