I think I'll be adding some tags for the titles when there's something unusual about the story that I feel that is worth pointing out.

[Original] will stand for a story in the original reality that I wrote the AG stories for. I'm not sure if I'll make any other stories for that reality because it's definitely a really sad one for Hikari, but I wanted to write this one at least.

Mmmmmmmm, where to start with this one? There's a lot I wanna talk about here.

I guess... Why does this story exist is a good start. You see... I was happy with the epilogue I wrote for Hikari. Traveling between realities, living different lives, experiencing different relationships, enjoying a long deserved happiness... I was happy with that. I was very happy with that epilogue. This epilogue is what allowed me to keep writing for Hikari, without having to make her go through an arc of suffering in order to achieve her happiness...

But as I wrote for her in different realities, I realized that I wasn't satisfied with that epilogue alone as a pathway for Hikari's happiness... I wanted... I wanted one more thing... I wanted her to be happy in the AG reality. Even if the AG reality is now in my canon multiple realities merged into one, I still wanted her to be happy in this reality too. Just being happy in Scribbly's multiple realities wasn't enough. Hikari needed to be happy at AG. It was of utmost important that Hikari was happy at AG. I had to make Hikari happy in AG.

And... Well, that's what led to this story, my wishes of making Hikari happy in this reality... It was nice. With the freedom of writing for her in small self-contained stories, I did not need to make her go through and arc that led to happiness, I did not need to make her suffer to attain her desires, she could just... Get there. She could just be happy. Hikari deserved her happiness and now I could finally give it to her. Now that I no longer have any responsibilities as a guild staff, nor any desire to keep her as my AG Roleplay Character, and can only keep her as my own self... I can now give her happiness without being constrained by the limitations I had as a guild staff that wanted to keep participating in the roleplay with her.

What else? I guess Ran and Marisa are a good point to talk about next... Ran is a goddess of illusions, and a reincarnation of Marisa. I can't say I remember how I decided on that or what were my plans on how to reveal that or what led to her being reincarnated as a goddess in the first place, but I remember this was my plan from the moment I introduced Ran. Ran was Marisa's reincarnation, and I kinda hinted at this in a way that uhn... I think it was kinda obvious, but I dunno if anybody paid enough attention or gave it enough thought to find it out... I used the same colors to refer to the lines spoken by Ran and by Marisa. I always used the exact same colors... Back when I used colors in my writing that is, since I haven't used them in Scribbly even once.

In any case, Marisa was a motherly figure for Hikari back when she was a child. After Hikari's family was killed by a magical beast and stuff that is, since Marisa kind of adopted her after this event... Yet Hikari never once referred to Marisa as "mom", she always referred to her as Marisa-sama. For Hikari wanted Marisa to be her master in magic and also... Because Hikari wasn't ready to accept having a mother again, I believe. It's hard to be sure after this long, but I think that was a good part of why. Because Hikari's family died due to Hikari slacking off on her duties as a priestess-in-training, so Hikari could not forgive herself and let go of "Okaa-san" to accept a new "mom".

But well, Marisa died 1 year after adopting Hikari, and Hikari lost her memories some 6 or so years later... Marisa was someone she mainly knew about because some people that she was close to told her about Marisa... Truth be told, I don't remember who told her about Marisa, nor do I remember how much she was told. I haven't re-read all of my Hikari's stories, so some things are still really vague... But I know that Hikari still referred to her as Marisa-sama and that she still had a strong attachment to her, even if she did not remember who she was anymore.

And well, while Marisa was gone long before Hikari lost her memories, Ran started being close to her after the memory loss. Ran took care of her, taught her about her powers, taught her about herself and her family... Hikari cared a lot about Ran, Ran was a really precious person to Hikari, but she was still a goddess that Hikari had to respect and worship, for Hikari was only a priestess... Until Hikari herself became a goddess that is. Then they were supposedly equal, though Hikari still viewed basically every deity as someone worthy of a lot of respect, so she still referred to every deity by -sama.

