It was finished.
Maybe I was just too tired.
When I typed "The end," I felt completely empty.
My head was empty, and so was my heart.
It was as though they were dear friends, people who had truly existed, waving goodbye to me in the midsummer sunshine.
They drove away in their fully packed RV, while I, the one who had recorded their story, stood there feeling hollow, listening to their laughter fade into the distance.
After ten months of uninterrupted serialization, it had suddenly come to an end. That feeling of being abruptly pulled out of the story left my mind briefly blank.
I stared at the computer screen for ages, not knowing how to write this afterword...
I scrolled through the table of contents with my mouse, clicking back through the chapters one by one.
I saw Chen Shi'an and Fat Ink coming down the mountain, Little Cicada on the bus, the Class Monitor in the classroom without her deskmate, Sister Wanyin opening the door to her rented apartment...
I said goodbye to each of them. Even if they were only characters I had written, at least within this two-million-character story, they truly had, in some dimension, a happy life of their own.
Perhaps this was a strange sort of feeling that only a creator could experience.
I believe everyone who loves this story can feel it too.
Looking back on the process of creating this book.
First, I still have to thank my editor, Tiger Fang. This isn't just a courtesy, because without the idea she gave me, you would never have seen this story.
Whenever I finish a story, I always fall into a long creative slump. Partly because I no longer have anything I want to express, and partly because I genuinely don't know