(Published in Dragon Literature · Light Novel Vol. 16 Preface)

　　Quite a few girls who read my books have said something similar to me: "It must be very happy to be your girlfriend, right? Having someone to tell stories before sleep, and when happy, suddenly pouting and asking to play a certain role in the story."

　　Usually, I treat such remarks as compliments, smile, and let them pass. But there are some girls who truly love stories and playing their own roles within them; they will discuss this topic with me repeatedly. At those times, I tell them that my wife has never appeared in my novels even once. If I happen to use certain details related to her, I always skirt around them, substituting them with her toys or pets—for example, Erii's Rilakkuma and little yellow duck with the tags still on, or those two bossy, lazy cats in the Black Stone Residence.

　　I don't know if every writer is like me, holding a certain reverence for books, terrified that the events in the story will turn into reality.

　　There is an idiom that describes this very thing, called "Yi Yu Cheng Chen" (a single remark becomes a prophecy).

　　Chen (谶), is a character rarely used nowadays; it is pronounced chen, in the fourth tone.

　　During the Qin and Han dynasties, wizards and alchemists invented the theory of "Chen Wei" (prophecy and incantation), meaning that while the Way of Heaven can be surmised, it cannot be spoken directly and can only be told through riddles. It implies that things set down in writing are sometimes the hidden language of fate, eventually becoming reality.

　　Because there are so many things in the world that go against human wishes, sometimes when reviewing old writings after the fact, one discovers that unintentional jokes from the past later became heartbreaking facts. One would probably wish to take a knife and chop off the wrist that wrote those words back then, right?

　　People who hold reverence always feel that, somewhere in the unseen, there is a book recording all the joys, sorrows, separations, and reunions of this world. We cannot edit it nor read it in advance; we can only wait quietly for events to happen one by one, eventually regretting them too late. But even your late regret is written in that book. All you can do is not write down those prophetic words yourself.

　　The terrible thing is, this matter seems to always be entangling me.

　　When I was in the United States, I wrote a story about a Reaper chatting with a girl on a balcony every night. Because the Reaper feared sunlight, the time they met was inverted from the rest of the world, and they always parted hastily when the sky began to brighten. I wrote that story because my girlfriend at the time was in China. There was half a world of distance between China and the US; her daytime was always late night in the US. So I always slept very late, waiting for her to come online to chat, living a life inverted from everyone else.

　　I had been cautiously unwilling to publish that story because it was a story written for a specific person, and its ending was a tragedy. Until later, when my girlfriend also came to the US to study in another city, and I felt the relationship had stabilized, only then did I authorize it to a publisher. On the night we finalized the contract, my girlfriend called, crying but firmly saying she wanted to break up because she had fallen for someone else.

　　For many days after that, I read that story repeatedly, recalling the joys and sorrows between the lines, but I couldn't figure out if I had already subconsciously realized the crisis beforehand. For a period after the breakup, we still contacted each other occasionally. She complained that I didn't really love her, and had never even written a story for her. I said I did write one for you; I pasted every paragraph to you as I wrote it. She said she didn't feel that story had anything to do with her.

　　Years later, looking back on this, I don't blame that girl. I just feel I was such a fool when I was young; even if there was a coal mine buried in my heart, the outer shell was still cold.

　　For the next few years, I never wrote stories for girlfriends again, until I couldn't hold back and wrote a story about a loser falling in love with a goddess, flying a plane to save her when the whole city was about to sink underground.

　　Not only that, but I very cunningly split the girlfriend at the time into two people—the female lead and the secondary female lead were both her—and split myself into two people as well; the male lead and the secondary male lead were both me.

　　At the time, publishing that book would have earned me hundreds of thousands in royalties, and I wasn't exactly financially well-off then, but I kept it out of my publishing plan. To me, it was a taboo object, like the bottommost block in a stack of building blocks; it must never be pulled out. But later, problems finally arose between us. After a long stalemate, perhaps it was time to end it. During that time, a publishing company kept asking me for the publishing rights to that book, so I gave it to them.

　　A few days after the publishing contract was signed, we each deleted the other's contact information.

　　Interestingly, she didn't think that story was related to her either, although many bystanders said they could tell at a glance.

　　Later on, I got married. My relationship with my wife has been very good from the moment we met, through our dating, to our marriage. We haven't had conflicts, and melodramatic, thrilling breakup plots certainly haven't happened, but I still haven't written her into my books.

　　My wife is a very open-minded person and has never asked me why I haven't written a story for her. If she were to ask, I would tell her that I can think of a story for her and tell it to her slowly over many days, but I will never write down a single word. That will be a story known only to two people; not even Fate will know. We might forget many details of that story, but it doesn't matter; if we forget, we'll just write new parts and rewrite it. It will be a constantly updating story, until finally, it is completely different from the initial story, just like a trickle flowing until it becomes a river and an ocean. But it just won't land on paper, let alone be published.

　　I must treat those people and things I care about most with great caution—holding reverence for spirits and gods for her, remaining silent for her, and also wielding a sword for her.

　　In this world, there actually are stories that exist for her; it's just that others don't know.