v1 Afterword

  

I would like to thank you for picking up a copy of this book. And I’d like to apologize for ending the volume at such a cliffhanger. There’s still a bit more to the story of Yasuki and Ema, but I've decided to end it here since I’ve already reached the limit of a single volume…

Originally, I wanted to read a story about ordinary high school students struggling to find love while studying for their entrance exams, but I couldn’t find such a story, so I thought, “Well, I’ll just have to write it myself then,” which is how this story came to be.

I chose a setting that’s probably common all over Japan: a “high school where tradition is valued over all else”. The main character is a boy who has a fair and delicate face, with a relatively small stature, and wears glasses. He’s serious, plain, and a bit stubborn at times. The female lead, Ema, is another one of those "top class girls within the school", but "top class" here refers to the fact that there’s always one person who stands out over everyone else in any sort of group, so she isn’t some sort of rare or unusual being, and I portrayed her as a girl with immaturity and flaws characteristic to high school students. One of the goals I had during writing this was to see how far I could write a story that only contained elements found in real life, so if you read this story expecting a dreamlike development like those found in romcoms, you might be feeling betrayed right now.

However, if this story managed to touch the hearts of those of you the same age as Yasuki and friends, and if you managed to sympathize with the story with thoughts like, “I get that feeling too!”, then I’d be overjoyed as an author. And, for the adult readers out there, if this story helped trigger some nostalgic memories for you, and if it made you think, “Ah, I remember when this sort of thing happened to me too…”, then it’d bring me great pleasure as well.

Chiba Station, which frequently came up in the story, was surprisingly much more beautiful when I visited it the other day. The station had changed a lot since the time of writing, when it was under construction for many years, so it was quite difficult to make the appropriate adjustments in the story. As for the high school Yasuki and Ema go to, I have a model school on which I based it on, but I didn’t make it exactly the same (in terms of the types of club activities, the schedule of their exams and events, their school rules, and so on) so please be aware of that. (However, the “Local Geography Research Club” is based on the real “Social Studies Research Club”. For all the club members in real life, I’d like to apologize for basing it off your club without permission...)

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to U35-sama for taking the time out of their busy schedule to do the cover of this book. Also, I would like to express my utmost gratitude to all the readers who have supported these two indecisive, hesitant, and frustrating characters!

I hope the day comes where we meet each other once more.

- Katsura Ikada

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Thanks for reading all the way till the end. If you liked the story, please buy the original volume to support the author! I'll be continuing v2 on Neosekai. The order of the chapters is a bit wacky, so use the dropdown list instead.