As the convenience stores in my area have been going out of business one by one, I now have to walk approximately fifteen minutes to reach the nearest one, and there is a relatively large pond on the way that hosts migrating birds during winter.
I was passing by a while back and happened to see a male mallard duck drifting around the pond, even though it was already summer.
Well, I thought to myself, what reason would a mallard have to part company with his brethren and isolate himself? I pictured him being shocked after waking up one spring morning to discover that everyone was gone and he had been left behind and felt my heart ache as much as it would for the next person, but the other day, I went out late at night to buy something and saw the mallard quacking and splashing around in the middle of a river. It left me feeling relieved. So he’s just an oddball.
Perhaps he was merely a rebellious duck like the humans who dislike moving around in groups for no particular reason. I daresay that when his brethren invited him to go north with them, he responded by saying, “No, I’ll stay here. No real reason,” and chose to deviate from the routine work of duck society. After all, he was weird enough to wander around in the middle of the night, so floating around in a pond by himself couldn’t be a big deal. In fact, I surmised that he happened to prefer to be alone.
And so I convinced myself. But after a slight bit of research, I discovered that many migratory birds choose not to go north when spring comes. Basically, humans stop by the lake to feed them so they can live a comfortable life without having to worry about finding their own food. That would mean that he wasn’t an oddball but rather a lazy bum, which shattered my arbitrary dream and left me dejected, which is why I wrote about it in this afterword. Of course, none of this matters to the mallard, as far as he is concerned.
Moving on to a different subject, there is a rumor that the next volume will be a compilation of short stories from The Sneaker (as of summer 2003) with the addition of a new original story. At the moment, I believe that the title will be The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya, but it is still subject to change. Of course, spending only three seconds to come up with the title The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya has left me with a series title that doesn’t seem quite right. I didn’t expect this to become a series. I apologize.
On another note, I would like to thank the people who spent a great deal of time playing mah-jongg with me the other day. I would appreciate it if you could hold yourself back or show mercy… no, never mind.
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my editor, Mr. S, and the illustrator, Ms. Noizi Ito, along with everyone involved in the publication of this book, as well as all of the readers. I hope to see you again.
Nagaru Tanigawa