Rookie Prize Judges’ Table

It was a sunny day in early September when Haruto Fuwa visited Gift Publishing to help judge for the fifteenth GF Bunko New Writers Contest.

Contests like these were, as the title suggested, a system for light novel publishers to discover new talent; lots of labels held their own. They accepted unpublished manuscripts, gave out prizes to the best ones, and (generally) put the winners into print. Even if a novel wasn’t quite prizeworthy, the writer would still occasionally be assigned an editor and make their debut later. Having new talent show up and be active in the business wasn’t just good for labels, but for the industry as a whole—it was no exaggeration that the future of light novels rode on the backs of these contests.

Despite having honest doubts about how qualified a judge he was, Haruto took the elevator up to the meeting room where the evaluations took place. The GF Bunko New Writers Contest was launched alongside the label itself; this was its fifteenth anniversary. Evaluation took place over three rounds, through a process of test readings and editor checks, before a smaller pool was nominated for the final judgment. This was what the judges went through to pick a grand prize and multiple first, second, and honorable mention prizes, along with a Special Judges’ Selection.

The judges were picked from writers, manga artists, well-known screenwriters and anime directors, and other creative types, paired with GF Bunko editors. It was common to see some pretty famous figures in the judge pool for the first few years of these awards, but these days, they were more likely to be people already working in the Gift Publishing family. This was Haruto’s first stint as a judge; he was picked because his work was being made into anime (this was before the show’s airing) and he had some “momentum” going. (A lot of this also had to do with the fact that Nayuta Kani, the most famous winner of the GF award, declined to participate. She told Haruto as much herself.)

Not that I could imagine Nayu taking this seriously at all…

Haruto smiled a little as he called his editor Kawabe to announce his presence. After a few moments, he was instead greeted by Miyako Shirakawa.

“Oh, hello, Fuwa!”

“Oh, uh, hi, Miyako.”

His heart skipped a beat. This came wholly out of the blue. He knew she was working part-time for editorial, of course, but he hadn’t had much business at the publisher itself after the anime’s run ended. It was the first time he had seen her here.

“Mr. Kawabe is a little busy at the moment, so I’ll let you in.”

“Okay.”

She used her ID lanyard to unlock and open the door. The way she seemed so used to operations around here flustered him a bit as he followed behind.

“Here’s the judging room.”

The meeting room she took him to was unoccupied. None of the other judges was there yet. Haruto had been here countless times before for other meetings; it wasn’t decorated for the occasion in any way. Publishers would occasionally rent out space at a fancy hotel or hold the judging at a lavishly decorated chamber inside their building, but that wasn’t the case for GF Bunko. Instead, there was a long table with some chocolate and other snacks on a paper plate in the middle, while neat stacks of paper had been placed in front of each seat.

Haruto sat in a random chair, picked one of the contest entries in front of him, and flipped through it.

“Have you read all the entries?”

“Oh, sure.” Haruto nodded. “Of course. Well, the final six nominees, at least.”

The contest this year had received over a thousand entrants. Haruto and his fellow judges would be assigning prizes to the six that made it through the process.

“Pretty crazy to think,” remarked Miyako. “A six-in-one-thousand chance.”

“Yeah, I think there were around nine hundred in the contest Itsuki and I participated in. I’m still kind of amazed that I passed.”

He smiled a bit. That was the honest truth.

“Oh, so you and Itsuki both turned pro after being selected in this?”

“Uh-huh. We both earned prizes in the tenth annual contest. They publish the names of the writers who make it past the first round on the net and stuff—I still remember how happy I was to see my name up there. I was on pins and needles the whole time until they released the round-two survivors.”

It was all nostalgic memories for him now, at this point.

“Though, really,” he added, “it must be a lot harder to select from a thousand entries.”

“I bet it was. The editors were all reading entries over lunch and everything.”

