Hidan no Aria Volume 14 authors notes

And with this, Volume 14 comes to an end…

Still waiting to see what my schedule will be like, but hoping to carve out Sundays for HnA. As I said, we shall see…

In the meantime, Enjoy!

[BEGIN]

Hello! It's Akamatsu!

Just a note to tell you that we've released the collection of short stories『Cast Off Table』between this volume and the previous one!

By the way… this afterword contains spoilers! If you have not yet read the novel, please be careful.

Now then…

The last two volumes, 13 and 14, were set in Hong Kong. At the time of writing, I actually visited Hong Kong… Writing about it made me want to visit again *laughs*.

I visited twice years ago, and the first time, I  stopped there on my way back home from the UK. Since it was a while ago, my memories of that time are a bit hazy… but I do remember the million dollar nightscape shining like a string of pearls. But the real view is really is like the multi-coloured casket of jewels Kinji saw. I was only a boy at the time, and I suppose in the time it takes to become an adult a city can change drastically. In any case, it is beautiful.

It is how it is. There were somethings that I wanted to write into the novel that I just couldn't. Like the famous Hangzhou restaurant's specialty crab flour noodles. It was amazingly delicious! It was a luxurious dish made of 4 Chinese mitten crab pastes and serving of noodles. I was surprised by it a second time when I saw the price!

–For a cup of noodles with sauce, it was about 4,000 Yen…!

But the taste was really worth the price, so I thought I'd write about it in the novel! But in the end, I didn't even do so… Kinji ended up never getting the chance to eat it. So, instead, I decided to write about it here.

Actually though…

During the Rampan and Baskerville's Imperial Feast, Kinji saw Shirayuki eating some『noodles with sauce』, and that was the crab flour noodles.

We can only hope that Shirayuki will make it for him.

In this last 14th volume the remnants of Nazi Germany declare war on Kinji and Co.

Facing Kinji, the enemy leader is unsurprisingly a tiny girl. This tiny brat has certainly worked her way deep into Kinji's psyche without raising a finger. I mean Aria of course!

And so until next time–let's meet again in the bookstore when I long for the deep sea and light blue colour.

A certain day in April 2013.

Akamatsu Chuugaku

[END]

Note: No idea what that last line about deep blue and light blue is… Maybe some obscure poetic reference?

Chapter end