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A field of sand, a field of starfish, strewn across like carcass. The night before, a terrible storm had passed, rushing them to the surface and upending all their lives. As they laid scattered and battered in a state of near-death, a crowd of people moved along in a bustle just right out of reach. With their strong arms and hardy legs, they went along their business to get ready for the new day, moving boxes and dragging rope and never, not even once, turning their pitying gaze into anything more. The starfish were left hung to dry; out of breath, out of hope.
I'm going to die, many thought. I can't breathe. I can't think.
I want to go home.
It was at that moment, a girl broke out of that faceless crowd and came to them like a dream. She was a tiny thing — even on tiptoes she'd just barely pass the waists of the men behind her — yet with her small, grubby hands, she began to pick up the starfish and throw them back into the water.
Splash, splash, splash! One by one, the starfish were set free. Hope blossomed in their hearts. Only— it was not to be.
In the eyes of man, she was no hero, no wish-come-true. One came to reproach her. She bit back with words. Yet, more and more came to dissuade her until she was soon caught up in her own storm, arguing, rationalising, fighting back and it was only then that the starfish realised: if they were to live, did their fate really have to lie at the hands of others?
What about me? the remaining starfish thought. When and where should I go? How and what should I do?
The sand was still moist and wet. One by one, they began to move. In a slow crawl, they headed due north.
I want to go home.
![[Escape or Die] A ghost story featured in <Dark Exploration Records> Supernatural Disaster Management Bureau – Supernatural Disaster #SD-BR20-7881939348 Classification Type – Breaking A supernatural disaster where one leaves land only to meet a new calamity. If victims stay on the beach, they'll be chased until they can run no longer. If they rush into the sea, they'll be transformed into something… Other. A total record of 34 lives has been claimed by this disaster.](https://squidgeimages.s3.us-west-002.backblazeb2.com/2026/03/14/Escape-or-Die-Ghost-Story.png)
'It's a routine job,' Agent Choi had said. 'We'd be in and out,' his scammer of a sunbae-nim had said. Agent Bronze once passed him a journal kit complete with colourful markers and a sticker sheet dotted with exhausted, half-dead bunnies, telling him to list down all the grievances he had towards that man in bright, cherry red. What initially appeared as the beginnings of a HR insubordination case slowly morphed into the marching tune of a devil's siren.
It's good advice, Kim Soleum finally decided as he laid on the back of a giant weasel sailing through the sky. Agent Bronze, I'll gift you the finest bag of coffee beans imaginable.
As he began to seriously contemplate the merits of presenting the man with one of the most expensive coffee on Earth which also just happened to be a type of bean excavated from the dung pit of elephants, the seniors in question finally quit their squabbling long enough to crawl forwards and join him.
"Eyy Grapes-ie, you comfy out here?" Agent Choi called with a grin as he sheathed both his jakdu.
Kim Soleum, sore and tired and injured with a tight grasp on the victim who'd been in a dead faint since the 5% mark of this mission said, "Yes, sunbae-nim."
For what felt like a mini forever ago, the three of them had just wrapped up a routine check of a supernatural disaster found in a provincial seaside town close to Seoul when they received an emergency call from one of the town residents, pulling them into a disaster he racked his brain hard to recall, and only managing to do so right at the moment they nearly got beheaded by a nightmare of titan-sized coconut crabs. Coincidentally, nightmare was, quite literally, the correct etymological term for them. He found this out just last week in a game of trivia with Hyunmu Team 3's squad leader at her hospital bedside. Get me out of here, he wanted to cry.
Agent Choi, who had the gall to have his stomach rumble the moment he saw the crabs, patted his back cheerfully. "Attaboy!" he said, pleased. "Luckily, we managed to convince the lord of the mountain, the lord of the forest, and the lord of unkept homes to give us a l'il hand." He patted the fur around him warmly. The lord of the mountain, a white-coated tiger with a luxurious necklace strung out of skull heads, bounded through the sky beside them in graceful leaps. To their right, the lord of the forest, a large bear clad in a majestic patchwork pelt of human skin, followed along at a more sedate pace. Kim Soleum nearly blanched when he first clapped eyes on them.
