Pretending This Is a Ten-Thousand-Word Update When It's Actually a Volume-End Summary I Couldn't Wait to Write

Because I really wanted to draw a full stop for this volume and for all the painful experiences before it, I wrote this volume-end note early instead of waiting for the side stories to finish updating.

Of course, because of my obsessive-compulsive tendencies, once all the side stories are done, I'll move this chapter back to the end.

The first half of this chapter contains a lot of pain. If you'd rather read the plot summary, feel free to skip directly to the second half.

But most people probably don't read volume-end notes anyway, especially one this long. Whenever I read, I skip them every time too, hh.

It was finally over.

I started this in March 2021 and wrote until July 2023. Two years and three months, and I finally finished this volume. If it were someone else, they probably could have finished an entire novel in that time.

And I only finished one volume, probably close to six hundred thousand words.

Really, that fact was just... something else. My speed was so slow that I deliberately tried not to think about it in daily life, afraid I'd have a mental breakdown and affect my updates.

Like when you were injured somewhere, but were too afraid of pain to press on it, so you pretended it didn't exist.

But now, now that the North America volume was finally finished, I could finally dig it out of my heart and talk about it.

These past few days, I kept reminiscing—about everything I had experienced since this volume began, about my mindset throughout the entire North America volume.

It was pain.

Extreme pain.

Looking back through my author notes, it was either writer's block or apologies. It seemed like there were barely any times when I said things like, "Ah, I