Chapter 48
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 0
Chapter Title: Because We're Different
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Because we're different.
What kind of reason should I come up with?
What reason could convince her that, even though she's formed trustworthy, positive connections with Senyora, she's still lingering in the back alleys?
I need to create a reason why she's so sensitive to the gazes of others, especially humans.
So... yeah, fabricating a wound inflicted by a human seems right.
Until now, even when others treated her harshly, Senyora never dwelled on it much.
When a drunken patron yelled at her in a rage, she just gazed at their flushed face and thought they looked like a strawberry.
Sure, there were times when she tried to shift her focus elsewhere or ignore it, but she still felt a pang of hurt.
Even so, Senyora was fine. She'd shake her head a couple of times and let the bad memories slip away. Or rather, she never let them take root in the first place.
That's how she lived. In a world harsh on beastkin, this was how Senyora got by.
If I suddenly claimed in this situation that Senyora had been hurt too, would readers buy it?
If I mishandled it, it could shatter her character consistency.
And we're planning to wrap up with volume 4... ending with the protagonist's character collapsing at the finale...
That would be the worst. If the final chapter flops, it drags down the evaluation of the entire novel, not just that part.
I felt the same as a reader. Once, an author tried to impart some life lesson at the end with a total drift from the story.
The early parts were genuinely fun—enough that I thought it could be my all-time favorite.
But one drift ruined it all. I never wanted to revisit even the good parts.
Not sure if this phrasing fits, but it became loathsome. That word captured my feelings best.
The key point is that attempts like this could lead to character breakdown, which would be fatal to my work.
So I have to approach it with caution.
Would revealing that Senyora, who always brushed off everything so well, actually carried emotional scars count as character collapse...?
I mulled it over for a good few minutes. Nothing else on my mind—just that.
And I finally reached a conclusion. It'll be okay.
The reason? From volume 1, I hadn't locked in the future plot, but I'd laid some groundwork.
It's like leaving an escape hatch. I can decide later whether to use it based on how things play out.
As long as I don't poke too many holes and weaken the overall narrative, there's no reason not to.
And so, I decided to use one of those pre-dug holes.
Sure, some awkward spots might linger...
But if it lets me craft a better scene, it's worth the risk.
Sometimes, you have to loosen up on rigid details and prioritize a stronger arc.
If it works out, it'll be perfect foreshadowing payoff and buildup, right?
So, what did I do back in volume 1?
Whenever Senyora faced discrimination from humans in her daily life, I never delved into her inner thoughts.
To be precise, I only described how she brushed it off.
I never touched on how she actually felt about those unkind stares directed her way.
What if, right here, I depict her inner world as chipping away bit by bit, even if it seemed like she was shrugging it off?
...Or, what if she's not truly hurt, but not because her heart is tough—what if it's because of some past event that killed her expectations of kindness from humans?
No expectations means no betrayal.
Personally, I like the second option better.
Because I can contrast it with Rika.
Senyora, who gave up hoping due to human malice.
Rika, who faced such brutality at a young age that she despaired—and even gave up on despair itself.
This gives them a shared trait: they've both forsaken hope, so they no longer react negatively.
But I can draw even more contrasts.
Rika's life crumbled.
Even if she stopped despairing after repeating it so much, that couldn't lead to anything good.
She was just surviving because she couldn't die. Living because she hadn't died yet.
She was thrashing desperately in the darkness, gasping for breath.
Senyora adapted to life somehow.
She abandoned expectations to avoid more wounds.
No matter how others reacted to her, she let it slide.
So even while hiding in the dark back alleys, she occasionally glimpsed light and smiled.
And when Rika finally found salvation, and good connections formed around Senyora,
their reactions remained polar opposites.
Rika could finally grasp a normal life.
Her personality flipped completely.
Before, her dead eyes barely registered anything; she just existed.
Now? She smiles again, light sparkles in her eyes, and her spirit is lively.
For a while, fear of the outside kept her indoors, but even that grew stale.
