Hi, this is Hiyori from the circle "Oh no! Straizo-sama has taken the camera girl hostage!" or SutoCame for short! Our milestone 20th book is a serious story mainly about Hifuu. I hope you enjoyed it. In the afterword of "Disease Leading to Fantasy," I wrote something like, "Next time, I'd like to draw an adventure story about the two of them," and while my dream came true, the drawing was so hard I almost cried. The backgrounds......the backgrounds...... I'm so grateful to Hisaka for going to take reference photos. (Leaving aside the question of who specified such backgrounds in the first place) Anyway, it was a lot of fun drawing while imagining all sorts of things about the Hifuu world. I also wanted to include some futuristic props that would take advantage of the near-future setting. Maybe next time I draw Hifuu. Well then, I hope to see you again in the next book!

Hello and nice to meet you. I'm Hisaka, the original story writer for the circle "Strange Chamelon," or "SutoCame" for short. Our milestone 20th book is a Hifuu Club book. Did you enjoy it?

It's been a while since we released a Hifuu book as a standalone circle. For reference, I pulled out "Disease Leading to Fantasy," which we released about three years ago, and it turns out that was our 10th book. This is our 20th, so I was a little surprised by the coincidence. The number of pages is also the same, 60. I'm sure our next Hifuu book will be our 30th.

Well, this book was one of those stock books that I've always wanted to release but kept shelving. I wrote out the plot at the beginning of August 2011. The idea came to me on the train on the way to a meeting, and the plot was almost finalized on the train home. We thought, "Won't this be interesting!?" It's common to solidify an idea all at once based on an initial impulse, but it's also common to have other books scheduled for release, meaning it can't be published immediately. In the end, when the new Hifuu CD, "Trojan Green Asteroid," came out in 2012, I decided that this year was the only year to bring a Hifuu story to life, and so I made the decision to publish it.

Now, a little about the content. Works based on the Hifuu Club have a slightly different atmosphere from fanfics of the original Touhou Project, so one of my goals was to incorporate the atmosphere and setting of the original Hifuu stories as much as possible. While respecting the original setting, I explored my own worldview that could be inferred from it and constructed the story. What kind of near-future Japan will Renko and Merry live in? Expanding that imagination in my head was the most enjoyable part. I would be happy if you could feel even a little bit of the Hifuu worldview that I derived from my own interpretation.

By the way, I'm publishing both a manga and a novel simultaneously this time. The manga and novel are quite closely linked, so it would be even better if you could read them together. Ideally, it would be best if you read the manga first and the novel afterward, so it would be great if you're reading this after finishing the manga and about to start the novel. Well, I tried to make it enjoyable even if that's not the case, so I think it'll be fine. I aimed to have the plot threads intertwine nicely between the two works, so I'm just hoping that's the case. I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on that.

By the way, as for the background music while I was working on this, I was listening to Trojan Green Asteroid and Neo-Traditionalism of Japan all the time while I was putting the story together. When I got into the actual work and needed to concentrate, I was listening to "Kakusei" by THE BACK HORN's on repeat. It's a song that really gets you pumped up. When I was working on my previous work, "Disease Leading to Fantasy," I also chose a theme song and listened to it, so I thought I'd do the same this time. I forgot to mention it in the afterword to the novel, but I was listening to it on repeat the whole time I was working on the novel as well.

And that's all for this long afterword. I had fun creating this again. I was also able to visit some of Tokyo's famous tourist spots under the guise of research. See you again in my next work. Bye for now.