A/N: Ah finally I finished this book! To think I'd be able to finish publishing it on my birthday too surprises me woah... Anyways thank you for sticking with me all this time readers :D A lot of things had happened throughout the period of time that I've written this book but on hindsight, it was a really interesting journey full of ups and downs ^^;
Since I did a 20 random book/character facts for Z.H, I figured I cannot just leave this book finished without revealing some interesting/unspoken secrets of the A.F cast so here it is!
-20 random book/characters facts-
A.F Edition
1. Let's start off with a known fact mentioned by Veikko! Gaela's name originates from the two Irish words 'Gaeilge' and 'Gealach' which means Irish (the language) and moon. At first I considered calling her Geala or Gealach but I invented the name Gaela since it sounds nicer (also it means Gaey and Gayla inside jokes). Geala/Gealach might be hard to pronounce for people who don't speak Irish. And so, I decided I will give Gaela names associated with the moon and snow. Gaela prefers her mother's maiden name, Itenokami, instead of Dal because she despises her father.
2. All of Gaela's full names are:
Dal Seuno 달 스노 (named by her father)
Itenokami Yuki 射手の神 雪 ( " mother)
Yue Xuemei 月 雪梅 (" Mr. Yue)
Gaela Itenokami (" Veikko)
Gaela Moon (married to David :))
3. 'An Assassin's Faith' is the prequel to 'Valerie's Interest'. Therefore you can actually see some familiar surnames/faces in that story! Though they're not the main characters or anything sadly. It foreshadows Brian's death and certain quintessential having kids so yeah Brian is destined to die form the start :"D
4. I tend to draft out multiple plot lines/story arcs before actually writing them. Therefore I anticipated most A.F deaths and the flow of the story; though I cannot say my heart has taken them in nicely. I broke down bawling when writing the deaths of Threatening, Brian and Akamai and I couldn't write for three days :")
5. Gary Akise Cóir and Sherry Corcoran are inspired off of the same person! I had a teacher in fifth class in primary school who I really like. He runs the chess club! His first name is Gary and his surname is Corcoran. So I split his name up and gave it to our lovable detective and coroner duo :) So Mr. Corcoran, if you're reading this somehow, thank you for being such a cool teacher and a positive influence in my life :D I miss you and still wanna play a chess match against you some day!!
6. Luke Aiden and Caley Kemp are American. Luke Aiden came to be when I said to myself "I want the Quint police's surname to be L.A like Los Angeles." As for Caley, I went like "C.K for Calvin Klein the clothing brand. My older brother really likes that brand so it'll be cool to see what I can do about it." Therefore both of them are fashionable which is a bit... strange since at first I really wanted Luke to be some stuck-up serious yet awkward policeman...
7. Alfred and Akamai are created together side by side with very complimentary colours (dark blue/golden yellow hair colour, red/green eyes) when I was doodling in religion, geography and Irish class because I got my work done early. I doodled them in geography and Irish and made their final reference sheets in religion. Whilst Akamai's first name is Hawaiian, Alfred's surname (Tenjin) is Hawaiian (his adoptive parents' surname since his American parents died. His adoptive mother is actually his aunt)!
8. Shi Akamai's name, 死 赤舞, works both in Japanese and Chinese! Akamai is a Hawaiian name but it still have really suitable characters in those languages. Also her name foreshadows her death. 死 赤舞 means Dead Red Dance. But it can be interpreted as "Red Dance of Death".
She died a fiery death within blazing flames :")
9. Sherry have severe ADHD and congenital analgesia. She struggles with her studies a lot; failing lots of classes and just barely passing important exams. Alfred and Gary are the two who helps her lots; Luke would sometimes tag along because, hey, he fails classes he doesn't study for and who doesn't want free grinds? :) Sherry cannot feel physical pain but she always tries to act as humane as possible even though she doesn't feel hurt. Due to the disorder that makes Sherry insensitive to pain, the coroner does self harm in order to "investigate" various kinds of lacerations and injuries, only to be told to stop by Akamai and Luke, who were both in a panicked frenzy and threw a tirade once they found out... Due to Sherry's short attention span and immunity to pain, she would probably be pondering something random like "if horse hair is used for violin bows, can human hair be used too?" whilst getting beaten up and not know she's getting injured or even picked on.
