City Series:Volume7a Prologue

[Translation Note: This is an illustration novel, so every single page is an illustration with a small amount of text. I can't exactly upload the entire 150-page raw novel here, so I have instead given a short text description of the illustrations in square brackets. That said, the illustrations are the real heart of this novel, so I highly recommend tracking down the illustrations yourself if possible]

Prologue: Painting

1999 summer

Page 1

[Sarah is sleeping]

[Sarah hits her IZUMO-brand alarm clock]

Morning comes early in Image City San Francisco.

I was out last night drinking, singing, dancing, and partying with my friends, but my alarm clock starts ringing at 4 in the morning.

Such an awful sound when you haven’t even gotten 3 hours of sleep.

I don’t really have a choice, so I stop the clock with a good whack and try to wake up as cheerfully as possible.

It’s about time for my first job of the morning. I don’t have time for breakfast, which sucks.

Page 2

The calendar shows it’s late September. Summer is going to be over soon.

I decide to invite everyone to the beach after work today and get dressed.

It’s already half past four, but it’s still completely dark outside.

[Sarah looks unhappily at the darkness out the window]

But of course it is. I’m in charge of the eastern sky and here I am still at home. I should probably get going before City Hall calls.

And once I’m done, I can grab some breakfast on the beach in my swimsuit.

[Sarah gets dressed]

“Right?”

[Sarah looks to the floor while brushing her hair]

I say that to Beretta who’s playing with my Disdemon wings, but he of course doesn’t understand and tilts his head at me.

He’s like a symbol of a carefree life.

[Beretta, a three-tail fox looks up at Sarah from the floor.]

Page 3

Okay, I’m all dressed.

I grab Halifax, the IZUMO-brand Mouse Device you could say is my weapon or the tool of my trade.

After shoving Beretta and a disposable Grid Seeker in my coat pocket, it’s time to head out.

My job is to redraw the city’s night as morning.

[Dressed and equipped, Sarah leaves home]

Once outside, I find the air is so much chillier than yesterday. A familiar coworker sends me some information: “Hi, Sarah. I’ve heard your territory will be given the autumn paints starting tomorrow.”

I see. I run down the slope, push Beretta back into my pocket, and leap. I dive into the city night.

Part 4

[Sarah flies into the moonlit sky above the city]

I open my fantastic wings in the city’s night breeze.

They’re Disdemon wings.

Heaven and earth both hate these black and gold wings, but I think they look great in the city lights.

I soar to my workplace as if dancing in the wind.

Page 5

[Sarah readies her tools in the sky]

My workplace is the in the sky.

I have to redraw that sky from night to morning.

I stab the Grid Seeker into the sky canvas to set up the masking.

I roll out Halifax to redraw the messages of the Lives in the area I have defined. I have to redraw it into a morning sky.

Message Open.

But just as I’m about to start, I notice my mistake.

Uh, oh!

[Close up of Sarah’s shocked and sweating face]

A part of the sky isn’t contained by the masking!

If I redraw the sky now, that part will stay night.

That’s not good.

I must have positioned the Grid Seeker wrong.

A careless mistake.

There isn’t time to head back home and grab another Grid Seeker, but this is going to mean more than an apology and a fine.

What do I do?

Pages 6-7

[Beretta reaches for Sarah’s wing]

[Sarah pulls out a feather]

It hits me when Beretta reaches from my pocket to play with my wing.

The very next moment, I pull one of the gold and black feathers from my wing and Bust it with Halifax. I create a spare Grid Seeker.

I immediately stab it into space and it stays put.

This is working. Now for the real Message Open.

Everyone is preparing for autumn, but I love the summer. Unfortunately, summer will be over soon.

So I draw out a blazing summer morning.

I draw such a bright morning my fantastic wings pale in comparison.

[Sarah redraws the night into the morning with Halifax]

I draw it all at once!

Page 8

After doing one of my best jobs for the year’s last summer morning, I spread my wings and fall.

[Sarah falls toward the city with a big smile on her face]

Now, time for breakfast on the beach in a swimsuit!

Page 9

When I look into the sky from the beach, I see one of my feathers sticking into the year’s final summer sky.

My wing misses the feather, but I’m sure I’ll have grown a new one by next summer.

Surely.

[In casual clothing, Sarah points up at her feather in the sky for her two friends (one with a prosthetic arm) to see]

The end of image.

Finish

Kawa-Commentary

Prologue: Painting

I’ll be giving a lot of pointless commentary here.

• Overall

This was actually a trial chapter published in Dengeki hp before SF was serialized. That’s why some of the details differ from what comes later. For example, this one said “Image-City” at the top of each page’s frame.

• Page 1

Sarah generally sleeps on her side since she has wings.

There are beds on the market designed for winged species to sleep on their back, but differences in everyday habits mean few people buy them. (Hospitals have that kind of bed for winged species to rest in after abdominal surgery.)

Beretta isn’t in the bed with her because his actual bed is in the hall. He still comes to sleep in Sarah’s better-heated room when it’s cold.→See Chapter 6

The clock is an IZUMO product. In Japan, IZUMO was absorbed by their branch company IAI after a scandal in 1999, but the IZUMO brand remains in use overseas.

• Page 2

The view scrolls through the room to match Sarah’s movements, but you can see a bit of a sofa below the window in panel 3. Beretta is in the room now, but is that because Sarah opened the door, or because Sarah always lets him in after getting up? I feel like it’s the latter.

• Page 3

SF (in real life) is a city with lots of slopes, so its residential areas have a lot stairs and hills. The lines you can see on the road in panel 3 are for a city train or a cable car. Sarah is actually drawn there below the dialogue, but can you actually see her?

Sarah and her coworkers work under a leader who assigns them different parts of SF to redraw. Sarah does the sky and he might do a part of the city itself, for example.

• Page 4

Sarah spreads her wings. They usually only look like 2, but it’s actually 6 with 3 on each side.

She is flying toward the bay and you can’t see the clock tower tree, so that must be to the north. She likes working over the ocean because no one complains if she does a half-assed job, but she might also just like how it feels to fly.

• Page 5

The Grid Seeker and such are only used for big jobs, so we won’t be seeing them again after this. Oops.

This infodumps a bunch about her equipment and how she does her drawing, but Halifax and the rest are all IZUMO products. That is a famous corporation that also makes Rhythms and Devices, so they have a partnership with the SF City Hall. Sarah also personally prefers IZUMO products.

• Pages 6-7

That’s the Golden Gate Bridge you can see at the bottom.

That thing at the lower center of Page 7 is the Grid Seeker.

• Page 8

She jumps down. That’s SF’s coast, but the sunlight and the quantity of plastic greenhouses visible in the city below means this is the east side. The clouds floating low over the city below are because of how chilly it is in the morning.

• Page 9

This beach is the same one you could see on the previous page. Sarah’s two friends are already shown here, but I feel like Army (Kawakami Nickname for the one with a prosthetic arm – the other one is Plainy) would need to waterproof her arm before going to the beach…

Anyway, that’s how SF begins.

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