I have almost nothing to say about Alfred’s story in terms of notes. His translation was very straight-forward and I think this is the fastest I’ve ever translated a story!
The one thing I thought needed explaining is in the Sun Route, Alfred offers the protagonist Kifu. There wasn’t a good way to translate this into English, so I simply romanized the Japanese. Kifu translates to ‘noble rot’ which doesn’t sound at all appealing to someone who knows absolutely nothing about wine (like me). So naturally I had to look it up because Alfred doesn’t really explain it in the story. Noble rot is a type of beneficial fungus that grows on wine grapes and, if the grapes are harvested at the right time, they can create a very fine, sweet wine. So Alfred’s choice for the evening is a sweet wine, which he says is the color of the stars… which I don’t think is accurate but he’s being all romantic and stuff, so just roll with it. That is the one and only thing I have for translation notes on Alfred!