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Translator: Vine
Chapter Title: Afterword
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Hello, everyone. This is Byeolbulkkot.

...I have so much I want to say in this afterword. I don't even know where to begin.

So, I'll just talk about whatever comes to mind.

It might be a bit all over the place, but...

I have so much I want to tell my readers, so please bear with me.

Hmm, shall we start with how I came to write this novel?

It wasn't anything special.

I wanted to read a novel where the protagonist used this kind of ability.

Wouldn't it be unique if the story was created through communication with the author?

I wrote it because I wanted to write something that was inspired by such trivial, minor things.

There was no other particular reason.

The reason this novel is a pure romance was also nothing special.

My previous work was a no-romance, so I debated whether this one should be pure romance or yuri.

In the end, I just decided on pure romance.

Perhaps in another worldline, it could have been a yuri story.

Hearing this, you might be thinking:

"Huh? So where was the plot?"

There wasn't one.

From the moment I wrote the prologue until now, writing this afterword.

There was absolutely no plot.

When I wrote the prologue, only two things were set in stone.

That the protagonist was a transmigration/possessed TS female character who used threads from clothes and was misunderstood as the mastermind.

And that she would create the story through conversations with 'the Author'.

Yes. That was all.

What kind of ability Siwoo had, the Author's identity, how the two would eventually connect.

Amelia, Dorothy, Hayul, Lyra, Spira, the club president, and countless other characters.

None of them were planned.

I literally started with a blank slate.

There were only Arte and the Author.

Suddenly, a line from Director Bong Joon-ho's famous movie, "Parasite," comes to mind.

"Do you know what kind of plan never fails? No plan at all."

That's right.

Although unintentional, it really turned out just as that line suggests.

I couldn't even decide on the protagonist's name until maybe the first or second chapter. That's when I decided.

I also remember naming the protagonist after Tiresias, the prophet from Greek mythology, arguably the first TS story.

What this person is famous for is...

After killing snakes and being transformed into a woman, living as one for a long time, two gods came to him/her.

Zeus and Hera.

The two gods asked him/her, "Between a woman and a man, who enjoys sex more?"

And Tiresias replied:

"Heehee, women's pleasure is like, nine times better than men's!"

Arte Isis is an anagram of that prophet.

Tiresias.

Arte Isis.

Haha.

I had thought about using this as a plot point someday, but in the end, it remained just a motif and wasn't used.

When Hayul asked if it was a prophecy.

That was the only time I used it. It's a bit of a shame.

Of course, if I was still thinking about the protagonist's name while writing, I hadn't decided on the love interest's name either.

So, he ended up being Siwoo, the "common-use" male lead that anyone could use.

I also decided on his ability impulsively: intuition.

Didn't the Author describe her ability by likening it to Schrödinger's Cat?

I think that's why I decided on it.

I don't know. Since I just wrote down what came to my mind, I don't quite remember if the Author's ability came first or Siwoo's.

However, the fact that someone close to a god was ultimately defeated by Laplace's Demon will not change.

The Author character is a bit of a sore spot for me.

She always received a lot of criticism.

"She's a nuisance." "When will you kill her?" "She's a sweet potato (frustrating)." "She's a filter (for readers)."

I aimed for a character that was annoying but cute.

Since she was always getting cursed at, I often wondered if I had set up the character wrong.

The very reason I started writing the novel was because of the Author's existence, so it was impossible to change her.

It's a relief that by sticking with her, there were quite a few reactions saying she was cute in the end.

As for Lyra... well, the origin of her name is Lyra from 'Descendants of the Sun'.

"Feel the glorious light of the new sun."

A disgusting 5-cost 3/5 minion, isn't she?

Don't know what I'm talking about? That's fine.

Miracle Priest... You did very well... Ugh, my head.

However, I only took the name, so there was no particular motif.

...And yet, she was actually the turning point of this novel.

I wonder if you knew that.

Do you remember the scene early on where Lyra almost died at Arte's hands?

Even after writing that scene, I agonized over it for a long time.

