Afterword

To everyone who picked up Volume 5 of the World’s Least Interesting Master Swordsman, thank you very much. It’s I, Rokurou Akashi, the author.

Back when I was just a reader, I probably wouldn’t have been surprised when a series I liked released its fifth volume. But as an author, this is an incredible milestone for me.

I still remember all the milestones in my writing career like they were yesterday. When the first volume was published. When I heard that I would be getting published. Heck, even the time when I first decided to publish on Shousetsuka ni Narou.

At the same time... Embarrassingly, I’ve ended up a veteran writer with nothing left to write in the afterword.

If I’m honest, it feels like I’m a real professional now, and that does make me happy, but I do think it might be problematic for me to consider myself an experienced old hand when I’m still a rookie in this world.

But since it’s the afterword to the fifth volume, I can cut loose a little, right? Which is why I’d like to try my hand at a professional, experienced, veteran writer’s version of an afterword.

A manga artist I particularly like often spoke in detail about the chronic ailments that come from being a manga artist. He had lamented that he wasn’t alone in those ailments, but that they were shared by many in the industry. Those ailments that he bemoaned were a lack of rest, insomnia, stiff shoulders, and back cramps coming from sitting for prolonged periods.

Now, I’m not a full-time author, but rather a part-timer, so I don’t sit in a single position all the time and instead do a fair bit of moving around.

It’s supposed to be a good thing, but a part of me thinks, “Huh, that doesn’t seem very professional, does it?”

I mean, I’ve become a published author, so I’d like to have the problems of a professional writer, you know? As I was thinking about such things while doing clean-up and preparations on Volume 5, I noticed something in particular.

I do my work on a laptop computer, but it was getting really hard to click or drag icons.

Since it’s a laptop I’ve been using for a long time, I thought it was just wear and tear on the laptop itself, but it turns out that it was my mouse that was failing on me.

I had been using a wired mouse until now, but I switched to a wireless mouse, and what a difference it’s made in my work.

Basically, I had to replace my mouse because it broke from my years of writing work!

My work tools broke because of overuse! That sounds like I’m a professional! It sounds like I’m a veteran writer!

I basked in that feeling for a while. But thinking a bit about it in hindsight, the fact that I was reveling in such a silly feeling made me feel more like a rookie than anything else.

As an author, I suppose I ought to show that I’m a veteran writer in the form of a novel.

No, it must be important for me to maintain the motivations that I had in bringing the best story possible to as many readers as possible, never forgetting what motivated me to be a writer in the first place.

I should be rejoicing not at the fact that I’ve gotten to volume 5, but at the thought of all the smiles on my readers’ faces.

My mother is from Miyako Island in Okinawa Prefecture, and I was also born there. Although I don’t speak any of the local dialect because I was raised in Kanagawa Prefecture, I always spent my summer vacations while I was in school at my mother’s family home.

But that was back when I was a student.

I went to a trade school, so I was a student until I was twenty, but I remember being really sentimental about the visit during that last year.

Back then, I thought that it was the last time I’d go to Okinawa. That leaving childhood summers behind was what it meant to become an adult.

But now that I’m a writer (even a part-time one) and I have a bit more breathing room in my day to day life, I was able to accompany my mother and return to Miyako Island.

Embarrassingly, or rather maybe idiotically, I had completely forgotten to contact people, so no one in my mother’s family knew that I was going to be visiting.

But when I arrived at my mother’s family home, everyone was happy to see me.

My grandfather and grandmother were both as healthy as they were when I was a student and welcomed me with open arms.

While I wasn’t exactly returning home in triumph, the memory of my warm reception still makes me tear up.

After ten years, my homeland had changed some, but it had stayed the same. It was a very moving experience that made me feel a lot of conflicting emotions.

It was very tiring since I hadn’t flown in a long time, but I’m still glad I went.

I know many creators talk about how an artist’s experiences create their artwork, so I hope to be able to reflect this experience in my own work. I hope you’ll join me when I do.

Now I’ve left it for the end, but... I’d like to thank the following people for everything they did for this volume in spite of everything else they’ve got going on in their lives. Shiso for the beautiful illustrations. Mr. Kuroda of PASH! for being the managing editor both on the light novel and on the comic adaptation, and Mr. Kondo, as well.

I look forward to continuing our work together.

-Rokurou Akashi