Afterword
Mobile phones started to become popular among students right around the time when I was in high school.
At that time, the things a student could do with a mobile phone were limited to phone calls, text messages with a limited number of characters per message, and creation of ringtone melodies. Depending on your phone model, you might not have even been able to send messages to someone on a different carrier, and it was a time when most of the displays were monochromatic, so things like “You can choose from one of green, white, red, or blue colors!” were still valid selling points.
There was no such thing as a wallpaper or background image, and only a few high-end models had a camera function that you needed to attach extra equipment to use.
People who wanted to stand out from the crowd could decorate the handset and replace the standard antenna with one that blinked on receiving a signal. However, doing that didn’t improve the functionality of the handset in any way.
It was just an additional feature meant to improve the appearance of the mobile phone. Even without considering that, it was a time when strict schools had rules about wearing the school uniform even when meeting up with friends outside, and even carrying a mobile phone was against the rules.
The logic behind that rule was to not bring things to school that were not related to studies, but even elementary school students nowadays carry one for the sake of safety, and at the middle and high school level, talking to classmates is being replaced by conversations using a messaging application on a smartphone. It’s interesting to see how the conditions have changed.
It’s nice to meet you, or maybe it’s just been a long time. My name is Wagahara Satoshi.
My first mobile phone was a bar-shaped model which had no internet connection capabilities. All it could handle were voice calls and short messages. Even so, at that time, I was excited about owning such a futuristic device, and along with my Famicon, it is one of the few things I begged my parents to buy for me.
I’d exchange useless messages with friends even though we had nothing in particular to talk about, carefully hide it deep inside my bag at school to keep the teachers from finding it, and do my best at creating ringtone melodies using triad notes. On the way to school in the train, I would use my Walkman (which would also be confiscated by a teacher if found) to listen to ‘My Best’ MiniDisc that I created by dubbing titles from CDs and MDs, and inputting the titles on the keypad.
However, now is the age when high school students play social games on their smartphones while listening to downloaded music on their way to school.
When I first came up with the idea for this book, “The Hero’s Son”, I was worried if an old man like me from the Triassic period of digital devices would be able to write about a modern high-school student using my imagination alone.
The educational environment, digital environment, and manner of examinations that surround a student, never mind a decade, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say they become obsolete in a mere three years. That’s why, for writing this book, I used the current methods of examinations and the current style of prep schools as a reference.
Not only exams, I was also able to obtain a lot of important information regarding the current practices of education, and the daily life of students in school. I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank Nakagawa-sensei, Takeda-sensei, and Hayashi-sensei from a certain prep school for readily agreeing to help me collect data.
This book, “The Hero’s Son”, is about a young man who thinks doing your best is not required to live, and he faces a sudden situation that causes him to want to overcome his definition of doing his best.
I would like to create a new story about a “Hero living in Modern Japan” along with 029-san who created “Hataraku Maou-sama!” along with me, and knows me inside out.
I hope we can once again meet in the chaotic land of the Hero’s Trial (exams)!
Goodbye!
And now, for a little afterword of my own.
This was my first attempt at translating a light novel, and I did my best to translate it while keeping the ‘Engrish’ to a bare minimum. I hope the readers enjoyed reading this novel.
I would like to thank Aardvark for editing my translation and bringing it close to the standard of English one would expect to see in a novel.
I would also like to thank Ice Phantom for managing this project from the start to the finish, taking care of annoying things like quality checks, advertising it on Reddit, NovelUpdates, and other sites, and generally making sure that people know this site exists. This project would most certainly not have existed if not for his help.
A big thank you to Frozen for creating the nice chapter navigation images, seeing as I’m next to useless at Photoshop.
And finally, I would like to thank the people who read my releases every week and left feedback in the comments. I might not always reply, but rest assured that I read every single comment, and the feedback motivates me to keep translating.
Goodbye for now, I am going into hibernation until the next volume is released.
-Nazo
Thanks for translating this !
Thanks for all the translations (I came back to this post after reading the 5 short stories). Thank-you to the rest of the team, too!
Thank you for the translation.
Wagahara sensei is a good writer for young readers, you did a splendid job at deciding to translate this novel.
Sleep well in hibernation, eating enough fat to avoid waking up in mid winter like some unlucky bears.
Wow, that was quick xD
I hope you didn’t miss reading the Final chapter? I don’t usually do double releases, but the last chapter was so short that I decided to release the afterword along with it.
Yup, I read it as soon as it posted since I had just finished studying for the day.
And decided to study some more after seeing how Yasuo is struggling.
just realized this one came out from the E-mail notification , what can I say kinda surprised to how rather anticlimactic the epilogue is since some novel read always use ambiguous cliffhanger in epilogue lol
as for afterwords wagahara-sensei in normal side type eh, thought the talk about phone in beginning rather come out nowhere lol
anyway thanks for the hard work for translating this LN
Thanks for your hard work! 🙂
Thanks for the translation 😊
Thanks for taking your time on translating this novel.
So you have no plans on translating something else?
PS: are you sure there’ll be another volume? Since there’s no “n°1” on the cover, maybe it’s only a oneshot like some other.
Though I really hope there’ll be one. There is too many unanswered question (like the black soot following his friend from middle school).
Hope to see you again (maybe on another novel during the mean time)!!
From what Wagahara said in the afterword, I get the impression that he wants to continue the novel series. Of course, other factors are involved in deciding if it ever gets published, but we can only hope.
I do not plan to translate anything else in the meantime as I have some other commitments that take up a lot of my time.
Don’t worry!
I just found this :
Dengeki Bunko – 10 August :
– Yuusha no Segare Vol.2
So get ready to translate in two months. 😀
Oh shame, like I just said, it’s in two months so I guess we won’t see until then. ;(
You did an excellent job on the novel. Thanks for all your hard work! 😄
Thanks for the chaps