In contrast, the weasel they were sitting atop of was simply cute and kind and cuddly. This entire time, he had been nothing but sweet and generous to them. What did the poor lord of unkept homes ever do to deserve that name? Just how wronged did he feel? Right then and there, Kim Soleum swore to do up a petition to right this error on his honoured behalf.
And at that very moment, with the vast ocean below them and the exit just within reach, the victim woke up. And tasered the freaking shit out of the closest person available — Agent Choi.
"GWAHHHHH!" she yelled in a half-awake frenzy.
Agent Bronze surged forwards to hold back the swinging, titanium arms of an Agent Choi about to make the worst instinctive fight/flight/freeze response of his life.
The victim scrabbled backwards, her taser a flinging hazard in her hands. Kim Soleum demanded almost incredulously, "Don't you need police permission for that?"
"My brother's girlfriend's girlfriend is a police officer," she said. And then, "Who are you actually?"
Just like that, the large expanse of white that was their exit washed over them in a wave and they were swept back out into the real world. The sidewalk they'd been tossed onto tipped them over like vertigo. Groaning, Kim Soleum blinked up into the setting sun. They laid there like that for a bit, watching in a daze as the fluffy, white clouds above them drifted lazily under an orange-purple darkening sky. His ribs were beginning to realise how sore they were.
Eventually though, they untangled themselves from their unceremonious heap on the ground. Agent Bronze helpfully did some introductions. "We're the Response & Rescue Unit of the Disaster Management Bureau who answered your call for help."
"Oh. I'm so sorry about this." Kim Soleum did the unhappy honour of clarifying everything to the victim in detail. In an appropriately appalled tone, she cried, "Oh, I'm so sorry about this!" She awkwardly hovered over an Agent Choi she didn't seem to dare touch.
Laughing, Agent Choi simply grinned and said, "No worries at all, noona! That was some lightning punch you got there. Respect." He said all this whilst seemingly forgetting the great strength Ryu Jaekwan had to pull just to reign him in.
"Thank you, it was my brother's girlfriend's girlfriend's ex's taser," she said. "She's my ex too, actually. Ah, I'm getting sidetracked. Please, how could I ever repay you?"
"No repayment needed," Kim Soleum said politely. His back was beginning to sore too. "We'd be grateful if you could point us to the nearest train station back to the city though. We came here by car and bikes." He didn't elaborate on what happened to said car and bikes.
She opened her mouth, closed her mouth, frowned thoughtfully, said give me one moment, and took out her phone. 'One moment' stretched into ten minutes, of which all four of them spent that time looking up routes and debating directions and train lines and timings and durations and eventually came to the conclusion that the closest train back is two towns away with the last train setting off at 6:00 p.m. sharp. It was 6:13 by the time they swiped away from KakaoMaps.
"Would you like to stay the night at my karaoke?" the victim who introduced herself as Nah Seoyoon at the five-minute mark of their back-and-forth said. "It's 24/7 with a cafe, everything on the house."
Agent Bronze, "Thank you, but we couldn't possibly—"
Agent Choi, "Well, tomorrow is the weekend."
Kim Soleum, "We'll gratefully accept your hospitality." Agent Bronze side-eyed the both of them. Kim Soleum resolutely stared straight ahead. At this point, all he wanted was to just sit down and pass away in peace.
Pleased, Nah Seoyoon said, "How wonderful, you three might even be my last customers!" It took one long, long pause for her to hurriedly explain that this was a dying town and that her karaoke will close just that weekend.
