Afterword
Right from when I first started writing this story, I knew that Ashton was going to die. Even in fiction, if you are going to portray war then you cannot leave out death, and it feels extremely unnatural to me to exclude certain characters from that, even if they are central to the story. Young people are forced to go to war, where their lives are ruthlessly snatched away. Ashton could be said to symbolize those people.
On the other hand, I like stories where, whatever happens along the way, it all comes to a happy ending. Even after the war ended, with Ashton still dead, could Olivia and Claudia ever really laugh again for the rest of their long lives? As I approached the end, that thought grew more pressing in my mind, until eventually I ended up discarding my original plot. I expect people will be divided, but I hope you will feel that this is the best possible conclusion. This story is indisputably Olivia’s heroic epic, but at the same time, it is also the story of a girl meeting many different people and growing as a person. It should be obvious without spelling it out that the main reason Olivia is able to stay who she is even amid the unique environment of the military is because of the people who support her.
One of the episodes that particularly shows how she has grown is her conversation with the children from volume 2 whom she met again in this volume. In volume 2, Ashton practically has to force her to hand out her cookies. In this volume, however, she gently chides the children who want to fight the imperial army and, to thank them for the thought, gives them her whole stock of cookies. Perhaps it was cruel that Ashton had to die for her to learn to think of others in this way, just as Claudia thought to herself. I think that the way Olivia keeps moving forward without faltering despite this shows that she is a real protagonist.
By the way, I left the number of mysteries that remain unsolved that way on purpose. The core reason for this is that I find it boring when everything is explained, leaving no room to use your imagination, but also, I would like to one day release a side story about what happened between Olivia leaving the Forest of No Return and her volunteering for the Royal Army.
Finally, some acknowledgments. Thank you to my editor, Higuchi-sama, who waited with boundless patience as I fell behind and failed to make progress on the book. Thank you to Cierra-sama, who provided wonderful illustrations all the way through. And my deepest thanks to everyone involved in this series. It is five years and seven months since volume 1 was released. It is all down to you, my readers, that I was able to continue to the end. I am truly grateful.
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