The Day My World Collapsed
That day, my world came crashing down.
Academy Yuri Princess.
The legendary hit that spawned a brand-new slang term — "the Yuri Flood" — the masterpiece that plastered every ranking page with yuri titles from top to bottom.
Its prose gripped readers like a demon's spell; no one could put their phone down.
Diligent updates without missing a single day, and skill so polished no one would believe it was a debut — a genuine monster that marched straight into the #1 spot on the rankings.
To summarize the plot roughly, it went something like this. Eva Amethyst, eldest daughter of the prestigious Amethyst family, was born with magical talent so exceptional that the word "prodigy" felt inadequate.
Hailed as a talent heaven-sent, she carried the weight of her family's expectations on her shoulders — the great archmage destined to bring glory to House Amethyst.
But Eva found all that expectation suffocating.
Blessed — or cursed — with an innate case of social anxiety, she preferred games to magic and a sheltered life within her own four walls to any social engagement.
For her, sitting at a computer and hammering away at a keyboard was life's greatest pleasure, and so she holed herself up in her room, advancing ever deeper into full-fledged hikikomori life.
That lifestyle didn't change even after Eva came of age.
Petra Amethyst, head of the family and her mother, took drastic measures to fix her daughter's incurably introverted nature.
Thus the story begins: pushed along by her mother's relentless pressure, Eva enrolls at an Academy located on a remote island across the continent.
She was nothing like the proactive heroines who stand at the center of every incident and drive the plot forward.
Passive, sunlight-averse, the kind of girl who could come across as downright frustrating — but the author elevated those flaws into strengths with a cuteness that stroked the reader's protective instincts.
Beyond that, there were the sweet, cozy days at the Academy woven together with a cast of charming side characters, and thrilling action sequences in the dungeons to boot.
It was a work that satisfied even the pickiest of readers — the kind who don't hesitate to call something "the greatest of all time, regardless of genre."
A flawless novel, really.
When the author abandoned the novel for seven years and finally returned, readers sang with one voice that as long as she didn't drop it again within a few months, there was absolutely no way it could fail.
I shared that opinion, same as everyone else.
For me, the idea of this novel tanking was simply unthinkable.
"And THIS is the ending she gives us?!"
But — ta-da!
Turns out there's no such thing as absolute.
Whether she'd been struck down by Artiste Syndrome, or whether this was the script all along, I couldn't say — but the author committed a fuckup for the ages.
And she did it right when the epilogue — the finishing flourish, the cherry on top — went up!
Eva carefully lifted the baby wrapped in a woolen blanket.
With trembling hands, she received that tiny life.
The infant's warmth traveled up from her fingertips and spread through her chest.
This child is... Chloe's baby.
Eva clutched the child tight against her breast.
She blessed the birth of a new life — a small but vividly burning ember, one that had only just opened its eyes to the light of the world.
"Welcome to this world. I'm so glad you were born."
Over the baby's breath, hiccuped with soft cries, Eva gently pressed a kiss to its forehead.
The little one, greeting the world for the very first time, reached up toward her with a tiny outstretched hand.
In that moment, she believed — without a shred of doubt — that she was happier than anyone alive.
That final paragraph, capping off the completed novel, unleashed a firestorm of fury in the comments section.
A real-time parade of spicy comments rained down, the reactions of readers in full-blown denial of reality spawning shock and terror across the board.
Everyone was reeling, refusing to accept what they'd just read.
Even I, who considered Academy Yuri Princess my all-time favorite, stared blankly at the screen, blinking in a daze of genuine shock.
For thirteen years I'd walked the single road of web novels, sampling every genre under the sun.
I'd devoured everything from masterpieces that left a mark on my life to trainwrecks that made me gag just turning the pages.
I could identify any novel from a single line of quoted text. That's how much I'd read — and how numb I'd become.
Run-of-the-mill plot swerves couldn't scratch me, let alone wound me.
My friends called me "the Golden Retriever Who Eats Shit" for a reason — at my level, I never thought a web novel could make me seize up.
How arrogant I was.
Who could have imagined that a stock riding at an all-time high, sky-high and drunk on itself, would come crashing down to a basement floor so deep it couldn't even be seen from down there?
This insane author pulls a swerve-out-of-nowhere ending HERE?! OF ALL PLACES?!
In all my years, I never dreamed I'd witness a yuri heroine sleeping with a man — and going further, giving birth.
Academy Yuri Princess was a web novel with yuri as its core selling point.
For a yuri story it had a fair number of male side characters, but once the romance arcs kicked in, the line was drawn crystal clear: anyone with a dick cast no shadow in those scenes. Ever.
In the latter half of the novel, Chloe — the flagship heroine — confessed to Eva, the two confirmed their feelings, and sailed smoothly all the way to marriage.
Even the readers who'd championed other heroines as the true love interest accepted the outcome; it was a clean, satisfying wrap-up, and plenty of people hoped for a proper epilogue.
The author posted an announcement for exactly those readers:
Since you've all asked for it, once the novel concludes I'll publish side stories as a separate serial, if time allows. However, as I've mentioned before, it will be wrapped up strictly as an after-story for the two of them.
As the finale approached, Eva had cleared the topmost floor of her target dungeon and slain the great evil that sought to swallow the world.
The happy ending was already a given, so readers focused intently on how the author would deliver it.
Some of the comments even wished to see a child born of Chloe and Eva.
