Vol. 1 Epilogue

Well...the cultural festival didn't exactly pan out how I was expecting, but surprisingly, it wasn't in a bad way. There were people running around campus all day searching for a little girl who had attacked a student, but she had disappeared into the crowds and they never found her. It would have helped them if they realized that the little girl they were searching for was a middle-aged woman. Then, the news started to spread around the campus that the second-years in the Karate Club had been seen beating up a first-year earlier in the day. Ayame told me that the teachers were saying something about it. God, I hope they were talking about another first-year and they don't call me to testify or something. I just want everything to blow over.

It turns out my injuries were way more mild than everyone thought at first. I got a few bruises and a split lip, but I didn't actually get knocked out. The nurse said I don't have a concussion and that I collapsed from overwork. My bold-face lie ended up being the truth after all. Well, I know exactly who to blame for that. I mean, I blame my body more for deciding to shut down in the middle of a fight, but, regardless, I got to go home early. And my uniform? It was in the classroom all along.

I apologized profusely to Sudou-san for blowing her off on the festival day, but she didn't seem to mind at all and was just worried that she heard I had collapsed and was glad I was back to normal. Her saintliness knows no bounds.

I still don’t know what Takeno-senpai thinks of me. Did I actually solve anything with him at all? Maybe he still hates me, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he never did. Maybe I’ll never find out, honestly. I just have to wait and see, and keep going. Not just for his sake…for my sake as well. Is he in trouble too? Maybe I’d like to see him get taken down, too…but I wouldn’t feel good about him being punished for something he had no part in. I never wanted him to get punished in the first place…I wanted to earn his respect.

And as for my parents, I once thought that they loved anime, manga, light novels and video games, not me. I thought I was a background character- a one-page prop in the happy-ever-after picture that finishes every romantic series they ever talk about. But I'm not that. They're annoying, and they don't know what social cues are, and you better not say anything otaku to them because they won't shut up about it, but my dad works really hard to put a roof over my head and food on my table and my mom backed down my seniors who were twice her size just to protect me. Most importantly, they listened when I told them what about their behavior embarrassed me, and they're trying their best to change. For my sake. I once thought they were losers, and to be honest they still are, but that doesn't make them bad parents. In fact, it's the opposite. I couldn't imagine myself saying this just a month ago, but I'm glad I have the parents I do. Even if they annoy me by talking too much about otaku stuff or my mom makes Pretty Lyrical Miracle Curry or my dad starts listing all his "waifus", I still love them.

My dad is an otaku, my mom is a fujoshi, and you know what? I don't mind.

AFTERWORD

Astral here!

I hope you enjoyed this story. Looking back at it, I'm not sure exactly what kind of genre this book counts as. It's a rom-com, but it's also a drama at points, and a pure comedy at points, with a little heartwarming thrown in. Jun Maeda once said that his goal was to first make you laugh, then make you cry. I guess that's what I ended up doing here.

I’m not sure why I brought up Jun Maeda. I don’t like him very much.

This story started with an idea I had after finishing reading another LN- the main characters were a couple otaku, mainly because that kind of stuff makes them easily identifiable, and at the end of the story they got married and had a baby. I began to wonder what life would be like for that child as he grew up, and what it would be like once he realized what his parents were like. When I first envisioned Haruto, I thought of it as a twist on the traditional "rebellious child"- normally, the child rebels against his overbearing parents by participating in counterculture, but in this case his parents were the ones in the counterculture- he was rebelling against them by trying to be a normal, productive member of society. Then, the other characters followed, and that's how we ended up here.

It wasn’t intentional, but when I was writing the main conflict, I realized it was a lot like my own childhood. When I was a teenager, I was like Haruto and thought I knew everything and fought with my parents all the time. I thought I was too cool for them, and just like him, I resented them for acting the way they did toward me. It was only later in life (when I was grown up, but still not yet matured) that I began to realize just how much that my mother and father did for me.

What's the point here? I guess there's none. This is not the kind of series you should be getting life lessons from. But if I could take something from this story, it would be to appreciate your parents, because you only have one family.

Thanks for reading this self-indulgent little passion project. I'll see you next time.