Afterword
NICE TO MEET YOU. My name is Teren Mikami.
And welcome to TNFWIBYLU season two!
What the heck’s up with the 488 pages thing in the Japanese release? Well, fun fact: light novels are usually capped at 300 pages because there’s data that shows this is a good number for sales and profit. That’s why you get so many books that are 256 pages or 272 pages or whatever. Therefore, when a book gets as big as this one, you should probably split it into two smaller volumes. I would have liked to do that. But. I wasn’t able to… There just wasn’t anywhere to make a good split. That’s because I thought the story would be way, way shorter!
I even told my editor, “Oh, I’m going to make Volume 5 a short one. It’s just going to be everyday fun kind of stuff. Volume 4 was definitely a chunker, wasn’t it? (ha ha)”
But if you’d asked me what could be cut out, the only answer I could have given you was my vital organs. This means I declare: Volumes 6 and 7 will both be two-parters! And I’ll do my best to get them both to you as soon as possible. If that doesn’t work out, you have my permission to bury me under a tree. Ta-da!
Okay, now let’s see. They gave me a whopping six pages for the afterword in the Japanese release, so I’ll do my best to talk about Season 2 topics without giving away any spoilers. Let’s go!
1. So what the heck is Season 2 anyway? (Contains slight spoilers for Volume 5)
Let’s recap.
Season 1 was pretty straightforward, as the plot was carried along with each character having their own book. Volume 1 was Mai-chan, Volume 2 was Satsuki-san, Volume 3 was Ajisai-san, and finally, Volume 4 closed out the season and featured Kaho-chan.
By way of comparison, the structure of Season 2 is a little more complex. I’m trying to think of how to explain this simply, stripping away all the complicated stuff and just leaving the interesting bits. Part of the reason why the page count got so high this time is because the foreshadowing took up more space than I had figured it would. And since this was the second season, I trotted out a bunch of new characters to be a review of the first season. This series sure has a lot of characters, huh… But I just love them all.
Ah, right. That reminds me of something else I need to say.
This is kind of going into spoiler territory for Volume 5, but in this volume we got another girl who seemed like an extra protagonist. (There goes the roster, expanding again!) However, from now on, the main cast will be the five Quintet girls like always. This is just my personal preference, but do you ever start reading a story where the main characters start getting less screen time and the minor characters become the new leads? Don’t you get kind of an “Oh…” feeling? I know I do. Of course, there are lots of stories out there that do that and turn out all the better for it, but my goal in writing is to make you fall even further in love with the Quintet over time. I’m the type of trainer who takes the first Pokémon she catches all the way to the Elite Four.
To sum it all up, I’m going to do my best to make you fall in love with Mai-chan, Satsuki-san, Ajisai-san, and Kaho-chan! Good luck out there, Renako.
2. The Satsuki-san cliffhanger in Volume 4
I’m so sorry to have kept you all waiting on this for so long.
That’s Satsuki-san’s rash side coming out, huh? And it’s not like an “Oopsies, I actually did it!” kind of thing either. It’ll still take some more time to deal with that bombshell she dropped. After all, I heard deactivating a bomb is a complicated, time-consuming process. Likewise, I think it might be a while before this story reaches its conclusion.
(But at the very least, given all the trouble I put you through in Volume 4 and how much you wanted an answer, we all know it’d be awful if I had Renako go in the next volume, “Oh yeah, I’m totally dating Satsuki-san too lololol Yay! lololol” You wouldn’t allow me to do that, right??)
Still, this series is one of those that never drags things out and always puts the pedal to the metal, so… Maybe when I write Volume 6, Satsuki-san will suddenly start dating Renako or someone else… You see, even I have no idea what Satsuki-san will do.
At any rate, just like there are perks to dating her, there are perks to having her as a friend. Before their relationship can be taken to the next level (and I have no idea what that means!), I think it’d be nice to let the readers get a full, exhaustive look at all the fun things that could only happen with their current relationship. And that’s what I’m doing my best to accomplish. Good luck out there, Renako.
3. The cliffhanger in this volume
There’s a lot of wild stuff brewing, huh? How on earth is this going to turn out? Well, good luck out there, Renako.
4. In conclusion
In the 2021 Next Light Novel Award presented in February 2022, this series won numerous awards, including the grand prize for new works. This is all thanks to the support of the readers. Thank you all very much. I truly believe I’ve only been able to write up to this point because of all your comments and reviews saying stuff like, “Yeah, I guess it’s kinda funny.” I would be delighted if I could repay the favor by writing more of this funny story for you. I’m doing my best to make you say, “Season 1 was good, but Season 2’s even more hilarious!” So please enjoy. First off, Volume 6 will feature Amaori Haruna as the main character! Hey, Renako, are you upset that your little sister is stealing your thunder?
Now that I’ve gone on for long enough, I’d like to proceed to the acknowledgments.
First off, a huge congrats to Eku Takushima-sensei for the anime adaptation of her series Whisper Me a Love Song. Woo-hoo! I can’t wait to see all of the characters Takushima-san draws so charmingly moving around. And thank you once again for the delightful illustrations. A good tenth of this series’ popularity is thanks to you, heh heh. The bath scene in Volume 5 was amazing, so I’m putting together another fantastic bathing scene for Volume 6, heh heh.
And thank you to my editor Khara-san for everything! Thank you for adding amazingly funny corrections to Volume 5. I’m the kind of person whose pen is powered by praise, so a good tenth of always being able to write this series without compromises is due to you, heh heh.
Also, thank you to everyone who has helped me publish this book. In particular, I apologize for sending in unrealistic demands to the designers in every volume. But thanks to them, we end up with books packed with playfulness and fun! I hope!
I’d also like to give huge thanks to Musshu-sensei, the artist who draws the manga version of this series, and her editor Amida-san. I can attribute another good tenth of TNFWIBYLU’s success thus far to these two, heh heh. I look forward to seeing the new manga chapters every month. Grr… Curse these two. They make me fall in love with Renako harder by the minute…
Also, Volume 5 of this series’s manga drawn by the very same Musshu-san is coming out on March 17th in Japan! They’re now starting on the Ajisai-san arc from Volume 3! Zoom!
Also also, you should check out my other GL romcom AriOto! It’s not goofy, like this series, but kind of steamy. Volume 7 gets a little hoo-cha-cha, so…watch out!
And with that, I hope to see you again in Volume 6. Wh-which I’ll make as fast as possible…
Teren Mikami, signing off!