The Watermelon Wars - A Short Story by RWX

Note that this was inspired by Danadin's short story here, which I actually really liked (seriously). He gets an A+ for effort, and unlike others I don't think he is a shill at all. Here's my own original story, a little yarn about the farmin' world. I hope you all like it!

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Once upon a time, there was a huge landlord known as Landlord Q. Through a combination of first mover advantage and shrewd business tactics, he realized that there was a wonderful market for selling watermelons, and Landlord Q made his fortune hiring farmers to farm watermelon for him. He cut those watermelons apart, chopped them into tasty cubes, then tossed the rinds to the side. Others joined into this business as well, such as Landlord 17 and Landlord Z, but thanks to the first mover advantage Q Watermelons always had the biggest watermelon farm anywhere in town.

Over the course of nearly ten years, literally millions of discarded watermelon rinds have accumulated in the trash pile behind Landlord Q's house, and Landlord Q did nothing with them at all. Hell, there's nothing to be done with them; they are watermelon rinds! Just keep tossing that crap to one side; the meat is where the money is at.

One day, a young farmer named W has a great idea and knocks on Landlord Q's door. "Sir, may I have twenty of your watermelon rinds?" Without a second thought, Landlord Q agrees. Hah! Rinds? Some idiot actually wants rinds? Jackpot!They sign a contract, the young Farmer W pays Landlord Q a significant sum of money and takes away twenty rinds, while Landlord Q is as happy as a pig in mud; he just made money for free from something he had been throwing away for ten years! What a fool the young farmer was.

But to his surprise, the young Farmer W set up a little shack where he and his friends started to produce decorative art from those watermelon rinds. Due to putting care and love into each work of art, they quickly build up a little reputation for themselves amongst the locals and grow the niche market of 'rind-art'.

Landlord Q watches wide-eyed as this happened, the flames of greed beginning to flicker in his eyes. Sonufabitch, those are my rinds he's making money off of! But what can he do? He had already sold them. But he put a big smile on his face and went to the W Shack and said, "My young friend, congratulations on your success. I would like to invest in you; would you like to work together more closely? I have many more watermelon rinds. With your skills and my rinds, we can do great things together."

The young Farmer W nodded eagerly. He had always been a big fan of Landlord Q's watermelon meat. Landlord Q continued, "Now, while I'd love to invest in you, I need to do something called 'due diligence', where I need to see all your books, your margins, your employee payouts... I need to see everything you do to make sure my investment is safe. You understand, right?" Farmer W hesitated, but in the end he nodded again. He really had been a fan of Q Watermelons, and the man had given him the twenty rinds he had started off with; he couldn't be a bad guy, right? Landlord Q beamed. "Splendid! I'll send my accountants over right away. Oh, and feel free to take as many rinds as you need from my trash-heap; we'll just add them to the old contract every few months."

Farmer W takes him at his word, but since him and his friends focused on hand-crafting each rind with care, they really don't need that much and end up just taking 11 rinds from the Landlord Q's trash heap. Meanwhile, Landlord Q sends over his accountants and lawyers, who go through every single inch of young Farmer W's business and review every single sale. Landlord 17 and Landlord Z see this happening; having suffered bruising losses in their fights against Landlord Q, they send warnings to our young farmer, who had bought one or two of their rinds as well, but the young farmer shakes his head; he had always been a fan of Q Watermelons, and Landlord Q had sold him the 20 rinds he used to start his business. Surely, Landlord Q was a good man!

During this 'due diligence' process, Landlord Q starts to secretly set up his own company using imported Chinese labor, and funnels all the information he is getting regarding farmer W's artisan shack to his new company. A few months later, Landlord Q calls young farmer W over to his house. An expansive smile on his face, he says: "W! My young friend, we've finished our review and we're ready to go into business together. I'm ready to make my offer. As I see it, your business is worth ten bars of gold. I'm willing to offer three bars for my share. What do you say?"

Young Farmer W hesitated. Landlord 17 and Landlord Z had also talked to him and had valued the business at twenty bars of gold when they made their offers to work together... but the young farmer really was a big fan of Q Watermelons. In the end, he nodded. Landlord Q beamed. "Splendid! Here's the contract. You'll make a wonderful partner for Q Rinds!"Q Rinds? Young Farmer W was caught off-guard, but he continued to look through the contract.

What the hell? Q Watermelons wants to make hundreds of different cheap rind-products and import them from China? The market is too small for that! He expects me to triple sales every year? But this is a boutique niche market, those don't grow like that. And you have to focus on quality, this stuff won't work. WHAT!? He wants control over my artisans and to have the final say on my agreements with them?