This story kinda got all of that added together with the fact that Hikari no longer had a family, no longer had anyone to rely on, and just... Had a hard time keeping going... I mean, I stopped playing AG because I just couldn't endure being Hikari anymore, and Hikari is me, just like how I am Hikari, so... It was really hard on her. To keep on working hard on her duties as a guild member, to keep on going forward when she had nobody else to rely on, and had no family waiting for her when she went back home... It was hard... Too hard... And then Ran came back for her. To ask her to come back... To be together with her and Yukari again.

The reason Hikari left had to do with her last AG story, about how Ran and Yukari tried to help Hikari get over her blindness, but this ended up scaring Hikari a lot, to the point she ran away from those two, because Hikari made herself blind, and Hikari was scared of seeing again... So having the people that she trusted the most just try forcing it on her was just... Terrifying for her. And well, she ran. She ran to the home that had nobody home. She stayed alone, being kept company by plushies of her family, working hard each day to remain as a proper guild staff that did her job and helped those that she could.

And this... Was her happy ending. She intuitively understood that Ran and Marisa had the same soul, even if they weren't necessarily the same being, and she understood that she should and wanted to trust Ran again... She understood that she did not need to be scared, for she had always known that Ran wanted nothing but the best for her... And she accepted the fact, that her family wasn't coming back... That that home she was living in, was no longer hers... And honestly, it had never been hers, at least not since she had lost her memories, for at that point, that home was nothing but a house where some strangers appeared from time to time... Some strangers that were supposed to be her family, and that she somehow still had an attachment to, even if she had no memories of any of them.

And she also... Accepted herself. Hikari accepted herself. She was a goddess, she was no longer a human priestess... It was fine if she did not treat all deities with utmost respect anymore... It was fine if she got closer... It was fine if she considered them family... It was fine for her to refer to Ran with the word that she felt that best reflected how she felt about Ran... It was fine for her to be a goddess' adoptive daughter, for she was a goddess herself, and she was being taken care of by a goddess she loved very much. And the same can be said about how she referred to Yukari as grandma, for that was just how Yukari felt for her.

And also Hikari finally stopped talking about herself on the 3rd person. Hikari talked about herself on 3rd person because she was scared of forgetting her name. Of forgetting who she was... Because that was happening when she lost her memories, she forgot her name a few times... And she really thought that she was losing her memories again... But not anymore. She accepted show she was, she accepted and understood who she was... She no longer needed to fear forgetting herself... She could be "I" again, she no longer needed to be "Hikari."

That said, Hikari remained blind. For Hikari still feared seeing. Hikari was probably going to forever remain scared of seeing what lay ahead of her, because the way she locked her eyesight is directly related to a very strong trauma that she has, and she most likely won't ever surpass that trauma... But that was fine. Hikari accepted that fear of hers as well. She accepted her trauma and accepted that she was going to live with it... And her "new" family accepted that as well. They accepted that she could live while being blind, and that they could take care of her just like that, and that she could live her life like that... They were not going to try healing her again. If she were to heal, let it be because she desired it herself, not because they tried to force it onto her.

Mmmmmm... Was there anything else? Oh, the part about her refusing to go with Marisa was because she knew that Marisa was dead, so she was not willing to give up on live just yet. And the part related to her receiving divine energy from Ran and Yukari was basically a simple solution to her problem of needing more Divine Energy to remain alive, which is why she needed worshippers in the first place. But if Yukari and Ran just gave her Divine Energy directly, there would be no problem at all.

