Afterword
It truly has been a long time since the previous installment in the main story. This is the magical girl who’s been too busy writing the main story to actually appear in the main story, otherwise known as Asari Endou.
While I managed to avoid going past the deadline for the newest anthology—the one with many rare bonus short stories, Magical Girl Raising Project: Episodes Δ (wh-what a good deal!)—it still took too much time, and getting it published was painful (ah, right, the print book and ebook will be released simultaneously).
To all the fans who have been left waiting, my apologies.
In Black, the usual thing does not happen—the thing that comes up in every book for a few people or more than a dozen.
Not only did that not happen, but also, everyone worked together to defeat enemies, too. There is no maid who pretends to be helping while she’s secretly manipulating hearts and no elf hunter sneaking in to fire javelins. They are actually joining forces to fight enemies.
Perhaps some may lament that the author has taken a turn for the worse or that writing nothing but heartwarming short stories has corrupted my work. But don’t worry! In the next one, White, a new transfer student will join them… Oh, I can’t say any more. Spoilers are not allowed in an afterword.
Granted, I have done a little bit of spoiling here, but I get the feeling that the sequel will be titled White. Earlier, S-mura was saying how it’d be funny if it wound up something other than White, so there’s still the slight possibility the next book in the main story will be called something different. But it basically seems like it will probably be White, I’m sure. Please wait for it, while also mentally preparing yourself even if the subtitle becomes Veridian Green.
On another topic.
Setting this book in a magical-girl class means that the whole cast is middle school students. When I put out ten or more new characters at once, I always give them a variety of ages, professions, and whatnot in order to make them easier for readers to identify, but I couldn’t do that this time.
Some of the magical girls are very unlike middle schoolers, and some are not actually middle schoolers at all, but still, I couldn’t let them all not be middle schoolers, and I struggled quite a lot with that.
Also, though you may be surprised by this, the truth is that I am not a middle schooler. So it’s difficult to write about what they do or what sort of things they talk about based on my own experience, and I looked to my niece for help.
Thanks to my niece, I was able to learn about the real life of middle schoolers. She was so helpful!
Maybe some people who are currently in middle school, when reading the depiction of middle schoolers in the book, thought, Hold on, middle schoolers aren’t like this. But that’s because my niece is a magical girl, so some of her life as a middle school magical girl wound up in there, too. Even if you think it’s not right for a middle schooler, please be generous and forgive me, like, If she’s a middle school magical girl, then sure, whatever.
But saying all this, I still feel like a middle schooler.
To everyone in the editorial department who has guided me, and to S-mura, whose time has been chipped away while working like a storm to resolve countless problems for me and mercilessly dispose of my writings: Thank you very much.
Marui-no, thank you very much for your wonderful illustrations. Revisions and changes have resulted in more versions with different costumes and accessories, rather like updates in video games. They are all in my treasure box. Though it’s wound up like the wrongdoer here is benefiting in the end, that sort of thing does happen in Magical Girl Raising Project, huh…? Oh, I really am sorry.
To Chihiro Yuki, who made those wonderful comments on the blurb, and to Hanasaki Morinaka, thank you very much. As Asari Endou, Virtual Light Novel Bestseller, I tremble with the honor of receiving such praise from industry veterans.
And to all my readers, I’m sorry I’ve made you wait. Thank you very much for being patient. I’ll publish the sequel as quickly as possible. As for the next part of Breakdown and whatnot—yes, I’ll get through that as quickly as possible…to the best of my ability!
See you again next time, in Veridian…er, in White!
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