Chapter 111

AFTERWORD It’s been a while. Hiromu here. I have a feeling that this time, the afterword will be packed with announcements and acknowledgments. Even now, there might be some readers who still aren’t following my Twitter, so please forgive me for going into detail. First of all, Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle won first place in the This Light Novel Is Amazing! 2022 competition for the second time since last year, making it the first debut work to win twice in a row!!! Last year, I came in first place, something I’d never imagined, but this year, I decided to aim for the top spot from the beginning. To be more precise, I worked with the belief that if I could finish Volumes 5 and 6 to my satisfaction, in addition to Volume 4, which was barely out of the voting period last time, I would be able to aim for a second consecutive victory. Or something like that. So, when I heard the results, it was like instant relief (by the way, the editor in charge, Iwaasa, kept starting phone conversations with fake-outs like, “Hiromu, unfortunately…,” so you’ll have to forgive me for being a nervous wreck). Anyway, thank you to all the readers who voted! In response to the results, there’s a slew of good Chiramune stuff coming your way. (In fact, some of them were already underway before I heard the results, but let’s not quibble over details.) There’s a fully voiced video featuring all the heroines, commemorative goods commemorating the second This Light Novel Is Amazing! victory, and the production of the long-awaited Chiramune LINE app stamps drawn by none other than raemz, plus more! And the biggest thing to report is that there are various collaborative projects underway, with the full cooperation of Fukui City in Fukui Prefecture! I’ll try to jot down everything using bullet points, okay? • An online stage tour has been decided! (Real-time streaming is scheduled for March 21, from two PM to three thirty PM, right after this volume is released. You can watch it for free.) • Chiramune × Fukui City collaboration poster production and display • Chiramune sacred place pilgrimage map distribution • Character life-size panel installation and keyword rally • Chiramune × Fukui original goods • Collaboration project with stores that appear in Chiramune …Seeing it all laid out is incredible, like something out of a dream. I would actually like to give you the details for each one (as there are deadlines approaching), but there aren’t enough pages available to me here, so if you’re interested, please go to the Gagaga Bunko official website and visit the special subsite to commemorate the second consecutive competition victory. I think you can easily find what you need by searching for “Fukui City Chiramune.” Also, apart from that, there is a collaboration with the familiar shopping mall Lpa, which appears in the first volume (a bus decorated with Chiramune art, a huge signboard on the outside wall, original cards and tin badges, et cetera; I could talk about it all day…), and FBC Radio’s “After School ☆ LIVE” program has a Chiramune feature. The passion of my hometown for this work knows no bounds! Wonderfully (and surprisingly), neither I, Hiromu, nor Shogakukan approached them about any of this at all. Just like the catchphrase of the fourth volume, “Catch the Fever,” the enthusiasm of the readers in Fukui spread like wildfire, and the sight of Chiramune permeating wider and wider, beyond the hands of this author, was amazing. It still doesn’t feel very real to me. Now, let’s move on to the acknowledgments. First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who has worked hard to make the collaboration between Chiramune and Fukui City a reality, and to everyone who has generously cooperated. I never dreamed that I would be able to create such a large-scale project. Also, I would like to thank URALA and HOSHIDO for taking the time to answer my questions for the purpose of writing Volume 6.5! I would just like to make a disclaimer here and say that I, Hiromu, have reconstructed the majority of the stories as fiction, based on the things that each person told me, so the URALA and HOSHIDO that appear here belong only to the world of Chiramune. If you have any opinions, please direct them to me! By the way, I’d like to mention one more thing: Just because we’re collaborating with Fukui City, that doesn’t mean there are any dodgy backroom deals with people asking us specifically to set scenes in their establishments (lol). Including in this volume, the locations that appear in the story are places that Chiramune’s characters visit of their own volition, and things that they eat and so on are their own choices, so please read with confidence and don’t make any strange assumptions! (Even when it wasn’t related to the collaboration, I kept including more and more stuff about Fukui…lol.) Thank you, raemz, not only for the cover and general artwork, including the monochrome drawings, but also for the wonderful, newly drawn LINE stamps! I plan on spamming everyone I know with them! Also, raemz was selected as the second-place winner in the illustrator category of the This Light Novel Is Amazing! prize! As a friend, as someone who’s walked the path of this series together, and of course as a huge fan, I am delighted! Congratulations! And Iwaasa, the editor in charge—you had wanted to try Fukui crab since the first volume, but on the night we finally got to eat it, you were apparently in such bad health that you couldn’t taste it at all…so we’re just going to have to go and eat it again sometime soon (lol). In addition, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to everyone involved in Chiramune, such as those in charge of advertising and proofreading and, most of all, to all the readers who gave us the gift of winning the big prize for the second time in a row. I hope I’ve managed to write a story that you might think of in summers to come. HIROMU