Volume 16, Afterword   The year 2021 is also coming to an end. If I may talk about some

random stuff… I was cleaning my house the other day and I found my junior high school graduation book and I was reading through it. In elementary school, I wrote that I wanted to be a game programmer. I thought to myself, ‘what a incredibly difficult profession I was dreaming of!’ In my graduation essay from junior high school, “I want to work as a writer because I don’t have any talent for drawing,” (—that’s what I’d like to say, but I was too embarrassed to specify exactly what I wanted at that time) is what was written. Aside from that, I was moved to tears when I found that one of the girls I was close to wrote, “Meeting Kinugasa-kun” in the section about the good things that happened to her in junior high school. I guess there are times when it is better to leave the

past in the past!

All jokes aside, the second semester of the second year has begun. The second semester will be filled with big events, especially the cultural festival and the school trip, which will also bring a new story never before seen in the first year volumes.

It’d be great if you look forward to that in the future.

Looking back on volume 5, this is the first volume in a very long time where almost no students from other grades appear. It feels as if we haven’t seen them in a long time. The story of the first and third graders will continue to unfold, but the fact that the main focus of this story is on the same grade is reaffirmed in this volume.

Well, I have a bit of an announcement to make this time! One of the things I’ve been waiting for for a long time is a manga adaptation of the second year, and now that it’s finally ready, I’d like to announce it here.

Starting with the December issue of Monthly Comic Alive, the manga of “Welcome to the Classroom of the Elite, Second Year

Arc” will be serialized by Sasane Shia/Sia. Thank you very much for your support. I’d also like to express my deepest gratitude to Ichino Yuyu for continuing to draw the first-year version of this story, and thank you in advance for your kind cooperation.

Finally, in the afterword of the next volume, I have a thought that I’ve been keeping in my mind for the past two years, and I hope I’ll be able to touch on it.

Next time I see you will be at the beginning of the new year of 2022, see you next year!