Spoiler warning!The truth is, up until the last moment, I was planning to have this girl die in the final chapter...
We only ended up changing direction at the editor meeting after the penultimate chapter (ch. 5), resulting in the story as you know it. Talk about down to the wire!
The final "XX years later, she goes to Komachi after growing old and dying naturally" scene is a vestige of the original plot. (Originally, Komachi would've ferried her over as the young girl she was at the time, discussing their regrets and decisions on the way. A much more solemn ending.)Ah, but hey! I also wondered over and over if it wasn't out of character for Komachi to be "saving people on a whim!" just because she "likes them!"
However! It's a fanwork! I managed to convince myself that it was fine to break free from the official works' format, where things always go back to status quo in the end, and write a story where characters' thinking undergoes big lasting changes.In the end, I think I also did an okay job tying up the subject of contradictions in Komachi's attitude towards humans that started in ch. 3... but I wonder if you agree?
My greatest aftertaste from this project is... Man, am I glad I made those changes!
That's for sure!Her hair isn't just brown, but actually has a yellow base, much like her eyes. That gave me the idea to make her obi yellow to match, and finally give her kinagashi a color that seemed like it'd go well with them.I love girls with moles, so I took this opportunity working with an OC to add one. It makes her so obviously not a Touhou character!Back in ch. 1, I thought of her as a completely random crowd character, never expecting to give her such a big role in the story.The purpose of her death was to make Komachi regret her failure and give her determination to save others in the future, but... being tied down by regret and forced to save people because of it just felt too negative, not like Komachi's own thinking but more like a curse...
A positive reason like "saving humans because she loves them" just seems clearer and easier to accept, personally...
That was basically the reasoning. Even if it ended up a bit cheesy!
