Table of Contents

  Cover

  Color Illustrations

  About This Publication

  Chapter 1: The Island Where God Resides

  Chapter 2: Ashes to Ashes

  Chapter 3: The Queen’s Coronation

  December 27, 2018 (Thursday)

  Chapter 4: If—A Few Midsummer Memories

  Chapter 5: It’s Gone

  Chapter 6: AB Night

  Chapter 7: Birds of a Feather

  Chapter 8: Black Cat

  Afterword

  Maps

  Bonus High Resolution Illustrations

  About J-Novel Club

  Copyright

  About This Publication

  This is a collection of the short stories that were included as bonuses with the release of each volume of the mainline D-Genesis novels. As we continued to release new volumes, at one point readers began to ask me if there was any way they could read the previous short stories. I filed that info away as something I’d like to make happen in the future—then things got super busy, and time just flew on by.

  Flash forward to the fateful release of volume 8. A short while after finishing “Black Cat,” I started getting more requests for the stories, and I came to the realization that these people were absolutely right. The stories were only available for a limited time, so there was no way for new readers to experience them anymore. Unfortunately, we had already wrapped up the volume by that point, so anyone who hadn’t read the previous short stories would be left wondering who the heck people like Ai and Megumi were...

  Treating that as a perfect opportunity, I reached out to my editor N and we put our heads together to mull things over. We wanted to give the readers what they were asking for, but we also couldn’t just throw all the stories into a release without keeping in mind that they were supposed to have been limited-time bonuses for each volume...sigh.

  In the end, we decided to go ahead and put them into a collection anyway. The readers who got the limited editions would still have gotten the privilege of reading the stories early, which would hopefully mitigate some of their potential dissatisfaction. Also, a mere reprint might’ve left longtime readers wanting, so we thought it would be nice to give the release some added value. I ended up rewriting a few bits here and there to better align things with the main story, and added some DVD-commentary-style blabber from me about when I was initially writing them for the volumes.

  My hope is that all readers of the series can find something to enjoy in this collection—whether they’ve experienced these stories before or not.

  Chapter 1: The Island Where God Resides

  Commentary

  Volume 1 actually didn’t contain a bonus short story. Instead, a story that explains why Iori joined the JSDF was inserted in the middle of the book. Obviously that chunk can’t be reprinted here, so I encourage anyone who has volume 1 to pick it up and take a look.

  Once upon a time, due to certain circumstances I ended up staying in the remote islands of Okinawa for a year and a half. During that time, I wrote a fantasy story based on the idea of the last miko of Kudaka Island, and I ended up borrowing a bit of the essence from that tale when I wrote this particular story.

  Now, the Okinawan dialect I used was based on how they speak on the main island, and I agonized over that a fair bit. The smaller islands of Okinawa barely use any of the same words you hear on the main island, and that’s especially true for the Yaeyama Islands. The first time I went there I had absolutely no idea what anyone was saying—the older men and women sounded like they were speaking complete gibberish, and all I could make out was the typical Okinawan “sa” at the end. Even the local middle schoolers said that while they could understand what the older folks were saying, they couldn’t speak it themselves, so I suppose it wasn’t exactly surprising that such a brief visit got me nowhere in terms of comprehension.

  I am a huge fan of the modern horror genre, which was all the rage at the time, so I had a fantastic time writing this particular story. Unfortunately, it had to be cut from the manga version to maintain the flow of the overarching story, but both this and the volume’s epilogue are bits of writing I’m quite fond of as an author.

  By the way, I’ve been thinking that Iori and Hagane may as well become a couple—what do you think? Hagane is rather concerned about their age difference (eleven years), and their workplace dynamic is a problem as well, so he hasn’t been able to convince himself to commit to anything. Every time the two of them show up, though, I find myself thinking, Just get together already, ya big dummies! while I’m writing.

  Oh, and Iori’s feelings for the Phantom are more like a form of admiration, I’d wager.

  Chapter 2: Ashes to Ashes

  Foreword

  This story takes place over three days, from August 8 through 10, 2019. The final day is Yoshimura’s birthday, on which he turns twenty-nine.

  The 2019 G20 Osaka summit plays a pivotal role in D-Genesis. Or at least it’s supposed to—the story is subtitled “Three Years after the Dungeons Appeared,” after all. Fun fact: The Japanese word for “appeared,” which can be romanized to “dekite,” was originally supposed to be written in hiragana. I wrote it that way in the webnovel version, and I still don’t quite understand how it magically changed to being in kanji for the official releases. It’s almost definitely my fault, though. Getting back on track, this story takes place after things have calmed down from the G20 summit a bit.

  Since the events here take place in the future after everything has been wrapped up, it includes bits and pieces of info from the “golden bough” segment of volume 8. If these had been normal novels, that would’ve definitely been a huge no-no (because the readers wouldn’t have had any idea what was going on), but this is the fast and loose world of webnovels, so yeah...

  By the way, that particular “tradition” of referring to events in future volumes is kept alive and well into the rest of the short stories. Ah well, can’t do anything about it now!

