This is Rarutori. Thank you for picking up the fourth volume of Enough with This Slow Life! I Was Reincarnated as a High Elf and Now I’m Bored.
Winter, huh? There might be a bit of a time gap between when I write this afterword and when the book actually releases, but still, it’s quite cold out. What kind of impression does winter have on you?
A season of warm and delicious foods, like hotpot?
A season where the sake hits you deep?
A season where people long for the comfort of others?
A season full of all kinds of fun events?
Or perhaps a season characterized by the proverb “January passes, February flees, and March vanishes?”
I am sure it holds all sorts of meanings to each of you. But for me, it is a season of stuffing myself with good food, following it with good drink, and then hibernating. So let’s get right to talking about alcohol.
The drink I’d like to introduce to you this time is called “Mori no Kumasan.” It’s made by Eikou Fuji, a brewery in Tsuruoka, Yamagata Prefecture. If you Google it, I’m sure it’ll come up right away. It has a really cute label. When I went to a bar the other day, a very pretty lady working there (that part is very important) recommended it to me. It’s kind of sweet and easy to drink, and it has a good aroma, so I took quite a liking to it.
The interesting thing about this drink is that the rice it’s made from goes by the same name. Apparently it ranks quite well as far as varieties of rice go, having achieved “Special A Rank” multiple times in the past. I’ve never tried the rice itself, so I can’t comment on that, but it does sound interesting to me.
Now that I think about it, the drink I introduced back in the afterword of volume one—“Roze no Yukidoke”—was a winter drink too, so you might be able to get your hands on it around the time volume four releases. Volume one released in April, so it was probably pretty hard to find back then. If you are at all interested, please give it a try.
Volume four covered Acer’s journey to Fusou, as well as the trip back home afterward. He experienced some very important partings, and he’s seen and experienced all sorts of things that have started to change his way of thinking. As he continues to slowly grow, he will probably start handling things a bit differently than he used to. And with one journey at an end, after a short break, he will soon set a new goal for himself. I guess I’ll leave that discussion for the afterword in volume five though. For now, let’s talk about the themes of volume three.
The first chapter of volume three was themed after goodbyes. It was the most important goodbye Acer ever experienced. Normally hellos and goodbyes come in pairs, but they are not equal by any means. When you meet someone, you are taking a zero and adding a one, but when you say goodbye, you are losing everything you had built since then. If the relationship you’ve built adds up to a hundred, you lose all of it. To me, the impact of saying goodbye to someone far outweighs the impact of meeting someone new. However, even after saying goodbye to someone, there are still some things that remain. That was the story I wanted to tell in chapter one.
Chapter two’s theme was about getting yourself moving again when you just wanted to stand still. Chapter three covered meeting new people. Chapters three through five focused on Acer’s experience of new and different cultures. Chapter four’s theme...or maybe motif was the kung fu movies I saw as a child, like the Bruce Lee movies. Chapter five’s theme was transcendent beings.
That about covers it. Looking back on it now, chapter one seemed quite different from the rest, didn’t it?
Besides that...ah, recently I started visiting a hedgehog café. Hedgehogs are really cute, aren’t they? Surprisingly. When you pet them, their quills don’t hurt you. However, hedgehogs are nocturnal, so when they sit on my lap and fall asleep, I feel really bad about touching them and waking them up.
Volume five will cover a bit of Acer’s interactions with the modern Yosogi School, and his journey back to the forest of the high elves. I would be most grateful to see you there.