86 - Volume 13 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD

It feels like I never have enough space for idle chatter here, doesn’t it? Hello, everyone, this is Asato Asato. An extra-thick 86—Eighty Six, Volume 13, is here for your reading pleasure!

• The subtitle:

It’s not Deer, but Dear. And Jaeger means “Hunter” in German. And so it means, “To My Dear Hunter”—Citri’s feelings for Dustin. Though, they never reach him.

• The chapter titles:

This time, I used waka poetry as the theme. Incidentally, Citri’s name references the plover in the poem used for Chapter 5’s title:

Prologue: When I Gaze Up to the Distant Heavens, Is the Spring Moon, the Same as Mount Wakakusa

Chapter 1: I Utter the Name, Asking the Gull, If My Beloved Still Lives (Source: Kokin Wakashu, Proofread and Annotated by Umetomo Saeki, Iwanami Shouten, January 1981)

Chapter 2: We Departed, Vowing Never to Forget, to See Each Other’s Visage in Our Hometown’s Moon

Chapter 3: How Is the Gull, Who Lives Not in the Capital, to Answer One’s Fears

Chapter 4: As the Grudges Linger, I Ask the Gull, for My Beloved

Chapter 5: The Moonlight Shineth, as the Plover Crying Out My Feelings, Leaves the Shore of Okitsu (Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu, Part 1, Proofread and Annotated by Jun Kubota, KADOKAWA, March 2007)

Now, for some thanks.

To my editors, Tabata and Nishimura. I’m glad every chapter, from one all the way to five, made you scream. I did it!

To Shirabii. Yuuto and Citri look so good on the cover. I wish I could stare at them forever…!

To I-IV. The Azhi Dahāka is just too cool. I really regret we couldn’t show it in the anime. I’d love to see it in motion…!

To Somemiya. Lena and the tiny Eighty-Six in Magical Girl Regina   Lena are so cute, I’m always excited to see them. It’s just an explosion of adorableness. The Magical Girl Saint   Magnolia is gorgeous, too!

And to all the readers who read this volume. The next volume kicks off the last arc of 86. It’s the final arc, with Shin, Lena, and the Eighty-Six having matured enough to face the enemy from the beginning of the series: the malice of humankind that seals off the battlefield—the malice they once yielded to.

The final arc is the Eighty-Sixth Sector arc. I invite you to see it to its conclusion.

Music playing while writing this afterword:

“Haikyo to Rakuen” by Akiko Shikata