Afterward

Thank you and apologies for reading a story about Tobe. I didn't plan on going quite that far with him, but that's how it ended up. And even winning the approval of the mothers? That's why this is a work of fan fiction.

I had decided to publish all chapters at the same time as an experiment for myself. Once a chapter is published, you cannot take it back. If it has not been published, you can always go back and rewrite portions of it. Though, even with that safety net, I've ended up making only minor edits.

My primary motivation was to illustrate an interaction with the two mothers from an initial meeting to playing roles in solving a Service Club-like incident. However, the conflict between them was resolved quite quickly, for reasons that you can guess. Naturally, this let Tobe have the spotlight in the second chapter.

The other thing that was a bit unintentional was the part dedicated to Ebina. Ebina was a character that I found intriguing yet paid less attention to, naturally owed to her low presence in the novels. Because of that, it's hard to gauge how she progressed. But it's quite clear that, even up to volume 13, it never seemed like she found something that was truly satisfactory.

If you shrug and let things be, if you say to yourself that it can't be helped or that's that, is satisfaction really possible?

Yukino's mother intimidated nearly every character in Oregairu. That's an obvious flaw in a character that's otherwise portrayed as high-spec to the point of being nearly untouchable. Then, what would happen if she were to become just a touch friendlier? Not just anyone can point that out to her, though.

And, we have GahaMama. In the novels, she immediately took quite a liking to Hachiman and even reacted quite affirmatively to his usual jests, either playing along with his jokes or giving him a subtle but hard reminder to behave himself. It's tempting to think of her as Yui but with more wisdom. But there is a decisive difference. I believe that she values sincerity just a little bit more than her daughter. It's a claim that's hard to substantiate from the cooking lesson in volume 14 alone. I'm also inferring from her age. Adults have more responsibilities and needs, accompanied with much of stress in fulfilling them. The consequences of not gaining the upper hand with a lie is harsher as an adult. Being able to find sincerity in such an environment is truly precious.

Is that reaching too far? If it is, I hoped what I wrote was entertaining, even if not convincing. I let myself loose and wrote about things I've always been imagining.

If you could eat desserts expensive enough to devastate your wallet with GahaMama and Yukinoshita's mother, would you be more frightened than happy?