Toradora! - Volume 5 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

The bank gave me a shiatsu pressure point stick. Now, there are a lot of pressure point sticks in the world, but this stick is particularly well made, and I just can’t seem to put it down. Whenever I’m conscious, I savagely grind it into my neck like clockwork. It just feels so great, I can’t stop. Calling it this might be extreme, but I put this stick on the same level as an addiction, so I call it my “drug stick.” While I’m out and about, I have withdrawal symptoms, and when I start using my drug stick, the eyes of the world seem to judge me. When I was young, I was normal, and I was so sad that no one would pay attention to me, but now I’m in the pits of sorrow that people look at me with such strange eyes… I’m Yuyuko (fatty nine…I mean twenty nine). Even though the rainy season has come and gone, I kept sleeping under my winter down blankets and sweated out a little weight.

Now then, to all of you who picked up Toradora! Vol. 5, I am so grateful that you went along with it! We got to the fifth novel before I even realized it, and we did it because you supported me. Did you perhaps enjoy yourself a little? Have I possibly repaid you? In order to pay you back for the joy and gratefulness I feel for you allowing me to write this book, I’ll enthusiastically devote everything I’ve got to the romcom road (and forget to change my bedding in the process)! A sense of the changing seasons?! I don’t need that in my life! Next up, I intend to deliver Toradora! Vol. 6 to you before the year ends, if I can. If you would be so kind, I beg of you to lend me your power for the next volume! I’m counting on you!

And now, I’d like to report on the current situation… I’ve bought several potted plants. I buy them and pot them and buy them and pot them and they just keep withering away.

I read Botanical Life (Shinchosha) by Itou Seikou, which is made up of essays written about growing plants on a veranda. It had an effect on me. I thought I’d make taking care of potted plants my hobby, too, and immediately went out to buy all kinds of things. They just keep withering and withering. They wither no sooner than I buy them. The moment I step into the main entrance of my house, they start dying, and it seems there’s no stopping that process. Before I knew it, the cute mini roses I bought that were looking perky and healthy at the flower shop were hopelessly black. Anything that could be considered a flower starts turning the same color as a blackberry starting from the edge of its petals as it rots. The petals turn up and they just collapse in on themselves until they’re ruined. I didn’t want any of that. I was giving them a moderate amount of water, too. What happened? Just what did I do? Now the diseased plants all over my room are emanating this overwhelming aura of death, and the atmosphere in my condo is super depressing. It’s all just negative. I wonder what it is… I don’t like it… I was thinking the plants would share their life force with me, so I could live my life more energetically, too.

Well then, to everyone who has stayed with me right until the end, I am truly thankful for you! And Manager-sama, Yasu-sensei, please somehow don’t succumb to the negative presence that follows me!

—Yuyuko Takemiya