Miyako mentally recalled the scene around the office a month ago. For the first round, GF Bunko usually hired on part-time readers—not from the general public, but among writers, critics, friends of the editors, and other people with an eye for quality. Works that made it past there and into round two were read through by at least two editors, and in round three, the entire department read through the surviving entries. All stories that beat the first round had an evaluation sheet attached to them outlining their merits and issues, along with suggestions for improvements; these were sent back to the writer after the judging was over. Around a hundred novels were picked in round one; twenty or so made it past round two.

This meant, of course, that the editors had to read and write evaluations for a hundred entries. This, combined with their regular duties, made the judging period a trial by fire workwise. In the office, at home, commuting in between—it was a given that every second would be spent reading. Every waking moment devoted to work—and only questionably legal.

“So we’ll have to pick the prizewinners from the six they handpicked for us?” A bead of cold sweat appeared on Haruto’s cheek. “That’s a lot of responsibility.”

“Good luck, Fuwa. The future of our label is riding on this.”

Haruto giggled a bit at her ironic comment. “You really have become a full-fledged editor, Miyako.”

“Huh?! Oh, no, I really haven’t…” Miyako laughed awkwardly.

“No, Kawabe told me about how Shirakawa, the part-timer, defused a huge crisis at GF Bunko on her first day, and so on.”

“All I did was go fetch Nayu’s manuscript.”

“Not only that, but you’re always working hard, you find stuff to do before anyone asks about it… He said they really appreciate having you around.”

“Well, uh… I’m glad to hear that. But I wrote someone’s pen name on a package I sent the other day, and it caused this huge uproar…”

“Ah, everybody makes mistakes. Do you mean the person making the manga for Itsuki’s series?”

“Yeah…”

Why does he know? It puzzled Miyako.

“Mmm. I heard about that. Like, the manga artist’s dad stormed into the office, demanding you stop making her draw porn, and you lectured him into submission like Kamijo [protagonist of A Certain Magical Index].”

“I—I didn’t lecture him! And definitely not into submission! And who told you that anyway?” Miyako’s face turned red.

“One of the editors there was so impressed, I guess he told a whole bunch of people. Itsuki knew about it, so I bet a lot of other writers do.”

“Oooooh… No wonder I’ve been feeling all this attention on me lately. I better yell at Mr. Tokuyama about that…”

“Ha-ha! Ah, it’s no big deal. You’re the most red-blooded, passionate editor we’ve got, Miyako!”

“Oh, stop!” Miyako gave Haruto a light slap on the shoulder for that jab.

“Hyeahh…”

…And, of course, that slight bit of unannounced body touching made Haruto’s (virgin) heart skip a beat.

“…Do I hear the sounds of youthful flirting…? Is someone in here playing out a light novel–style romantic comedy? Writing about it isn’t enough…?”

Then, with a voice that seemed to rise up from the core of the earth, the door opened to reveal two men. One was Satoshi Godo, GF Bunko’s editor in chief and flashy mafioso. The other was a slight, skinny man in his late thirties wearing a worn-out jacket, about Haruto’s height but appearing shorter because of poor posture. His face was pale, drained of energy, and there were rings under his eyes, giving him the appearance of a ghost.

“…That’s strange… I thought this was the refined, holy sanctuary of the judges’ table, and yet, I seemed to detect the voice of a dashing young man, enjoying casual conversation with a woman…”

The man sluggishly took his seat, his glassy, fishlike eyes squarely upon Haruto and Miyako. Miyako returned the gaze, utterly confused.

“Um…?”

Haruto, meanwhile, let out a little laugh. “Hey, Kaizu. Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Mm. Yeah. You too.”

This was Makina Kaizu, a veteran novelist who made his debut way back at the very first GF Bunko New Writers Contest. Basic arithmetic meant that he had now been in the business for a good fourteen years, time he had spent launching a large number of titles. Some were canceled midway through the plot; some were smash hits and candidates for an anime adaptation (but never accepted); but through it all, he had maintained his presence in the business this entire time.

Kaizu had been a judge for the New Writers Contest since its twelfth year; this was his fourth go-round.

“How’re you feeling, Fuwa?”

