Afterword
HELLO! SATSUKI NAKAMURA HERE. Many thanks for picking up Volume 9.
Disaster befalls a certain character at the very end, but at least the revenge drama from the previous volume came to a close. Read the main story to find out who that character is.
Silly me! Looks like I’ve left myself two whole pages for the afterword of this volume. Well, this is a bit embarrassing, but I might as well take the opportunity to talk about the writing process!
While I had a lot of fun writing Reirin and Keigetsu’s miscommunication last volume, I purposely left only half of the underlying issue resolved. Rather than riding the momentum of the moment and hand-waving the conflict away with “adversity strengthens the foundations,” I wanted the pair to make the conscious choice to confront each other and talk things out.
Reirin needs to be more cognizant of her lack of regard for her own life, while Keigetsu needs to curb her habit of letting her emotions get the better of her. Of course, these qualities are part of what makes the girls so great, and people don’t change overnight, but it’s not enough to write them off as personality quirks. It’s important that the girls examine themselves, occasionally get scolded by those closest to them, and resolve their misunderstandings through communication and effort, not as a product of chance. I wrote the middle section of the volume with that hope in mind.
Your support is the reason the Inept Villainess series has gone on long enough for me to depict this sort of gradual character growth. Thank you so much.
Uh… This is normally where I’d wrap things up with the acknowledgments, but I still have almost a page left to go. What are authors even supposed to write in the afterword? I always cram the main story so full of content that I’ve never had to figure it out! What a dilemma!
Wait, I know! Thanks to your support, we’ve released a special edition of this ninth volume that was informed by the results of the popularity poll.1 The special edition comes with a bonus story featuring the three top-ranking characters. I agonized over what to write about, but I ultimately settled on a story covering Reirin’s and Keigetsu’s childhoods and the period immediately following their entry to the court. An episode zero, so to speak. I’ve wanted to touch on how Keigetsu felt about Reirin when they first met for a while now, so I’m glad I could take this chance to depict her perspective in so much detail.
Next up is the big ten-volume milestone! When I first started writing this story, I never dreamed I would be given the opportunity to extend Reirin’s tale this far. As the series progresses, we will steadily unravel the core mysteries, and the next volume will mark the start of a new arc. I hope you’ll look forward to it.
Once again, I would like to thank my supervisor for so enthusiastically keeping pace with me from the very start of this journey. I also wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to Kana Yuki-sensei, whose beautiful illustrations are sure to add years to the lives of both me and my readers; to Ohitsuji-sensei, who captivates audiences all over the world with her dramatic manga adaptation; and to my designer, whose playful spirit shines through in the smallest of details. Of course, special thanks go out to all my dear readers!
What kind of story will the next arc turn out to be? I hope to see you there.
—Satsuki Nakamura, October 2024