As they set off to her karaoke, the sky quickly falling to night in the late October breeze, she continued to explain, "You see, most of the young people had gradually moved to the city for studies and work over the years. My interest is in marine biology so just I've continued to stay on here to continue my research. Not that I can do much right now but— The local university here is one of the best in the region for that, did you know? It made my parents so relieved! I've actually rarely left town myself, and only by car. Even though I inherited this karaoke from my brother's girlfriend's girlfriend's ex's uncle-in-law, I'm not exactly the healthiest person around, haha. So I was heavily dissuaded from studying and working in the city by my mother… My father, aunt, and grandparents too. My brother though, he's living the high life now that he's actually made some friends beside his girlfriend. She's our childhood friend by the way, so it's hard to count her as a friend sometimes. Ah, not in the sense that girlfriends can't be your friends, they absolutely should, it'd be weird not to, but the thing is that I'm the one who got him to befriend her in the first place, you know? So I don't really think she counts as someone he became friends with on his own. Feels like cheating. But if he really is down in the dumps, I'll just count her in to make him feel better. Oh, we're here!"
She was a chatty but nice girl. She even magicked some lollipops for them on their walk there. Bright lights blinked sporadically as they walked up to its doors, its neon green and pink winking in the shape of a watermelon, a shot of colour in the dark. She opened the doors and they gratefully not-limped their way in. The cool outside wind gave way to something stiller and warmer.
Despite being solid concrete, the inside had a simple pleasantness to it, with the first floor housing some game machines and photo booths. Behind the counter was a wall filled edge to edge with framed photo after framed photo. Faces young and old beamed with gleaming age. As if time had stopped in the four walls of this space. Vaguely, Kim Soleum was reminded of the old arcade in his childhood neighbourhood, the laughter a distant yet near bell in his mind.
Before Nah Seoyoon could lead them upstairs, Agent Choi bent over a claw machine and exclaimed with rising glee, "Eyyy now what do we have here?"
The two of them lumbered over. Peering through the glass, small plushies filled the tank as a myriad of creatures, both fantastical and not. In a mix of bright colours and muted palettes, yet all with soft cloth and fur, Kim Soleum spotted dolphins, moose, dragons, lizards, and even—
Agent Choi, mirthfully, "Is that the three lords I see?" He grinned, knuckles rapping against the machine.
Ryu Jaekwan, "Oh, they really do have them all."
Squished amongst a fluffle of pink and brown bunnies, a weasel, tiger, and bear peeped up at them from a crowd of other animals. They even had eerily similar colouring to the actual lords they met earlier, with brown and white coats of fur. Kim Soleum couldn't even see if there were any other of the same kinds around, just them in a circle.
It felt like fate. It felt like an omen.
Kim Soleum made up his mind. "Sunbae-nim, let's pay our respects."
"Yeah, agreed."
"Let's get cracking."
This is why it was best to work with professionals. Flipping their wallets open, they started pooling all the coins they had — there was no e-terminal in sight, just how old was this thing? — and started talking strategy. 1,000 won per play and the machine only accepts 500 won coins. No bills, no smaller change, just that. They glanced down. Three tries.
Agent Choi was the first to batter up.
With a glinting smile, he told them that he was a claw machine expert, a connoisseur even, that they were supposed to gently hip-check the machine before they start to test out how loose it was, and oh hey, despite its prehistoric age it was looking pretty legit actually let's bang up it some more to shift the plush, and okay see right here, they're going to want to aim for stuff like tags, loops, anything grabbable for those weak-limp crab hands to hold onto, which was why he was going to aim for the weasel first, and yup there's an upsie, just a bit further, nice and easy, that should do it, it's almost there, let's drop and! Agent Choi struck out…
"Welp, there goes our trio," Agent Choi said.
"I knew you were lying through your teeth."
"Eyyy Jaekwan-ie, how could you accuse me so? I do have luck! Back in middle school."
"Forget it, it's my turn." And in just one move, Agent Bronze hit a home run.
"Gimme back my money!"
"The coins came from me, you braggart!"
While the two of them bickered, Kim Soleum was busy learning the art of the claw machine from his superior predecessors. Which naturally meant furiously scrolling through DCinside, Theqoo, Naver, and whatever else was useful. And the truth, laid out bare in 12pt text, was that most claw machines were rigged to grab something in one out of ten tries. The game plan most employ was to carefully watch others and calculate the next interval for a successful grab. Which was one out of ten…
He looked up to catch his sunbae-nim stuffing the weasel he just won right into his other sunbae-nim's cackling face. This wasn't much of a game plan. Venerated ancestors, how could you betray me so? he lamented, insides wilting.
