Dispatches from the Graduate School of Ghost Stories - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Anomalies and Graduate School (1)
Congratulations on your graduation.
Why do we march toward misfortune we know is sealed?
Even knowing that a single moment’s choice will haunt me for a lifetime, I have chosen wrong again and again.
The day I enrolled. The day I chose my advisor. Or rather—the day I decided to graduate.
If I met myself back then, I would shout with all my strength.
“Run away!”
* * *
There is always a reason why everyone warns against something.
The typical examples would be stocks, cryptocurrency, graduate school, and joining a small or medium-sized company run by a single family.
A man working at what passed for an ordinary Korean family business had failed to leave work on time again today, treating himself instead to a cozy dinner with his manager.
“At your age, you could get by on an hour of sleep and climb a mountain without breaking a sweat. Have more.”
“Ha, well, I’m nearly thirty now…”
“It’s fine. You won’t die.”
His name was Yu Jong-hwa, and one of life’s rare strokes of luck was that his parents weren’t surnamed Choi.
Still, his fortune seemed to be holding today. Before Kim Manager could order another round, a loud alert chimed from every phone in the establishment.
Yu Jong-hwa checked the text that had arrived on his own device.
—Safety Advisory—
[Disaster Management Agency] Unidentified Anomaly Phenomenon confirmed in Gangbuk-gu, Seoul at 18:18 today.
Objects in the form of various colored plastic capsules.
Resembling commercial capsule-gacha products. If found, do not touch and report immediately to the relevant authorities.
Collection and disinfection measures planned until phenomenon resolution.
“Ah, Manager. I really should head out. A disaster alert just came through.”
“Doesn’t one of those come every day? Where did something happen?”
“An Anomaly Phenomenon. Apparently strange objects have been appearing in my neighborhood.”
“An anomaly? That’s a bit unusual. Is it an emergency, or just an advisory?”
A message should have arrived on his own phone as well, but it seemed easier to have a subordinate check than to pull up the screen himself. Yu Jong-hwa obediently looked at his display again and checked the message type.
“It says ‘Safety Advisory,’ so… is that okay?”
“Don’t know. As long as it’s not urgent or emergency-level, it should be fine. They’ll probably clean it up and wrap it up quick, whatever.”
“Still, maybe we should head in early today? I’ll get the check.”
Anomalies, as they were called, were a type of natural disaster that had emerged over the past several years—though they differed fundamentally from disasters of the past.
Whether it was people vanishing into certain ‘corrupted spaces,’ or the discovery of inexplicable substances within specific zones, none of it resembled natural disaster by any standard. Yet because human technology could neither comprehend nor respond to them, they had been classified as disasters nonetheless.
Odd occurrences, strange phenomena, bizarre events, abnormal calamities—the various names for these eerie incidents had been unified under the government’s official designation: Anomaly Phenomenon. But most people simply called them anomalies.
Strange stories that had once circulated as rumors were now becoming reality.
He didn’t know what was happening in other countries, but as far as he’d heard, there hadn’t been an Anomaly Phenomenon in Korea serious enough to cause mass casualties.
He didn’t know the details—being an ordinary citizen—and most people didn’t worry much about it either.
Yu Jong-hwa finished scraping his seasoned pork clean without much thought, then left the restaurant with Kim Manager, heading toward the subway station. He was simply grateful to escape his superior’s company sooner.
“Anomalies sound scary, but some people say it’s like winning the lottery. You might even profit off it.”
“If I were that lucky, I’d have won the lottery ages ago.”
“Just because your mouth speaks nothing but truth doesn’t mean it’s always a good thing.”
It was bad enough being forced to accompany his superior on an unwanted commute home; now he was being reproached for his honesty.
Yu Jong-hwa turned his gaze elsewhere and let his mind wander. The night sky was bright, the air thick with pollution, and people crowded everywhere. Very Seoul.
As he walked through a narrow alley, something caught beneath his shoe and rolled away. The light sound of plastic rolling somehow cut through the cacophony of the noisy city with eerie clarity.
