Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and The Inexperienced Me - Volume 4 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

Thank you for reading volume 4!

This time, the story spanned late autumn and the winter. I feel like winter memories are bittersweet—is that the same for all of you too?

As I wrote this volume, I recalled a Christmas Eve when I was a high school senior and college entrance exams were right around the corner. I remember going out with friends from my school who went to the same cram school too. We used a break between classes to go into town—it was full of couples. We bought a whole Christmas cake at a convenience store on the spur of the moment and binged on it in our classroom. It was a bittersweet experience at the time, but now that memory only makes me nostalgic.

Irregular things are more likely to stay with us, aren’t they? I’m sure that even when Ryuto becomes an adult, he’ll look back fondly on the events of this winter.

Speaking of memories, photo booths are a fond one for me. I sometimes write works with gyaru characters (a gyaru appears in Otakusou no Kusatte Yagaru Ojousama-tachi [Rotten Ladies of the Otaku Manor]), so I’ve kind of been keeping a finger on the pulse of photo booth trends. Modern photo booths have changed too much since my day, though. If I were friends with a modern gyaru and she took me to a photo sticker shop, the culture shock might make me lose my nerve even more than Ryuto!

Back in high school, I liked getting stickers from my friends who took them with their boyfriends. I even pestered my friends for them. “You don’t have anyone else to give it to, right? Give one to me”—that sort of thing. I had fun watching my friends and their partners—it was kind of like wanting to lovingly watch over a fictional couple. I didn’t have a boyfriend myself, but I still put stickers in a sticker book and sometimes looked at them with a smile on my face. Thinking back on it now, though, that was kind of scary...

Taking good care of things and keeping them for a long time is one of the few things I can boast about. I still have that sticker book from high school. I can show it to people at any time. My friends who once gave me stickers you took with your boyfriends—sleep with one eye open...

And so (totally not changing the topic), we’ve hit volume 4 already. It’s all thanks to all my readers that this story has been able to go on for so long.

Back when volume 1 came out, I had already planned out some parts of the story that unfolded between Runa and Maria in the third and fourth volumes. Before the release of volume 2, however, I couldn’t be sure the series would be able to continue, so at that time, I focused on advancing the relationship between Runa and Ryuto. As a result, I ended up writing Maria as a feeler character who was only there to test the main couple. That’s been bothering me.

Maria showed up in the story as somebody who was necessary to advance Ryuto and Runa’s tale, so I’m really glad I managed to give the sisters’ story a proper ending.

The love stories of the supporting cast have turned upside down since the previous volume too. They’re now even more exciting to follow, aren’t they? (I like to put pressure on myself.)

As always, I can never sufficiently express my gratitude to my illustrator, magako-sama, who makes such beautiful illustrations! Thank you so much for drawing Icchi’s before-and-after when I knew asking for both was unreasonable!

To my editor, Matsubayashi-sama—I’m always so grateful for how incredibly helpful you are! I feel like I’m the yokai Konaki-jiji and you’re carrying me on your back and cradling me in your arms. I’m able to focus on writing light novels thanks to you.

Also, as I’ve previously mentioned in Dragon Magazine and some other places, this series, unbelievably, will be made into a manga! It’s planned to start coming out on February 23, which is four days after this book goes on sale in Japan. Please check it out on Gangan Online!

And finally, as you’ve probably already realized after reading this volume and getting to this part of the afterword, this series will thankfully continue for a fifth volume.

In what’s been published so far, Ryuto and Runa’s story spans summer, autumn, and winter. It will finally be spring in the next one and the seasons will have come full circle. Please look forward to seeing where the main couple’s love is headed as they enter their final year of high school, along with the youth of their friends surrounding them!

Well then, may we meet again in the next volume!

January 2022, Makiko Nagaoka