Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume Short Story-1 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

Hello again, it’s Miya Kazuki. Thank you very much for reading Ascendance of a Bookworm’s first short story collection.

This book contained all sorts of content, from sales bonuses to chapters that went completely unpublished. A few of the stories were already featured in the second fanbook but, because we have so many new readers now, we decided to include them here as well to make them more easily accessible. Hopefully this means those of you who only read e-books or simply live too far away from participating bookstores can enjoy them too!

These short stories appear in chronological order, and the first ones go all the way back to the beginning! Reading them might fill you with a sense of nostalgia... but when I started editing them for this collection, I was too busy writhing in embarrassment.

One huge attraction of this book is You Shiina-sama’s beautiful artwork. It’s as wonderful and enrapturing as ever! There were no new character designs for her to wrestle with, but these illustrations still caused her a lot of trouble. You see, in the world of Bookworm, about six years pass between Part 1 Volume 1 and Part 4 Volume 4. As you can tell from the cover art, Myne grew about twenty centimeters in that time—and other characters like Lutz and Tuuli grew about forty! I was often having to stop and think, “How old were these characters at this point in the story?” I’d use my fingers to work out their ages in comparison to Myne, then Shiina-sama would draw them to match!

Not to mention, the color illustration for this book is a gathering of so many main characters! She originally said that including fourteen people was completely unreasonable... but then she went ahead and did it anyway! Shiina-sama really can’t be beat, and the four-panel manga she drew are as cute as always. Thank you very much, Shiina-sama!

This short story volume is due to be published around the same time as the anime starts airing! Not only can you experience Myne and everyone being brought to life, but you’ll also get to see all of the end cards drawn by Shiina-sama and others. Please watch until the end of each episode.

And finally, I offer up my highest thanks to everyone who read this book. May we meet again in Part 4 Volume 9 and the fourth fanbook.

September 2019, Miya Kazuki