After all, the overt hints Chloe had dropped throughout the story were more than enough to fuel that kind of speculation.
But when readers asked to see a child of Chloe and Eva, the author drove in a nail with absolute finality: in her world, two women could never conceive a child.
Nothing is impossible in fiction, but conflicts over that very question had cropped up constantly in the story, and pure love that transcended such barriers was the novel's central theme — so by and large, people accepted the author's word.
Honestly, I didn't get it at the time either, but I let it slide and moved on.
Right before the ending, Eva was portrayed as someone who had conquered the dungeon and pushed beyond the rank of Great Archmage, approaching a divine realm where anything she willed could come true.
And yet this transcendent being claimed same-sex birth was impossible?
Plenty of readers grumbled that no, they couldn't buy it — it stung.
But the ending belonged to the author. Readers hoping for one last twist might be disappointed, but that was that.
Yes. Up to this point, I understood a hundred percent.
But then why — WHY, in the grand epilogue that was supposed to close the novel, does Eva suddenly celebrate the birth of new life with the line that the child is CHLOE'S?!
Because if you think about it, that leaves exactly one conclusion: Chloe had sex with some nameless random man and got pregnant!
It was as if someone had poured an entire bucket of paint over a masterpiece that needed only a single brushstroke to be complete.
The readers who'd waited for the work to be finished gnashed their teeth and burned with rage at the author's jaw-dropping development.
It was a fuckup of historic proportions — a giant middle finger to everyone who'd come for yuri. And yet some people simply would not let go of hope.
They insisted the development was pure theater meant to shock the readers, that in truth some lore existed allowing women to bear children together, and that a twist was coming.
Others mocked that hope relentlessly, but a stubborn few held their ground like sailors guarding their ship through an endless storm.
I, too, waited in silence, just one reader among many who loved the author's writing.
And to our waiting, the author finally gave her answer.
A new post had gone up: "Regarding the Currently Controversial Epilogue." The author was about to state her position.
With hope and dread tangled in my chest, I tapped the notice with trembling fingertips, and —
Academy Yuri Princess ends here. There will be no revisions. I wrote the story I wanted to write, and I have reached the ending I set out to reach.
She betrayed even the last flicker of her readers' hope and flat-out declared: I'll do whatever the hell I want.
This ending has been planned for a long time. Some of you may find it unsatisfying, but this is my decision.
The moment I finished reading that one-line damage-control notice, I slapped my forehead.
I'd never in my life seen an announcement delivered like this. I was simply flabbergasted.
Functionally speaking, this notice was the author driving the final nail into her own career as a web novelist.
The comment section, already roaring, had gasoline thrown on it in the form of that notice — and blazed even hotter.
The window for damage control had blown past ages ago.
The author had zero intention of apologizing, and any chance of this novel being salvaged had vanished for good.
"It's over."
My strength drained away as I sank onto the bed.
Everything before my eyes turned pitch black.
The hours I'd spent reading the novel. The emotions I'd poured into it.
All of it suddenly felt worthless.
Ha. Fuck. I'm so pissed.
My forehead burned so hot that an ice pack would have sizzled into steam the moment it touched.
Would leaving one juicy insult in the comments make me feel better?
No. That would only hurt my feelings more. Better not to waste energy on this.
What's done is done. If it can't be undone, forgetting is better for my mental health...
"But the more I think about it, the angrier I get?!"
This is how it ends? Sucked the sweet out of us and moved on, huh?!
Wait a second. Weren't people dumping insane amounts of donation money on her just last week to congratulate the finale?
Didn't I send a hundred grand or so myself?
"Fuck! Pay me back, you bastard!"
That was five whole chickens' worth of money. Malice bubbled up in me like a spring finally hitting its full, rotten maturity.
I had never felt rage this violent in my entire life.
And that wasn't all.
Of the mountains of fan art posted on the notice page, more than half was mine.
Sent without asking for a single coin, purely out of a desire to see a good work continue — that was my sincerity, damn it!
Author. You betrayed my heart.
Decision made. Today, I become an agent of chaos.
I was hoping I'd never have to bring this out.
I pulled my collection out of the deepest vault of my computer.
NO.126 — "Landfill of Filth Under a Toilet Lid."
One of the cursed images I'd gathered across the internet, part of a stash saved back when I worked as an unpaid mod-slave for a major community site.
A treasured file, kept with loving care under the motto: if I'm going down, I'm not going down alone.
Ah, my darlings. You lived inside my computer all this time, waiting for this very day.
With this, I shall assassinate the bastard.
I zipped the file and sent a polite email to the author:
We'd been exchanging emails regularly for the past three years since the serial began, so the author opened the attachment without a shred of suspicion.
Just as predicted, my email appeared in the read-receipt list.
Ring-ring! Ring-ring!
As the notifications blared without pause, I savored the violent reaction on the other end of the line — then shut off my computer.
I don't know what the message said, but right before the screen went dark, I caught a glimpse of the subject line: "You son of a bitch."
Serves you right, bastard.
Go ahead and report me if you want.
Posting cursed images is legally un punishable — a lesson I learned through my lifelong career as a community rat.
I sprawled out on my bed with an easy conscience.
And with that, tonight too, I shall drift off into blissful slumber.
Then, like a rising tide, drowsiness swept over me and my consciousness sank into deep darkness.
And then —
"Hm?"
When I came to, I was inside the body of a character from the novel.