Afterword This is my 32nd book. Zounose here. I finally managed to get out the book on Marisa and the two servants that I've been supposedly working on and drawing and drawing for a long time now. And also, when drawing those two, the inevitable Matara Okina. Even within Touhou, she has connections to all sorts of characters, and is even one of Gensokyo's sages. What a massive character. And on top of that, since I'm not that familiar with the original Matarajin either, getting all that sorted out inside my head really was a lot of work.

In the end, I couldn't help thinking that being a "mysterious god" and all, people kept combining all sorts of beliefs and divine virtues with her, making her more of a "convenient god". (This is of course just a silly idea with no academical basis.) What the two servants are chanting while burning down the Kirisame house is a spell I came across while researching the subject. Based on the literature, the pronunciation seems pretty complicated and everything, so it's just my free interpretation of the thing. To be blunt, the actual contents seem to be something pretty dirty.

After Autumn Reitaisai and Kouroumu, I'm planning to release the fifth compilation at Winter Comiket. I want to pack this one full of new art as well! I'm having trouble thinking of anything specific, though!!! Well then, I hope we can meet again.

Even the official works say that Marisa's "Kirisame Magic Shop" is really a shop in name only, but her job here was based completely on my own tastes and convenience for the story. Although, the book "RAINFALL" I drew way, way back also had Marisa carting corpses with Orin, so I guess I've always had an image of her doing "beggar-like" odd jobs like this. The front cover has Aya looking like a main character despite not really appearing very much (I suppose the same goes for Patchouli), but truth be told, I was originally planning to give her a bigger role as someone crossing between the Human Village and Youkai Mountain, over the "boundary" between human and youkai society so to speak. However, I ended up cutting that out for distracting from the main plot, so the cover is just a relic of that. This time's afterword is (as usual?) nothing but background information, isn't it...