Hwashin Wedding (2)
I was clutching my head, trying to hammer out an ending for the new series — and still nothing that truly satisfied me would come.
How was it possible that not a single approach felt right?
"Whatever happens later, maybe I should just get the rest of it organized first…"
I hadn't settled on a conclusion yet, but wrestling with the earlier material ahead of time might still shake something loose. Of course, the odds that it wouldn't work at all were far higher. Even so, this was the kind of moment when doing something mattered more than waiting for inspiration to strike.
Hmm. Let's see…
The new entry in the Hwashin series — Hwashin Wedding — opened by calling back to the ending of its predecessor, Hwashin Conception.
In Hwashin Conception, the core premise was that the girls gained tremendous power through a kind of divine possession called "Conception," receiving a god's flame into their wombs. The problem was that the womb tattoos granted by that Conception also inflicted a curse-like pleasure, reducing the girls to slaves of ecstasy.
And right there, the gap between the worldbuilding I'd intended and the way readers actually received the story became clear. I'd assumed people would interpret those curses as the price the gods exacted for lending their power. Readers, however, treated the pleasure as proof of everything the girls had endured — a reward for fighting so hard.
Honestly, the womb-sticker merch probably got even more popular because of that exact reading.
But I couldn't just abandon what I'd meant to say and write an entirely different story. The work still had to treat those marks as a curse. Springing that discrepancy on readers all at once, though, would leave them disoriented. So I'd need to spend the early-to-mid stretch of the new series carefully explaining it.
I had to make clear that the gods in this story were not simply benevolent beings — and that the pleasure everyone had taken for a blessing was, in fact, the product of something else entirely. The deeper the girls sank into that pleasure, the more their souls were bound and offered up to the gods. A living-sacrifice system. A tribute. I needed readers to absorb that as naturally as possible.
In the previous work, for all that the cast lived drowning in lewdness, they still kept their heads in a fight and managed ordinary daily life well enough by the end. This time, day-to-day existence would be steadily eaten away by pleasure until they were reduced to useless wrecks — and eventually the corruption would start interfering even with combat.
The only one who holds onto her mind at all is Albedo, who received her power under relatively generous terms.
The other gods had watched Albedo conceive the red flame and copied the system, laying on far harsher curses. But when Albedo herself received the red flame, the god had seen her will and lent its power with only a loosely defined curse. That left her just enough room to endure with the bare minimum of her sanity intact.
Having pieced the situation together on her own, Albedo realizes that if things continue as they are, everything will lose its meaning. At first she thinks it doesn't matter if she and the others are sacrificed. But what if the pleasure consumes them so completely that they can no longer fight at all?
In the end, the only option left would be to find the next generation of Hwashin.
She begins to fear that anyone with the talent to become a vessel will simply keep being fed into the gods' tribute system — and little by little, she starts thinking the situation has to change. Of course, thinking about it is all she does. She never actually raises a banner of revolt. Because if they try to fight the Corruption without the gods' power, extinction is the only outcome. Even once it becomes clear the gods are not unconditionally kind, humanity still has no choice but to reach for their hands as long as the common enemy of the Corruption remains. All they've learned is that a power they thought was free carries a devastating price. The need for that power itself hasn't gone away.
"But the Corruption keeps getting pushed back, so eventually even they decide they're in danger — and they prepare a final battle and come charging in."
If they can just stop that assault, everything is resolved. It's a far better outcome than the one she'd first feared. And yet she knows that if they keep fighting and keep using the flames, everyone but her will have their souls fully offered up as tribute, trapped forever in a cycle of endless climax until they die. So Albedo cannot accept even that ending. She makes a new request of the Hwashin.
"I'll offer myself completely. In exchange — let the others go."
Fortunately, every one of the gods coveted Albedo's body most of all, so they agreed. Rather than prying broken scraps of soul from the others by force, it would be better to take Albedo herself through a "wedding" and share her among them.
Albedo's white tattoo, the Soul Chain.
Nigredo's black tattoo, the Dream Catcher.
Citrinitas's yellow tattoo, the Alter Mind.
Rubedo's red tattoo, Temptation.
Viriditas's green tattoo, Favor.
The marks of Conception that symbolized the power of the five flames — and the curse-patterns that gnawed at their souls — Albedo takes them all into her own body. With the rainbow-colored tattoo called Opus carved into her womb, she rises on a blaze of multicolored fire and faces the final battle alone.
"A protagonist who literally sacrifices herself to save everyone…"
Everything up through that scene was already finished, waiting only to be drawn. That was why the last merch drop had included the Opus tattoo as a rare pull. The real problem was what kind of ending came after.
"I've got a few options."
One: everything ends, peace returns, and the girls who miss the Albedo who saved them pray with desperate sincerity — and the gods, moved, give her back. A pure, brainless happy ending.
But that's a hard sell.
Not one god, but five, all agreeing? Their desire for Albedo ran far too deep. Lending their flames hadn't been free, and they'd taken losses of their own in the war. Having them make such an inefficient choice would feel off — it would break the internal logic.
"Then again, a plain sacrificial ending doesn't sit right either."
I'd considered that approach at first, but Albedo would be far too pitiful, and the survivors would never be happy knowing she'd given herself up for them. A tragic ending can work on its own terms — but she wouldn't even get a cool death. She'd be offering body and soul to the gods. That left a bad taste.
"This is hard. Really hard…"
I sighed, decided I should at least eat dinner and think it over, and left the dorm — only to freeze at the sight of female students strolling around with tattoos and anal-plug tails attached.
I'd gotten used to the tattoos by now. But those tails swaying gently, flashing the insides of their skirts, the distinctive jut of the plug base just visible — that was something else. That swaying was them performing real-time anal masturbation as they walked. Fashion item or not, watching everyday life turn into public self-pleasure left me with a thoroughly complicated feeling.
"I really don't understand trends sometimes."
And it wasn't just our academy. This was a nationwide craze. The fact that people would voluntarily dress this perversely might be the single defining feature of the current market. Whether it was because everyone had only just gotten into fandom culture, or something else entirely, the intensity with which people committed to their hobbies here was remarkably high.
"…Wait a second."
Come to think of it, the level of dedication people brought to their fandoms in this world was already extreme. That was why so many had poured absurd amounts of money into pulling the rare Opus tattoo. Dumping the leftover stickers cheap had been the single biggest reason the womb-tattoo trend spread so far. And now people were even using potentially dangerous anal plugs as a form of fandom fashion, in numbers that kept growing.
I had to show a sequel to people who were that serious about their hobbies. Not just present them with a work of art — communicate with them. So what if I reflected that need back into the story itself?
"…That's not half bad, is it?"
Eating suddenly felt like a waste of time. I sprinted back to my dorm room, spread out paper, and started sketching the idea into rough notes, testing whether the concept that had just hit me could actually work.
Just because something was a comic didn't mean the world outside the work couldn't be felt exerting influence inside it. There was a famous technique in a well-known manga that did exactly that — a finishing move whose narrative justification was borrowing a little power from everything, becoming the strongest technique of all. The sources of that power weren't limited to people, but the scenes where countless wills lent their strength still delivered an unforgettable rush of pure hype.
So what if you had a situation like that technique — except even borrowing the power of everyone in that world still wasn't enough? How would you fill the shortfall?
If people were willing to pour this much genuine devotion into a work, maybe that missing power could be supplied from this reality.
"That would be more than enough justification, wouldn't it?"
If the internal logic of one world alone couldn't save a single girl — then let the real world cheer her on and fill the gap. That was the basic framework of the ending I'd just conceived.