"Through its calm and deliberate sentences, the story invites readers into another world. Its gentle portrayal of human nature, shown through different lives, draws readers toward the quiet, unfamiliar sides of themselves."
- Judges’ comments

★ Winner of the 2025 Geuneul Fiction Contest
★ Geuneul Novella Series 001

Cistus, a flower that kills itself
What I Wanted to Destroy Was No One but Myself.

The Suicidal Flower, Cistus is a haunting psychological portrait of a woman standing on the edge of her own collapse. Within its compact frame and finely layered storytelling, this novella unfolds like a slow implosion, exposing the fragile architecture of a soul that can no longer hold itself together.

The story follows Hakyung, a divorced mother of two, who moves through her days with quiet endurance, believing that survival itself is enough. Yet beneath the calm surface lies a long accumulation of silence and fatigue. One ordinary day, without warning, her composure shatters. The quiet cracks in her heart split wide open, releasing years of restraint and sorrow. That day becomes the point of no return—the moment when her inner world begins to crumble.

How does an ordinary life reach the brink of ruin? This book follows that moment of collapse, delving relentlessly into the cracks of the human psyche and the dark depths of emotion. It asks: what happens when the self finally turns inward and begins to destroy itself?

Joo Sunmi majored in creative writing and completed an advanced course in literary studies. She once said, “If I had found something more alluring than writing, I would have done that instead.”