His venerated ancestors ignored him, just like how they ignored the entire world-ending stress which was his life. Sometimes it felt like he didn't even have any.
Pocketing his phone, he stepped forward. One thing the posts had mentioned was that the rigged system was meant to present an opportunity. It wasn't a guarantee, it wasn't a clear win, it was just that — an opportunity. People win by accident, people win through luck. He wasn't a betting man but if there was one thing he learnt how to do in this awful, awful world, it was that if he wanted to survive, he had to create his own chances for it.
This of course included steering far and clear from the bunnies. That just sounded like a crisis waiting to happen.
Agent Choi may not have won anything but his abuse of the machine and his use of the claw made it such that the tiger and bear ended up right by the exit hole. He paused to make up his mind. Finally, Kim Soleum lowered the crane. Aim and drift, his internet teachers had said. The common logic is that you want the prize closest to the win zone right? Well, what you're going to do is aim right beside it, not at it mind you, and use that neighbour prize to drift across what you actually want. Then badabing badaboom, you sweep it right into the hole. It's basically collateral.
And the closest plushie to each other was still each other. He aimed at the white tiger. Then in one swift move, the claw grabbed it and drifted, sweeping the bear right into the exit. Kim Soleum quickly released the claw. He smiled. The tiger soon joined its bear friend outside.
"EYYYY GRAPES-IE—"
"Congratulations, Agent Grapes—"
As his sunbae-nim shook him violently and the other clapped his free shoulder, smiling, Nah Seoyoon emerged from the back with three steaming bowls of kimchi stew. "Oh you're finally done? Let's head up then, sorry if this isn't to your taste though it really should, we only have one dish on the house tonight. Ah, I forgot 'bout allergies… Is it too last to ask?"
They switched prizes; Black Tortoise Team 1 grabbed their respective bowls and drinks and she helped with their plush. They headed upstairs.
"Here's your room!" she said cheerily, kicking the door in. "We don't have any blankets or pillows or anything but you can stay here for the night, there's enough space. I'll set the karaoke to keep going till midnight if you guys want. What, 2am? Sure, if you wanna! Okay, here we go."
Soon, she set Agent Choi loose, the man gleefully mucking about with the karaoke machine as he proceeded to add three songs a second. Kim Soleum and Agent Bronze, meanwhile, went ahead to set up the table for offerings. They had no flowers or incense but they did pour three small plastic bowls of soup out and Agent Choi joined them in their bows. They did two full prostrations to the plushie lords and thanked the three full-sized lords for saving their hides earlier in the day. It wasn't the most traditional way to pay respects, but somehow it felt like they'd understand their sincerity anyway.
Soon, Agent Choi shooed Agent Bronze off to sing a song he picked out 'just for him'. All Kim Soleum could see was that he was taking this chance to ponder long and hard over which plush he wanted to keep the most.
Kim Soleum gave him three minutes, and when he still hadn't decided, went and said, "I'll take the lord of unkept homes, if you don't mind." Someone had to decide eventually, and he wanted the one he was planning to write a petition for.
"Nice choice. Weasels are actually known to be symbols of good fortune, y'know? They may be tricky to be deal with at times, but they're creatures known for their ability to drive out vermin. Because of that, they tend to have holy natures inside supernatural disasters." Agent Choi picked up the tiger. He smiled lightly, the edge of his lips touched with something that felt… Close to irony, maybe. He patted its head and brought it with him up to the mic as he and Agent Bronze switched places.
The remaining plush was left in Agent Bronze's hands and he stroked the bear's fur thoughtfully.
"The long and short of it was that we lucked out with the lords of the mountain and forest," Agent Bronze finally said. It seemed he'd overheard them. "Those two creatures have dual natures inside them. They can either herald great fortune… Or great calamity. You just can't tell sometimes."
