The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village - Volume 8, Afterword

“Hey, Yoshi-kun. I think you’re——”

Hearing that voice for the first time stopped me in my tracks. On my way home from school. On the playing field of our junior high, and at the bookshop in front of the station. And then in the empty lot where the white cat slept. Shiina Yuki, the strange girl who somehow knew all about me, always approached me like that.

We laughed, cried, got angry, held hands. Again and again, we repeated those disappearing memories and ephemeral promises. That’s why I never knew. I never knew the value of Yuki’s smiles or the meaning of her tears. Nor even the singular sentiment behind her many ‘Nice to meet you’s.

This is a captivating, heartrending tale of meetings and partings.

Liang Ning had just bid farewell to her eldest and second eldest brothers who died on the battlefield, never expecting that when she was preparing to fulfill a marriage contract with an orphan she saved six years ago, she would be burned alive by him!Upon waking, she became Miss Fu of the Fu Family, and her murderer had already risen to a high position, surrounded by beautiful wives and concubines, becoming a trusted minister before the emperor...No fear!Miss Liang of the Liang Family changes lanes, still the decisive and ruthless Rashamon!But why does that brat, who used to play around with her nephew and knew nothing about respecting elders, keep pestering her?

The protracted ’witch hunting’ had faded into silence with the end of the Seven Years’ War, and the mysteries of the East Coast had begun to conceal themselves, yet gunpowder was on a rapid rise. Mo Qishang, who should have been utterly confounded, stood at the crossroads of destiny in the name of Arthur. He stared in astonishment at the charging knights, the wizards atop the high towers, and the bizarre wilderness. He felt the sharpness of the longsword and the recoil of the firearm, both clear and unfamiliar. At last, he excitedly shook his robe and, with a smile on his face, said— “Do not believe what I say, for to believe is to exist!”