The End of the Affair
is a completed fic based on My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected.
Set many years after graduation, Hachiman has been living alone and working various odd jobs to support himself. In the months since graduation he has gradually lost contact with all the friends he made during high school until the day he involved himself in their high school reunion.
The day after the next he receives a call Yukino and Hachiman finds that the unanswered questions between them from their high school years may be catching up to them...
The story addresses many themes on adult life in Hachiman's usual way much like in the light novels. As it is written by one of the translators of the original light novels, the author does an excellent job in maintaining the "voice" of each character even as adults.
- Above the Influence: Various lines during and after the Did They or Didn't They? incident suggests that Yukino was actually willing to have sex with Hachiman but he was the one who turned her down.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Hachiman delivers one to Yukino at the end when he asks her whether the massive charity organisation that she founded was nothing more than an attempt to recreate the Service Club in a larger scale. He actually manages to stun her speechless.
- Babies Ever After: Komachi and Yukino are revealed to be pregnant during the story.
- Bittersweet Ending: More bitter than sweet. Hachiman and Yukino have met up and he managed to help Yukino end her personal problems and the things unsaid from high school have, for all intents and purposes, been resolved between them, however said resolution means that Hachiman will continue his lonely life while Yukino willingly remains in a loveless marriage so that she would have the resources to maximise her charity organisation. It's ultimately left ambiguous whether either of them will truly be happy with their lives even though they each did so entirely out of their own decisions. Likewise it's implied that this will be the last time either of them interacts with each other in a meaningful manner.
- Bus Crash: Haruno is revealed to have died in a skiing accident several years before the start of the story.
- Call-Back: Near the end of the story Hachiman gets hit by a car again, this time for pushing a little girl out of the way.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Hachiman and Yukino both have a case of this owing to their each of their own personal issues with romantic relationships.
- Class Reunion: One near the start of the story that, aside from briefly introducing many of the characters from the light novel and what they're like now, slowly kicks off the story when Yukino doesn't show up.
- Did They or Didn't They?: All of chapter 4 pretty much teases this between Yukino and Hachiman. It's revealed at the end that they didn't do anything more than hold hands and sleep in the same bed.
- Exact Words: When Hachiman remarks on how Yukino has finally surpassed her sister she agrees because her sister has been dead for years.
- The Fellowship Has Ended: After graduation everyone has gone their separate ways. Hachiman in particular, due to his personality, loses contact with everyone but his sister helped along in no small way by the fact that he didn't really bother maintaining even long distant contact with his friends. He also admits that he didn't really contact them after meeting up again due to guilt over his coldness to them before.
- Knight in Sour Armor: Yukino has pretty much grown into this, starting a massive charity organisation to help the less fortunate. Hachiman outrights calls this her "cynical idealism."
- My God, What Have I Done?: Hachiman has this sort of reaction when he finds out that Haruno had died years before and that he had been obliviously mentioning her repeatedly to Yukino.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Hachiman delivers one to James, Yukino's husband.
- Replacement Goldfish: It's implied that Haruno's fiancé only married Yukino because he hoped she might serve as a replacement for her sister.
- Shipper on Deck: Komachi is still shown to be this for Hachiman, shipping him with anyone in an attempt to get him to open up more.
- Silly Rabbit, Romance Is for Kids!: At least from Hachiman's side, this is very clearly the reason why he rejects Yui and why he never confessed his own feelings towards Yukino. There are some implications that part of the reason Yukino never admitted her own attraction to Hachiman is because he has this attitude towards love. It's deconstructed somewhat where we see how on some level Hachiman really does want to love and be loved and sometimes finds himself reminiscing on what could have been if he had accepted his own feelings.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Inverted in a way. While it's all but stated that Yukino and Hachiman have genuine feelings for each other it is ultimately their own internal issues that prevent them from taking the final step rather than any external force (if anything, it can be said that outside forces were actively trying to get them together) keeping them apart both at graduation and at the end of the story. This is also defied on a personal level by Hachiman who mentally narrates how they both willingly chose to end any chance of a relationship between them, how real relationships are formed and end from people's personal choices and how circumstances forcing couples apart is nothing more than a cheap device to create drama in a story.
- Taking Up the Mantle: Yukino is revealed to have done this for her sister. Shouldering the responsibilities of her family and even marrying her sister's fiancé. That said, the stress of doing so is shown to have taken its toll on her.
- Twice Shy: Both Hachiman and Yukino obviously have feelings for each other but neither ever says anything about it even until the very end.