“Oh, fine, I guess…”

“Fine” seemed to sum it up. The Chevalier of the New World anime turned out awful, but the books were selling well, at least.

“You getting your regular checkups?”

“…Oh, you mean how am I physically feeling? I haven’t gotten a checkup since college.”

“Ooh, you better get one every year… Your health is everything, you know…”

Haruto giggled a bit. Considering his advice, Kaizu looked less than healthy himself. “What about you, Mr. Kaizu?”

“I had a physical last month. Everything passed with flying colors.”

“Really?” Haruto had trouble believing that, given the evidence in front of him.

“Heh-heh-heh…” Kaizu gave him a creepy laugh, then turned to Miyako. “So who’s this pretty girl?”

“That’s the new part-timer I mentioned,” Godo replied.

“Oh… The real-life Ms. Bear Cub, huh?”

“What does that mean?!” a confused Miyako exclaimed.

“That’s the nickname of the main character in Juhan Shuttai! [Sleeper Hit!], a manga about an editorial team. She’s a former candidate for the Japanese national judo team. Real passion, you know?”

The shame made Miyako’s cheeks redden again. “Ugh, how far are those rumors traveling anyway…? People call me Kamijo, people call me Bear Cub…! I never even tried judo before! I did karate, but…”

“Oh, you did?” This was news to Haruto.

“W-well, as a kid,” the ever-reddening Miyako replied as she poured tea from a bottle into some cups as a distraction.

“Right, now that we’re all here, can we get started?” Godo asked gruffly.

The final decisions were to be made by these three judges—Makina Kaizu, Haruto Fuwa, and editor in chief Satoshi Godo.

“Right,” Kaizu said blandly as he picked up a crunchy, puffed-corn snack from the bowl and tore it open. “Let’s get this over with quick, shall we…?”

“Well,” Haruto countered, “I don’t want to half ass this. This is really important, so we need to talk it out.”

“Heh-heh…” The laugh from Kaizu couldn’t have sounded more sarcastic. “Don’t get so worked up, Fuwa. The important thing is the New Writers Contest system itself. The final selections don’t really mean anything.”

Haruto arched an eyebrow. “…How do you mean?”

“Anyone whose work made it to the final round is gonna be assigned an editor and have their work published. That’s already been decided. Whether it’s the grand prize or honorable mention, it’s not their ranking in the contest that drives sales—it’s how the package marketing plays out. Sometimes the grand-prize winner flops in the market, and the honorable mention from that same year makes it into anime territory.”

“Well, yeah, but—wait, wasn’t that my year?”

Chevalier of the New World won honorable mention at the tenth New Writers Contest, but the grand-prize winner that year sold like garbage. That wasn’t unheard of. You saw lower-ranked titles outselling the first-prize entries at least once in the history of pretty much every contest. There were even real-life examples of entries that didn’t make it into the final round getting fished out of the pile by an editor and becoming a big hit.

“We judges are just icing on the cake. We’re here to keep up appearances for this event, that’s all. All we’re doing is deciding how much lunch money we’re doling out to the new guys.”

Kaizu flashed an ironic grin.

“So let’s keep it chill, huh?”

He was rather point-blank about it, Haruto thought, but he might be right. Even if he was, he was loath to admit it.

“So if all this is pointless, Mr. Kaizu, then why have you done it so many times?”

“To get paid.”

“…Judges really don’t make a lot of money.”

They did receive some payment for this, yes, but considering the work involved with carefully reading and judging six complete novels—pretty rough ones, too, since no editing or proofreading had been done on them—it was barely worth it. Writing novels was a much more lucrative use of their time.

“Oh, well, maybe it’s just a pittance to a hotshot rising star like you, but for a starving writer like me, it’s enough to make my eyes pop out of my sockets.”

Haruto could tell he was half joking.

“That…and we’re kind of doing the writers a favor. Some of ’em may go on to do big things, and now we’ll get to say ‘Hey, you turned pro thanks to us.’ And if they make hits, they’ll take us out to fancy sushi places and stuff…”

“Even though all six of these are gonna be published anyway?”

