Prologue — My Favorite Is a Losing Heroine
Anyone who loves novels or anime is bound to have a favorite.
Most people want that favorite to be happy. They want them to get a better ending.
I was no different.
I wanted Yoon Soye to be happy—one of the heroines of the romantic comedy web novel I was reading, Your Wish, and my favorite of them all. I wanted the story to give her a gentle ending.
And today, Soye confessed to the protagonist.
It was the kind of moment that makes your heart pound. And in the middle of that breathless scene, what I saw was—
A cold, merciless rejection. And through it all, our angel of a Soye was still treating that limp-dicked bastard with nothing but kindness.
The instant I took in those trembling, desperate words—the instant I saw the illustration of Soye in tears—my mind went white. When I came back to myself, the rage boiling up inside me was more than I could hold. I slammed down a comment 5,700 characters long.
I kept pouring it on after that, spelling out every last grievance until I'd posted a comment piled high as a heaping bowl of rice, long enough to be a novel in its own right. Then the replies started rolling in.
I didn't even want to look at them. I didn't need to. They'd only be the replies of idiots who didn't understand the first thing about what made Soye special.
But one of those comments carved a hole straight through my chest.
A filler heroine.
Yeah. I knew that. Unlike the other three heroines, Soye had been dropped in fifty chapters earlier with the role of a junior—a filler heroine, cooked up to stretch the novel's run.
But arriving late only made her story denser, and the devoted, single-minded pure love she held for the protagonist only made her more captivating. That was exactly why I had fallen so hard for her.
Which was why I wanted her to win even more. I wanted the world inside that novel to be kind to Soye.
But this world was far too cruel to her. There was no happiness here with her name on it.
Pathetically enough, I read all the way to the end, praying she would receive even the smallest salvation at the last—
And that goddamn author, as if he had forgotten Soye existed at all, did not even give her an epilogue. As if, now that she had done her job of padding out the chapter count, there was nothing left to say about her.
Maybe that was why I threw away the last scrap of reason I had and opened the comments one more time.
I packed every ounce of rage that had been building since Soye left the story into that comment, then flung my phone onto the pillow beside my head.
I was so angry. That a girl that gentle, that good, had been used and thrown away—and by the author, of all people. By the one who was supposed to be the creator of that world. The sheer fact of it made me furious beyond words.
The world of that novel had been far too cruel to her. It had not given her even a scrap of happiness. It had not permitted her even the smallest salvation.
"Why the hell did I read that garbage all the way to the end."
I regretted it so much. Trusting that goddamn author and following him all the way to the finish made me feel like a fool. Never again would I touch another work of his. I hoped he would never show his face in front of me again.
With that thought, I picked the phone back up from where it lay by my pillow—and a reply had come in from that cursed, damnable author.
What kind of excuse had he even tried to make? I opened the comments one last time, if only to see that much.
And what I found was this.
In twenty-three years of being alive, that was the stupidest thing I had ever heard.
If I could have done that, I would have made Soye the happiest heroine of them all—not the most pitiful, most wretched one, the girl who did not even get an epilogue.
"You're blocked, you son of a bitch."
I blocked the author on the spot, then closed my eyes and tried to sleep. Hoping I would never have to see that writer again.
I just never imagined that the stupidest thing I had heard in twenty-three years of being alive would become reality.