10. Sherry is an atheist who believes in "The Stars". She loves Zodiac stereotypes because it's accurate in some ways unlike religion. This sweet homeless, parentless and birthday-less Quintessential hopes one day she will be able to find out her own birthday when she gets good enough to calculate it. She currently shares a birthday with Alfred and calls Alfred's parents her own dad and mom, not that they mind of course.
11. I think I need to highlight my favourite characters. They are Luke Aiden, Caelan Rose, Akamai Shi and Threatening! I love Heather Bellrose and Sabrina An Sona very much too. Though it's a shame they don't get as much screen time as others aaaaaaaaaaaaa ;w;
12. Caelan and Heather both have 'Rose' in their surnames... I gave Caelan 'Rose' as his surname because I figured he's an ikemen of sorts so might as well make him as "princely" as possible ^^; As for Heather, I received a gift from my little brother and it was really sweet; a bell with little hollies for Christmas! I want to commemorate this special and cute present so I wanna give Heather the honours! Bell-holly or Hollybelle sounds a bit weird so I stuck with Bellrose when Caelan came to mind (because of the red bells, I thought of red roses...). At first I consider making them siblings but I didn't. In the end, these two gets along very well canonically!
(Pssst! Here's the bell that my little brother gifted me~!)
13. Rin has heart disease. She found out about it at the age of ten when she collapsed from fencing one day. Realising she has little to no time to live her life for all the excitement she has missed out on, she escaped from her home and started a new life as "Rin Shiota" and is sent to the Agency thanks to her piquing Mr. Yue's interest.
Bonus fact: Speaking of Rin, she is an OC created for the anime "Assassination Classroom" (one of my favourite animes aaaaah). She's supposedly Nagisa's sister who is "studying" (working as an assassin) overseas and loves to dress up as a guy (to piss her mom off. To those who knows Nagisa's backstory w/ his mother; I mean, Rin is good at provoking people alright). She came back to Japan to help the E Class kill Koro-sensei. Her favourite hobby is teasing Shu-chan (Asano Gakushu).
14. Brian is actually named Gemini. But I gave him the name Brian/(Braun) when @20lait1 asked me to give her a few OCs to feature in her book "Killer Instinct" (a Zodiac story)! Brian, Rin, Adrienne and my persona are in the story so do go and check it out~! Since there's already a Gemini in the story, I gave Brian a name to make both Lait and my life easier XD Brian's full name in A.F is Braun Gemini Schuyler ^^✨
15. Here's a RaG stats sheet from my drafts~
Gaela Itenokami (月 雪梅)
Coordination: 3/5
Cardiovascular endurance: 4/5
Intelligence: 3/5
Muscular endurance: 5/5
Speed: 4/5
Strength: 3/5
Brian Speller (Braun Schuyler)
Coordination: 5/5
Cardiovascular endurance: 5/5
Intelligence: 5/5
Muscular endurance: 5/5
Speed: 5/5
Strength: 5/5
潮田 燐 (瑳月 礼)
Coordination: 3/5
Cardiovascular endurance: 1/5
Intelligence: 4/5
Muscular endurance: 3/5
Speed: 5/5
Strength: 4/5
^ Rin btw
Adrienne Le Blank
Coordination: 4/5
Cardiovascular endurance: 3/5
Intelligence: 5/5
Muscular endurance: 1/5
Speed: 2/5
Strength: 1/5
Folisha
Coordination: 3/5
Cardiovascular endurance: 3/5
Intelligence: 2/5
Muscular endurance: 4/5
Speed: 4/5
Strength: 5/5
Threatening
Coordination: 5/5
Cardiovascular endurance: 4/5
Intelligence: 3/5
Muscular endurance: 3/5
Speed: 3/5
Strength: 4/5
16. Shauna is a neurologist. She's supposed to have a very defining role in A.F; racking people's brains lots and driving people insane. I've planned a scene where Shauna performed Lobotomy on Maria to cure her insanity and get rid of the bad memories of the Yue Xuemei-Maria Reginheraht Incident, which caused havoc upon the Quints (since she did it without Maria's consent. And as you all know, consent is very important and very very sexy. However it is important to know Maria may not be in her right mind to give consent... So it challenges your morales and what you believe is right/wrong. A.F does that a lot XD).
