This Novel is not my Novel

"I-I apologize. For the misunderstanding..."

It was my fault for treating a perfectly normal person like a psychopath, and he seemed quite angry.

I suppressed my questions and bewilderment and apologized first.

At that, the furrows on his brow smoothed out, the tension in his facial muscles eased, and his usual smiling face returned.

"It's fine. You only thought that because you see me as an exceptionally skilled professional informant, right? Ah, of course, I am that kind of person. However, you overlooked something."

"What?"

"That to analyze someone's information, you must first understand their emotions."

It meant that a proper informant must never lose touch with their emotions.

Only after hearing that did I realize my mistake.

After all, I wasn't unaware that emotions contain a great deal of information.

Action is a function based on human psychology, and psychology is the result of a complex interplay between one's life experiences and the emotions of the moment.

Even when writing a novel, a character's 'emotion' is one of the elements that must be considered.

That's the only way to describe how that character will react and behave in a specific situation.

If you were to write based on the 'situation' rather than the 'character' without keeping this in mind, even if you could develop the work without deviating from your preconceived plot, you would not only lose plausibility but also fail to bring out the character's charm.

All this time, while using the 【Character Analysis】 skill, I was fully aware that this concept applied when analyzing a real person's principles of action and predicting their next move...

As an author, I was flooded with embarrassment for having overlooked such basic common sense.

"Why is your face turning red? Are you perhaps embarrassed? Because you overlooked the fact that you need to understand emotions to analyze information? You must have the innate nature of an informant!"

This situation, where he was forcing a connection over nothing and recommending a profession to me, felt strangely familiar.

The face of Professor Radvisin flashing through my mind at that moment was surely no coincidence.

"That's nonsen..."

"Telling me to stop? I was about to, anyway. I was planning on wrapping up today's Q&A here, but I'd rather not get forcibly kicked out like Senior Reisir."

Pret cut me off and, out of the blue, gave me a wink.

To think he'd do that while mentioning Reisir getting kicked out of my room.

The suspicion that he might know the reason arose in my mind.

But to ask about it would be tantamount to admitting that I had kicked Reisir out because of a wink.

Acting nonchalant, I just let the matter go and asked about something else.

"I thought you had more information you wanted to get from me?"

"Yes, I do. A whole lot more, in fact."

"And yet you're ending the Q&A?"

"I didn't say I'm ending it completely. I said I'm ending it 'for today'. After all, we have a reason to have another secret meeting, away from the eyes of others, don't we?"

Pret said with a sly expression.

Whether Karvaldr really purchased the poison himself, and if so, whether Tryggdrik truly incited him.

He was saying he would continue his questions after finding out information about that.

That didn't matter to me, but...

"Then what about the price for the information I gave you? Are you planning to pay for it then, too?"

"Since it was my decision to ask the questions later, I should pay the price right now."

If nothing else, I wanted to confirm the information about Sveinn quickly, so I deliberately narrowed my eyes to show my dissatisfaction.

Whether my action had an effect or whether that had been his intention all along, fortunately, Pret promptly took out a bundle of documents from his Inventory and handed them to me.

Unlike the information on Karvaldr, which was full of red correction marks and comments, the contents of the documents I received this time were neat and concise.

Although, separate from that, they were filled with all sorts of trivial details...

In 《NaSE》, a supporting character would make a brief appearance, be used for a few episodes based on their main setting, and then...

They were nothing more than beings to be killed off and disposed of.

So there was no way Author Senna would have meticulously configured the background of every single supporting character.

It would be a different story for characters like Karvaldr, Vigdís, or Skati, whose backgrounds were important settings that defined them.

But the majority of people in this data aren't like that, are they?

Even so, as long as they were people, the process of being born and raised had to exist.

The vacancies in their lives not set by the original author were automatically filled, and those contents were now in my hands.

Was that why?

In the cases of characters whose backgrounds weren't particularly important, their lives could be summarized by the sentence, 'Born into an ordinary family found anywhere, and lived an ordinary life no different from anyone else's.'

Until a turning point in their lives occurred, caused by a detail Author Senna deliberately set up.

To give an example that my dear readers could easily understand, Banhilda losing her family members would be one such case.

Before she experienced that incident, harbored vengeance, and became a bounty hunter, she was apparently born the daughter of an ordinary family, married an ordinary man from the same village, and lived as an ordinary housewife.