“Oh, you know, these new writers are so naive… No one has to tell them that…”

Haruto chuckled. “Wow. That’s pretty awful.”

“Hee-hee-hee… Eating expensive sushi on some younger guy’s tab… That’s my dream in life…”

“…Well! Enough chitchat. I’d like to move on to the judging, if you don’t mind?”

“Oh, sure!”

“Yeah, yeah, um…”

Both nodded as Miyako took her post in front of the door.

“I don’t have any idea how this works,” Haruto said, “but what’s the process?”

“First,” replied Godo, “the writing judges will go over their assorted feelings for each of the titles and name the one they think deserves the grand prize. I’ll give my opinion as EIC, too, but I want the writers’ feedback to take precedent. If you two agree, then great; otherwise, we’ll talk about it.”

“All right…”

“I think the grand prize should be something sexy written by a woman. Can you tell me which one that is?” Kaizu joked.

For the purposes of this contest, readers and judges were not given writer profiles, so they wouldn’t have any preconceived notions going in. The content of the novel was the only thing they had to judge on.

“Um… Well,” said Haruto, ignoring Kaizu’s nonsense, “should I begin?”

Kaizu waved his snack toward him in agreement, so he took out his tablet and loaded up a document with his feedback for each entry.

“Oooh, you brought your own notes and everything. Really into this, huh?” Kaizu remarked dully.

The six entries left for the finals were as follows:

Checking his notes, Haruto began outlining his feelings.

“Um, so Maken Wars to start… This is pretty much Fate, although, I guess I’m not really one to talk when it comes to battle-royale fantasy. The names of all the sword moves are pretty nice. They stir the imagination of the little kid inside all of us; I like them. But there’s nothing novel to it at all. I really wanted at least some kind of fresh new element.”

Haruto’s own Chevaliers of the New World borrowed a great number of things from Arthurian legend and mythological weaponry, so honestly, Fate was a huge inspiration to him, but he thought that his work stood out from the pack a lot more than this one…or so he hoped, at least. The judges in that contest slammed him for it, though.

“I Woke Up as the Demon Lord of Another World, So I Just Started a Harem is, well, about as Narō-style [Shōsetsuka ni Narō, or “Let’s Become Novelists,” a Japanese amateur novel publishing website and the starting point for many successful light novels] as you can get, like you can tell from the title. It definitely does what it says on the tin, huh? Really fun read, and I think the ending got wrapped up in a nice way. Still, I think you’ll find a lot of titles on Narō in the same wheelhouse and doing it better, so I’m not sure how much business it has earning an award…”

“Harsh,” Godo whispered in his low voice.

“Next was The Goddess Must Be Punished! I’ll Save the World for You, So Just Show Me Your Ass!, but…how to put it…?”

Haruto gave a glance to Miyako before lowering his voice.

“…Um, the author’s passion for butts and spanking them came across loud and clear, for sure. It’s basically a quick-reading comedy with a little sexy stuff in it, but you can tell he devoted a lot of his energy to describing people’s rear ends. It’s not just deep, but super-deep. If you have the same tastes the author does, I think you’d really enjoy it.”

“What do you think of that stuff, Fuwa?”

Haruto gulped. He had deliberately avoided talking about that, and Kaizu latched right on to it. Haruto gave him a taut smile, pushing back the desire to scream I don’t wanna talk about my sexual preferences in front of the girl I like!

“I, um, well, I’m not huuuugely into it…”

“Oh? Funny. Didn’t you like maids a lot? I figured that scene where the goddess was dressed up in a maid outfit and spanked would be right up your alley.”

“Why do you know so much about my…uh, my stuff?!”

Kaizu grimly smiled at the blushing Haruto. “Because you can’t hide the fetishes in your work. Like, you’re a fan of the closet-masochist type, right? Someone who’s all willful and determined normally but faithfully follows orders and secretly wishes her master would punish her more?”

