Chapter 161: Afterword.

Afterword

Hello everyone, this is Starfire.

…There’s so much I want to say in this afterword. I don’t know where to begin.

So I’ll just start rambling and see where my thoughts take me.

It might end up all over the place….

But there’s just so much I want to share with you readers. Please bear with me.

Hmm, why don’t I start by lightly discussing what led me to write this novel in the first place.

It was nothing major.

I wanted to read a novel with a protagonist who had this kind of ability.

I thought it would be interesting to create a story while communicating with the author.

So I decided to write the simple, inspiration-sparked content I wanted to read.

There wasn’t any other special reason.

The reason this novel became a pure love story was also, truly, nothing major.

Since my previous work had no romance, I debated whether to make this one a straight or yuri story.

Then I just decided to go the straight route on a whim.

Perhaps in another world line, it could have ended up as a yuri novel. (TN: Imagine Amelia being true ending.)

Upon hearing this, some of you may be thinking:

Huh? Then what happened to the plot?

There wasn’t one.

From when I wrote the prologue, to now as I pen this afterword.

There was never any thought of plot whatsoever.

When I wrote the prologue, I had only decided on two things:

The protagonist would be a misunderstood, possessed TS female lead who uses thread from clothes.

And that she would converse with the “Author-nim” as they create the story together.

Yup. That was it.

What Siwoo’s ability was, the Author-nim’s true identity, and how the two of them would even connect.

Amelia, Dorothy, Ha-Yul, Lyra, Spira, the club president, and countless other characters.

None of them were planned.

I started from a literal blank slate.

The only things that existed were Arte and Author.

Suddenly, I’m reminded of a famous line from Director Bong Joon-ho’s renowned film, Parasite.

“You know what kind of plan never fails? No plan at all.”

And so it was.

Though unintentional, things really turned out just like that quote.

I couldn’t even decide on the protagonist’s name until what, chapter 1 or 2? That’s when I finally named her. (TN: You had no idea how much I stressed not finding Arte’s name. I just decided to trust and believe it was similar to Omniscient First Person Viewpoint. Amazing series btw.)

I also remember taking the name Arte Isis from Tiresias, the prophet of Greek mythology and possibly the first TS character.

The reason that person became famous was this:

After killing a snake and going through TS, he (she?) lived as a woman for a long time. Then one day, two gods came to visit Tiresias.

It was Zeus and Hera.

The two gods asked him (her?): Between men and women, who feels more pleasure during sex?

To which Tiresias replied:

Uwaaa~ women’s pleasure is like 9 times more mind-blowing than mennnnnnnnnn!

Arte Isis is an anagram of that prophet’s name.

Tiresias.

Arte Isis. (TN: Don’t murder me that the name isn’t exact. I know it’s Isis, but it has some negative connotations I just didn’t want to deal with.)

Haha.

I had thought about using that tidbit later on. But in the end, it remained only as a motif without being explicitly mentioned.

The one time I did use it was when Ha-Yul asked if that was a prophecy.

That ended up being the extent of it. I’m a little disappointed.

Of course, I couldn’t even decide on the protagonist’s name while writing, so naturally, I also hadn’t chosen a name for her love interest.

In the end, he became Siwoo, the common male lead name that everyone uses.

I impulsively decided on his abilities too. Intuition.

If I remember correctly, when Author-nim was explaining her own ability, she compared it to Schrödinger’s cat?

So I think that’s why I decided on it that way.

I’m not sure. Since I wrote down whatever popped into my head, I can’t recall if Author-nim’s ability came first or Siwoo’s.

However, the fact that in the end, the one closest to God was hunted down by Laplace’s Demon remains unchanged.

Author’s character is a bit of a sore spot for me.

She was always getting cursed at, after all.

What a nuisance. When will she die already. She’s such a potato. That’s fertilizer alright.

I had aimed to make her an irritating yet lovable character.

But since she was constantly getting flak, I often worried that maybe I had messed up her characterization.

And since Author’s existence was the very reason I started writing this novel in the first place, rewriting her wasn’t an option either.

In the end, I kept her as is, so I’m glad there were quite a few people who found her cute. S~eaʀᴄh the NôᴠelFirё.net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Lyla was…well, her name comes from a character in Descendants of the Sun.

Feel the glorious new light of the sun.

She’s the disgusting bastard who appears in episode 5 scene 3.

You don’t know who I’m talking about? That’s fine, you don’t need to.

Miracle Priest…. You did great…. Ugh, my head. (TN: I really don’t have the energy to double check the source, so I’ll just take your word for it.)

But I only borrowed the name and didn’t use the motif.

…The fact that she ended up being the turning point of this novel.

I wonder if you all realized.

Do you remember that scene early on where Lyla almost killed Arte?

