Afterword

Hello again, readers. I've kept the author's notes to a minimum until now, since I felt like they would only take away from the immersion of the story. I removed the previous A/Ns as well for the sake of story flow for future readers. Here, I'll make all my final comments. Everything in this afterword will be spoilers, so please finish the story first if you haven't already.

If you made it this far, congratulations, observer, you have broken the loop of Ad Infinitum.

I hope you've enjoyed this story to the fullest, but most of all, I hope you take something with you from it. The best stories become parts of who we are, and I'd be honored if that was the case for even one single reader here.

This story began as a joke. After seeing a specific piece of *ahem* fanart involving Diluc and Keqing, I decided to write a short story about them. Something about the dynamic between the two intrigued me. They seemed like a strangely good fit, and upon looking online, I could find very little other art or stories about the two of them. Of course, once I started writing, the story quickly became longer than anticipated.

The idea of this story was a Diluc/Keqing tragic love story set against the untimely "end" of the world of Teyvat - only one of countless futures that Dainsleif had seen in his endless search for an end to that world's tale. I immediately outlined the whole story from the start, and wanted to end with Diluc's decision, which led to two different "futures", one slightly bittersweet, and one leading back to "reality" itself as the final twist. I threw in a whole slew of my favorite story themes, inspired by many of my favorite works of fiction, including Evangelion, the Zero Escape series, White Album 2, Steins;Gate and many others. Somehow, I mixed all of that with preexisting lore from Genshin to create what I thought was a fairly plausible take on the world of Teyvat.

This story was never meant to be a simple romance, but even with all of its twists and borderline sci-fi themes, in the end this story is simply about love. It's about that feeling of longing for someone, and the lengths we humans will go to to be with the one we adore. In reality, a cathartic, happy ending like Diluc and Keqing's is rare. However, even in a world that seems to grow darker by the day, love still prevails over that darkness, and it always will.

Now I'm sure some people will be confused and disappointed by what happened in Episode 10. I mean really, who writes a love story where the main love interest dies 1/3 of the way through? That's bullshit, right? I wasn't sure if that would work myself, but I didn't want this to just be another fluff piece. That incident fit the darker vibe I was going for, and allowed for more Diluc angst, which is what he does best. I wanted to explore the fascinating idea of the "world between" from Hu Tao's story quest, and no better way to slam the reader with feels than to have Keqing be the one stuck there. It also allowed the ending to have a much larger impact than it would have had otherwise, since Diluc was willing to do anything to see her again, even at the cost of being trapped in a false world for (possibly) an eternity.

This story was somewhat rushed, since my time is rather limited, and I had already spent a great deal of time writing something that (at the time) I didn't think anyone but a few friends would ever read. I had a ton of ideas swirling around in my head, and really this story deserves to be about 3x as long, but I was glad to simply finish it at the time. Too many of my favorite fanfiction stories ended up unfinished, so that was the last thing I wanted to do when writing mine. Perhaps one day I'll go back and flesh out a few things more, but no promises on that. I think the story stands up well enough for now to be enjoyable, and that's all I can ask for.

There are a few open-ended things in this story (like where the necklace and letter came from, and exactly how they got there well before the beginning of the first "loop"). I purposely did that, since at the time I wanted to write a direct sequel picking up from the end of Final Episode, following Diluc and Keqing's new life in the false world. In case you hadn't figured it out yet, that is the "other half" of the infinite loop. Perhaps I'll still write that sequel one day (I have the outline already, after all), but given my lack of time lately, it may or may not happen. However, there IS a short side story for this series that I will be publishing soon. Look forward to that.

I've probably said enough already, but thanks again to everyone who stuck it out and finished this story, especially the ones that took time to review and comment on a new writer's work: your insightful thoughts were a joy to read. If you made it this far, past all my rambling, please consider leaving your thoughts on the story in a comment. Your participation makes posting this here all the more worthwhile.

I wish you all the best.

Until next time.

-Mr. Standoffish Man