...Martin's short stories? Wow, that's high praise indeed. With the tone, I felt I wanted it to stay lighthearted overall but also have the reader feel the gravity of Kenji's situation, so the tone varied quite a bit like I couldn't decide what to do with it. Glad it worked out to be a nice balance though. Okay, the opening paragraph could have been more attention-grabbing. I liked the image of the porter as a wind-up mechanism too much though. The ambiguity of the ending could be argued to fit the rest of the fic because the main thread running throughout is that you never know if you are going to lose control. It was also because having Smit sprial into depression would leave things on a sour note while having him take the coins and leave would make it a perfectly happy ending, so I opted to keep it open and kinda flippant. In other words, I couldn't decide.

Thanks for the essay. It's really quite flattering. Gives me more motivation to revamp my contest entry as well.