Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume3 Chapter3 5

Who's Suga Sei? Part 5.

"It was actually a big enough incident that it ran on newspapers, but sarcastically speaking, the war helped everyone forget about it."

Suga Sei, or Kasuga Seiko-san, said, staring into the distance.

It was an "oh" feeling when she explained the pen name was simply the removal of a letter at the end of each name, and thus it was conceived simply.

Kasuga Seiko became Suga Sei. No matter how much she thought about it, she kept thinking, "Oh."

Satou Sei turning into Sugar Sei, thus linking "Satou Sei" and Suga Sei was such a more brilliant tinkering of a name.

But the real person didn't even realize Satou turned into sugar (Suga) until the three mentioned it, so upon mentioning, Sasaki-san and Seiko-san both roared with laughter. They thought it was just a simple mix-up of the name "Sei."

"Um… if it was enough to have run in newspapers, does that mean the story was true?"

Rei-sama scolded Yoshino-san, "That's rude!" when she asked the question, but Kasuga-san didn't seem to mind.

"I re-wrote the setting so young girls could imagine it more easily, and I changed the names a bit, but everything is almost precisely true. Kahori's name was actually Saori, and I'm Seiko, see?"

They had decided to tweak things out of respect for those concerned and alive.

But of course that meant the two had indeed tried to commit double suicide. It was hard to believe the grandmother in front of them had done something that severe.

So that they wouldn't be found, they walked into a forest, holding hands, and drank sleeping pills, one at a time. So they would be together forever in a different world.

"But the ending was wrong, apparently."

Apparently, Kasuga-san said, like it was someone else's business. It seemed strange for the author of "Forest of Thorns" to take that sort of attitude to it, but her explanation made it understandable.

"I had no idea Saori was alive until we received the phone call yesterday. She thought I'd died, too. Because the local newspaper that I was able to get a glimpse of read, 'One dead, one in critical condition.'"

"One dead?"

"They didn't publish the names, so of course, we'd assume the other was the one that died."

Kasuga-san chuckled.

"Why did such an article…"

"It was an accidental misunderstanding. I checked the newspaper archives at the library yesterday, and found out that they printed a recant the next day, along with an apology. But our parents probably took advantage of the mistake. That was probably the only way to split us up, after all."

So, "Sei and Kahori," or Seiko-san and Saori-san, both lived decades believing the other had passed away.

"Perfect, I have an idea, Kasuga-san. You could write a sequel to 'Forest of Thorns.'"

Sasaki-san suddenly switched into work mode and presented the idea.

"One day, you received a call from Kahori, whom you thought had already died. And that's where the story starts…"

"Indeed. But reality would be chasing us from afar."

Kasuga-san intended to go meet Saori-san. On Christmas Eve, decades after they'd been separated.

"We've both lived this long, it might be a gift from God."

Apparently, Cosmos Books intended to take a more flexible position regarding Suga Sei's identity. While they were eating lunch, Kasuga-san and Sasaki-san were speaking about that.

While they wouldn't release any profiling information, they would take a stronger stance toward making sure people wouldn't make the wrong assumption. That would hopefully prevent cases like Rosa Gigantea being needlessly bothered.

By the way, Suga Sei apparently had two reasons for being published under a pen name.

The first is that Kasuga-san was actually the chairman of a company, and so publishing under her real name would be a hindrance. The other was that they wanted to suppress the author's profile to uphold readers' image of Sei, from "Forest of Thorns." Because it was an autobiographical novel, the readers would end up wanting to see who the author is, but if the author was an old lady, their dreams would be shattered, is what they thought.

But Yumi thought that kind of dream wouldn't be shattered by looking at the old lady in front of her.

Because she was such a fantastic grandmother.

Let's meet again, Kasuga-san and Sasaki-san said, before they vanished into the back of the building. When she looked at her watch, it read five thirty, and Kyuuteisha was beginning to close its doors, too.

"Again, she said."

Yoshino-san laughed.

"Maybe she means in a book?"

Rei-sama mumbled.

"Ah."

After the door shut behind them, as they trudged forth, Yumi suddenly remembered.

"Umm, so in the end, how does Saori-san and Lillian connect?"

"Uh."

"Uh."

Yoshino-san and Rei-sama both squealed, in canon.

Even if they wanted to go back, the doors were locked, and since it wasn't really an emergency, they didn't have the courage to request the doors be unlocked for them. And even if they managed to do that, they didn't want to trouble Sasaki-san and Kasuga-san by calling them to the front again, so they gave up.

Anyways, a lot of things happened today, so they were already quite exhausted. They wanted to go home and take a bath. Otherwise they'd continue to be flustered.

Plus, as Yumi carefully sorted out everything she found out today, she remembered another big thing.

(I should have asked for an autograph…)

Ahh, gosh. Why now? She hated herself.

Return to Main Page

Back to Part 4

Forward to Chapter 4 Part 1