And an unintended one. It was supposed to be a dystopian story. People are running out of space, and criminals are sent to a convict nation for the Proper Posture Torture.

🏳 🍉 ☠️

An extraordinary watermelon-saving spectacle, unfolding in the country of convicts where even the slightest bent back means immediate death.

There is a country, which, in its entirety, is a penal nation. All convicts here cannot bend their backs whatsoever due to the chip implanted behind their ear, a.k.a. the “Proper Posture Torture.”

The surrounding countries, which overflow with non-criminal civilians, air this torturous existence of the convicts in the form of a reality show to maintain social order. They want to suppress riots.

But one day, a woman, who is about to enter Convict Country as yet another rookie, finds a watermelon seed at the entrance…

Watermelon Love Song

For whatever weird-ass reason, I ended up writing a love story. And I don’t consider that a spoiler. The title says it. It’s a love song.

And the cover is pink, oh so sweet, because the story is sweet (in my admittedly abnormal opinion), and the watermelon is sweet.

Also, I like the playlist for this story:

Sometimes playlists just… happen. Everything for this story just… happened.

The playlist cover says “because the watermelon was sweet.” It is a Korean original. The story was born based on the same logic as Random Word Grotesqueries and Agora Phantasmagoria. But it was one that got long. Also, I like the sweetness of the watermelon in this story. (In real life, I feel neutral about watermelons.) This story had to be published as its own thing. It needed its own cover and its own playlist. There’s something about the namelessness of these characters; something about their love-not-love; something about the grotesqueness of the Proper Posture Torture… that makes me shiver, pleasantly.

And, I mean this: I never know how a story will unfold. That’s why I finish one and then look back at it and go, “Huh. Nameless. Love-not-love. Grotesque.” And then I make a playlist, think about the story, enjoy the music, taste the sweetness in my mouth–the sweetness of a fruit that I don’t even enjoy that much in my own real life.

Maybe this story was my previous life or will be my future life, or is my life in some alternate universe.