Hello, author mikawaghost here. Have you already finished enjoying volume 9 of My Friend’s Little Sister Has It In for Me?
After having very little presence in the first volume covering the class trip, Iroha makes up for it in this one (even though she’s a first-year) by reuniting with Akiteru and even scoring a date with him. Mashiro’s there to continue her efforts to win his heart from the previous volume too of course, so I’m hoping her fans were satisfied as well. We’ve got a ton of other characters here to brighten up the ImoUza world on top of that: Otoi-san, Mizuki, Otoha, Canary, Sasara, and Midori. They’ll be playing bigger roles from now on too, so please look forward to the next volumes to come.
So, this volume was mainly set at the amusement park, and I got to write some date scenes where our characters experienced a variety of attractions.
You might remember from a previous afterword that I mentioned going to a high-class French restaurant by myself to help write the story. That’s because I’m the type of author who will go and do the fieldwork whenever necessary, and so this time I’d decided I would go to an amusement park. And of course, I’m single, so I couldn’t go there as a date, and I felt super awkward about going by myself.
Unfortunately, I was writing volume 9 at a time when the entire nation was being warned not to leave the house unnecessarily. In the end, I wrapped up the volume without ever going on my lonely trip to the amusement park.
It’s a real shame, but what can you do? I wasn’t even scared of the hellish experience that was going all by myself—I just didn’t feel like I could go when everyone was so firmly told not to go out. And that’s not an excuse. I swear.
Now I’d like to move on to the acknowledgments.
To my illustrator, Tomari-sensei. Thank you for your incredible drawings once again! Iroha’s looking as vibrant as ever, and you’ve drawn her and the other characters so wonderfully. I was trying to give as many characters as possible a chance to shine in this volume, to the extent that it was a bit of a headache. But I’m going to keep putting together scenes that will let you draw lots of different sides to lots of different characters, and I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as I am!
To Hiraoka Hira-sensei, who’s drawing ImoUza’s manga version. I really enjoy reading the manga each time a new one comes out. Let’s keep working together to make ImoUza as exciting a series as possible!
To my editor, Nuru-san, the editorial department, and everyone else at GA Bunko, and above all else, my readers! Somehow we’ve made it to two whole years of serialization, and are about to jump right into the third. Thank you so much for sticking by me for so long. I hope you’ll keep supporting ImoUza into the future too.
I’m running out of pages now, so I’ll sign off.
That’s all from me,
mikawaghost