Afterword
FIRST, LET ME OFFER YOU MY SINCEREST GRATITUDE for having chosen this humble book of mine for your reading pleasure, out of all the other novels in the world.
As you may or may not be aware, this is the latest and greatest edition of my debut novel, first released in Japanese paperback all the way back in 2016. While it may be just a simple coming-of-age story about life and love in the midst of adversity, it’s a book that’s still very near and dear to my heart. I’m so grateful that it’s still being read and enjoyed by so many people the world over, even now, a full seven years later.
Originally, this was only ever intended to be an amateur web novel—something I published quietly, piece by piece, in a secluded corner of the internet, whenever I had time to pen a few pages late at night after getting off work. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would reach and resonate with so many different people. It’s a true testament to the power of word of mouth, and not a day goes by that I don’t feel unbelievably grateful to every single person who’s read it over the years and helped sing its praises.
I was born in Kagoshima prefecture, and to this day, I still remember taking a trip with my extracurricular club to the Chiran Peace Museum. The moment we walked inside, it was like a hush fell over us all—even the most rambunctious and cynical kids in our group couldn’t help but be rendered speechless. We didn’t laugh or joke around at all that day; there was just this air of shock and reverence hanging over the entire place.
I remember being deeply affected by the thought that young men who were no older than I was had their whole lives so unfairly taken away from them, simply because they’d been born in the wrong place at the wrong time. And then I started to think about it the opposite way: If me, or my family, or my friends had been born just a few decades prior, or in a different country, we might not have been spared from the horrors of war ourselves. This was a formative moment for me—the sobering realization of just how much I’d taken my modern life for granted, and how precious life was in general.
A bit later on, I became a Japanese instructor in a different prefecture and would occasionally assign my high school students literature set during World War II. What I realized then was that students today already view the war as something so far removed from their modern lives that it felt too distant to be relatable. To be clear, this was something I completely understood—how could it not feel like ancient history, when even their grandparents weren’t born until after the war was already over?
Not to suggest that I was that much closer to it than they were; the only firsthand accounts I’d ever heard of what it was like to actually live through the war were through little fragmentary anecdotes that my grandfather would share with me back when I was still much too young to fully understand them. And yet, there was something about actually hearing someone I personally knew describe what it had been like in their own words that made the war feel a lot more tangible to me. Like it was something that had actually happened not too long ago in the grand scheme of things—the repercussions of which could still be seen and felt in the modern day, through survivors like him.
But all things eventually fade with time. It’s a simple fact of life.
It’s why we have a responsibility—no, a moral imperative—to pass down the things we’ve been taught by previous generations to the future. And yet, at the same time, it’s also critical that they not just “learn” these lessons as simple dates and historical events written in a textbook, but actually “feel” the true gravity and importance of them somehow, in a way that’s both tangible and relatable to their modern lives.
It’s for this reason that I originally chose to publish this story as a cell phone novel—a medium already inherently aimed at a younger demographic—and have the protagonist be a young girl around their age who gets sent back into the past and has to actually live through the war herself. My hope was that, by having a main character they could more easily relate to, readers would be able to put themselves in Yuri’s shoes and really feel both how different things were back then, and how precious life is.
To every reader who has read and enjoyed this book, and to every bookstore that has placed it prominently on their shelves: Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I wish I could meet each and every one of you and express just how grateful I am in person, but since that would be highly unfeasible, I hope you’ll accept a short, all-new after-story instead, as my way of saying thanks for your continued support.
It’s not much, I know. But I truly hope you’ll enjoy it.
NATSUE SHIOMI, JUNE 2023