When I finished writing the ending of the IF route, suddenly... How should I put it...
If I had to describe it, I suppose I felt compassion.
It sounds a little strange, feeling compassion for the protagonist I created myself. But I knew that what came next would be different from before. Completely different.
No matter how many predicaments or trials I put my protagonists through in the past, they would ultimately turn misfortune into fortune, finding a route to a happy ending from among ten thousand solutions. All the setbacks and hardships would eventually become nothing more than stories to laugh about.
But this time was different. Le Yu would be like a wingless bird with broken wings, blown about by wind and rain before plummeting into the abyss, doomed to sink forever and never fly again. He would be covered in blood and mud, drink his fill of sorrow and hatred, make one terrible mistake after another, and step into hell one step at a time.
He would sever every bond completely and suffer endless torment in the world I had created... even though he had never done anything wrong.
When I opened the new chapter and prepared to type out this long-awaited final volume, I suddenly felt terrible.
I regretted it—not only for your sake, but also for the sake of who I had been a year ago.
As I said when I started the book, "Rebirth Through Death" was a premise I had been preparing for a long time. When I was still in college five years ago, I thought the idea of "replacing the person who killed me" was fascinating and could lead to many interesting developments. I had hidden this premise for so long partly because it did not suit the market, but also