Afterword

Hello everyone, Rin Murakami here!

It’s been quite a while since my last work. If you read it and have been waiting ever since... I’m sorry. If this is the first of my books you’ve ever read, it’s nice to meet you! Thanks for picking up a Rin Murakami book for the first time. I hope you all enjoyed reading Guide to the Perfect Otaku Girlfriend: Roomies and Romance!

In the time since my last book, apart from writing, I’ve been doing the usual stuff: traveling the country to follow idol groups, spending hundreds of hours on gacha games, becoming a regular at maid cafés, and so on.

This book is mostly based on my own experiences with otaku romance and those of the people around me. I asked otaku couples that I know personally, as well as some of my friends who were looking to get married. Thank you to everyone that shared their experiences with me! Maybe some of my readers who are looking for romance themselves will find some of the stuff in this series useful. Maybe...

Part of this volume included the experience of meeting people through an MMORPG. Actually, that was inspired by something similar that happened to me. A friend and I were playing a certain game together, and we both ended up falling in love with the same player. We were rivals in love for a while, always doing our best to impress her and possibly win her over. One day though, that friend of mine did a bit of snooping around, finding one of her social media accounts—one of his social media accounts, actually. The “girl” in our love triangle was a middle-aged man.

I hope that writing so much about romance will motivate myself to do a little better in that department in the future.

As for all the otaku trends, I have some friends who advise me about the stuff I’m not so familiar with, but I always end up becoming even more obsessed with the trends than they are...

Lastly, there are some people I’d like to thank.

First of all, Fumiaki Maruto, who left some wonderful comments about this book. Thank you for your kind words!

Then, Kurehito Misaki, the illustrator for How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend. Thank you for letting my characters talk about Kato Megumi!

And of course Mako Tatekawa, who drew the illustrations for this volume. Thank you for all the cute girls! I’d date even the most hardcore fujoshi if she looked like that!

I also want to thank the editor in charge of this volume, since it all started with one of their ideas. Thank you so very much for your valuable guidance.

Last, but not least, I want to thank all of you for buying and reading my book! If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be able to publish anything.

I’ll do my best to write ever more entertaining stories in the future, so look forward to those. Thank you and see you next time!

Rin Murakami