A novel by Matsumoto Izumi and Terada Kenji
(C) 1995 I.MATSUMOTO K.TERADA
ISBN 4-08-703035-3 C0093
Printed in Japan
Published by Kabushiki Gaisha Shueisha
Tokyo-to Chiyoda-ku
Hitotsu-bashi 2-5-10 JAPAN 101-50
Translation by Peter Payne
c/o Yanai Shoten 4235 Hashie-cho
Isesaki-shi JAPAN 372
http://www.peterpayne.net
Translator's notes
Many factors conspired to keep this translation from getting completed,
not the least of which included the school I taught ESL at sinking into
financial troubles, leaving me with no paycheck for up to a month, me running
a full-time business in my spare time, and planning two more. But I kept
plugging away at it, one page at a time, and though it took nearly a year,
SHIN KIMAGURE ORANGE ROAD II: The Pyramid Murder Mystery is finally
done.
As with the last translation, this is completely unofficial and done without
the prior knowledge or consent of the authors or publishers of the original
Japanese work. It was not done for the purpose of profit or intention of
denying it to the authors or publishers. Rather, it was made for the purpose
of enlightening fans of Orange Road who aren't lucky enough to read Japanese.
I make no profit from this.
I strongly encourage all fans of Orange Road to find a copy of the Japanese
version of this novel. One of Jump's new "Jump Books" line of
manga-like novels, it has many nice illustrations that enhance appreciation
of the story in the way it was intended by the author. To encourage you
to buy the novel and support Mr. Matsumoto and Mr. Terada, I will not make
scans of the images available on any ftp site (although others may).
Distribution: This document may be freely transmitted in its full form but
not sold for profit. It may be included on any ftp site, CD ROM collection,
and so on. It may be edited for the purpose of turning it into, say, an
HTML document, but other editing or changing of this text itself is not
allowed. If you find too many errors in the text (they are there, trust
me), please mark them with [square] brackets and email the file to me; I
will make changes and announce a new version on rec.arts.anime.*. I was
less than pleased to find several "improved" versions of the last
novel running around the Internet (including one that consited of a guy
from the Netherlands "correcting" my American expressions by changing
them into British English). If there are things you think should be changed,
run them by me and I'll probably agree.
The last translation was a "postcard" translation, and I recieved
many (something like 40) nice postcards from people all over the world.
Thanks to you all. In the tradition of Dragthing, a cool Macintosh utility
by James Thomson, this translation is "something coolware": If
you read it and enjoy it, please send me something cool. Cool things are
anything from some nice snack food that I can't eat in the U.S. (living,
as I do, in a small town in central Japan) to a videotape of some neato
American TV shows to an autographed photo of David Duchovny or Gillian Anderson
to a Power Macintosh 8500. I don't care if the item you send me is of any
monetary value--anything cool would be, well, cool.
In the past year I have set up an Internet business selling Japanese pop
items over the Internet. I sell anime and manga items, Japanese CDs and
idol-related stuff, as well as a few items for people over the age of 18.
I have rather a lot of stuff, so take a few minutes and check the pages
out, and see if there isn't something of interest to you. The URL is www.jlist.com. I will be officially re-open
for business October 1st with many new features.
I am also involved with a company called JAST USA (www.jastusa.com)
that is bringing interactive RPG-style adult anime games to America. If
you are interestd in these products, please stop by that web site or email
me for more information.If you are over eighteen, of course.
As you read the translation, I would like you to keep in mind a few things
about this novel. First of all, although Internet features heavily in this
work, I am not certain that the author knew was he was talking about all
the time. For example, homepages are often refered to as BBSs, UNIX is referred
to as a brand of computer "alongside IBM-PC and Mac" etc. I have
made this translation reflect what was written in the original text as closely
as possible, so no flames on tech issues, please.
Finally, for all those who wondered why tense agreement was virtually nonexistant
in the translation fo the first KOR novel, again "I'm just the translator
droid": it is an element of the writing style of Mr. Matsumoto, and
to a degree Japanese sentence structure in general, to _not_ have verb tense
agreement in the sense that we have it in English. Thus you have the Kyosuke-centered
narrator in a Kyosuke "scene" telling his story in the first person,
past tense, with sudden first-person present-tense commentary, all mixed
neatly together. Okay? Are we clear on this? There is NO WAY to make the
KOR novels have tense agreement without throwing out te original intentions
of the author.
I would like to thank the one beta reader who didn't just disappear when
I sent the rough draft of the novel for them to read and comment on, Robert
Kwong. He gave the manuscript a good reading and made many good recommendations
to me, saving the text from some stupid errors. He has some fine homepages
at http://www-ucsee.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rk/Kor.html
and http://www-ucsee.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rk/HardKor.html,
and his email address is rk@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU.
Also, thanks to Edwin Koshimoto for scanning some images for me when I was
busy with other projects.
Thank you. Please enjoy the novel.
Peter R. Payne
October 1995 ~ September, 1996