I was Thrown into an Unfamiliar Manga

Hello, this is your inadequate author.
Somehow, after about a year and a half since I began serialization, the main story has reached its conclusion.
This is, in fact, my third completed work.

There was actually another series that should have been finished before this one, but due to my lack of ability, I couldn’t focus on more than one thing at a time, so this ended up finishing first.
Fortunately, the other one is nearly at its climax, so it looks like it will conclude next month.
As for a new project, I plan to only begin once I’ve wrapped up all the works I’ve already started.

I have many things I’d like to say, but I’ve picked out a few topics that I think readers might be most curious about.
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[First] The background of that “mystery arc”

Honestly, this was 100% my mistake.
Originally, I was going to write a story about flirting with the chairman on a deserted island. But then I saw readers getting attached to the phrase “remote solitary island” in the plan and leaving comments expecting a mystery. So I thought, “Ah! It might be fun to mix in some mystery here!” and twisted the original story.
I decided the first half would be mystery, the second half a stranded island survival story.
But unexpectedly, I lost the overall direction of the work.

Originally, I wanted to show Kim Yu-seong breaking through the culprit’s traps with pure physicality, like in Gorilla-sensei. But then I realized you can’t have an actual murderer appear in a romcom.
So the half-baked mystery became a rushed “Ta-da! It was all fake!” and when I tried to abruptly end it, the draft became impossible to salvage.

I deleted the hastily written mystery portion and returned to the original deserted island plan. But in that process, about half the readers who had been following out of habit disappeared, snapped away like Thanos.

I honestly thought someone had finger-snapped.
[Second] Why illustration production suddenly stopped
This happened because I pushed the artist too hard, and midway through ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) they declared they were quitting.

From the start, I had planned for the story to end around 300 episodes, with 10 illustrations per 60 episodes.
I paid 150,000 won + α per illustration, so I was ready to spend around 8 million won just on art.
But a single black-and-white illustration took about 3–4 days, and with feedback included, each one easily took 5 days to complete.

On top of that, the cover was being worked on simultaneously, so the speed of art production couldn’t keep up with serialization at all.
The artist asked to slow the pace to one illustration per week, and I agreed, but in the end, the workload was too overwhelming and they gave up.
By then, I already had 20 illustrations and 3 color covers, but because of consistency and cost issues, bringing in a new artist wasn’t feasible, so I abandoned illustration production.

[Third] Why serialization suddenly slowed down
This was due to a combination of factors.
Before this series, I was serializing my previous work daily. After unexpectedly winning an award, I slowed the pace of the previous one, but kept daily serialization for this one. I managed about 230 days of accident-free daily updates.

But then three things hit at once: health problems, a Thanos-snap drop in views, and the artist’s departure. My mental state broke, and I fell into a slump.
Before, I could write one episode in 2–3 hours, but around then it started taking 4–6 hours minimum.
I even quit my job to focus on writing, but my concentration issues didn’t improve, and I struggled in the slump for quite some time.

More recently, I recovered to about 5 updates per week. But since 4 of those went to this work and 1 to the previous one, it probably didn’t feel like much of an improvement unless you were reading both.

So if you thought my release speed was a mess, you were completely right.
Too many excuses, but ultimately it was my fault.
[Fourth] Why do I keep “kiting” with the reservation function?

I know this is a bad habit.
In truth, it could be solved by just writing in Hangul or Word and copy-pasting to the site. But the reason I kept doing it is partly the spacing issue I’ve mentioned before, and also because writing on my phone during breaks at work had become a habit.
So I was basically using the reservation function as a temporary save.

At first, I didn’t know that Novelpia’s notification system also triggered for scheduled posts—I thought alerts only went out when the main story updated.
I found out later.
For my next work, I’ll fix this by choosing a set upload time and posting then.

[Fifth] Will there be erotic content in the side stories?
Yes.
The side stories will cover events two years later in university, telling the parts the main story couldn’t. At the same time, I plan to write IF episodes respecting each heroine’s individuality.

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So these are some of the things I thought readers might be curious about.
A year and a half.

Short, yet long.
I can only say thank you to all the readers who stayed with me through it.
To everyone who supported me and cheered me on, my deepest gratitude.

With that, this inadequate author steps back.
Have a good night, everyone.