With Chapter 16, The Silent Sea has come to an end.
To everyone who read along, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Each time a “like” notification came in, I felt as though someone was whispering, “I’m rooting for you.”
Just like Shiori, I felt allowed to exist.
After sketching a rough plot, I simply let the pen follow my heart.
And Shiori, with no hesitation, ran off the page—leaving the outline behind like an old map.
In the end, she climbed into a white Tesla and disappeared into the sound of Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity.
…That’s it?
Even I, the author, was caught off guard.
But Shiori wouldn’t let me write any further.
She told me she had reclaimed her life—and what happens next should be left to the reader.
At first, I thought I was writing a love story.
But perhaps it was a novel about a woman’s self-awakening.
Even though it passed through the doorway of an affair, it didn’t linger on guilt.
It lingered on absence—on the parts of ourselves that go missing.
Even after deep intimacy, I wrote a future where the lovers didn’t end up together.
It was a quiet betrayal of Japanese sentimentality.
Not dramatic. Not cinematic.
But real.
And Shiori reminds us:
The person in the driver’s seat of your life…
is you.