Afterword

Kanata Satsuki here! Thank you for reading I Refuse to Be Your Enemy! 6. This sixth volume marks the final entry in the I Refuse to Be Your Enemy! series.

Here, we get the solution to one of the biggest mysteries of the series: why does Kiara possess memories of her past life? We also get some answers regarding the Thorn Princess, whose entire existence has been one big enigma. The end of the fight against the queen unfolds in this volume, too. Here’s hoping you all walked away satisfied with the conclusions to these various threads.

This time around, the side story follows the main couple’s life after the ending. Just because their new life together is a peaceful one doesn’t mean they don’t have plenty else on their plate. All the same, I hope you had fun reading about their happy future together.

It’s truly all thanks to my faithful readers that I was able to write the series to its completion. I can’t thank you enough for sticking with me until the end.

Looking back on it now, writing my very first war story was one heck of an undertaking. I’ve read a lot of similar stories on my own time, but when it came to writing one myself, each update felt like an experiment I couldn’t afford to mess up.

Your author here has a penchant for going against the norm, which is why the main character didn’t end up playing the role of a strategist. I thought it would be nice to let a girl go out onto the battlefield and fight for once. Of course, that ended up forcing me to write battle scenes in pretty vivid detail, which might have been the most stressful part of writing this entire series for me.

Also, if I made Kiara too strong, Reggie and Cain would have nothing to do but tag along after her, so I made sure to put some limits on her powers purely to give them a chance to shine. For the most part, however, I spent this series writing whatever struck me—for example, turning Master Horace into a clay doll on a pure whim of mine. As a result, I came away pretty attached to this particular work.

When it came time to wrap up the story, rather than a sense of accomplishment, I felt a bit melancholy that it had to come to an end. I’m still feeling a little blue, so both prior to and after the publication of this volume, I plan to post more epilogue stories on the Shousetsuka ni Narou website. One of them will be about Alan’s engagement, which I couldn’t fit into the main story. (I hope you’re all sufficiently surprised by how he ends up tying the knot! I was laughing the whole time I was writing it.) Another one I want to write is about Reggie and the Thorn Princess’s talk just after the final battle, and there’s also the story of the person who made the RPG in Kiara’s past life. (I alluded to him in the side story of the previous volume, but as it turns out, there’s one more member of the cast who was reincarnated in a parallel world.)

Precisely because this was such a long-running series, I bet you’re all curious to know what happens after the end. I hope you enjoy the extra stories.

I decided on the cover of this volume a pretty long time ago: it’s the main couple at their wedding ceremony! I asked for it knowing it would give off big “finale” vibes, but the moment I actually saw the artwork, I couldn’t stop squealing. They look so happy together, and you can tell the story will have a happy ending just from looking at the cover! I love it!

The color illustration is the couple and their two dolls. I’d vaguely settled on this one ahead of time, too. I wanted to see the Thorn Princess’s Kofun-style figure in color, as well as the surreal sight of Reggie holding her in his arms. There were a lot of different desires tangled up in that particular choice.

My artist draws such cool-looking art, yet here I was always making her draw weird prehistoric clay dolls and the like! I am both terribly sorry and eternally grateful to Mitsuya Fuji, to the point where I don’t even know how to thank her. Thank you so much for everything!

Finally, I’d like to thank my wonderful editor, who pulled out all the stops to make this book a reality, as well as the editing department at Shufu to Seikatsu Sha. When we first met, I said, “I want to see the full series published!” I’m beyond ecstatic that that wish became a reality! Also, I still have fond memories of the time no one realized I’d been published by a different company and started frantically looking it up on their phones all at once.

I’m grateful to the proofreaders, the printers, and everyone else who helped get this book published—and above all else, to all my dear readers who chose to pick up this book.

I sincerely hope that, through the medium of literature, our paths will cross once more.

—Kanata Satsuki, August 2017