Japan, 1995. Natsumi is a principal dancer whose body is beginning to betray her, and the life she built — the stage, the city, the people she loves — is quietly coming apart at the seams.

When she's pushed into hiring a bodyguard, she gets Ryoji: quiet, unreadable, far too knowing for a stranger. The closer they get, the more the past she thought she understood stops adding up — and somewhere beneath the last analog summer before the world sped up, an ancient evil has been waiting for her a very long time.

A retro-anime romance wrapped around a slow-burning mystery, set along the neon edge of the '80s and '90s — where the love story is the first thing you see, before the lights go out.
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More than a novel. After Summer began as a nostalgic feeling — for those summers long gone — and grew into a whole retro-anime world: original music, artwork, animated trailers, and NipponNana (日本ナナ), a fictional Japanese TV channel broadcasting from inside this version of 1995.

I’m looking for a few thoughtful readers, not mass promotion.
Trailers, music, and art live at aftersummer.net — link in my bio.