Dec 08, 2025
Author's Commentary #1:
It's time to discuss the first chapter of Volume 3, Chapter 1: Chess at the beach.
Originally written as a special chapter made to commemorate 100 chapters of the series, I decided to instead make it serve as the intro to Season 4, since it is 100% canon to the story. And since Volume 3 will be adapting the first half of Season 4, it was natural that I'd include it here.
As for the game, it's actually one of the fastest possible ways to get an en passant checkmate. Now let's talk a bit about the new characters, starting with Jackie Egghead.
ジャッキー・エッグヘッド (Jackie Egghead) is how her name is spelled in katakana. While she is academically gifted, she's essentially a female version of Numakawa, in other words an idiot. The same can be said for her friends.
Her birthday is February 15th. I chose this date at random so there's no real significance behind why I chose the date to be her birthday.
Her favorite piece is the queen, since it's the most powerful piece on the board. She actually has a tendency to avoid queen trading at all costs and will sometimes outright resign if her queen is captured due to a blunder. Next up is Olga Obrazovanshchina.
オルガ・オブラゾヴァンシチナ (Olga Obrazovanshchina) is how her name is spelled in katakana while Ольга Образованщина (Olga Obrazovanshchina) is how her name is spelled in Russian. Оbrazovanshchina is actually the Russian equivalent of the word, "egghead". Funnily enough, all the other members of the group have a similar naming scheme.
(If I made any mistakes with the translations, feel free to correct me).
She actually knows Svetlana due to being the daughter of a Russian dignitary. She is currently studying at Stanford, but remains close with Svetlana.
Her birthday is September 14th. I chose this date at random so there's no real significance behind why I chose this date to be her birthday.
Her favorite piece is the queen due to it being the most powerful piece on the board. Unlike Jackie though, she isn't afraid to trade queens and will only resign after blundering her queen if she feels there's no hope of her winning.
While the college girls aren't full-fledged Desperado members, they are closely affiliated with some of them. They'll also be semi-recurring characters going forward so expect them to pop up in the story every now and then.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