“…Is that the anomaly from the alert earlier? As long as we don’t open the capsule, we’re fine… right?”
“There are so many of them. It’s almost impossible to avoid stepping on them.”
The shabby alley was carpeted with plastic capsules of every color scattered across the ground. At the far end of the alley, the bright expanse of the main street lay visible in the distance.
Yu Jong-hwa hastily began searching for information on the Anomaly Phenomenon he’d just disturbed. Humans, after all, only truly engage their minds once a crisis arrives.
Among records of ordinary accidents and incidents, he found brief articles related to the Gangbuk-gu disaster alert. Following a link in one article, he entered the Disaster Management Agency’s page for today’s newly registered Anomaly Phenomenon.
The information window, marked ‘Unresolved,’ had a remarkably short scroll.
<A Prophecy for You>
First Anomaly Phenomenon reported on 2025.09.26.
Resembles commercial plastic capsule-gacha products. When opened, contains a slip of paper inscribed with a random prophecy.
The written content is inconsistent. Futures may be expressed in ambiguous sentences, so please exercise caution in interpretation.
As reported so far, all prophecies with specified timeframes have been fulfilled within their periods, and prophecies concerning third parties—not the capsule opener—have also come true.
Below that were the usual warnings not to touch, along with instructions to report any new cases to the relevant authorities.
“Think we could pick some up and sell them on secondhand marketplaces? I hear people actually buy these things.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea…”
“Prophecies, right? Whatever’s going to happen will happen anyway. Better to know beforehand.”
Kim Manager, who had been craning his neck to look at his smartphone, picked up a capsule from the ground without hesitation and popped open the plastic lid.
His sausage-thick fingers struggled to unfold the tightly rolled paper. Ordinary ink on ordinary paper spoke an ill-omened prophecy.
[Today, 9:02 PM — collision with a nine-passenger vehicle (white) — admitted to intensive care]
“What rotten luck.”
“Well… couldn’t it be about someone else?”
The middle-aged manager spat onto the pavement and, in his fouler mood, turned his frustration on Yu Jong-hwa—a clear message not to spout nonsense about serious matters. So Jong-hwa fell silent, only to be chided for making people anxious for no reason.
Yu Jong-hwa simply scratched his head.
His hair was noticeably thicker than Kim Manager’s, and that alone managed to prick the older man’s nerves all over again.
“Come on, open one too, Jong-hwa.”
“No way! I’ll just end up worrying about it! I don’t even check my daily horoscope—it just makes me feel off for the whole day!”
“Too late for that—I already did!”
“I warned you!”
“You didn’t!”
Yu Jong-hwa bolted down the alley, and Kim Manager chased after him with a fist full of capsules. But there was no way a flabby middle-aged man who played golf occasionally could outrun someone in his twenties who’d trained in athletics. How honest the human body was in showing the truth!
Kim Manager fell behind in an instant, and Yu Jong-hwa—carefully avoiding the trash underfoot—suddenly found the mouth of the alley within reach.
Hit someone by accident and you’re guilty.
Hit someone by accident and if the anomaly’s in a bad mood, you’re still guilty.
His foot kicked hard against a translucent purple capsule, which unfortunately smacked straight into the red wall of the Amazing Meat Unlimited Refill Restaurant.
Click. The cheap plastic capsule cracked open far too easily, spilling a scrap of paper onto the ground.
Yu Jong-hwa felt a chill of foreboding as he hurriedly scooped up the paper.
[Congratulations on your graduation from Jubjak University Graduate School of Anomaly Studies in 2028]
What the hell is this?
He squinted and turned the paper over. The text scrawled across one side remained unchanged no matter how much he crumpled it.
Kim Manager came walking over, scratching his left palm frantically, and stopped beside Yu Jong-hwa to read the paper. Jong-hwa felt his own palms itch in sympathy and started clawing at his skin with his fingernails.
“So you’re going to graduate school?”
“No? Not at all. I don’t even know how to apply.”
