Accel World - Volume 2 - Chapter Aft

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AFTERWORD

It’s been a while, or maybe this is the first time. Reki Kawahara here. Thank you for reading Accel World 2: The Red Storm Princess.

I was told about two billion times that the afterword in the last volume was “too formal!” or “pretentious!” or “who are you?” so this time, I’d like to do it with a tiny bit more delicacy.

About twice a week, I get on my good-for-nothing bike and ride out to a farm not far from my house, about thirty-five kilometers north along the river. Last year, two kittens were born on this farm. And of course, even these kids, who were such cuties as first, grew up at an incredible speed (lol). Before I knew it, they had gotten so huge, and for the most part, that’s fine, but what bothers me is that when I eat some sweet bread on a bench at the farm instead of an extra meal, they come flying at me really forcefully now, demanding some bread with loud meows.

I feel like it’s not a particularly good idea to give cats bread, and more important, I’m very much not interested in having my precious calories taken from me, so, crafty me, I decided to bring some of those little dried sardines with me along with the sweet bread and give them those. What a good person! Go ahead and compliment me!

However. The sardines I offered up so confidently (domestically made, no less) were only sniffed at by the cats and ignored. Then they started clamoring—Who would eat such a fish? Give us a break, give us the bread. You can understand my amazement, I’m sure. Until that time, I had believed all the writings stating that these creatures called cats universally loved sardines. But that was not the case. Cats who have been raised not eating fish will end up not liking fish.

The result of all this being that I now spend my days being squeezed by this gang for approximately 10 percent of my precious sweet bread.

The moral of this apparently pointless story is that things you think may make others happy may not necessarily make others happy. Yes…Even so, I do hope you all enjoyed this book, which I worked hard in my own way to write.

Illustrator, HIMA, and my editor, Miki, you have again helped me out so much.

Thank you to my friends on the IRC channel, who cheer me up when I tend to lose heart so easily, and everyone who sent me encouraging messages on the website.