Epilogue & Q&A
Hello. This is the author, BloodWeddingIsBest. At last, The World-Class Fullback Is a Noble has reached its conclusion. I never expected the story to run past four hundred chapters, yet somehow we’ve arrived at a proper ending. To every reader who stayed with me until the final whistle, thank you once again from the bottom of my heart. Now, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to write a short afterword.
1. On the protagonist, Ha Sunmoon. He is a character I poured my soul into crafting. From his parents’ complicated relationship, through the crushing poverty of his childhood, all the way to his backbreaking labor in Brazil—he began life under circumstances so bleak they bordered on cruel. Those hardships formed the bedrock of his probability, shaping a flawed young man whose mistakes could still be forgiven because he was still just a boy. The central spine of the novel was watching that wounded child slowly mend every crack in his soul until the boy who had lost everything grew into the man who held the world in his hands. He started as a tiny Asian kid barely scraping by and finished as a giant who had claimed every honor the game could offer.
2. Clara Guardiola (Diora). I dropped hints in the author’s notes early on, but from the very beginning she was never meant to be the heroine. She was an outright antagonist who shook Ha Sunmoon to his core. At first she wore the mask of a helpful supporter, yet what she truly wanted was never the man himself—only the glittering fame that followed him. Her motif was, of course, the blonde, voluptuous older girlfriend from those classic “Yanuzai fundamentalism” tropes. But copying that outright would have been boring, so I disguised her with the name Clara and the convenient title of Pep Guardiola’s niece. Had things gone differently, they might have become genuine partners. In the end, however, the version of Ha Sunmoon who kept growing chose to push her away for the sake of his own evolution.
3. Annie. She’s a classic archetype. They didn’t exactly grow up together, but the dynamic is close enough to childhood sweethearts. Their first meetings were icy, almost hostile, yet over time they discovered how perfectly they fit and fell deeply in love. Throughout the entire story, Annie remained Sunmoon’s one and only official wife.
4. The story as a whole. It’s a little chaotic, I admit. A protagonist locked into the fullback position. The appearance of a “ghost” named Harrison. The hidden truth behind Ha Sunmoon’s birth. And woven through all of that, the endless cycle of matches and the long climb to Europe’s very peak. Even writing it exhausted me, but I believe that very messiness is what made the novel worth reading. There were frustrating stretches, yes. Please consider them the necessary foundation that allowed us to reach even higher peaks later.
In addition, I will be accepting questions for a Q&A. I’ll answer almost everything except the truly difficult ones. Shall we say it’ll run for about a week?