Heavy Object

Volume 5, Afterword

So is this the 5th novel? Writing multiple manuscripts at the same time is a bit odd because I don’t actually know which order they will be released in.

This is Kazuma Kamachi.

This is a side story. It is the story of a girl who is much dryer than Quenser and Heivia. I think the concept of the Northern European Restricted Zone first appeared in Adoption War, but now we have an ace pilot from there as our protagonist.

The Technopics appearing in this novel is a type of “battle” that has been twisted by modern technology just like the clean wars created by Objects.

Naturally, doping is bad. And there is no sense of sportsmanship left if the ones who spend the most money on sportswear and shoes automatically win.

But...

How far would humans go if they were not bound by any of those rules?

That was the slightly imprudent question that expanded into this story. I think one of the few advantages fiction has over reality is the ability to deal with this kind of thing that is either impossible or ill-advised in reality. What do you think?

Also, the world of this story has a field that uses the same technology as the Technopics but is not bound by the rules of sports.

That is of course the military.

To put it simply, the Elites who pilot Objects and the athletes participating in the Technopics both resulted from the same technologies and they both fight different sorts of proxy wars to avoid a longer, more drawn out war.

Mariydi Whitewitch can be seen as a different sort of Elite who branched off from the main story, so I felt she was well suited as the protagonist of a side story.

And since I was doing a side story, I thought it would be fun to use a different viewpoint than the Legitimacy Kingdom. Instead of simply using the systems and customs of the other world powers, it’s interesting to see the very basis of the characters change so they react differently in what they find completely natural or very strange.

In other words, I can have fun by questioning the things Quenser and Heivia find natural and have the things they would find shocking be accepted as normal. You shouldn’t trust everything those two idiots say, okay?

When writing a school story, I feel like you have to make the reader want to go to that school, but in a story like this, that kind of “tour of the school” isn’t necessary. I feel that is a big reason I am able to show the mercilessness of the systems of society.

I want to do everything I can to write more stories that make you afraid of living in that world but make you feel the characters are amazing to live there, so look forward to that.

I give my thanks to my illustrator Nagiryo-san and my editor Miki-san. With a setting like a giant manmade island, I wanted some help from the illustrations and the atmosphere kept changing between battlefield and sports arena, so I think this must have been an annoying job to deal with. I thank them for sticking with me once more.

And I give my thanks to the readers. A side story is something you can only do with a continuing series, and I feel that it is most certainly thanks to all of you that this was possible. I am truly thankful.

I hope this book will remain in your heart in some way.

I shall lay down my pen here.

With Second Venice and the like, I placed some foreshadowing I don’t know when I will ever use.

-Kamachi Kazuma