I agonized over it for a long time even after writing that part.

Whether to let her die or live.

In the end, I decided to let her live, but….

If I had her die, instead of a happy ending, we may have gotten a bad ending or normal ending.

The post-apocalyptic part may have been much longer too.

It was such an important scene that almost completely changed the direction of the story.

And then there’s Spira.

I had intended for her to die too. (TN: Author is just Author-nim’s self-insert at this point.)

The reason I deliberately kept the snake alive was because of the Tiresias motif I mentioned before.

According to the name, Arte should have killed the snake. But by letting her live, through the snake’s words, she realizes the truth that the puppets were not actually that but real people.

That was the kind of idea I had.

In the Bible, the snake gives Eve the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, right?

I took inspiration from that.

Actually, there are theories that it’s better to think of the fruit of knowledge as the fruit of wisdom.

So the snake (Spira) gives the fruit of wisdom (the truth that everyone is human), and Eve (Arte) eats it to realize the truth.

That was my thought process.

Well, looking back now that the story has concluded, those plans all died.

If I had taken it a bit slower with the pacing and leisurely depicted things, I could have explored Spira’s story too.

It’s a shame.

It’s the kind of mishap that occurred because I didn’t lay out a plot.

Hmm, saying all this might make me sound completely unprepared.

But it was precisely because of this lack of planning that I had so much fun, you know?

It felt like I had become the captain of a ship called “Narrow Eyes,” sailing into the vast open sea without being able to see an inch in front of me, together with you readers as my crew.

And the result is, well.

As you can see.

There were crew members who left partway and new ones who joined midway, but it looks like we arrived safely in the end.

I’m grateful for that.

…Of course, it wasn’t without hardship.

Writing while working a day job is more challenging than one might expect, after all.

Even when I write while being patted on the head by you readers, I often announce breaks because it’s tough. In the beginning, I received some really harsh curses too. (TN: Tell me about it. Smashing my head in at grammar mistakes. Imagine if I had to write. No way.)

Why is this tagged as TS?

Because it is?

Isn’t this BL? (TN: Wait, so Amelia would be the straight route? You know what, I interpret it by whatever you are in the act. Like if two people possessed two trans midgets, that would be a microtransaction.)

Tsk…. (TN: Everyone’s reaction to the last line.)

By now I’ve heard those kinds of comments so much that I’m used to it, but for a while, I angrily reported them on Novelpia.

There were times I cried out to the PD, Please help PD-nim…!, because I couldn’t take it anymore.

I can only express my gratitude to the PD-nim back then.

If my mental state had really collapsed then, I may have put down my pen for good.

Seeing how I managed to finish the novel like this, it looks like my mentality was sturdier than I thought.

All they did was listen to me and offer some conventional advice, but….

Sometimes, just having someone like that is enough to make things better.

Other than that, there weren’t any notable hardships.

Occasionally running into writer’s block is, well.

Like an illness that sometimes afflicts authors.

Hmm.

I’m not sure what else to talk about.

There are still so many things I want to say to you all….

But if I keep going, there will be no end to it.

So why don’t I talk a bit about my next work.

Fortunately, this time I do have a rough plot in mind.

The next work is also set in an academy but,

Of course, the protagonist won’t be a student this time.

Why don’t we try telling the story from a teacher’s perspective for once?

It’s not a teacher who teaches anyone.

What? Then they’re not really a teacher, you say?

Don’t worry. A teacher who resides in the counseling office is still a teacher, you know?

In Narrow Eyes, there were many comments about how it felt wrong for Arte to kill people.

So the protagonist of the next work has become a good kid? …Truthfully, I also just like kind-hearted protagonists.

But a regular counseling teacher would be a bit boring, right?

…Alright. Why don’t we add a dash of hypnosis into the mix?

A teacher with a kind impression, always nice to the students.

Students trust and follow them.

But then the secret hypnosis ability the teacher had been hiding gets exposed.

The betrayed students tremble with rage.

The teacher who was always so warm and treated us kindly, the one we trusted and relied on…!

Teacher, don’t tell me you used hypnosis on us…!

Or something like that.

Doesn’t that sound good…? I like it….

Of course, this kind of thing requires proper build-up, so it will inevitably only happen after the story has progressed quite a bit.

But I feel like I could write however many chapters it takes for the sake of that scene.

So, with that in mind.

From now on, please look forward to “I Became an Academy Counselor.”

Except this time, with a side of hypnosis.

When will I start publishing it, you ask?

Next Monday. (TN: Yeah, no. Sorry? Next? Maybe~)

I’m slowly believing one quote more and more:

Sleep is for the dead.

Translator’s Corner

Thank you for your hard work Author, Starfire!

Also sorry if there are a lot of misspellings or grammar mistakes.

-Ruminas