Aug 31, 2026
Author's Commentary #35:
Time to talk about Chapter 35: Hailstorm Part 4.
Serika has snapped and gone on a rampage. Turns out the one that got slugged in the face and died at the end of the previous chapter was Zerin Nakayama. I guess I'll give a quick bio on her since she's the only remaining named character that hasn't gotten one.
中山 是林 (Nakayama Zerin) is how her name is spelled in kanji. 是林 means "correct" and "forest" while 中山 means "inside" and "mountain".
(If I made any mistakes with the translations, feel free to correct me).
Her birthday is March 4th. I chose the date at random so there's no significance as to why this date is her birthday.
Zerin is easily one of my most hated characters. She's an Ookuma fanatic and seeks to reshape the country to match Ookuma's vision of it. Like some of the other characters in Escape Witch, she does appear in Spice of life and Mystery ghost foresight and is just as unlikable there as she is here.
As for the chapter, it went through quite a few revisions before arriving at the final draft. In the initial release of the original, Serika snapped simply after being unable to keep up her act as neither Emeri or Yuni were present during Serika's rampage then. In the revised version of the original, she snapped after Emeri was about to get punched by Kurobane. Here, since I decided that Yuni would be brought to everyone, I felt it was fitting that she was what would ultimately be what caused Serika to snap. Bianka was also originally not going to be present during the rampage, and only hear about Mochi afterwards, however, I felt it was better for her to be present due to her history with Serika.
Another change was the fact that in the original, Mutsumi ended up getting framed for Benise's murder and was arrested. Here however, I decided to have her be on top of things.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
![Escape Witch [Remake] cover](https://honeyfeed-novel-images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/novel_image/file/14560/cover_thumb_9f88f94f-2a73-4d00-b518-6f20b53f9811.jpg)
