Spy Classroom - Volume 1 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

It’s nice to meet you. I’m Takemachi, Grand Prize winner of the 32nd Fantasia Taisho awards.

I submitted this under the title The Spy’s Sweet Temptations—All the Other Students Are Beautiful Girls. From there, the book went through a number of revisions, and now it’s in the form you see today.

Incidentally, the reason the actual book’s synopsis turned out so different from my submission’s is because of conversations I had with my editor. After analyzing the story’s strengths and weaknesses, I rewrote it to better live up to the expectations that winning the Grand Prize carries. And if anyone bought this book hoping to use it as a reference for their own future Fantasia Taisho submissions, don’t worry. Anything you may have heard about the editorial department poisoning me or blackmailing me into making changes is a lie. All they did was offer me delicious coffee and win me over through gentle persuasion.

If anyone’s curious about the original synopsis, please feel free to check it out on the Fantasia Taisho website. If you do, you’ll be able to see just how much work went into the revisions—mostly on my editor’s part.

Starting here, I have some people to thank.

To Tomari, the book’s illustrator, thank you for giving the characters such great designs. Klaus, in particular, was so cool, he gave me shivers. Some of the girls didn’t get much of a spotlight this time around, but I’ll make sure to change that in the next book so your fantastic designs for them get a chance to shine.

To Asaura, who helped me research the book’s firearms, I can’t thank you enough for helping get a gun novice like me up to speed. Now that you’ve taught me how much there is to know, I feel like I’m ready to start learning more.

To the Fantasia Taisho selection committee, thank you so much for awarding me your prestigious Grand Prize. As I mentioned before, the actual book ended up being pretty different from my submission, and it’s all thanks to the responsibility with which you entrusted me that I was able to make so many changes.

And finally, to all my readers. I know that “spies” isn’t the most common theme for a light novel, so thank you for reading my book anyway. The next volume should be coming out soon, so I hope to see you again then.

Until next time.

Takemachi