Drawn to My Bad-Boy Assistant

It was so fun, it was so cute, and then it ended. It's the first time I ever experience this feeling, having a manga I like speedrunning to it's own ending. It's a pretty hollow feeling from a reader's point of view, because I keep thinking "what could have been?". It was shaping up to be a very funny story about the world of love and manga seen from the perspective of the two protagonists. I wanted to see them thrive together for much more time than I got, but today I had to read a 40 pages chapter where their story ends abruptly. And thus,we come to the final chapter. And what I consider to be one of the most meta things I've read recently. I can feel it, the author's disappointment in their series ending so quickly, their first work being cut short without much fanfare. It's like they wrote their own feelings about the end in those final pages. And yet, it's not a completely hopeless chapter: there is a discussion between the male lead and another character, that I chose to intepret as two sides of the author talking to themselves. The former, disappointed that he may not become the manga artist he dreamed of becoming, and the latter, the more hopeful side, here manifested in the character of an older and more experienced mangaka, telling him that throwing the towel right now and accepting that he has lost will not bring him anywhere. No artist knows they'll succeed the moment they start out, so he tells him to keep trying and trying, to never give up on his dream. This finale feels like a therapy session for the author, something that feels both like they wrote it more for themselves than for the audience, and also like a message to any aspiring artist of any kind who might be reading. I hope they will one day write something new, because after today, I really want to see them succeed.