The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village

Volume 2, Afterword

And so here is the 2nd volume.

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

This work can now officially be called a series. The original concept was to tell the stories of Youkai in the fictional living environments known as Intellectual Villages, but compared to Volume 1 and all its Intellectual Villages, this volume’s stories were set outside that basic structure a lot more. Chapter 3 and the second half of Chapter 4 would be the most obvious examples.

I also used Uchimaku Hayabusa a lot more this time. At first glance, he seems to be a guy with common sense stuck at a midpoint where he is not allowed the inexperience of Jinnai Shinobu and cannot resolve anything and everything as smartly as Hishigami Mai. However, he does live quite a crazy life too. The idea of “Hishigami Mai’s world” showed up a few times, but “Uchimaku Hayabusa’s world” is enough to rival it. Uchimaku Hayabusa took half a step into “Hishigami Mai’s world” this time, but you also got to enjoy seeing him run around his home turf of the big city.

The detective is only interested in the living while the mystery freak is only interested in the dead. This time, I told the story of the detective being isolated from his organization, but I think there is a lot more I can do with that duo. Creating some conflict between the two could make for some interesting drama.

I paid careful attention to once more show the difference between humans and Youkai. I also explained some of the reason behind the Zashiki Warashi teasing Jinnai Shinobu. She has no problem showing off her skin because she fully views herself as his guardian. ...That said, it is possible he could shoot Cupid’s arrow right through her heart by calling her “onee-chan”. However, Jinnai Shinobu is in his rebellious teenage years, so he would rather bite his own tongue than do that.

I give my thanks to my illustrator Mahaya-san and my editor Miki-san. This novel had a lot of Youkai without human forms and it focused a lot on some annoying creature-y kind of stuff. I am truly thankful they stuck with my selfish requests.

And I give my thanks to the readers. By cherry-picking the species used, I could easily make all the Youkai look like girls, but I have chosen not to do that. This is another selfish choice of mine, so thank you for sticking with me regardless.

And I will end this here.

I will just hope I can write a third volume.

I got careless and the number of pages really got out of hand...

-Kamachi Kazuma