Origins: Aster Rose isn’t a thing. But you couldn’t tell me that in 2023 when I was listening to Klaatu’s second studio album “Hope” for the millionth time. What does their loneliest creature have to do with a boy and girl in Toyono? Nothing, pretty much. But the flower stuck in my head because of me mishearing “Beware all ships, the space graveyard and its stones of asteroids” as “stones of aster rose”. It’s probably not too hard to understand the mistake, but through that I did stumble on Aster, and it related very well to an expression I wrote a few years ago which would become the opening scene of “The Seed of Wilted Aster”

Seed: The expression was quite similar to that opening scene. The formlessness and the box as representation. It wasn’t an abstract piece, per se, but it was an attempt at a higher philosophical tilt than I was able to write at the time. It was an improvement and a great exercise, but it wasn’t something that had any value in proliferation. A concept piece for work later on, and which I was able to re-adjust and edit quite heavily. Well, maybe “edit” is wrong. Seed is quite straightly entirely different than the original concept, it’s really only the general form of the piece, rather than any of the pathos, that was inherited. It’s use in Free: Marigolds in the Trunk Space section is much more directly related to the origin piece. That said, violence is not always a foretold thing, you know? To a degree I’m a thief, and for that I’m not sorry. Eat my pancreas for all I care, a guy can be inspired and pay homage.

Rose: Like I said, that’s not really a thing. Nishiki though, he’s a character, isn’t he? His brand of circular thinking is just slightly different and yet very unique in its differences. At once clearly a teenage boy going through a complicated puberty, at twice a possessor of an interesting notion hidden beneath the surface. A forgotten notion, and forgotten expressions. Have words ever left blood-stained lips? There are questions to that, and the story is mostly to ask them. Who is Shouko? And what the hell is up with that ending? Well, this and that I suppose. What is Shouko? That day he certainly was her to some extent, but he is himself and she is something not quite him. Something else. Repeated motions and defenses, memories? Nobody that night looked at the form Nishiki, they only looked at Shouko, but all of their eyes were indeed on the figure which later cried in his bedroom because of a memory he could not recall.

Peach: Just because it’s in the series doesn’t mean it has to be named in it, right? Well, is it a part of the series? Technically yes, at least I say so, and I’m the guy who wrote it, so bully. The title, then, is not Suyuki, not Nishiki, but that brief image of a good friend in Momozuki Reiga. I try to make a pun whenever I can, sue me. I wanted the blossoms and a very nice spring flower, but obviously saved Cherry Blossom for that other series of over-bearing nonsense. Peach Blossom then, wintered for a long time until a young boy melts it with his warmth, the inherited heat of circumstance and no more. No divinity, no Will, not even Fate. Just people in the same place at the same time. Just the randomly chosen delivery-kids, just the teenage girl with free time, just the boy who happened to need a babysitter sometimes, just the girl whose friend meant more to her than her own true happiness. Yeah, it is a love triangle, but I think reducing it to that is bad faith. I watched a popular series where the final two seasons were the breakdown and follow-through of a love triangle, and it was some of the best romance I have ever seen. Yes, it is an anime, yes, it would be too pretentious to name it. I’m not saying this is equal to that, or necessarily that they are comparable except in a general sense, but I have a soft spot for romance. Partly because it is an uncomplicated genre that lends itself greatly to the particular brand of internalization which I like to write. Philosophically? I think Love is the best thing in the world. But, hey, don’t take my word for it, John Lennon already told you it’s all you need pal.

Conclusion (3/9/26): The trilogy is not supposed to be a trilogy. After I wrote Peach Blossom a lot happened, I started working on YuToSo in earnest and once the first draft of Act 1 was finished I meandered into a broken jaw and a forced hiatus. After I healed up I went and did the Sakura and Mishima stories which have been completed so far, and it’s only recently that I’ve considered returning to Toyono and Nomaguchi. I have a concept for at least one more story to cap it off, and generally I know where Nishiki goes in life. But I’d like to write two if at all possible. One for Nishiki to close it out and another for that inheritance theme, carrying on the heat to another person, so that we can more easily carry it on to the girl whose beginning I have written into a whole Act. Nishiki’s Mother’s maiden name is Genjou, in case you were curious. They’re difficult stories, and writing something like a conclusion is difficult enough without that kind of narrative weight. That said, it’s not right to leave Nishiki in the bedroom crying like that.