Chapter 29

AFTERWORD Long time no see. Daigo Murasaki, the guy who sprains his ankle on nothing, here. I guess no one cares about that, huh? I am extremely grateful for getting to publish a second volume, and I’m so glad to have you back again. The afterword last time was quite short, and it was my debut volume, so it was all pretty proper and formal. But this time, I got more pages for it, so I’m gonna write some more. I had all sorts of ideas and quirky lines to write in my afterword before making my debut, but once you actually get to it…you end up with something like what I wrote for the first volume. I wonder if other authors also have this much trouble coming up with stuff for the afterword. I only know one other writer, so I really have no idea. I thought this second volume would end up with fewer pages than the first, but it turned out just about the same. I wrote the entire thing craving meat. I really wanted to go for some yakiniku once I finished. I swore I would. Perhaps this might be spoilers? So if you start reading from the afterword, I’m sorry. You see that scene were someone’s eating offal at the beginning? That was me immortalizing my deepest desires. I considered writing more about the story here, but I felt it would be uncouth to talk about it outside the work itself, so I’ll just share something sad that happened to me recently. This happened a few hours prior to proofreading (my own check, after it’s already been through a proofreader) before I headed to a certain building in Chiyoda. To an author, their computer is their manuscript paper, and their keyboard is their pen. (It just came to me… Are there still people who handwrite their stories?) What I mean is, their work depends on these tools. I say this as I use a super-cheap keyboard for work, while spending more on the one I use for gaming. Anyway, I use an external keyboard on a laptop to write, since my laptop’s keyboard broke. And, you know how you gotta clean the keyboard regularly, right? It gets dirty. So I was cleaning mine to also take a break from work. I felt like an assassin cleaning his favorite gun. Remember this is just a few hours before proofreading. I took all the keys off and made it shine like new. I even used a vacuum cleaner to get out all the crud stuck inside. Then I put it back together, threw it in my bag along with my laptop, and left to do the much-anticipated proofreading. But once I tried to start work, I noticed something. The external keyboard didn’t work anymore. I broke it in my attempt to clean it. I lost my mind. Fortunately, proofreading can be done without a computer, so it all worked out in the end. Anyway, that’s a sad anecdote behind the production of this book. Time for some words of thanks. To my illustrator, Kureta: Thank you so much for your marvelous work. Hizuki ended up looking so, so cute. I love her. Especially that drawing of her in a maid outfit… Thank you so much… To my editor: I’m sorry for the trouble. We were on a tight deadline, and I was down for a couple days with a cold. And lastly, to you, for reading my book. Whether you’ve been following the story since the first volume or just grabbed the second volume, I thank you equally. Truly. I’m able to continue writing thanks to your support. I hope I can keep developing this world even further, and I would be glad to have you follow me on this journey. I’m looking forward to our next meeting. Daigo Murasaki