Thank you very much for your thoughtful comments and for connecting so deeply with my work.
I’m sorry that we have gone through something similar. In many ways, making this game was also part of how I processed that experience myself. I worked on it on and off for about a year, and I think time played an important role in shaping it.
I kept going back to what I had written, and little by little, I decided to remove many of the more private and literary parts. Instead, I tried to keep the indirect feelings left behind by grief — the emotions and atmosphere that stayed with me for many years.
You mentioned Han Kang. Unfortunately, I haven’t read her work yet, so I don’t really know how to respond to that comparison. But among all the comments I’ve received, you were the only person who mentioned the “bittersweet” feeling, and that meant a lot to me, because it was something I truly wanted to express.
I think that after experiences like this, the world can feel incomplete. But at the same time, the world never truly stops being beautiful because someone or something is gone. For me, that is where the bittersweet feeling comes from.
There was actually a line in an earlier draft that I later removed:
“For some reason, the summer evening wind still felt warm.”
Thank you again.