Spice and Wolf - Volume 10 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD

Hello again. This is Isuna Hasekura. And somehow, this is the tenth volume.

The first volume of Spice and Wolf went on sale in February 2006, so this makes an even three years. It feels somehow both short and long, but I suppose it really is not much time at all. It went by in a flash.

But when I slowly pick up the first volume and open it, I see a mountain of mistakes that I want to get a red pen out and start fixing, so maybe I have grown up a bit.

Although I have no idea what will change in another three years…

Speaking of which, one thing that hasn’t changed the past three years is that I’m super into online gaming. Not a new one, but getting back into an old one. I hadn’t played it for a really long time, but just around the time I was finishing this tenth volume, I had a little time, so I was lucky enough to get to play a little. The era when I could while away whole days without a care in the world is long gone, and these days every minute, every second I’m logged in is precious. (Incidentally, I started writing this afterword when I tried to log in and the game servers were down for maintenance.)

A bunch of retired players in the guild I play in have come back, and I was seeing famous player names as I wandered around the in-game town for the first time in years, so it sort of felt like the past had come back to life.

A few days ago, I had the chance to get some food with some friends who play the same game, and even though they supposedly quit because of their jobs, they’d all recently come back to the game for some reason.

But what made me really think about the passage of time was that although after midnight was just when I would start really getting into my gameplay, nowadays when that time rolls around, the number of players drops way off. I think most of the players have shifted from being students to being employed. Even when we have real-life meet-ups, we’ve stopped going to places aimed at students and started going to joints that cater to a slightly older crowd. It’s sort of interesting.

It’s going to be fun to see how things turn out in another three years.

And with that I think I’ve just about filled up the space I have, so we’ll leave it at that.

I will see you in the next volume.

—Isuna Hasekura