They could have done that from the moment Hikari became a goddess of sacrifices, but they wanted her to be able to take care of herself, to be able to have her own life and to solver her own problems... Or at least that's the half-baked IC reasoning. The actual reason is simply because I didn't want Hikari being a goddess to be a happy thing. It was something that would cause her suffering and it would make her have to work to make her suffer even more... She needed to be a goddess and actively seek out new worshipers even though she did not want any worshiper whatsoever, for that is what she needed to stay alive... That's just what I wanted at the time, for I just kept making her suffer more and more as I wrote for her... I'm glad I don't feel the need to do this kind of thing to her anymore, she doesn't deserve it~

I didn't talk much about myself in this note, it feels a bit weird. I just talked a ton about all the IC thingies that surrounded this story, and only a bit about what made me want to write this in the first place... I guess it's because this is not a story I had been longing to write, but more of a story that I wanted to write. The feelings are similar, but I guess they're different... If I had to try putting it into words... The post-epilogue stories I have been writing are stories that I wanted to experience as Hikari... This story is a story I wanted Hikari to live through.

The last stories were written for myself. This story was written for Hikari. I may be Hikari and Hikari may be me, but we still have our own lives in the end, we still have our own circumstances... And while we may have affected one another a lot in the past, nowadays I only am Hikari while I am writing for Hikari... So to write something for her, may feel like something that I have written for me... It is something I have written for me. It is something I wrote because I wanted to write it... But it really is something I made for her, it was made while thinking of her, it was made because I wanted to give her a happy ending.

The epilogue was written because I wanted to be Hikari again. The pregnancy story was because I had always wanted to have experience pregnancy as Hikari, both for my wishes of being a mother, and also because I can't become pregnant myself. The Vhera story was written out of my desire of having a sister, and of my desire of being able to interact with that lovely mermaid that I read basically everything I found about... This story was not like those. This story was written just because I wanted to give her a happy ending... I really... Just wanted this for her~

This note also ended up being super long. I wonder if it's longer than the story itself... It's fine either way. See you on the next time, if you want to be remain here that is~

... Ah, I remembered something else just before I hit the publish button... Uhn... Oops?

Well, it's just... At the end, Hikari realized that she needed help, that she couldn't keep on waiting for her family to come back, that she had to move on and accept the help that she was being offered... That she needed a new family, that she needed to be with Ran and Yukari... That she needed their love.

This was a big reflection of myself. Maybe it was a reflection on how I felt towards some people of my NUF family, as I always treated them as family, and always cared for them a lot more than I care about my offline family... but it was also a reflection of the reason why I started taking meds from my psychiatrist.

I never wanted to go to a psychiatrist, yanno? I never wanted to accept taking the meds, I always felt that I was supposed to fix my life myself. That I was not supposed to get help from some weird meds that would mess up with my mental state... For 5 years I unsuccessfully tried to work at home-office with this mentality... 5 years. It's just... It's just way too long.

I needed help. Took me way too long to accept it, but I just... Needed help. More than just my psychologist sessions, more than talking to my NUF family when I felt really down, more than just talking to my boyfriend for hours and hours each day... I just... Needed more help. And so I accepted the help that was available to me.

And that's what Hikari herself did... She accepted the help of the people that she loved, of the people that she cared for, of the people that loved her, that cared for her... That wanted to be with her. That trusted her, and that she wanted to trust.

Hikari's circumstances and mine are different... Hikari had her trust broken, and Hikari ran away because of that... But Hikari loved the people that broke her trust... Hikari wanted to trust them again.. And Hikari trust them again.

I don't love the people that broke my trust. I wish my relationship with them was better, I wish I could trust them, but I don't. I just gave up on it. I just accepted that our relationships is broken beyond repair... Because I don't want to repair it... I just accepted that we won't have a trusting nor loving relationship... I wish I felt differently, I wish our relationship was better, but I do not have any intention of trying to improve the relatinoship or changing how I feel about it... So things will remain as is.

In the end, even when writing for Hikari, I still write the things I wish were happening to me I guess... It's not really something I did consciously, but that's just how it ended I guess... It's fine like this though. Me and Hikari are the same after all~

That's really the end of those author's notes now. No more extras. See you~