Whether to kill her or save her.

I ultimately decided to save her, but...

If I had killed her, the ending might not have been a happy one, but a bad ending or a normal ending.

Perhaps the angsty part would have been much longer.

It was a crucial scene that almost completely changed the direction of the story.

And Spira.

This character was also initially set to die.

The reason I deliberately saved the snake was because of the Tiresias motif I mentioned earlier.

Arte, who according to her name should have killed the snake, instead saved it, and through its words, people would realize the truth that they were all human, not dolls.

I was thinking along those lines.

The snake in the Bible gives Eve the fruit of knowledge, doesn't it?

I drew my motif from that.

In fact, there's a saying that it's better to think of the forbidden fruit as the fruit of knowledge.

So, Eve (Arte) eats the fruit of knowledge (the truth that everyone was human) given by the snake (Spira) and realizes the truth.

I had thought that.

Well, looking at it now that the story is complete, it was a dead storyline.

If I had paced it a bit more slowly and described it leisurely, I could have developed Spira's story too.

That's a regrettable part.

It's like an accident that happened because I didn't plan a plot.

Hmm, talking about it like this might make it sound like I had no plan.

But precisely because I was so unplanned, I can say I actually enjoyed it.

It felt like I was the captain, sailing a ship named "Slit-Eyed Mastermind" with you, my readers, as the crew, out into a vast, open sea where I couldn't see an inch ahead.

The result, well.

As you can see.

Some crew members left along the way, and some joined mid-voyage, but it seems we've arrived safely.

That's a relief.

...Of course, it wasn't without its difficulties.

Writing while working a company job is harder than you'd think.

Even with the encouragement of my readers, I often had to rest because it was tough, and in the early days, I even received very harsh criticism.

"Why is this TS?"

"The 'female transformation' vibe is disgusting, so tag it."

"Isn't this gay?"

*Sigh*...

Now, I've heard such things so often that I'm used to them, but for a while, I was so irritable that I even reported comments on Novelpia.

There were times when I felt like I couldn't do it anymore and cried out to my PD, "Help me, PD-Doraemon...!"

I can only express my gratitude to my PD from that time.

If my mental state had truly broken down then, I might have given up writing.

Thankfully, seeing that I've completed the novel like this, it seems my mental fortitude was stronger than I thought.

They simply listened to my story and offered some conventional advice, but...

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

Other than that, there were no particular hardships.

As for occasional writer's block, well.

It's like a disease that sometimes afflicts writers.

Hmm.

I'm not sure what else to talk about.

I have so many things I truly want to tell you all, but...

If I talk any more, it feels like it'll never end.

So, I think I'll talk about my next work.

Fortunately, this time, a rough plot does exist.

My next work will also be an academy setting.

Of course, this time, the protagonist isn't a student.

How about we stand in the shoes of a teacher?

Not a teacher who instructs someone.

What? Then they're not a teacher, you say?

Don't worry. A teacher who resides in the counseling room is still a teacher, aren't they?

In "Slit-Eyed Mastermind," there were many comments saying that Arte killing people felt off-putting.

So, the protagonist of the next work will be a good kid? ...

Actually, I also like good protagonists.

But if it's just a counseling teacher, it might be a bit boring, right?

...Alright. How about we add a spoonful of hypnosis here?

A teacher with a kind impression, always friendly to students.

Students who trusted and followed them.

But the teacher's secret hypnosis ability is exposed.

Students trembling with a sense of betrayal.

We had trusted and relied on the teacher who was always warm and kind to us...!

"Teacher, surely you didn't... hypnotize us...!"

Something like that.

Isn't it good...? I like it...

However, something like this naturally requires a lot of build-up, so it would only appear much later in the story's progression.

I feel like I could write several chapters just for that scene.

Yes, therefore.

From now on, I will greet you with "I Became an Academy Counselor."

But this time, with a touch of hypnosis.

"When will it be serialized?" you ask?

Next Monday.

Someone once said:

"You can sleep when you're dead."

Chapter 156