When I opened my eyes, paper was the first thing I felt beneath my fingers.
Damp manuscript pages, the smell of ink, the faint heat of the desk lamp left on all night.
The scene was too familiar, and that made it dangerous.
I knew this scene. I had missed this ending once, and lost everything afterward. If I cannot fix the ending today, this manuscript will go out as it is. Broken.
No, I had let it pass once before. This time I could not.
A marked scene draft lay open on the desk, and at the end of the last page the sentence I had been holding onto until yesterday stopped cold: 'This is not the ending.'
The words slipped from my lips and tapped lightly against the room.
The deadline was close, and editor Doyun Kim had made it clear that the book would be released today unless I finished revising the ending.
But my eyes caught something sharper than that sentence.
The character on the final page had died far too emptily.