That was true in all the ghost stories he read. They began to chat as they ate their kimchi stew to completion, Agent Choi inhaling his own bowl during the instrumental section of the next song. When he finally returned to the couch, asking what kinds of songs they liked, Agent Bronze said Digimon.
"I watched Pokemon, the superior version," Agent Choi said.
Indignation flared in Kim Soleum. "Your taste is stuck at halfway, sunbae-nim."
So the two of them got up and proceeded to blast Butter-Fly by Wada-nim out the speakers. Agent Choi sat down to rattle the unused tambourine, whooping occasionally. Kim Soleum and Agent Bronze turned to look at each other. The chorus hit. "After an endless dream, in this world of nothingness," they sang. "It seems as if our beloved dreams will lose. Even with these unreliable wings, covered in images that tend to stay, I'm sure we can fly. Onnnn myyy loveee…"
Ryu Jaekwan was smiling. Inexplicably, Kim Soleum was too. Agent Choi had moved onto the maracas, shaking up a storm.
This somehow indeed did continue all the way up to the wee hours of the morning, though by then Kim Soleum was so exhausted, he nearly face-planted into the table twice.
"Why don't you just go to sleep?" Agent Choi asked, sipping at his third drink that night.
"I'm waiting for the karaoke machine to switch off."
"We can just choose to not select any more songs…?"
Kim Soleum stubbornly stayed silent. Agent Choi laughed and gestured for him to come over. As he reluctantly did, his head was pulled gently into his senior.
"Fine. Just a minute then." Blearily, Kim Soleum leant on Agent Choi's shoulder, his eyes slipping shut. The metal instrumentals and Ryu Jaekwan's rising, almost-excited voice continued to play and play and play and play. All the while, a large warm hand stroked his hair, long and up and down. And calm and slow and soothing.
A small face like mine
Can be fully covered
By my two palms;
But as my longing is
As wide as a lake,
I can only close my eyes.
I want to go home.
That was the thought Kim Soleum woke up to.
The push and pull of drifting awake gave way like a tide pulling out to sea. Light, yet rough snores somewhere to his right. The cool, still air of the almost silent air-conditioning. A hard pillow beneath his head. Warmth all around him. Eventually, Kim Soleum opened his eyes. And jolted up and out of the way when it clicked in his head just whose face he was waking up to.
He ran all the way to the door, turning round just to crouch down and place a palm over his chest in an attempt to calm his stuttering heart. He fell asleep? On his own senior's — his reporting officer, his superior's — lap? He liked living! Just how did he end up like that? He never, ever slept that solidly before. Why the hell did he run so hot in a cold-ass room like this? AGH!!!
It took a while, but Kim Soleum finally calmed down. Luckily, the room was dim, all lights switched off except for the rainbow LED ones bordering the TV. Anyway, he couldn't understand what just happened. What he did know though was that he couldn't stand the dark, so he got up and got out.
The sun was already up by the time he reached the first floor, its rays glancing off his face as he walked outside to feel the wind against his hair. He could hear the waves the previous night, but he hadn't expected it to be as close it was, probably because of all the buildings blocking his view. He took off his jacket and tied it across his waist as he walked past them, and there right there, he could see waves crashing against rock, the sun glinting off the water's surface.
The road sloped down to a morning market in full swing, and though he brought his phone, he didn't buy anything with it. Just walked around and took in the haggling aunties, the strong scent of spices coming from one particularly red stall, the rising volume of shouts and laughter as two siblings ran past him, their voices soon fading in with the rest of the market's noise. Eventually, he ended up by the treeline, the sand and sea just beyond it. There was a hammock nearby but he didn't dare lie on it.
He wasn't a photography kind of person, his phone usage mainly spent on memorising and re-memorising as many ghost story wiki pages as he could — or at least until his socket broke — but somehow he found himself snapping some pictures. And thinking things like, This is nothing like the sea from yesterday. And even, I think those two will like these.
This was the most relaxed he'd ever felt in his life probably, which meant it was high time for him to head back. He made it in good time too, he could see Agent Choi just about leaving the place himself.