  Anyway, since this was my first short story, I didn’t have a good sense of how long it should be, so I ended up just writing and writing until it was pretty much the size of a novella, with no sign of nearing the end. Time went on, the release date began to loom, and the pressure was so great I thought I might expire—which is another terrible tradition that has continued into the later stories...

  For D-Genesis, there’s a roughly three-to-five-month gap between the draft being finalized and the book being published (new novels need to go through proofreading, artwork creation, etc.)—which may seem like enough time to write not only a short story, but the entire next volume. However, I’m not sure if I’m just cursed with chronic laziness, or if a so-called “holiday novelist” can only handle so much, but the best-case scenarios just never seem to happen, and the release date always manages to sneak up on me. It makes no sense...

  Prologue

  It’s sooooo hot...

  We were under the dark shadow of an umbrella planted in the burning white sand, melting like a couple of slimes. Next to me lay Miyoshi’s corpse—er, body, limbs splayed out lazily, with a straw hat pulled down over her eyes.

  “Hey...” I mumbled.

  “What is it?” Miyoshi murmured back.

  “Why are we at the beach, exactly?”

  “Well, the main volumes are stuck in perpetual winter, and this book is coming out in summer. We’ve got to give people something summer-ish as a treat at some point, right?”

  It was a bit meta for my tastes, but I could smell what she was cooking. Still—

  “Don’t you think jumping straight to the beach as an emblem for summer is about the most trite thing we could’ve done?”

  “Well, how about fireworks, then?”

  “Ah yes, bright flowers bursting across the night sky. What a lovely idea!” I groaned in a mocking voice. “Is that what you wanted me to say? Big fireworks displays in Tokyo are hot, stuffy, and crowded as hell. Summer barely even comes to mind with fireworks; I just think of the massive throngs of people.”

  “Yup, that sounds like our lovely capital to me!”

  At the busiest summer times, anyone who decided to head over to the Edo River, Sumida River, or even Odaiba might well end up in a living hell.

  “Okay, then how about wind chimes?” Miyoshi suggested.

  “Chimes made out of Nambu iron sound so refreshing when they ring! Yeah, I feel myself cooling off just by thinking about it!” My words dripped with sarcasm. “Like hell! The wind never stops blowing, and the chimes never stop chiming! The ones made out of resin or glass may look refreshing, but I swear I’d rather rip my ears off than be subjected to the obnoxious sounds they make!”

  Ah, the summer heat really brings out my inner rage.

  “Hmm, what about sprinkling water on the streets?”

  “That’s actually nice and cool when it’s done in the morning or evening,” I replied. “When I see people sprinkling water in the afternoon, though, I kind of want to scream at them to stop making the street into a damn sauna.”

  The scorching midsummer sun above was already trying its absolute hardest to cook us to death. Meanwhile, the young women around us were all oiled up, as if they were purposefully frying themselves to a delicious golden brown.

  “What is this, some kind of restaurant? Next thing you know, they’l
l be rubbing salt all over themselves too. Oh, I guess they’re already brining in the ocean, huh...”

  “You’re awfully grumpy today, Kei. We may as well just stick with the beach theme, huh?”

  “What, are you gonna be the resident swimsuit babe or something, then?”

  “H-H-How dare you look at me like someone just gave you socks for Christmas!” Miyoshi roared indignantly. “Fine, if you’re gonna call me out like that, I’ll just have to rise to the challenge, then!”

  “Huh? Sure, I guess...”

  Suddenly full of energy, Miyoshi leaped to her feet, threw off her hoodie, and struck a proud pose with her hands on her hips.

  “How about this?” It was a tankini with a crossed front, a style that had been quite popular of late. Despite her slovenly lifestyle, her waist was still rather slender, and the outfit looked pretty good on her. Yet—

  “Hmmm. I’d say the curves are a bit...understated?”

  I heard a growl escape her throat.

  “Kei, that was super-duper rude!”

  “Now, now. We can leave the swimsuit babe role to the other ladies.” I took a look around, but all I saw was either families out on summer vacation or couples enjoying themselves. And everyone in our immediate area was being all super lovey-dovey... “I think I’m gonna be sick,” I grumbled.

  “Come on, it’s no big deal! It’s right there in the title of the series!” Miyoshi declared.

  “The hell are you talking about?”

  “See, there’s a couple right there! And one over there too!”

  I stared blankly.

  “What’s your point?”

  “It’s ‘Three Years After the Dames and Gents Appeared’!”

  My entire body went limp from the sheer ridiculousness of her attempted pun.

  “We really need to find you a husband.”

  And thus we bring you a summer horror special! This story documents three days and two nights of terror and madness that befell our heroes one summer.

  Annotations

  Three Years After the Dames and Gents Appeared: A typo the author made in a Twitter post (“danjou” instead of “dungeon”). It was so ridiculous he couldn’t help but chuckle.

  Day 1

  “Nnggh...”

  I let out a funny noise as I stretched my back, having finally gotten out of the car. We had made it to the Shizugatake Service Area on the Hokuriku Expressway, and the blue summer sky stretched out as far as we could see.

  As they got out of the back seat, Saito and Mitsurugi each murmured their respective thoughts.

  “So we’re a little over four hours out from Tokyo, huh...”

