This story is indeed more difficult, but not straight away. The first part was ok, but now I’m close to half-way through and I’ve got close to no idea what’s going on. I’ll definitely need to re-read this and look some unknown words up.
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I also notice only two in my ereader. Normal and italics.
Normal one for the main characters and italics for the extra body part that has its own thoughts and can talk
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I finished reading Story 2. I think it’s a better story than the first one.
The nicknames 류경아 gave them are really cute! 
Based on the story, 라임 is female and 레몬 is male, and they both share a female body. I think 류경아 is also female. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
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You’re correct. 김초엽 continues to write 퀴어 stuff
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Ok, this was a weird experience. I have no idea of what went on in the middle part, but then towards the end I could follow the story without any problems again. I can’t really claim I know what it was about or what went on, but I do have an idea. I’ll be re-reading this, too. Though I hope I have the time before the next one.
I think the author chose the name 샐리 on purpose, as it kind of sounds like ‘shell’. I wonder how that would be transcribed in hangul…
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I think it will be written as 셸 in Hangeul.
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Story 2:
Liked the world building in this story (the 셀븐인 species is so interesting) and the descriptions of the strange ocean. 라임, 레몬, and 류경아 were also great characters and each had more distinct personalities than the characters in Story 1.
Did anyone else feel like the conclusion was rushed though? 레몬 returns and everything is suddenly alright again? I wanted some more answers on how 라임 & 레몬 1) deal with each others emotions and 2) manage the jealousy of both having 류경아 as a lover. Those were the two reasons why they were considering the surgery in the first place, and the story kind of ended before they discussed any of that further…
1 word that kept popping up was “타자아” — I’m guessing this means “other self”?
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I believe the pros outweigh the cons, and when 라임 realised she might lose 레몬 forever, her jealousy diminished.
Yes, it’s other self or alter ego.
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Yeah I can’t help but want a lot more detail about how Lemon’s body dysphoria impacts both of them, and I feel like that is going to continue to be a thorn in Sally’s side unless they develop coping mechanisms to minimize the influence of their feelings on one another without surgery. It would have also been interesting to see if this phenomenon is common among their alien race. Ending with the idea that Lemon likes the deep ocean because no one perceives them is very sad despite being a satisfying ending thematically.
I was shocked to see not just “otherkin” but “비독점적” or whatever in this book lol
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I’m going to give everyone my blessing to start reading the next story today if they would like to. I certainly want to read today, lol.
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There’s still more than an hour left of today here and I finally finished the second story. I’m starting to think it wasn’t actually that difficult, I was just too tired to understand or remember anything the first time around.
I agree that this is an excellent story, such complex emotions and they are open to so many interpretations like being from a minority or living between two cultures, being autistic and wondering whether life would be better or worse without some of your traits, or being trans and trying to find get through the lengthy medical process and probably a lot more (which is what makes this such a great story).
For me the ending was a bit strange, but it’s probably because the stories I’ve read before would have ended much earlier and on a very different note. So I ended up liking the ending because of just that: for being unexpected.
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We are now officially on story 3 and it’s a short one!
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I’ve been keeping up with the reading but not posting, so time to make up for that!
I always feel like the stories are really vivid but I’m having a hard time writing my thoughts. Not because I don’t like them (I really do) but they’re more complex themes than I’ve read in Korean so far so I’m still organizing my thoughts.
Week 1: A lot of what I thought was similar to what others wrote.
Definitely noticed the themes of “What is art” and “Is it art if artificial intelligence makes it”. But also a tiny reference to “Whats the line with what is OK with body modification, and is it OK if it goes so far as hurting that person if thats what that person truly wants?”
Aside from that I really liked the description of the day to day realities of a sci-fi character not liking their field of job because certain artificial body parts spook them out more than others. Its funny to think about such things to me, but yeah, in a Sci-fi future theres going to be people who don’t want to work with artificial organic eyes, but are totally cool making custom skin for Otherkin. Kind of relates to me as someone who works in healthcare and wouldn’t want to deal with certain things other people have to, but dealing with peoples blood, urine, etc? Meh that’s just Tuesday.
I also thought it was kinda funny how matter of fact and unperturbed the MC was that they basically had to flee the country from what at the end of the day was a singular business transaction for their boss.
Week 2:
I liked the characters in this one more than the first, mostly because I felt like we had more time and it was more character driven than plot driven compared to the first.
It definitely reminded me of some other books I’ve read that have dealt with split personality disorder. But with a bit of a twist because when you’re an alien species that naturally has multiple personalities, what happens when those personalities have different opinions, and theoretically have equal claims on agency.
I do think more that 라임 ultimately decided against the surgery not just “because” but after the life and death instance and realizing that she just doesn’t handle some stuff (like deep water) as well as 레몬 does that despite the opportunity for conflict and disagreement that the they are more adaptable together. And from what I understood at least that the surgery wouldn’t get rid of 레몬 or prevent them from having their turn controlling the body, but just that they wouldn’t be able to directly communicate with each other. Which to be honest, to me seems much more of a hassle, cuz I’m imagining it being like shared custody of a child while only being able to communicate through (likely passive aggressive) post it notes. Anyways, it seems like the near death experience tipped the scales towards wanting to work together despite their differences, with going to their home planet being a path forward to maybe understanding how to better achieve that by learning from others of their species.
Well there I go and despite saying I didn’t know what to write, ended up writing a essay. Looking forward to reading week 3 now!
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Quick question for you guys: would you know if there happens to be an English or Japanese translation of this book?
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It only came out a few months ago, so definitely not.
None of 김초엽’s novels have been translated into English yet (I don’t know about Japanese). One has been translated into Spanish and there is an English translation coming out in several months maybe. That’s a book from several years ago.
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I feel a responsibility to comment that I read the third story (the day it came out) but I don’t have much to say lol. Especially when part of the fun is not knowing what is going on.
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You’re gonna have to learn Korean for this one… 
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I just finished the third story last night. Although I didn’t like the story as much, it really brings me another perspective of how we humans can speak, listen, write, read to understand each other while other animals that live in the deep sea in the dark have other methods to feel their dark surroundings and communicate with each other(like Z). And unfortunately we are not still not as intelligent to understand all the languages in the world.
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