Spice and Wolf - Volume 19 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD

Long time no see. Isuna Hasekura here. This is the newest Spice & Wolf novel in about eight months. Sorry to keep you waiting. Since this is a series I’ve already finished, I hope to put out more at around this pace. Please stick with me at this leisurely pace.

By the way, it might already be over by the time this afterword is printed in a book, but there was a Spice & Wolf collaboration café in juncture with Subculture Café & Bar Newtype Shinjuku. Collaboration cafés typically sell food and things based on the image of the characters in the work…but this time, they tried their best to replicate the food in the novel, and I really enjoyed it. I had rabbit meat, goat cheese, salted herring, and such for the first time. All the food that I wrote about completely with my imagination had been brought to life, and I was touched. There was also a footbath in the shop because of the bathhouse, and I thought it was just going to be a little tub with some hot water in it, but I was amazed to see a proper footbath, one you might actually see at a tourist spot, and the clerks were all dressed up as Holo and Myuri, and I think all my fortune as an author has run out. Thank you, thank you.

I am prospering even as I write this afterword, so I am as happy as can be as the original author.

Thank you very much to all who came.

What else…I have nothing to write about…My days are spent either changing oxygen into carbon dioxide or getting excited over Friends. But Friends is good. Now I only have a little bit left, and I’m very sad that it will be over. Just recently, I cried over the story between Toki and the professor. It’s amazing no matter how many times I watch it.

Now I remember. I’ve moved a bit away from the city, and now I commute by train. At first, I poked around on social games on my smartphone, but once I started reading, the number of books I had ballooned. I don’t have the will or strength to read for two hours straight, so it was too bothersome for me to open a book, but if I just think about reading for ten or so minutes, I can get through a lot. The start is always hard to get through.

So I’ve been reading some popular stories I’ve been hearing about. They’re all so good it pains me. It makes me want to work harder.

I imagined that once I read some new books, I would challenge myself with older novels that I’d never read but only heard of, but there are too many hot new books. I wonder when I’ll get around to that.

And those are the sort of days I’ve been having.

My page is all filled now, so I’ll end it here. I will see you in the next book.

Isuna Hasekura