Ishura - Volume 6 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

Hello again. Keiso here. Thank you very much for reading the latest volume of Ishura. I believe the fifth volume went on sale in September of last year, so there’s been about a ten-month gap between volumes. I very much apologize for keeping you waiting so long. The story in Volume 6 is the climactic conclusion to the first round of the Sixways Exhibition, and with it being about a battle outside the arena, a lot of the main shura appeared at once, and I had too many things I wanted to add on…so with these various elements all mixed together, this volume turned into what is likely the longest volume I’ve written. In regard to this clumsiness on your author Keiso’s part, I hope you’ll see the wonderful job Kureta-sensei has done on the illustrations in this volume, as always, and forgive me.

Also, as of this volume, my editor, Nagahori, who has been looking after me from the very start of the Ishura series, was transferred to a different department and removed from managing this series. Nagahori has a mind for battle and scheming on par with me, the author, and was truly very well suited to working on Ishura, always making sure there were no contradictions in the characters’ thinking or ensuring there were enough moments of battle to serve as ups and downs in the plot. I wanted to use this space to express my gratitude once again for the two and half years of help. Thank you.

There is a delicious pasta dish that I would absolutely love for Nagahori to try. Up until now, the menu options have all sought simplicity when it came to prep and cleanup, but for this special occasion, I’d like to outline a slightly better pasta recipe to bring out when it really counts. I call it the Nagahori Special.

This is an extremely important step, but before you begin your prep, make sure you have plenty of ice in your freezer. Once you begin cooking, you definitely won’t be able to get this ice ready…

Once you begin boiling your pasta in a microwave pasta cooker, first, crush a single cube’s worth of consommé. I imagine it’ll be rigid and impossible to fully pulverize, but there’s no real need to whittle it down with a grater. You’ll just have more dishes to wash. Put the cube on a microwave-safe plate, and if you wet it with a tiny bit of water and microwave it for about thirty seconds, it’ll make it easier to smash up. For those of you who already have powdered consommé, you just need to measure out five grams of it, making it much easier.

Next, heat up garlic in about a tablespoon’s worth of olive oil. In my case, whenever I specify garlic, I am never referring to raw garlic, but the glass bottles of minced garlic. This is much more convenient than totally normal garlic, and not only is it possible to preserve, but there’s also no need to mince or grate it yourself, and it’s seasoned from the start to be compatible with pretty much any type of cooking, so unless you are quite picky about your garlic, it’s much more convenient to have this on hand. Incidentally, you heat up this minced garlic until it’s golden brown, but you could actually just take it from this point, toss however much you like over some raw veggies, and turn it into salad dressing. I encourage you to give it a try.

Now, once the garlic’s cooked, turn off the heat, and thoroughly dissolve the broken-up consommé in the olive oil that cooked the garlic, and let it cool down. While that is happening, it’s time to cut up the ingredients you’ll be adding into it.

First, you’ll use half of an apple. Cut this down even farther into a quarter, then cut one fragment into cubes and the other into thin slices. If that’s a bit troublesome, though, you could thinly slice them both or dice them both; it doesn’t matter. I also peel off the skin, but if that’s a pain, feel free not to.

From there, cut the mozzarella that they sell in the supermarket into bite-size pieces. There’s the other version of mozzarella that’s already prepared to be put on pizza, but this time we’ll be using fresh mozzarella, the type that’s submerged in water. You can get away with just a third of the mozzarella you normally find on the shelves, but feel free to add as much as you like.

Then, take the cut-up apple and mozzarella, put them in a bowl along with the garlic oil you dissolved the consommé in, throw in three to four ice cubes, mix in a teaspoon of lemon juice, and it’s finished.

I believe the pasta in the microwave will finish cooking while you’re doing all of this, but rinse the boiled pasta in cold water to cool it, add in all the leftover ice you didn’t put in the bowl, and basically get it as freezing cold as possible.

Add the pasta to the bowl, mix it well, and then sprinkle it with as many hand-torn leaves of arugula or basil as you would like, and the Nagahori Special is finished.

I imagine there might be some of you reading this who question if the flavor of apples goes well with consommé and garlic-seasoned cold pasta, but I am very proud of this tasty dish, as it allows you to savor the fragrance of the olive oil and garlic through the sweet and acidic taste of the apple, and it’s a dish I’d like to make every week if my financial situation allowed me to buy fresh mozzarella whenever I wanted.

If the name of this pasta dish ends up being passed on through the ages, then I’m sure Ishura’s original editor, Nagahori, will be called the modern-day Earl of Sandwich! I would love it if my readers were to give this recipe a try in their own homes.

Furthermore, this volume of Ishura, like all the ones before it, is a product that has arrived in your hands thanks to the help of many people throughout the process, from proofreading and book binding to distribution, marketing, and more. Although my editor is the only person I interact with directly, every person across the entire process has done their absolute best, and I’m certain their contributions were just as extraordinary as my editor’s. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that the Nagahori Special, to all these individuals, may as well be called the [Insert Name Here] Special. Please do refer to it as such, and consider it a reward for your hard work.

Though I ended up saving this until the end, I already owe a great deal to Nagahori’s successor and my new editor, Satou, for helping me with the cover illustration and the revision back and forth…! I believe the seventh volume onward will be when I begin giving them trouble in earnest (?), but they are another editor with strong feelings for the Ishura series, and at some point, I’d like to create a Satou Special for them, too. To all of you readers as well, I hope that you’ll keep watch over Ishura and the great efforts of the editors overseeing it.