"Oh, there you are." Agent Choi relaxed, his grip on the hilt of his jakdu a touch softer. He turned around to signal back to Ryu Jaekwan who came out himself to give Kim Soleum a piece of his mind. And Kim Soleum did end up showing the two of them the pictures he took over breakfast, though this was mainly because he was sorry and needed something to distract them with. They were particularly taken by the photos of a black cat he saw.
Nah Seoyoon, the woman from yesterday and the owner of the establishment, came to sit down with them for awhile.
"Y'know, I was thinking," she said as soon as she swallowed half of the bite she'd taken, an egg bread in her hands. "It's so interesting that the supernatural disaster you saved me from yesterday was based off the parable of the starfish. It's an English story about a girl who throws starfish after starfish back into the water after they'd been caught on the beach after a heavy storm; not sure if you've heard of it?"
"I know of it," Kim Soleum said. "…And mainly remembered it by luck."
"So the girl saved all the starfish?" Agent Choi asked. "What if she couldn't make it to them in time?"
Nah Seoyoon shrugged. "Not sure, the story just ended like that. Trying to throw back hundreds of starfish in time is… A stretch."
"If I remember correctly," Ryu Jaekwan began slowly, "The point was that she tried. Even if she can't save all, it'd at least make a difference to one. And that matters."
"It does." Agent Choi didn't sound particularly enthused. Neither did Ryu Jaekwan, but he was also a man who knew his limits. And it got Kim Soleum thinking too. Doing their best to save others, even if it's hopeless, even if it's the hardest thing they'd ever done— In this other life, Agent Choi and Agent Bronze were meant to come here and fight this ghost story and its nightmare of titan crabs. Maybe not in the wiki, no that was a Daydream Inc. mission, but somehow, just somehow, it did feel like destiny.
Before they left, Agent Choi dragged them both into a photo studio and started spamming the buttons at a record pace.
"Come on, we can't leave without taking at least one photo!" he declared. "It's the weekend! Hey, this border looks pretty cool. Okay one, two, three, let's pose."
As he stood in the photo booth, him and Ryu Jaekwan unwilling props to their sunbae-nim's amusement, he suddenly realised that he was laughing, really laughing, and just as fast, a thought slammed into him. If I get any closer, I really will be done for.
I can't get any closer than this.
I still want to go back home.
Much much later, after they bid Nah Seoyoon goodbye and she lay slumped across her desk whilst formatting her presentation due just that Monday, she'd crack open a bottle and an article at the same time and scan it with increasing drunkenness. SUNFLOWER SEA STAR WASTING SYNDROME PANDEMIC, it read.
WHITE LESIONS APPEAR ON THE STAR.
ARM TIPS CURL, BEND, THEN BREAK OFF — AND MAY CRAWL AWAY!
STAR DISSOLVES INTO PILE OF GOOEY SKELETAL REMAINS WITHIN DAYS OF FIRST EXTERNALLY VISIBLE SYMPTOMS.
The image beside it pictured the end. Captioned in white against tofu-like remains: THE STAR MAY DIE WITHIN DAYS AND DISSOLVE AWAY.
Did you know? Star dissolves into a pile of— Hey, did you know? The sea star wasting disease melts you and rots you and you'll never ever go back—
Wait, Kim Soleum, wait.
You, in the flesh, did you really not…?
When he returned back, the photo and weasel were kept on his table and he fell into a dead sleep. But before he did so, he flicked off a notification which read: Send the beach pics to us!! Grapes-ieeee
He pretended not to see it out of embarrassment and forgot all about it in a few weeks' time. But at some point, Kim Soleum did read that message from his senior despite maintaining that he'd never seen it before in his life, and it remained in the chat till this day.
Home, I've come home,
But not to the home of my longing.
Wild pheasants brood eggs,
And cuckoos call in season, but
My heart seems forgetful of home,
A cloud floating toward distant harbors.
Today too, up the mountain alone,
White-spotted flowers smile kindly;
The grass flutes I blew in my youth don’t sound,
and are oh-so-bitter to my parched lips.
Home, I've come home,
Only— the sky I’ve missed is high and blue.