“Gahhh?! Wha—? Why…?!”

Haruto’s eyes burst open. He was absolutely correct.

“Heh-heh-heh…” Kaizu smiled in victory. “Maybe you didn’t notice it, but you were definitely on a roll when you wrote that scene where Högni had Asao punish her in a maid outfit in Volume 7. That wasn’t the only time your own tastes came out, but, ah, we can compare notes another time.”

“Ngh… I, um, thanks for reading my novels so carefully…” Haruto made a quivering fist with one hand, then took a deep breath. “Um, let’s go to the next one, Illegal Trial. Basically, this is the TV series Legal High reworked as a light novel. We’ve seen a few light novels set in courtrooms, but this one has a lot of fun, charming characters, and despite all the comedy, it’s got a nice backbone of a theme to it. The plot gimmicks are pretty crude, though, to the point that I thought any prosecutor who’d be fooled by that stuff has to be an idiot. It affects the whole persona of this invincible defense attorney, and I think that’s going to need some serious plot-level fixing to address.”

To sum up Haruto’s take, although it had the potential to become a masterpiece on the level of Legal High, in its current state, it was far from a complete package.

“Considering it’s a samurai drama about a man with eternal youth, Sengoku Kenpuden shares a few core elements with Blade of the Immortal, but the writing style and storytelling are pretty much a straight-up samurai novel. Going into all this detail on the daimyo of the period and their armies… I mean, personally, it’d be great to see a hard-boiled samurai tale in the light novel genre, but just thinking about its entertainment value, I worry about how it’s so focused on historical realism that it brings out all these famous warlords and samurai, pits them against one another, and then all that gets cut off. It’s like the main hero has no real effect on history at all. You see figures from history, but that’s it; you just see them. Tokugawa Ieyasu puts on a little demo of his sword skills, he talks a bit, and that’s all. Who cares? I’m not saying to ignore history, but I wish the author thought more about living up to reader expectations.”

“Hmm… I kind of liked it,” Godo meekly protested.

“The last one is Memories of the Sky. I thought the way the author depicted each character’s delicate state of mind was excellent. I was surprised by plot developments several times, and I think the story’s well put together. The climax was a little heartrending, but it left me feeling very refreshed. It really felt like a nice novel about youth to me. So those are my feelings.”

“Hmmm,” Kaizu lifelessly pondered. “…So which do you want for the grand prize?”

“It’s hard since they all have their pluses and minuses, but if I had to pick one, I guess I’d have to go with Memories of the Sky.”

“Huh?”

The protest came from a surprising source—Miyako, listening in from the door.

“What is it, Miyako?”

She turned her eyes toward Godo, hesitating to butt in as a part-timer. “If you have something to say,” he replied, “say it.”

“All right. Um, it’s really nothing too important, but Fuwa, you were lavishing praise on Memories of the Sky just now, but you sounded pretty unsure about picking it for the grand prize. I was just kind of surprised.”

“Ah, yeah…” Haruto laughed. Memories was a well-made package and one he personally enjoyed, but he had good reason not to push too hard for a grand prize. “Well, I think you’ll see why in a sec,” he simply said, before turning back toward Kaizu and Godo.

“How about we hear from Kaizu next?” Godo asked.

“Sure thing, boss! Although my feelings were mostly the same as Fuwa’s…”

Kaizu took a quick peek at the list of entry titles on the table before giving his takes in his usual slow, disinterested style.

“Um… Maken Wars is one of those ‘battle of the stars’ type things. The setting and move names are really cool, so I wish the title was a bit more original, too. Otherwise, the same as what Fuwa said. Next, I Woke Up—blah blah blah. I liked it. Fuwa questioned it being here since there’s a ton of stuff like it on Narō, but you won’t find many series on Narō that wrap things up as nice and neat as this book, although that advantage’ll go away if it becomes a series. The Goddess Must Be Punished!, like Fuwa said, is probably the best sex comedy ever if you share the author’s fetishes. I didn’t too much, but it takes a kind of talent to push your libido to the world the way this guy did. Illegal Trial… I agree with Fuwa. It’s not really up to par yet, but it’s got a good chance to hit it big with some rewrites. Sengoku Kenpuden definitely isn’t all that entertaining per se, but for someone older like me, this kind of dispassionate writing style is nice… Finally, Memories of the Sky… It’s a very well-done Nayuta Kani wannabe, is all I can say.”