“If you’re graduating in 2028, you’d better hurry, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m not going! They say graduate students are basically slaves. No pay anyway.”
“Ah, but it’s just where people live, isn’t it? A longer pedigree is always good. Better off than me, anyway.”
Setting aside the constitutional question of whether graduate students qualify as human beings—Jubjak University was in Seoul, a name Jong-hwa had grown familiar with hearing every time he rode the subway.
But an anomaly graduate school? He’d heard that related industries and departments had sprouted up since Anomaly Phenomena began, but he’d never expected a graduate program.
In any case, Yu Jong-hwa had no interest in studying whatsoever, so it was a prophecy with zero chance of coming true.
“What time is it now? I need to get somewhere without cars.”
“It’s 8:40… but is that still okay?”
“Are you trying to get me turned into a patient right now?!”
If this were an anomaly that always came true, no amount of effort would change it—but Yu Jong-hwa felt uneasy and made one more attempt to dissuade Kim Manager.
“We have to try something! Aaaahhh!”
Kim Manager suddenly grabbed his left hand and screamed. Yu Jong-hwa rushed over to check.
But there was no visible wound on his palm, and he found himself dragged along into a four-story building where lights flickered brightly.
A tired Wednesday night, alone with the boss, in a nice rooftop bar.
The situation was terrible, but leaving someone so visibly pale felt like a betrayal of conscience.
“You don’t need to fake being hurt… I’ll stay with you until the time passes.”
“It’s not fake. It really hurt! Anyway, thanks. You’re a good kid, Jong-hwa.”
Too good for his own good, though. Whatever Kim Manager meant by that remark, it rubbed Jong-hwa the wrong way.
Current time: 9:00 PM exactly.
While he checked the time on his smartphone, Kim Manager was shouting into his phone over the loud background music.
“I can’t leave the office yet! I’ll head out in thirty minutes!”
Someone on the other end—presumably his wife—was pleading loudly enough to hear through the receiver.
Aaagh! What—! With a scream like a pig being slaughtered, Kim Manager clenched his left hand into a fist and flailed it wildly at the empty air.
When he opened his hand again, Yu Jong-hwa could see something was definitely wrong.
One of the lines on the man’s palm had grown distinctly shorter.
“Um, sir? There’s no wound on your hand, but… this line looks different.”
“That’s my life line. And I said one of my life lines was supposed to be long…?”
“You should just let it happen!”
“… Dammit. Jong-hwa, can you get us down from here in one minute?”
“If we run down the stairs, maybe!”
Yu Jong-hwa jumped to his feet and looked around. The café’s interior stairs weren’t far.
He shouted that the stairs were close and tried to pull his boss up, but the man had already resigned himself to his fate.
Kim Manager screamed again, and his life line became completely blunt.
The expressionless middle-aged manager sat motionless and turned on his phone screen.
The numbers on the bright default background shifted from 9:01 to 9:02 in an instant.
And nothing happened.
“It’s fine.”
“Thank goodness.”
For a few more minutes, they sat motionless, both of them staring at Kim Manager’s palm.
The tedium stretched on, and the moment Kim Manager sighed—suffocating, needing air—he pushed open the door toward the rooftop.
A piercing alert sounded from scattered speakers throughout the café, and Yu Jong-hwa’s smartphone chimed with an incoming message.
―Emergency Alert―
[Disaster Management Agency] Seoul, Gangbuk-gu: Unidentified Anomaly Phenomenon object hazard level adjusted.
Objects in the form of plastic capsules of various colors.
Do not touch if encountered. You must report immediately to the relevant authorities.
Collection and decontamination measures planned until phenomenon termination.
Kim Manager climbed over the metal railing of the rooftop.
People around him gasped and began to murmur; moments later, Yu Jong-hwa too tore his eyes from the screen.
A man with a face all too familiar plunged downward, head first.
Yu Jong-hwa bolted from his seat and rushed toward him.
Then came a sound like something heavy—like fruit—bursting, and it pierced his ears.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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