Afterword

I’m currently writing this afterword while being sandwiched by my two daughters, who are six and two years old. The first was born just before I started writing Der Werwolf, actually. Thanks to them, I have a lot of real-life examples to draw from when writing about Veight’s fatherhood days. If I think about it, my two girls have not only helped me grow as an author, but they’ve also taught me a lot about life in general. They really are angels. Even though they act like devils sometimes.

My eldest daughter loves playing blasphemous, inharmonious melodies on her toy piano, and my youngest loves messing around with the red pen I use for proofreading (she’s scribbled so much with it that it’s unusable now). It’s hard enough writing afterwords with them messing around all the time, much less entire books.

At any rate, the protagonists of child-raising stories are the children themselves; this is why the protagonist of Der Werwolf is now Friede. Of course, Veight is still the protagonist of his own life. Parents are people too, after all, and their lives matter as well. There are still a few more legends the Black Werewolf King needs to make before he can retire. Veight may want to just sit back and relax, but as long as he’s alive, he won’t be able to stop sticking his nose in people’s problems.

I hope you all continue to enjoy reading about his escapades, as well as those of his daughter Friede. Both of them are protagonists now, and while they’ll be walking down different paths in life, they’ll continue to have a huge influence on each other.

Now then, it’s time for the acknowledgments.

First off, I’d like to thank Teshima-sensei for his wonderful illustrations. Drawing aged-up versions of characters who already have existing designs by a different artist is an impossibly difficult task, but he managed to do a splendid job regardless. I’m especially impressed by how he managed to make Friede look slightly older through the years; it was like going through an old album. Thank you so much for your hard work.

I’d also like to thank my editor, the great Lord Fusanon—A.K.A. Saitou-sama. Your advice has been a huge help. I’m terrible at anything not directly related to writing, so his suggestions and business advice have come in very handy. In the next volume, Friede will have grown up a little more, and though she’s not quite an adult, she’ll start following in Veight’s footsteps. I hope you enjoy seeing her learn and grow.

May we meet again in the next volume.