Spy Classroom - Volume SS1 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

Takemachi here. It’s been a while.

This collection contains four short stories that were originally serialized in Dragon Magazine with loads of edits and revisions, one completely new short story, and a few additional odds and ends.

Chronologically speaking, the content here takes place from the middle of Volume 1 right on up to just before Volume 2. There were a lot of girls who didn’t get much of a chance to be in the spotlight in Volume 1, so you can think of this as sort of an unabridged version of the bioweapon retrieval mission.

By the way, an alternate title for this collection could be Spy Classroom: Romcom Edition Pt. 1.

My philosophy for the main books is to pack as much story as I can into a couple hundred pages, but I do worry about how this means I don’t get to include much slice-of-life or romantic content about the girls. Given the option between “Let’s send Teach a love letter!” and “Let’s hurl a bunch of firecrackers into Teach’s room!” they seem about a hundred times more likely to choose the latter. Not much is going to change for the main books going forward, so getting to include that stuff in the short stories comes as a big relief to me.

The question at the forefront of my mind while writing these five stories was, “How do the Lamplight girls really feel about Klaus?” (Monika ended up being pretty much the same as ever, but that’s Monika for you.)

Unsurprisingly, it still ended up being pretty light on the “rom” relative to most of the rom-coms out there, but compared to the main books, I like to think it touched on the girls’ feelings a bit more than usual.

And there you have it. The short story collection centered around Sara, Sybilla, Monika, and Grete.

(By the way, here’s a tidbit of exposition. I suspect that 99 percent of the readers will have forgotten, but just for reference, the woman named Eve featured in Case: Monika showed up in Volume 1, Chapter 4 as well. Her most memorable quote was, “Gack.”)

Next up, I believe some thanks are in order. Tomari, your illustrations here were just as fantastic as in the main books. The girls were adorable in a whole different way than they are in the main storyline, so thank you for that. Getting to see your illustrations is always a huge highlight for me.

Finally, I have…a preview? If I get the chance to publish a Pt. 2, it stands to reason it’ll be centered around Annette, Thea, Erna, and Lily. Feels like that group is even less suited for rom-com shenanigans than the first one, huh. I will be able to publish the book, though…right? Yeah, probably.

Until next time.

Takemachi