Bjorn was a case where, because his father was a mercenary, he naturally became a mercenary himself.

For reference, his father was said to be one of those common mercenaries with ordinary skills.

His Mercenary Company was formed when he, while working as a mercenary, teamed up with like-minded individuals.

As befitting an original supporting character, Bjorn's martial prowess was outstanding, so the Mercenary Company quickly grew in scale and made quite a name for itself, but...

In the worldview of this fantasy novel, the fact that his father was a mercenary and the process of forming a Mercenary Company were not the least bit special.

"There isn't much information about Professor Skati... It can't be helped, you know? The truth is, information about her is incredibly expensive, but I figured you already know as much as there is to know, so I generously included it."

"Not only is there little of it, but are you now taking credit for giving me information you think I already know?"

"Aha! I'm of the mind to take as much credit as I possibly can!"

Just as Pret said, everything about Skati was information I already knew.

Things like her being the designated successor to the head of the Assassination Guild, or that she personally killed that head and provided the guild's information to the Imperial Family.

The 'turning points' in her life that I had read about in the original novel were written down, but...

How she came to belong to the Assassination Guild and receive training, what her life was like before that, and what her exact age and birthday were.

What the decisive incident was that made her decide to betray the guild, and so on.

None of the details from before she reached her turning point were recorded.

There was nothing new about what came after, either.

How she was ostracized by her fellow professors after becoming an academy professor, or the incidents that occurred after the students learned she was a criminal.

Or how she lived off retort food and frozen food she'd bought in advance from the school store during the vacation.

"If you didn't know, you would have reacted. Seeing as you haven't even batted an eye, you must have really known it all."

I answered Pret's words with a dismissive "Hmph!" and turned the page.

Then, finally, the information about Sveinn came into view.

His setting, as mentioned in the original novel, was simply that he 'lived an ordinary life in a city that was neither large nor small, and after seeing Reisir fight, he came to admire him and decided to follow him.'

It was to the point where I suspected he was a character added without much thought, just because the author thought it would be nice to have someone by the protagonist's side to praise him.

However, there was no way Author Senna would reintroduce him in the remake version without having decided on a single setting that could be used as a main narrative.

Even more so if they planned to make him a traitor this time as well.

After all, they had already experienced an entire chapter's comment section filling with criticism for having written Sveinn betraying the protagonist out of the blue for no reason.

Indeed...

Just as I'd guessed, I was able to find a turning point that hadn't been mentioned in the original novel I'd read.

And its contents were enough to make me frown automatically.

In the original novel, Sveinn's setting was that he only had several older brothers...

The existence of those brothers had vanished, and in their place, a younger sister had appeared.

If that were all, I wouldn't have grimaced like this.

His younger sister suddenly came down with an incurable disease, which ruined the family. And their debt is growing every month because of the medical expenses...?

To turn a certain character into a 'traitor with a reason', Author Senna added someone suffering from an incurable disease.

And plunged Sveinn and his family into a swamp of suffering and poverty.

In creative works, the archetype of 'a character who betrays someone to pay for a sick family member's medical bills' is common.

However, because the younger sister with the incurable disease was a character who originally didn't exist...

And because, despite these circumstances, it seemed the original author would write a development where Reisir took Sveinn's life with his own hands this time, too...

And I am no longer a reader reading a fictional story made of text.

To me, all the elements of this world were real.

I couldn't help but feel disgusted by Sveinn's newly added setting.

Still, if the setting is that Sveinn will betray Reisir for money and is scheduled to harm those around him...

The thought that it was a problem that could be solved just by giving him money brought me a momentary feeling of relief.

And the moment I realized this, a wave of self-reproach washed over me.

So, knowing Pret was observing me, it wasn't enough that I frowned; I even squeezed my eyes shut without realizing it.

"Why that reaction?"

"......"

"Are you suddenly regretting being cruel to a junior whose family is struggling?"

"That's not it."

"If not that, then what is it?"

He noticed I didn't want to talk about it, yet he kept prying.

His persistence was on par with the protagonist of someone else's novel.

"......Didn't we agree you wouldn't ask any more questions today?"

"If I ask tomorrow, will you answer?"

"I won't."

"Why not? You laid out more difficult topics so smoothly, though?"

"Hmph!"

"True, it's no fun if you just tell me everything I ask."

It was a declaration that he would find out by observing me himself.

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