Afterword

Speaking of screentime, Tsukasa is my favorite UM character so far, yet I didn't get to draw her very much either. She got a spot on the cover in exchange, but... I also didn't get to feature Iizunamaru at all, but I figure it'd interesting if she was trying to outmaneuver the Moriya Shrine even while working together on the surface. I wanna draw something like that sometime, too... The "onbashira market" briefly touched upon at the end is the thing from Sanae's "Another Ending". The endings have a lot of material to turn into books, like "Rainbow Devil Mansion" for instance. By which I mean I've already thought about that story quite a bit, but decided to show some restraint and not use the SDM for a second time in a row after "Sakunya".

This is my 46th book. Zounose here. "Was Unconnected Marketeers cool or what!? Right!?" This book is a celebration of that. It was fun!! I've been really busy with work for about the past year, so I had a lot of fatigue built up and was actually planning to take a break from doujin work until this fall or so, but I lost to the desire to draw a UM book.

Truth be told, I have the plot prepared for another UM book already (or actually, I wrote it before this one). I plan to draw that for some fall event. Seeing as I came up with plots for two books within 10 days of the game coming out, you know the New Game Effect is really strong. It's gonna be a pretty independent story with basically no connection to this one, probably just a whole book of chit-chat with the entire UM cast.

Next up, as mentioned above, I'm planning that UM all-cast book for Kouroumu, Autumn Reitaisai or something. It takes place on a marketplace, so I guess I'm gonna have a lot of pesky scenery and characters to draw... But I do love drawing doujinshi, after all, so mentally it's really recharging! I should probably rest my body for a bit after that, though... But, well then. I hope we can meet again.

So, this was basically a made-up prequel for UM itself. Or, well. If you think about it, basically everything in a fanmade doujin work is "made-up", right? But making it a direct prequel just ramps up the feeling of made-up-ness, right?? I originally thought I'd feature Shion more and make this more of a fluffy, "daily life of the pitiful poverty god" kind of story, but in the end, I wanted to give Chimata the center stage, so this is how it turned out. Because of that, though, Shion got less screentime than I'd intended. That, I kind of regret. I'd like to draw the Yorigami sisters more, but I just can't seem to get a lot of chances or ideas for them.