As he warned in advance, his opinions mostly matched Haruto’s, including his impression of Memories.

“So the grand prize goes to?” Godo asked.

“Either Illegal Trial for all the potential it has, or maybe The Goddess Must Be Punished! for how neatly it comes together and how unique it is.”

Haruto winced at this.

“Hmm… We have a difference of opinion,” noted Godo.

“Oh, great,” Kaizu responded, sighing with a little laugh as he turned to Haruto. “What do you think, Fuwa?”

“Um…” He mulled over Kaizu’s thoughts for a moment and compared them with his. “…Well, I can’t see Illegal Trial getting the grand prize. It’s just not complete enough.”

“Not now, no, but I’m thinking about what a decent round of editing could do. It could turn into a masterpiece.”

“But shouldn’t we be judging based on what they sent in?”

“You think? The readers are going to be seeing the edited versions, so wouldn’t we be safe thinking about its future prospects?”

“Well, if you put it that way, editing has the potential to improve any first draft. The difference is that with Illegal Trial, it’s really easy to see how to improve it. I’m sure some entrants wrote multiple drafts of their work before submitting it, so I think it’d be kind of rude to them if we say, like, ‘Well, maybe we can make it better later.’”

“Mm. True. Let’s take Illegal Trial off the board, then.” The ease with which Kaizu withdrew his proposal disappointed Haruto a bit.

“Oh, all right. So next…”

“Right. I’m also pushing for The Goddess Must Be Punished! It’s a complete package, it’s unique, and it’s a match for your fetishes. Don’t you think it’s good?”

“My—my fetishes don’t matter!” Haruto shouted. “But in terms of completeness and uniqueness, I agree with you. Still, I think the grand-prize winner is kind of the ‘face’ of the whole award. Maybe it doesn’t matter to readers what kind of prize each entry won, but I think it does matter to future writers who might send stuff to us in later years. I mean, if I were a new writer, I’d kinda hesitate to join a contest where the winner was a spanking-fetish novel with the subtitle I’ll Save the World for You, So Just Show Me Your Ass!”

“Well, what’s the big deal? You like spanking, don’cha?”

“I told you, my own tastes don’t matter!”

“Certainly,” Godo interjected, “the style of a grand-prize winner can affect the trends we see in next year’s entries. Fuwa said it before I could, but honestly, I’m not sure I want Just Show Me Your Ass! to be the face of the contest.”

“Besides,” added Haruto, “I think that Memories of the Sky is even more complete than Ass—I mean, The Goddess Must Be Punished!, so that’s why I’m pushing for that.”

“But it’s a blatant, inferior rip-off of Nayuta Kani.”

It was an extremely harsh way of putting it, but Kaizu sounded a little sad saying it.

“That… Yeah,” admitted Haruto.

And that was why he, despite all his kind words, had trouble pushing very hard for Memories. It was very clearly inspired by Nayuta Kani’s Landscape series. They had no way of telling whether this was deliberate or happened unconsciously, but either way, it was an undeniable fact. And Memories didn’t hold a candle to the Landscape series in any way. The depiction of the characters’ thoughts was excellent…but not as good as Landscape. The story was intricately woven…but not as well as in Landscape. It stuck in your mind afterward…but not as much as Landscape. It was more complete than Goddess…but not as complete as the Landscape series. The author had clear talent…but not as much talent as Nayuta Kani. Thus, it was an inferior rip-off.

“If it had anything going for it that wasn’t already in Landscape,” Kaizu commented, “I’d be happy to nominate it for the grand prize.”

