The Letter

A man wearing a worn suit got out of a public bus and walked at the side of the road while his eyes were glued onto his phone's screen. There was a huge wall of text and at the bottom of the screen, were four words in bold.

'Thank you for reading!'

A few seconds passed and the man stuffed his phone into his pocket as he let out a loud sigh. 

"After 14 years.... this webnovel finally ended. I don't really know how to feel about it though." he muttered as he took a left and walked on the familiar empty road. 

It was a normal book for everyone else, but for him? For him, it was something different. The book, even though it had more than 8000 chapters, wasn't really famous. But for him, it was like this book was written for him and him alone. 

The actions of the main character were the ones that he himself would have done if he were in similar situations. Even when it came to the type of women he preferred, the food he liked and even the way he talked with both friends and strangers were very similar.

'It really is a pity that it ended...' he thought as he sighed again and glanced at a small apartment with three floors. Multiple cracks and green algae at certain places showed that the building was either extremely old, or very badly maintained.

He silently walked in and climbed up the stairs until he reached the third floor, only to see two large cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other and sitting in front of his door.

He walked closer and noticed an envelope, which he opened without any hesitation. Inside was a letter along with a small thank you card. He put the card in his pocket before reading the letter.

Dear Loyal Reader, 

I'm writing this letter to show my appreciation for the support you have provided to me from the beginning to the end. Most readers read a few chapters and drop the book, but you were the only one who read the chapters every single day and left comments for me to read, be it constructive criticism, or just random memes and jokes.

Now to the darker talks... based on the minor indirect conversations we had, I'm hoping that you won't hate me for dropping this on you all of a sudden. Fourteen years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Apparently it was genetic and well... luckily for me, I beat it after a year.

This was also the time when I started writing the book and back then, I had a lot of readers. Maybe I should be thanking my luck for that too, but after I beat my cancer, I still continued to write. The story slightly took a turn and maybe even you noticed it. After all, switching from a fast paced story to a slow paced one is hard to not notice.

Anyways, a lot of readers actually left because of this and it actually made me feel like rushing the end. Just when I was about to make that decision, I was once again diagnosed with cancer and this was also breast cancer, but of a different kind.

Then I remembered the main reason I started writing this webnovel. It was for myself so that I could pass some time, but somehow, I began to care more about what the readers wanted and ignored my own thoughts.

Oops I'm writing too much crap, but please bear with me. Let's speed things up. So yeah, I continued writing and many more readers left until only one remained... 

It was you, mister fwydchicken. Unfortunately I don't really know your real name... and I wish I did. Unfortunately, it'll be too late by the time you receive this letter, which you probably will after two weeks of me writing this.

Well... Tada! I'll be dead by then. I wasn't able to beat cancer the second time and they'll perform on me in three days. Chances of survival is less than 1 percent... but that's just them trying to give me some hope.

Now that the sad and sappy stuff is done, let me tell you about the two boxes. All of my money, valuables and everything that belonged to me is in there. I hope that it'll help you in at least one way. 

Thank you for being there for someone who had no friends, nor family. 

Your happily dead author

Red Snow

Um... or Emma Clankton

After reading the letter, he stood silently as he continued to stare at the piece of paper. He was someone who got emotional pretty easily compared to the others, but this time, he simply stood in place, not doing anything. 

He silently grabbed his phone from his pocket and opened the webnovel app before clicking on the latest and the last chapter that he had just read. 

He then tapped on the comment button and typed a few words.

Fwydchicken: Thank you for the chapter

There was no response.

'It's not like she'll be staring at her phone waiting for my message.' he thought to himself, but there was something inside him that pushed him to type more.

Fwydchicken: Do you have any plans on writing another novel?

Again, no response.

He felt his vision go a little blurry, but he went back to the index and checked the comments on the previous chapters. 

4 8 15 27 28

None of these chapters had any comments other than his, but the 29th chapter from the last chapter, did. 

'14 days... 28 chapters. No responses...'

For four minutes, he stood in place silently as tears rolled down his cheeks. He didn't know the author personally and he also didn't talk to her a lot online. Even then, he couldn't stop himself from feeling like he was drowning. Even breathing was hard. 

He went back to the last chapter and began typing once again. 

Fwydchicken: My name is Keith. A divorced 28 year old guy who lost almost everything.