Suzumiya Haruhi no Kioku – Atogaki
The Memory of Suzumiya Haruhi – Afterword

Konbanwa, Flower of Paper here. If this is your first time reading one of my stories, it's nice to meet you.

This story started out as a fun little romp of a one-shot, but since it wouldn't be fair to hint at a date without actually describing it, I brainstormed for a while and came up with all sorts of ideas. And here we are.

I wasn't expecting this story to gradually drift from Tanigawa-sensei's style into magical realism...call it part of the organic process of writing. Was this drift due to Haruhi's subconscious or mine? (laughs) I'm quite fond of magical realism, especially Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende. (Wikipedia has a great article on magical realism if you're interested.)

As for the views expressed in this story...I won't lie to you, some are mine and some are not. For example, the opinions on interconnectedness (Chapter 1) and yin-yang (Chapter 5) are mine. The "morning glory speech" (Chapter 2) is Haruhi's personal opinion, and the fascination with the number seven (Chapter 4) is hers too. Nothing like Kyon's kitsune story (Chapter 3) actually happened to me—that was pure imagination, as was the story of Kyon's father.

I'd like to leave a short note on the number seven. Though I originally wrote Haruhi's opinions on the number seven off the top of my head, your tremendous response to that chapter prompted me to do a bit of research on the so-called mystical properties of the number seven, which led to my listening to "Fresh Aire 7: Mystic 7" by Mannheim Steamroller, which I randomly found in the library. It turns out that there are many more connections with the number seven than I had originally considered. Whether such "connections" are true or coincidental, I don't know. You don't necessarily have to believe them, but it was an interesting bit of research nonetheless.

The cyclic nature I mentioned in Chapter 5, especially in reference to Haruhi's self-regeneration, stemmed from the cyclic nature of magical realism. Also, there is Haruhi's pseudo-article in Volume 8 (Editor-in-Chief : Straight Ahead!). I won't say what, in order to avoid a spoiler, but it does provide a sort of canon basis for the idea.

One of my other main goals for this story, was to develop Haruhi, not only as a character, but as a person. Hopefully I succeeded in this regard.

To all those who read this story and took the time to voice an opinion, thank you very much. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank Esbee and Audley for their advice during the creation and growth of this story. Thank you for your constructive criticism, and I hope this story ended up being as good as you had hoped.

To wrap up this story, I'd like to leave you with a quote to consider.

"Invisible and subtle is the mind." — Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha

O-yomi itadaki, arigatou gozaimashita!
Thank you very much for reading!

— Flower of Paper