Kaito was beginning to suspect that being unkillable wasn't the blessing it sounded like. He had survived a train, a barracuda, a shark-led ballroom massacre, and an eel with high fashion trauma. Yet here he was, staring at his algae ceiling, questioning whether immortality came with a side of permanent humiliation.
Bub was snoring in the next burrow, doing that shrimp twitching thing that made him look like he was dreaming of war. Kaito tried to close his eyes, but fish lids didn't work like that. Instead, he stared and thought and stared some more.
A shadow passed outside the coral. Something big. Something too smooth and deliberate to be a drifting seaweed or wandering sea cow.
Kaito instinctively flattened himself against the wall.
The shadow moved past. Then came back.
Then stopped.
A single knock echoed through the water—three soft taps against coral, like a polite ghost was requesting entrance.
"Bub," Kaito whispered. "Hey, Bub, wake up."
Bub grunted. "Tell the ghost I'm off duty. I'm not doing any more cursed sea scroll translations until Thursday."
"There's someone outside."
That got Bub up. He scuttled forward and peeked around the algae flap.
Then turned pale—which, for a shrimp, meant turning bright blue.
"What?" Kaito asked.
"It's... Thren."
Kaito blinked. "The whale?"
Bub nodded. "No one gets visits from Thren unless they're about to be chosen, eaten, or cursed."
"Why not all three?"
"Maybe it's your turn."
Kaito floated to the entrance. Outside, the ancient whale loomed, his eyes as dark as the trench and twice as deep. He said nothing. Just stared.
Then, slowly, with a rumble that vibrated the very coral, he spoke.
"You must follow."
And turned.
Kaito gulped. "Do I have to?"
"You can stay," Bub said. "Or you can find out why the sea's creepiest poet wants a one-on-one. Your call."
Kaito followed.
They swam. Past the neon reef. Past the kelp forests. Downward. Deeper. The water thickened. Grew colder. The light turned from blue to violet to near black. Kaito's glow faded. The only thing lighting the way was Thren's own bioluminescent breath, pulsing gently like the last candle in a haunted house.
At last, they reached a place Kaito had never seen—never wanted to see. The Abyssal Shelf.
No fish came here. No coral grew. This was where things came to end, not begin.
Thren stopped.
"This," he said, "is where the Melon cracked."
Kaito blinked. "The... what?"
"The Melon. The great cosmic fruit. The ocean's joke. The seed of rebirth. The place where souls spiral like plankton in a blender of fate."
Kaito opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried again. "Are you... having a stroke?"
Thren sighed. "You are the Koko. The seed returned. The fish that was man. The man that should not be. The Unflushable One."
"That title's really sticking, huh?"
"You have seen death, danced with terror, worn the algae of ceremony. You have survived. This... offends the ocean."
"Oh."
"You must find the others. There are five."
"Others like me?"
"Not quite. One is a crab who remembers fire. Another, a squid who dreams in binary. One is a coral with teeth. The fourth is a dolphin that lies. And the fifth... we do not speak of the fifth."
"That sounds incredibly unhelpful."
"You must find them. The Melon will crack again. And if it does... the sea turns inside out."
Kaito blinked. "What does that mean?"
Thren vanished.
Just turned and slid into the trench like a bad idea slipping away at midnight.
Kaito floated there for a minute.
"Cool. Great. Guess I'm in a prophecy now."
When he returned, Bub was waiting with kelp tea and a concerned expression.
"So?"
"I think I'm in an apocalypse."
"Called it."
They stared at each other.
"So what now?"
"We find the five."
"And then?"
"We ask them politely to stop the sea from flipping inside out."
"Solid plan."
"I try."
They set off the next morning, if you could call it morning when the sun never quite reached this deep. Their first stop was the Field of Forgotten Toys—a seabed covered in human trash, now claimed by scavengers and haunted by seagull ghosts.
The crab lived there.
His name was Buster. He wore a plastic doll's head as a helmet and carried a fork like a sword. He spoke in a thick accent Kaito couldn't place.
"You the seed?" Buster asked.
"Maybe."
"You got the dreams? The floaty melon visions?"
"Depends. Was the melon speaking French?"
Buster nodded solemnly. "Oui."
Bub nudged Kaito. "He's in."
Next was the squid. She lived inside an old computer monitor, broadcasting her thoughts via bioluminescent pulses. Her name was Dotty.
Dotty communicated in riddles and code, flashing symbols into the water like underwater Morse.
"001-101-Seed?"
Kaito blinked. "Yes?"
"010—Koko—Initiate—Fizzle Protocol."
"What?"
Bub translated: "She's also in."
The coral was trickier. It didn't move. Didn't talk. Just pulsed. You had to let it bite you.
"I vote no," Kaito said.
"You're the chosen one," Bub replied.
"That sounds made up."
"Too late, I already let it bite me."
Kaito sighed. He floated up to the coral and let it latch onto his fin.
There was a vision.
A giant melon. Cracking. Screaming fish. Bub doing interpretive dance in the background.
He woke up gasping.
"It's in," Bub confirmed.
The dolphin was the worst.
His name was Flash. He wore sunglasses, even though they were always falling off. He lied about everything.
"I dated a mermaid," he said.
"No, you didn't," Bub replied.
"I invented the alphabet."
"Stop."
"I am the melon."
"Definitely not."
Still, he had the mark—the weird spiral on his flipper. He was one of them.
"Fine," Kaito said. "You're in."
"I knew you'd say that."
That left the fifth.
They didn't find the fifth.
The fifth found them.
Late one night, as they camped near a vent that smelled like boiled regret, the water shifted. Currents reversed. Bub's antennae twitched.
Then it came.
A shadow. A whisper. A hiss.
It was a mirror of Kaito. Same size. Same eyes. But darker. Hungrier.
"Hello, Me," it said.
Kaito backed away. "What are you?"
"I'm the Koko too. The rot in the melon. The punchline. The parasite."
"What do you want?"
"Everything. Your story. Your name. Your second chance. You weren't supposed to survive, Unflushable. But now that you have... I want in."
Kaito trembled.
The other Koko grinned.
"We'll meet again. When the melon splits. When the sea screams."
And vanished.
Bub swore. Buster clanged his fork. Dotty flashed red. Flash lied that he wasn't scared.
Kaito stared into the abyss.
The ocean was changing.
He wasn't just a fish anymore.
He was the seed of something.
And something was coming to harvest.
Chapter 3 of Koko Melon has been written and saved under Koko Melon Ch3, continuing the story from where Chapter 2 left off. It builds the mystery of the prophecy, introduces the Five, and hints at a dark reflection of Kaito.