17. Despite having written little about the Quints' backstory with the exception of very vague backstories for Gary, Maria, Alfred, David, Akamai and Caelan, I actually have a few backstories ready to tell! Those include Luke Aiden, Caley Kemp, Sherry Corcoran, the Cóir brothers, Sabrina An Sona, Britannia Kühn, Adalbert Uranus and Le Yinsha and finally Heather Bellrose.
18. A few Quintessentials that never showed up (only mentioned) in A.F includes Eden Blythe (Quintessential Modiste), Rosaire Courtney (Quintessential Escapologist), Barry Grady (Quintessential Locksmith) and Ayumu Neru (Quintessential Oneirologist). I managed to give Eden a cameo at the end because I love them :") But it's a shame I never got to write about Caoimhe MacMurrough (Quintessential Keener) though because I really like her design and I draw her a lot in my Irish copies.
19. There's an AU called "An Assassin's Fate" in my Instagram hashtag #anassassinsfate where I draw short comic-doodles ft. the whole A.F cast living a normal life together whilst going to school in Todhchaí Academy :") Many of the adults (Valeska, Hisame, Mr. Robinson, Mr. Dal etc.) are teachers in the school so really it's just a slice of life where everyone is happy and nobody is dead :D I created it when I was writing the "Final Mission Arc" to cope with the death of Threatening and Valeska 🤌
I planned another A.F AU called "A.F;IF". It's basically an AU where:
If NEAR hasn't been "executed"
If Koori & Gaela never got separated
If Harry Robinson lives
If Valerie is alive
If Brian never ran away from home
If Rí an Ghealach is never formed
If Hisame is still alive
If Gaela never met David
If A.F IF really happens, Brian and Gaela are definitely sworn enemies. Hisame and Valeska had some beef in the past. The Itenokamis and Schuylers would most definitely despise each other. But I scrapped writing it since it's too big brain for me to write even though I had some interesting ideas :")
I also want to write a sequel to A.F called "My FBI Agent is Alway Watching Over Me as My Guardian Angel!" with the long modern anime/light novel title as its theme. And also because of those "My FBI Agent" memes that made me laugh lots. It'll be a strange but wholesome love story between Acasia's daughter (an oblivious college student) and Christopher's son (Eric, who will work for the FBI and is tasked to look after her. He hates it and complains about it at first but he fell in love with her little by little). Of course, our beloved A.F cast will be there too (and their kids) but as support characters! I plan to write it when I go to college in order to experience the college life better but we'll see — I might be too busy to write it out so it might be scrapped like 'Rumour Has It...' :")
20. NEAR is an anagram :)
I think you can all figure out the rest!
A/N: H-Huh?! We reached twenty facts already?! But I still have so much to say such as scrapped Folian content and stuff about Adrienne QAQ Welp, I should leave this here and end this book for good now!
Thank you so much for reading and loving 'An Assassin's Faith', it means a lot to me! Thank you so much for having faith in this book and enjoying it :") Well I'm going to sign off now, once again, thank you for reading and I hope this story made a big impression on you readers; just as much as the Z.H series!
Thank you so much for your support and sticking with me until the end.
I love you all!
~ Destiny Akabane;
Rena Sun
Note:
• Lait's Bday chapter 1 was published between chpt 21 & 22
• Yinyu's Bday chapter was published between chpt 34 & 35
• Maria's Bday chapter was published between chpt 35 & 36
• Lait's Bday chapter 2 was published in "Random Stuff" in the Assassin's Fate AU written in around 'The Final Mission Arc".