Rika mustered courage and stepped out. Surprisingly, people didn't pay her much mind.
Emboldened, she ventured to crowded streets, even chatted with strangers.
Bad things happened, but good ones outnumbered them—enough to cancel out the negatives.
Thus, Rika successfully emerged into the world.
Senyora, however, couldn't.
Unlike Rika, who lost her normal life entirely, Senyora had adapted her own life to fit.
As her surroundings changed and Rika reclaimed normalcy, pulling free from the darkness,
Senyora stayed hidden in the shadows.
She found no reason to change again. Her new bonds weren't enough to compel it.
...Yeah, writing it out like this, this arc feels way stronger. Too good to scrap.
Alright, let's steer away from 'Senyora pretended to be fine but wasn't' toward 'something happened in her past.'
What could that something be?
The safest bet is parental conflict, no doubt.
Parents are a child's whole world. Trauma from that lingering into adulthood? Pretty convincing.
Set it as beastkin-human parents with issues between them, revealed in a flashback.
...Kinda reminds me of Ulpi's backstory, but it's different enough.
Anyway, this is straightforward and easy to write.
I could confidently call it the textbook approach.
But... there are concerns, regrets.
First, it's cliché.
More critically, tying trauma to parents inevitably amps up tension and emotions.
No matter how flatly I try to write it, an experience scarring Senyora to this day linked to her parents? The mood will swing wildly. Best I can do is tone it down.
Problem is, I already did a massive, emotionally overloaded arc in volume 3.
Another one? Feels repetitive, breaks immersion.
Plus, cramming a full emotional buildup and payoff into one volume feels rushed.
Even if I scrapped the volume 4 finale and stretched to volume 5, it wouldn't fix it.
That'd create new issues.
Shoving Senyora's episode into one volume feels abrupt, but dragging buildup isn't worth it either.
It'd feel padded. Filling with side content? Empty fluff.
It's just an extension of her 'somewhat happy daily life' from late volume 3.
Not a moderate extension—a dragged-out one.
...If only I had something fresh and fun with cat beastkin.
"...What? Why are you looking at me like that, Aren?"
"..."
"Staring without a word makes me shy..."
Probably not, right, Ranyori?
So, back to the point: let's try a different setup.
Make it something Ranyori can recount calmly.
Even delving into trauma and her heart, her voice might tremble slightly, but no emotional shakes.
She had a friend as a child.
About that friend, she reveals nothing except they're human.
No name, gender, appearance—nothing.
I didn't want to pin it to one specific human. Ideally, it's something that could happen to anyone, not just Senyora.
Her friend was a pure-hearted kid.
Didn't discriminate against beastkin. Didn't pity them either. Treated everyone the same.
Senyora just happened to be the first peer they met, so they became friends.
Senyora and the kid were decent friends.
Played together, laughed together.
They'd fight when moods clashed.
Mostly light stuff, but sometimes not.
Senyora once hurt them badly, forgetting the strength gap between beastkin and humans.
The kid once wounded Senyora deeply with a casual, unintended discriminatory remark.
Still, they always reconciled somehow. Tried returning to how things were.
But it got harder. The more time together, the clearer the human-beastkin divide became.
Eventually, they stayed friends out of obligation, not joy.
Then the kid made human friends.
They meshed well, unlike with her.
The kid still wanted to stay friends, but Senyora thought it too strained.
Humans with humans, beastkin with beastkin—that's how it should be.
So they drifted apart. By Senyora's choice.
Much time passed. Senyora met many humans.
Through it all, she realized how kindly that kid had treated a beastkin.
With faint longing, one truth dawned.
No matter how well humans and beastkin treat each other, fundamentally, they're different.
No matter how close they seem, conflict and separation are inevitable.
That's the thought. That's why strangers' human glares still scare her.
Humans belong with humans, beastkin with beastkin.
New bonds won't help. They're human too—bound to drift away eventually.
...Because they're 'human.'
Rika, the puppy beastkin, listened to Senyora's tale.