Volume 1, Afterword

Volume 1, Afterword

A good day to every fan of GA Publishing. And to those of you who already know me from other various works, my thanks as always. Annoyingly, rightfully, magnificently visiting you, it’s the author Mikawa Ghost.

Thank you very much for picking up “Tomodachi no Imouto Ga Ore ni Dake Uzai.” You know, I always have trouble deciding what I want to write in my afterword. Do people read the afterword before the actual book? Or do they read it afterwards? People differ greatly in the smallest of ways. With that in mind, I can’t in good faith go into detail about the contents of this novel. So instead I would like to tell you a story of when we were deciding on the title of “Tomodachi no Imouto Ga Ore ni Dake Uzai,” or “ImoZa” for short.

It happened during a hot summer in 2018. The crickets were making their presences known outside, the engines of the cars going by were roaring to their heart’s content, and I was sitting in an antique café. The professional editor from GA Publishing, Nuru-san, was sitting with me, and I told him the following:

“Recently, novels with grown-up protagonists have become rather popular…”

“That’s right.”

“Then how about an office love? Both the protagonist and the heroine are working members of society—a rom-com like that should do very well. It’ll have an office lady heroine. There will be a picture of her in a suit and tights on the cover.”

“That sounds good.”

“So, this is what I had been thinking about. ‘My girlfriend and Kouhai and superior are all working too hard.’”

“That sounds fun. Then please work in that direction.”

One week later.

“Hello. I have the design here.”

“Thank you very much. Then let’s take a look immediately… Hm?”

Having opened the small 1KB file, Editor Nuru-san tilted her head.

“There’s nothing but the title in here? ‘My friend’s little sister?’ What about the office lady heroine?”

“No matter I long I thought about it, I could only see a difficult future ahead of me if I wanted to write realistically about an office.”

“I see.”

“After all, putting lucky pervert moments in a modern office setting would only come off as sexual harassment, right? For the main character to avoid said sexual harassment and still become closer to the heroine is much too hard of a task. I would like to develop a heroine who is a bit more within the protagonist’s reach.”

“And that’s why you came up a friend’s little sister. Neither a childhood friend nor an actual little sister.”

“Please think about it. She often comes over to play, she tries to seduce him with her legs, she lets her guard down inside the living room, she sits there reading manga and listening to music.”

“I see.”

“And if that girl were a super-duper beauty?”

“That sounds nice.”

“That’s what I mean.”

“Hmm. However, what exactly is the role of that friend’s little sister? What kind of personality does she have?”

“About that.”

HAHAHAHA, I started laughing. To be completely honest, I hadn’t thought of anything except for the charm of her being so close to the protagonist.

“You see, recently, rather unexpected character traits have become popular.”

“Is that so?”

“Having them act annoying at first makes them seem rather lovable in the end, for example.”

“Ahhh, that has been quite popular recently. Being annoying.”

“I see…?”

After being told that, I wrote down the title that flew into my head at that moment.

“Tomodachi no Imouto Ga Ore ni Dake Uzai.”

“…That’s it!!!”

Both of us screamed out loud the second we saw that title.

And just like that, the title was born. Shortly afterwards the characters were born, and soon the volume was finished. So what did you think of it? It would be great if you all enjoyed it~ Please continue to watch over the past, present, and future of Akiteru, Iroha, Mashio, Ozu, and Sumire.

It’s time to give my thanks to the people who helped.

Tomari-sensei! Thank you so much for the greatest annoying heroine! The character design, cover, illustrations… Everything is perfect. I hope than we can bring this series to great success together. I’m looking forward to working with you!

To the editor Nuru-san, everyone involved from GA Publishing, everyone who made supportive comments from book stores all over the country, and to everyone else related to the release of “ImoUza,” I cannot thank you enough!

And of course, to everyone kind enough to pick up this piece of work, I love you so much!

I hope that we may see each other again. This has been Mikawa Ghost.