“I wouldn’t hesitate either, I don’t think. But if you ignore the Landscape series for a moment, I think Memories is still a better piece of work than Goddess, so I have to give it to that, I suppose…”

“Yeah, but we gave the grand prize two years ago to a series that’s now GF’s top seller. If we turn around two years later and give that same prize to a total rip-off, how is that gonna look?”

“That’s…true, yeah.”

Kaizu and Haruto could see that they both had valid points. All they could do was grumble at each other, unable to reach an answer.

But then…

“Um, do we absolutely have to pick a grand-prize winner?”

It was Miyako who presented the simple question. And she, too, had a point. Memories of the Sky and The Goddess Must Be Punished! both deserved prizes, no doubt about that…just as long as it wasn’t the grand prize, the top spot won by Nayuta Kani two years ago.

Kaizu turned to Godo. “…That’s certainly true, isn’t it? Ridiculous, but…”

But it was a rule in the GF New Writers Contest, beginning with the ninth year, that a grand prize had to be given out each time.

“Why is that?” Miyako asked.

“Because otherwise, the judges would never award one,” Godo bitterly explained. “In the first eight years, we awarded grand prizes based strictly on merit. We didn’t do any comparative assessments. So in that whole time, we only awarded a grand prize once.”

“Well, that’s not a bad thing, is it? It means winning a grand prize really means something.”

“It is bad,” Godo countered.

“…Why is that?”

“If we never give out grand prizes, people’ll think we’re cheap.”

“Cheap?”

“In our contest, the grand-prize winner gets three million yen; the two runners-up, one million; the honorable mention, half a million. Two million yen of difference between the grand prize and the other ones. Kaizu called it lunch money, but for a new writer before their debut, two million yen is a lot. A lot of people enter the contest for the money, period. But if we advertise a three-million-yen prize and don’t award it each year, what’ll the authors think of that?”

“…They’ll enter a contest that gives out the entire reward pool, instead of gunning for three million that never gets rewarded.”

Godo nodded at Miyako. “Exactly. Of course, this isn’t something we should give out to a low-quality novel, but we can’t have the standards for a grand prize be too strict, either.”

“Sounds hard,” she meekly stated.

Kaizu gave this a sarcastic smile. “Not that the judges are really supposed to care about what the company wants to do, honestly.”

“Actually, does it say in the official rules that we’ll definitely choose a grand-prize winner?” asked Haruto.

“Yep, unfortunately,” replied Kaizu. “Like, ‘a grand prize will be awarded to the best entry among the final nominations’ or something.”

“Ahh. So we gotta choose one, then…”

Haruto sighed, despite himself. Just like Kaizu, he wasn’t into the idea of grading these entries on a curve.

“I know how you feel about it,” Godo tried to explain, “but since the year we made it clear that we always give a grand prize, the number of entries has kept going up. That’s the truth of it.”

“Yeah, yeah… I’ll follow the rules.” Kaizu shrugged.

So the debate went like this: Kaizu was firmly against Memories of the Sky winning the grand prize. Haruto steadfastly opposed Illegal Trial winning it. Godo clearly disdained the idea of The Goddess Must Be Punished! taking the prize. Kaizu enjoyed Sengoku Kenpuden for its refusal to serve as casual entertainment, but Haruto disliked it for the same reason. “I liked it,” Godo commented, “but just like Goddess, I don’t want it to be the face of our awards.” Everyone agreed that Maken Wars was a level below the pack in originality and execution.

Thus, in the end, after tireless debate and discussion that extended across over four hours, the group managed to work out a compromise among themselves.

The winner of the grand prize was…I Woke Up as the Demon Lord of Another World, So I Just Started a Harem.

Once the grand prize was picked, the rest fell into place much more quickly. Memories of the Sky and The Goddess Must be Punished! both got first prize; Sengoku Kenpuden and Maken Wars, second prize; and Illegal Trial, the Special Judges’ Selection. Thus, after much mental and emotional distress, the fifteenth GF Bunko New Writers Contest came to a close.