by Hirukuma
The way my family raised me was rather strict, and I was forbidden from reading manga or watching anime until middle school. My mother hated all that stuff, so the only anime I got permission to watch were Sazae-san and Doraemon. (Although I watched other things in secret when my parents weren’t around.)
The only manga in our house, too, were historical ones about famous people from Japan and the rest of the world, but starved for manga as I was at the time, I read them front to back, over and over.
Normally, placed in a situation like this, one would concentrate on his studies, but I hated studying with a passion. Then I had the easygoing idea that if I couldn’t read manga, then I could just read novels, right? That led to me reading every novel I could get my hands on every day.
They weren’t limited to pure literature and the kinds of stories you’d find in textbooks; I mainly read action-adventure novels, historical ones, and books about the ecology of animals and insects. I was reading them as a stand-in for manga, so I remember liking books with interesting stories or ones where I could learn things I didn’t know.
That’s the kind of kid I was, so looking back on it, there were quite a few odd things about the way I spoke and acted. Whenever everyone else would have conversations about what they’d read in shounen manga magazines, I hadn’t read them, so I couldn’t keep up. If someone asked me directly, I’d say things like “Anyway, can we talk about Thomas Alva Edison?” I was a weirdo.
At the time, we had a biographical manga about Edison in the house, and being able to say his full name like that was a small pride for me. When I think about it now, I was the kind of kid my friends didn’t like too much because I always showed off my book smarts.
When I entered the later years of elementary school, after learning how interesting novels were, I was taken in by short-short stories, began to enjoy stories with sophisticated endings, and dabbled in Sherlock Holmes as well. That was how my twisted, unchildlike personality strengthened.
Once my grade school days were over and I began middle school, my mother suddenly lifted the ban on manga. She told me that now that I was in middle school, I should judge the good from the bad myself. I remember her talking about things like how she raised me the way she needed to in elementary school, and now she wanted me to take responsibility for my own actions.
Then I had a thought. Was this…a clever trap of hers? Was she letting me swim, waiting for me to slip up, get ahead of myself and buy manga, only for her to say how unhealthy the things I was reading were, claim it’s harmful, confiscate it, and talk to me about how I should be studying harder? I decided she was.
I was eager not to let her catch me with that one, so I thought about it long and hard.
At the time, I enjoyed watching Sherlock Holmes, Tuesday Suspense Theatre, and Western detective dramas, so I had started to fancy myself a deductive expert. I put my skills to work, looking for an answer as to how to go about living in the future.
Continuing to read novels like I always did would be the safest method. On the other hand, my desire to read manga grew by the day. Finally, I had an epiphany.
Couldn’t I just read light novels, many of which were fantasy, instead of the regular ones my parents liked? I could just take off the cover and it would look like a normal book. I would skip over pages with pictures on them while my parents were around, then enjoy them on my own time in solitude.
In that way, I enjoyed my days buried up to my shoulders in light novel worlds for my three years of middle school. Incidentally, I understood that my parents really wouldn’t get angry even if I read manga or watched anime when I entered my second year of middle school.
Well, after that, I ended up getting absorbed in stories about the human heart, like psychology and multiple personality disorder, when I got to high school. But when I look back, I also feel like that was the height of my youth, or a rather late chuunibyou phase.
When I talked to my mother about it, she was proud, and boasted “Well, I guess the fact that you’re writing novels now is thanks to me!” She’s not wrong, but why do I feel weird about it?
Anyway, if you’d told me at the time that I’d be in a position to let other people read stories I’ve written like this, I’d never have believed you.
Ituwa Kato not only provided the gorgeous illustrations once again, but also added to the main character’s vending machine shenanigans, and those beast people, too… Thank you so much.
My editor M and everyone in the Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko editing department, you’ve all been a great help on both Volume 1 and Volume 2.
To my mother and older brother—thank you for telling our relatives and your friends about this.
Thank you to my friends who went to the bookstore to purchase this, too.
And to all the readers who purchased Volume 2—I ask for your continued support in the future.
Hirukuma
Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Yen On.
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