【The Serial Master Case】The Person Waiting at the End of the Dream

Minoru Suzuki had done it.
One short-short story every week. Over the course of twenty years, the number of works Suzuki left behind was exactly one thousand.

"I am an ordinary person, but I wonder if this has allowed me to stand next to the stars."

The reporter later remarked that his ambiguous smile, which seemed both proud and lonely, was memorable.
Suzuki had a job and a family. There were days when he felt unwell or fell into a slump.
He often lost confidence in his work, wondering if this was truly okay or if it was really reaching anyone. It was twenty years of constant worry, questioning if there was any meaning in continuing like this.

Even so, Minoru Suzuki had accomplished it.

Even an ordinary person can leave behind a masterpiece if they dedicate their life to it. The serial master, who believed only in that and kept walking forward with almost foolish persistence.
……At the end of such a modest yet great dream, what awaited Suzuki was a shocking fact.

"What!? Shinichi Hoshi didn't leave behind 1001 short-short stories, but 1108!!??"

—The incident that decided the serial master's two-year extension.

I participated in this. (410 characters in the main text)

The source material is from an essay by Takashi Atoda: "Shinichi Hoshi published 1001 short-short stories and then put down his pen. It is a great achievement that takes twenty years at one story per week." Perhaps because it is quite an old work, the final number has changed, but Atoda's works are still great (homage and recommendation part 2).
Also, as an aside, "Even an ordinary person can leave behind a masterpiece if they dedicate their life to it" is a line from the game Danganronpa. Voiced by Nobuyo Oyama.
It has absolutely nothing to do with the main story, and the original context is more like "That's why speed is important. Speed is justice," but it is a phrase that has become a motivation for my own creative activities.

[Postscript]
Maybe I wasn't an ordinary person, but a hopeless one...