I'm on a hillside overlooking a sparkling ocean in Korea. It feels like the north east coast near Incheon, but everything is older, ancient. Wooden boats glide slowly through the harbor below, and Yui stands beside me. 

We explore the streets, looking for a house. They're all empty - devoid of even furniture. 

We're in a boat at sea, chasing another wooden ship. Aboard are Koreans, attacking the Japanese ship ahead of us. A man fires a bow and arrow, hitting the mast of the other ship, and angering it's commander. He wears riveted bamboo armor, like a Samurai. 
The dream splits in two - the chase continues, but we're simultaneously-  we're at dinner on a boat. The beams are made from solid wood, and the L-shaped table before me is lit by candle light. Yui, or a very similiar Korean girl sits beside/behind and to my right. The seafood on the table flickers between different dishes, even as I serve it. Yui pulls me around, and in close. [...]

We're back in the old city streets, north one block of where we we stood before. All the houses are dark, and crickets sound quietly in the distance. A park is behind us, with a white fence obscuring the memory of what occurs beyond. 

Yui and I are looking for a house - her house. / We're walking up a street, and into a 2nd floor house. The room is narrow, with windows facing outward into the night on one side. There are four beds, each with their own shelf to the left of it. The bed at the far left end of the room has a TV on the wall, but it is off. The room is empty, except for us. Yui tosses herself on to the bed, and begins studying a book in Korean. I notice a 3A-like figure on her bedside shelf, and begin to apply weathering to it by wiping off excess paint. She doesn't seem to notice. The robot looks like a thin 'Bertie', but wears a WW2 era german army helmet. I put it down, and join Yui on the bed. 

She teaches me Korean phrases and reading. She smiles back at me, and I realize this is just a memory - a closed loop within my mind. The rest of the room is falling dark, like a store in the mall as someone turns off the power for the night, bit by bit. Even she fades, transposed between memory and dream until it's only me on the bed, looking out into the nightscape beyond.

I'm a substitute teacher at an old house in a small town, reminiscent of a house at the east end of my street, on the left.  The sky and air are a hazy grey. I'm not suppose to be here, I feel. People eye me warily as I enter the house, and ascend the stairs spiraling to the right. A police officer is asking me questions about where this other teacher is, as a class of grade school children wait sitting down on the carpet for him. 

Apparently, I know his girlfriend - the person who directed me here. Other adults mill around a room that overlooks the entranceway downstair. Their glass 2nd floor windowed kitchen overlooks the street below, with a sloping nearby roof presenting nearby. 

Two large vehicles pull up to this house, and various tough but skinny looking men step out. One in particular takes point, and shouts something about a teacher to the house, then waits. 

I approach the group outside, and maintain a friendly, clueless persona toward this group. They all appear russian, but the skinniness I noticed earlier is actually a fetal alcohol syndrome-like look to their heads and bodies. The shaved head leader addresses me, looking for this missing teacher. I tell them I'm just filling in for him because he's missing. I don't mention the police, just the kids and adults inside. He asks what else in inside - I tell him "Just a bunch of textbooks". I notice how dirty and unclean his earlobes are. Many of these people look like they haven't bathed in a long time. I maintain a relaxed posture, and try to be friendly-helpful -- pretending like everything is ok, and gesture that I needed to get back to class. The man dismisses me and the group head back to their vehicles. 

In the hazy distance, I see figures moving slowly in the distance. Anxious, I quickly return to the house, and kitchen over looking the yard. In a nearby room on the north side of the house, a man and a woman anxiously await news of what the men want. "They look like Russian mob, and were asking about that missing teacher - and the house contents". I warn them to reinforce the sliding windows with wood door jams.

In the kitchen, a ragged looking woman in her 50s from the street below has scaled a nearby house and is now climbing up the slanted roof toward the kitchen. The house is empty, and I am nowhere. 

I'm standing in an old house with weathered floorboards. Much of feels exposed to the elements, but feels dry and eroded. Peeling wallpaper, dusty, torn furniture. The hallway has walled off glass sections that capture the house as it was - new, with fresh wallpaper and new cabinets. It feels like an exhibit, juxtaposing what was with what is. 

Down a hallway from a locked door, toward the front of the house is a frosted bay window. Yellow light filters in through the grime, blocking a view of the world beyond the house. It feels like I'm on the 2nd story of a home, given the dim horizon in the distance viewable through cracks in the glass. I turn left and walk down a connected hallway. To my immediate right is a washroom that is slanted toward the back of the house. The room is old, with the slanted floor implying the house foundations are sinking, or rotten. I use the sink and move on. From the hallway opens into a living room with a kitchen along one wall. My younger brother walks along beside me, having always been there quietly. We search the room, looking for some clue as to where we are. Along the left wall are a kitchen sink, an old fridge, and a small 4-panel window at the end of the hall/side of the kitchen-living room. An old sofa sits in the middle of the room, with an old chair near the window. Outside the window, it looks out onto a yard that slopes up to meet the window. 

Through the window, we see a man chase a boy out of the back of his house, down a set of porch steps and out on to his back yard. There's a deranged looking elderly woman near the door who emerges as well. The old man chases the boy down mid-yard and viciously beats him to death. I instruct my brother to hide, and I crawl under the sofa, behind the flaps of the furniture's skirt. Surrounded by dust and the smell of aged floorboards, I hear the noise of violence outside, then silence. 

The old man enters the house through our window and discover us. We run, but are caught. I try to struggle, but the man and woman are insubstantial, like ghosts.

 * * *

Everything resets, and I'm back standing next to the glassed off pristine area as I was before. However, the house is filled with people. I search for an exit at the front of the house, and then for a weapon and find neither. I confront the man as he enters the room this time, but my efforts pass through him ineffectively.

Everything rests. Time and time again. I lose track of the number of times I try to escape this loop. In desperation, I run straight out of the side of the house, through the window the moment I reset. I run up the deck past the crazy woman, past the murderous man and the running, filthy child. Into their house I run, and to their locked front door. I open it, and a younger woman -  perhaps the boy's mother - runs in with a hammer and strikes both of the older, crazed people. As she approaches the boy, they all disappear. 

I'm left in an empty house. I follow the hallway down the left side into a makeshift prison area that once housed the boy. It appears that he had a bare carpeted room, a washroom, and a barred 'lookout' tower with a ladder all within the left side of this old person's house. I try to exit the front door, but it's locked. I can see the aged ruins of suburbs outside, but I'm like the ghosts I see trapped inside. The loop broken, I wander. Everyone's gone. 

I try walking around the side of the old man's house but I'm hit with vertigo. Time slows down, pushing me back toward the backyard. I feel that I'm not allowed to go this way, but I push through. Once I make it to the street, the sensation clears. I walk past the decaying mansion and suburban home, looking for meaning before I wake.