Afterword
If you were to define the word “perspective,” you might go with something to the tune of “one’s personal manner of looking at something.” “One” in this context generally means an individual—either “you” or “someone else”—but it seems to me that you could take it a step further and subdivide your own personal perspective as well. What I mean, in simple terms, is that over the course of a lifetime, the same person can hold all sorts of different opinions and perspectives. Which is obvious, right?
Let’s look at an example—a power in a certain popular manga that allows its user to create a vacuum cleaner that can suck up anything nonliving. That leads to the question: what exactly distinguishes living and nonliving objects, anyway? Are viruses living? What about individual parts of the human body? How much time has to pass after your heart stops for you to count as a corpse?
Those are all questions that one has to rely on their own perspective on life and death to answer, and that answer is likely to change over the course of one’s existence. Change is a natural thing, after all—in fact, not changing is dangerous. That’s why, if supernatural powers with effects that varied depending on one’s perspective really existed, I’m convinced that those powers’ effects would change as time passed by. Of course, all that is just my own personal perspective on the matter, and I might have a totally different one by this time next year!
With all that out of the way, it’s been a while! This is Kota Nozomi, and this has been this series’ momentous tenth volume! Unlike all the previous volumes, I wrote this one after having already seen the anime adaptation in its entirety, which you might be able to guess judging by its content. The anime may be over, but the novels will be carrying on for a while longer, so I hope you stick with them! Oh, also, an extremely petty fun fact: “Futaba” and “Hinoemata” are both names of towns in Fukushima.
Next, some thanks. To my editor, Nakamizo: thank you once again for your work on this book! It sort of feels like you’ve been telling me over and over that this is a critical moment for us for the past year straight, but somehow, I get the feeling that said critical moment is still far from over yet. I guess every moment in life is a critical one, when it all comes down to it. Then, to the cover artist and character designer, 029: thank you once again for your beautiful illustrations! I guess this turned out to be Kudou’s first color appearance, didn’t it? Next, to the interior illustrator, Saito from Studio TRIGGER: thank you for your wonderful illustrations as well! I never imagined the anime’s staff would go on to work on the novels too, and I’m looking forward to working with you in the future. And, finally, I offer my greatest and most sincere of thank-yous to all the readers who’ve kept reading all the way through volume 10!
And, that’s all! May we meet again, if the fates allow it!
Kota Nozomi
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