Afterword

Thank you, as always, for buying my book.

I’m Shoutarou Mizuki.

This is Volume 9, a continuation from the last book. With this, the current story arc concludes. A lot has happened, but personally, I feel like I’ve successfully climbed a mountain. Hooray.

But there’s still more to come. I have to keep working on the big story arc, but next volume will be a collection of short, daily-life vignettes. I’m hoping to talk about what happens next with Yoshie, or maybe tell you a surprising story about the student council. I hope you’ll look forward to it if you’re a fan of books that aren’t so serious.

Now, it’s finally time for the anime to start. If you’re buying the book new, you can see information about it on the front flap. If not, check the webpage. I’m writing this a little before it airs, so all I’ve seen now is the voice recording sessions, but those were great. You’ve got a lot to look forward to.

A lot of fun things happened at the recording. Aoi Yuki, the VA for Korone, made homemade chiffon cake for me. I got to see Chiaki Takahashi (Mitsuko) and Shizuka Ito (Fujiko) cheer on Aoi Yuki as she did her best to sound sexy. And I got to watch the other VAs surround Aoi Yuki and take photos. If you think that I’m focusing too much on one thing, well, you’re wrong. All the people working on the book dropped in, and I hope you readers can get a sense of how much fun it was too.

Now, on to some stuff that doesn’t matter. As always, I watched the Winter Olympics on TV, and said to myself, “Curling looks fun!” But there’s only certain places and situations where you can play it. Just because you saw it doesn’t mean you can pick it up as a hobby, which is a little disappointing.

But in Canada, there’s places where you can drink at a pub while you play, so maybe it’s like pool in Japan. It’s a big world. It seems dangerous to fling around stones and brushes on an icy rink when you’re drunk, though...

Lastly, thank-yous. So many people are working on this now that I don’t know who you all are, and I haven’t met you all yet, but thank you. Thank you all so much.

Ohashi, my editor. Thanks for hanging in there with me to improve the quality of this volume. I learned a lot.

And more than anybody, Souichi Itou. I’m sorry I’m always late, but your work on the manga is just amazing.

And of course, thank you all I hope you’ll keep reading. There’s lots more fun in store!