The Place You Called From Volume 2, Afterword

Volu 2, Afterword

Recently, I wrote a short piece on a made-up term called "the sumr complex," and found it had a startlingly major influence. There are people in this world who feel "I've never once lived a proper sumr," and every ti they see things which they strongly feel to be sumr-like, they feel lancholy about the gap between their sumrs and a "proper sumr." I nad this trend the "sumr complex" for convenience; however, the term "proper sumr" which I used casually and vaguely seed to grab so people's hearts. I believe the large approving response can only be attributed to it being "proper sumr," and would not hold true for "proper spring," "proper autumn," or "proper winter."

The proper sumr. No one taught you what it was, but it exists in your mind like a mory from a past life, a primal scenery which carries a kind of nostalgia. The clearer this vision is, and the more aware of it you are, and the more estranged your sumrs are from this vision, the deeper the sumr complex. What's more, seek it as you will, the proper sumr only exists in your head. To reveal the secret: the "proper sumr" is a combination of all the countless "if only I'd"s you've had in your life. Attempting to recreate this sumr, well, it's a ga that you're set up to lose from the start. To give an comparison, it's like falling in love with a girl you only see in your dreams. Being tornted by "correctness" that doesn't really exist is a strange thing. But however foolish the vision may be, if you think just once "I wonder, is there soone who's lived a sumr like that out there?", instantly, that vision acquires the sa weight as reality.

A "proper sumr" exists in my mind too, and has continued to throw my mind into disarray since I was around 14 years old. Maybe writing a story about sumr now is struggling to at least reproduce the "proper sumr" in the pure frawork of a story. Once you're able to give appropriate nas to your feelings, that alone can lighten your mood a little. By telling of my sumr with the appropriate words, I believe I'm easing that load just a little.

- Sugaru Miaki