The young farmer read the entire contract. He raised his head to look Landlord Q in the eye, then slowly, carefully shook his head. "I'm sorry, sir. I can't accept this contract."

The smile instantly vanished from Landlord Q's face, and a threatening light flickered in his eyes. "It's the only contract I can offer, and you should take it, my young friend. Let me remind you that just the other day, you stole 11 of my rinds... and you cheated me of the first 20 as well." But young farmer W stubbornly shook his head. This wasn't the right deal for him, and it wasn't the right deal for his friends and fellow artisans in the shop.

Many things happened since that fateful day. A big, beautiful store named Q Rinds opened right next to young Farmer W's shack, and they even hired away one or two of Farmer W's friends, taking away the designs which Farmer W's shack had popularized. Farmer W felt some pain at the loss, but wasn't going to tell his friends they couldn't take a high-paying job elsewhere. As for the W Shack, since the supply of rinds from Q Watermelons was now gone, they started to buy from 17 Watermelons and Z Watermelons instead. Landlord Q just watched, a smirk on his face. He had made a fortune from selling cut watermelon cubes over the past 10 years; he was easily able to afford building a beautiful giant store and operating at a loss for a while, unlike young Farmer W.

And yet, not everything worked out as Landlord Q had expected. His new store was bright and beautiful, but sales didn't pick up. A black look was on his face as he saw the steady stream of visitors continuing to flood into the W Shack, leaving his new, beautiful, and expensive store almost empty. "To hell with that." The W Shack was making money off HIS rinds! Fine, then. He was going to take their rind-designs, mass-produce them... and at the same time, he sent the local police department a message that the shack had stolen 11 of his rinds, and to have them shut down the entire store as they investigated.

Once the W Shack was gone, the only one around would be Q Rinds, right? The people would HAVE to go to his store then... and besides, he had already copied everything the W Shack had for sale. Yes, the W Shack would probably be back up once the police figured out the real story... but by then, all the customers would've gotten used to going to his store instead. This was sure to work, right?

Young Farmer W had built up a sterling reputation in the local community, and the vast majority of the community was very supportive, responding with anger at Landlord Q's actions. But of course, there were naysayers in every community. "Landlord Q is a rich gentleman!" they cried. "His lawyers are legion! Surely such a rich man as Landlord Q would never break the law in such a way. There must be some mistake!" Conveniently forgetting that even richer figures such as Landlord Google and Landlord Microsoft had been fined billions of dollars for similarly monopolistic practices

Still other naysayers cried out, "Look at how beautiful and new Q Rinds is! It is a beautiful, big box office store. Farmer W is STILL running his operations out of that ugly hut. Surely this is proof that Q Rinds is the one which really cares about us, and those were his rinds anyhow!" But while those voices were loud, they were definitely in the minority, and they were quickly shouted down, sometimes with epithets and curses that young Farmer W never wanted to hear from either side.

And what is going to happen next? Hard to say... but yes, dark times are indeed upon us, my friends.

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I hope you enjoyed the Watermelon Wars! (Q Rinds, please don't steal and repost).

 

I love this. Hahaha! Must have been a great way to release some stress and shed some light onto the situation.

 

Landlord Q is such a great owner, such a thorough care for partner, truly wrung them dry for profit.
#sacarsm intended

 

There's a Landlord W mixed in there somewhere. please fix it. @rwxwuxiaworld

 

Can't wait for the sequel

 

I give this a perfect score of 5/7.

 

Stylish!!!

 

I hope farmer W's lawsuit over rinds can compete with the wealthy Landlord Q.

 

like for wuxiaworld
reply for watermelons
share to give wuxiaworld face #givewuxiaworldface #jadedskinface
Ignore for qidian

edit: my bad, wrong video

 

Master piece! Best explanation ever of what happened in a funny way x)

 

You should post this as the new DE chapter XD
@rwxwuxiaworld
Landlord Q going to copy the design of a watermelon rind with a smart bomb in it

 

Did you just call Qidian FAT???

I don't think their delicate sensibilities can handle such an insult.

 

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!

 

press F for watermelon rinds

F

 

MARVELOUS!!!!!
This should be post on one of your chapters, then wait till it is stolen by a thief.

 

already have a new proofreader for this whole series

 

I wasn't even aware till ren posted the other day about what was happening with novels from WW being copy-pasted by QI and that's because i read from wuxiaworld. Really, how can people be so shameless.

Can't wait for the sequel.

 

I became Ren's proofreader? lol

 

no???? did I offend the patriarch? T-T
nohoho *kowtow 100 times*
Imma sinner