Hostage Handbook

Ending Note

I wanted this story to be a short spin-off one shot, but I eventually wrote more than I envisaged. I initially arranged for Yeoreum to run away once before she completely gave up. However, the more I tried to understand her inner plane and fathom her personality, desires and emotions, I felt like it would be out of her character to give up that easily.

I read a Buzzfeed review on the movie 365 Days and watched it with the wrong mindset. How bad can it be? It's probably just porn! Needless to say, I got slapped in the face by the horrible portrayal of everything. I was angry enough to want to create a story to represent the emotional struggles and tangled relationship between an emotionally invested captor and a sane hostage.

Jungkook's character experienced many changes throughout the main book's creation. Originally, I planned for him to be the good younger brother who would help Taehyung bring down Empress Dowager. But things weltered in an unexpected direction as I was writing his initial interactions with Yeoreum.

There was a strange magnetic dynamic between them, and I didn't hate how it went, so I decided to ride that high and plump the evilness within Jungkook's character. He is interesting, and I am glad I managed to delve deeper into his personality through this branch-off story.

By writing this branch-off story, I gained more insights into Yeoreum's character and her hidden sides that were not touched on in the main story. It helped me flesh her out more in the main story as well because I wrote the two at the same time (finishing Empress Handbook first).

I hope you all enjoyed the two different endings. Normally, when I write multiple endings, I leave it up to the reader to decide which alternative ending is the so-called true ending. However, with the uniqueness of this story, I'd like to make it clear that the ending titled True Ending is the only true ending because the purpose of the story is defeated in the Normal Ending.

I just thought it would be cool to have one anti-Stockholm syndrome ending and one slightly more conforming ending to explore the different possibilities and cut some extra onions.

A documentary on abduction in China inspired the Normal Ending. In particular, their interview with a woman who was kidnapped to marry someone in rural China fascinated me. The woman was beaten into marrying her captor, but she chose to stay even after authorities went to rescue her. She was in the middle of pursuing her university education when the tragedy happened, and truthfully, her future was ruined by those human traffickers. She was well-spoken, articulate and perhaps logical to a fault. Although I struggle to agree with her decision even with her calmly expressed list of reasons, I found that perspective interesting.

I feel bad for making the supposedly fluffy Jungkook branch-off story so dark and emotionally trying (I felt all the frustration too, and I desperately need to read the Empress Handbook endings). So, I might release a better (?) after ending to revert Jungkook's mistakes and let this Jungkook x Yeoreum ship be shippable without hurting anyone's moral compasses. And perhaps even release fluffy one-shots for Yeoreum to romance Taehyung, Yoongi and Jungkook without the monarchy.

To be honest, I am not ready to bid farewell to Yeoreum. I was writing chapter twenty-six of this story when I realised there were only three more chapters left until I had to move on from Yeoreum, completely, with no more future stories starring her.

Yeoreum held my hand through a challenging time. She means so much to me, and I love her to the moon and back.

I genuinely hope you all enjoyed reading about Yeoreum (and as Yeoreum) during this time. I will take a short break to finish and polish my next work(s). One will still be on Bangtan (maybe VKook?), and the other will be for another fandom. Thank you all so much for the support, and I will see you then.