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Afterword
Hey. It’s me, Sunsunsun. I always worry so much about what I should say first to greet you whenever I write these. “And after all that worrying, you went with just ‘hey’?” Yeah, I know. Give me a break. After thinking and worrying about it until you get sick, you usually go with something simple. That’s just how these things are. In other words, this one-word greeting is proof that I put a lot of thought into this. At least a whole ten seconds.
At any rate, there is something I need to apologize to all of you for. I have to apologize for my boring afterword in Volume 3. I was just so happy to receive a shout-out from Miki Yoshikawa that I forgot to make the afterword a little fun. That wasn’t right. I am a writer, after all, and it is my job to move your hearts with my words. Therefore, it is only natural that I try to make you laugh or even smirk when you read the afterword as well. I mean, I’ve never seen any other novelist do that, but that’s another story.
I usually read light novels written by famous authors, so I’m sure when you get that big, you start to take everything very seriously, unlike someone like me, who just writes the first thing that comes to mind, then unloads this stream-of-consciousness gibberish onto their editor like, “Here ya go! All done!” Surely, those veterans contemplate and consider all their options before eventually deciding on something extremely simple. Yep, we went full circle. “Hey.” Foreshadowing…aka a “forced analogy.”
Oh, right. There’s something else I needed to improve on from last time. And that’s the comment I wrote on the sleeve of last volume’s cover. It was something like, “It isn’t a hurdle. It’s a clothesline, so place it as high as you need it,” but soon after I wrote that, it hit me: Clotheslines were usually higher than hurdles. I was shocked. The hurdles I had to jump over in PE back when I was a kid were basically low enough that I could straddle them if I wanted to. You can’t straddle clotheslines, though. You’d have to do a belly roll, like hang over it on your belly, if you wanted to even have a chance. In Japanese, by the way, the English word belly is written ベリー, which is also how we write berry, so I am sure you can imagine how confused the average Japanese person would be if they heard me say, “belly roll.” “Berry roll? Like strawberry roll cakes? Raspberry roll cakes?” That’s what they’d think.
Remember this next time you’re in PE and doing hurdles, so you can smugly show off how much more you know than everyone else. If someone says, “You’re acting pretty smug for knowing something you just read in the afterword of a book that you didn’t even fact-check,” well, they’re probably one of us. Whisper to them, “Alya is…?” And if they answer “adorable,” then you’ll know for sure they’re one of us. You must share a firm handshake after that. But if they, for some bizarre reason, say, “I prefer Yuki,” then they’re the enemy, and you are to introduce both strawberry (right fist) and raspberry (left fist) to their belly. There are times in life where the fists need to do the talking. Don’t worry. It could be the start of a beautiful friendship. By the way, I tried it once, and my former professors in university, my friends, and even my family all disowned me, and now I have no one. Weird, huh? I still don’t know what I did wrong. Maybe life isn’t like the comic books where you can become friends with someone after beating the crap out of each other. Anyway, I plan to stop using my fists to do the talking and go straight to knees next time.*
(*Don’t try this at home. Or anywhere. To anyone.)
Okay, that’s enough garbage to fill up the pages. Now, I want to thank everyone who made this volume a possibility:
Miyakawa, my editor who worked hard once again to get this published.
Momoco for all the erot— Bfffmmm?! Ahem—for all the wonderful illustrations.
Sabamizore for the adorable tsundere valentine drawing of Alya.
The legendary illustrator Noizi Ito for her guest illustration.
And everyone else who helped make this project come together, which includes every reader who picked up a copy.
I thank you all sooo much.
Until we meet again next volume.
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