  “Wow, so this is the Shizugatake SA?”

  Saito was wearing a summery sleeveless high-neck mini top with a high-waisted activewear skort, while Mitsurugi wore a long-sleeved blouse, a pair of black skinny jeans, and a straw capeline hat.

  “You were pushing for this service area really hard—but you’ve never even been here before?” I asked Mitsurugi.

  “Heh. Nope!” she replied, looking around as if she had some kind of objective to accomplish and was ready to head out to explore the area as soon as possible.

  “Saito really isn’t worried about getting sunburnt, is she?” Miyoshi observed. Mitsurugi’s outfit was quite clearly aimed at warding off potential sunburns, but Saito’s practically gleamed with a sense of liberation.

  “She said the SPF 50 sunscreen she put on wasn’t just for show,” I responded.

  “Oh, that’s right—they even protect their hair with UV spray. Actresses and models really take care of themselves, don’t they?”

  “And you don’t?”

  “I mean, I’ve got my own strategy, but compared to them it’s more like I’m just dangling my arms in front of me in a No Guard Stance.”

  “You and your references... I swear you’ve got to be lying about your age or something.”

  “Oh, stop Joe-king around, silly.”

  “Agh...”

  We had left Tokyo early in the morning, so it wasn’t even noon yet. The sun was only going to beat down on us harder as the day progressed.

  There was a reason the four of us had come out here together. Saito had shown up at our office the day before and offered to take us on a summer vacation with her. Apparently a friend of hers had invited her to stay at a villa resort ahead of its actual opening date.

  So this is what it’s like to be a celebrity! About the closest we ever usually came to that was buying Hana Celeb nasal tissues. Speaking of which, I thought the animal faces on the sides of those boxes looked kinda creepy. If you stacked a bunch of boxes in a cupboard, every time you opened it, you’re greeted by a line of cold, dead stares. But I digress.

  We weren’t sure how to respond at first, but for some reason Miyoshi ended up getting super interested in the idea. The moment she suggested we take a car because of how much luggage there would be between the three of them, that was that. Naturally, I wound up as the driver.

  “We made a pretty decent pace getting here,” I commented.

  Miyoshi snickered.

  “It’s all thanks to my brilliant navigating!”

  “What was there to even navigate? Once we got from Ohashi Junction onto Route 3, it was a straight highway the entire time. You don’t think I noticed you completely passed out with your mouth wide open?” I didn’t blame her for being tired—we had gotten up really early, and there wasn’t anything to do on the car ride besides stare at the same dull scenery for hours. Still, as the driver, I couldn’t help but get a bit irked with a passenger falling asleep on me.

  “You know, if you’d wanted to be a safe driver, you really should have kept your eyes on the road,” Miyoshi retorted, a pout on her face as she deflected my complaint with one of her own. “Besides, if I’d left it up to you, Kei, you would’ve just suggested we take the Tomei Expressway the entire way there, right?”

  Since our final destination was somewhere over toward Tsuruga Junction, we’d probably end up getting onto the Meishin Expressway at Komaki. Getting from the Tokyo Interchange to Komaki would put us on the Tomei the whole way, just as Miyoshi said. The Tomei was constructed specifically as a highway between Tokyo and Komaki, after all.

  “Probably, yeah.”

  “Listen, Kei.” Miyoshi raised her index finger as if she were admonishing a student. “If we take the Tomei Expressway all the way from Tokyo to Komaki, that would be a total of 346.7 kilometers. However, if we use the Shin-Tomei and the Isewangan Expressway as bypasses, it ends up only being 335.7 kilometers. That’s an eleven kilometer difference!”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Throwing out a perfunctory response, I stepped away from the car and over to an Ito En vending machine toward the back of the rest area, where I bought myself an Evian. The bottle fell to the bottom with a thump, and I picked it up, twisted off the cap, and took a sip—which suddenly reminded me that we still had plenty of food and drink tucked away in Storage and Vault. As I was making a mental note that we should probably work on organizing all that stuff pretty soon, I heard a cheerful, excited voice coming from somewhere off to my left.

  “Hey, Coach! Take a look at this!”

  When I turned to look, Saito had her face stuck through a photo stand-in panel that depicted the Three Azai Sisters, grinning merrily as she waved her hand at me from above the top of the board. It looked like it was based on an NHK Taiga drama from nearly ten years prior. There was no need to analyze any reports from the Development Bank of Japan to know that Taiga dramas were being used in an effort to revitalize tourism across the country.

  “Don’t tell me this is the reason you wanted to stop here?” I murmured as I took some pictures at her request, but Saito merely stuck out her tongue briefly in response. I sighed. “You might well be among the most popular actresses out there right now. What are you even doing?”

  “What do you mean, ‘might well be’? There’s no question about it!”

  “Right you are. So what’s the deal with this thing?”

  “This is a pretty old Taiga drama, right? I’m trying to pull in some of those ‘star’ vibes!”

  “So why are you sticking your face in the one on the left, then?” The stand-in panel had what looked like the three sisters lined up next to each other. The one in the center was standing a bit in front of the other two, who were both pulled slightly back.