Toradora!

Volume 3, Author's Notes

Lately, I've been hearing people raving about those fortune-telling websites, so I decided to try one myself. The fortune I got read "You're an exceptionally dense person. Once you see food you fancy, you'll end up eating only that." Wow, how accurate. Hi guys, this is Takemiya here!

Everyone that I've met has said to me that I'm going to get poisoned someday for eating cod spaghetti all the time. Even my fortune telling has foreseen it! So now, whenever I'm having cod spaghetti, I try to have it with a side dish as well.

...and that dish would be frozen fried chicken nuggets. I usually can eat up to four (after heating in the microwave for two minutes), but as every packet contains 17 nuggets, I get to have five nuggets on every fourth meal.

I always look forward to the meal where I can have five nuggets. I would even get up early on that morning and think, "Hey, I can have five today!" That thought alone is enough of a reason to get out of bed... Vegetables? Nope, don't have any...

By the way, the amount of spaghetti that I eat does not decrease just because I've added a side dish. Since it's hot lately, if my appetite decreases, I'll get too thin, and then it'll affect my work.

As a responsible person, I must take good care of my own body, which is why I have meals meant for two people.

To everyone who has read Toradora! Volume 3: thanks for reading till the end! Did you enjoy it?

Unlike previous volumes, the focus this time is on breasts. For me, this came a bit unexpectedly...anyway... There's still plenty of ammo for the hips for my romance novel, not to mention I'm still not done with the breast ammo yet, so I must spare no mercy in firing them in my future novels.

I hope everyone has liked my story, and I hope you would continue supporting me!

By the way, I wonder if any readers out there were wondering whether or not I could swim? Well, I actually can. Or to be more precise, at least I don't sink. Even when I'm not making an effort to swim, when I relax my body, it floats on its own! And you can forget about me scuba diving, since my butt would always float upwards, and you'd see me in an awkward position with my head downwards and my feet upwards.

For someone whose existence is hardly solid, I have been completely addicted to the Nintendo game Animal Crossing. Right now, my right hand is holding a fork and stuffing my face with spaghetti and chicken nuggets, while my left hand is on the console controller... I was just kidding... I hope I was kidding.

As I'm usually playing video games now, I'm lacking exercise now more than ever. But in the game, I've been using up a lot of energy, running around the village catching insects, fishing, digging up fossils! I'm sure that's more than enough exercise.

However, because I got too into the game, my already stiff shoulder and painful waist got even worse. My masseuse, who I visit often, told me, "Your shoulder's frozen (and it's getting even fatter)." I was wondering why I couldn't lift my arm. No matter how many soothing massages I get, my shoulders would still revert to its worst condition. I usually reply smiling, "Maybe I've been playing too many video games." My masseuse would then sigh as a result of my response... I can't even remember how many times this scene has repeated itself already.

For someone so obsessed with the game, I just can't figure out how to interact with the animals in the village... "Hey~ Yuyuko! Can I have a ###?" I usually can't bring myself to turn down the animals' sudden requests for help, so I'd spend lots of time searching for those items. After some considerable effort, I gave what I had finally found to them, and they would usually smile cutely and reply, "Wow! Thanks! As expected from Yuyuko!" Afterward, they would chuck it in the dustbin the following day, leaving me feeling a bit hurt... Although they were the ones who had lost it in the first place, the following day, they still come to me and ask "Hey~ Yuyuko! Can I have a ### (the exact same item)?" What the hell!?

...after getting frustrated with the game, I decided to try something different, which is what I'm playing now - mental training.

First, they'd test your mental age through voice recognition, so I have to answer the questions that they ask using a microphone. You're all probably thinking that I'm now depressed because my mental age was determined to be very old, right? Wrong!

I don't know whether it was because I spoke too softly on the mic, but the machine just couldn't determine my results.

I guess that's about right... Since I've hardly spoken to any real people lately... maybe I've even forgotten how to talk...

A-Anyway! Might as well go back to the village to catch some insects! In this world, even with a frozen shoulder, you can still swing your insect net around...

--- And so, thanks a lot for staying around till the end! Serious! Stay tuned for Volume 4 of Toradora! and I hope you'll like that as well! I'd also like to thank everyone who has written to me. I've already carefully read every letter together with my editors, though there were so many it took like forever to read them all.

Also thanks to Kurafuji Sachi-sensei for her manga adaptation of my other work Watashitachi no Tamura kun on Dengeki Comic Gao!, as well as his guest illustrations and thoughts in this volume. I hope to work again with you in the future!

Finally, much thanks for the hard work of Yasu-sensei and all the editors. Let us continue to work hard, and make full use of our breast ammo reserved for romance novels!

Takemiya Yuyuko