Synopsis
People wake at a fixed hour, work in fixed places, then quietly disappear.
Damsu, a 56-year-old man, lives a repetitive life inside an office divided like an ice tray. In the freezer of his home live blocks of ice that believe, “If I go outside, I’ll melt and die.”Among them, one baby ice is lured by the sound of waves beyond the door.
Outside, news reports warning of tidal waves mingle with advertisements seducing people toward the sea. As his coworkers vanish one by one and he is ultimately left alone, Damsu begins rejecting his daily routine out of fear that he, too, will be summoned. Yet even standing still, he begins to melt. To prevent his disappearance, Damsu confines himself within another mold: a bathtub. Meanwhile, his son — the ice that escaped the freezer — flows onward toward the sea. In the end, both meet the same fate. They melt.
But one flows, while the other stagnates. The flowing water reaches the ocean; the stagnant water freezes once again. And inside yet another freezer, the same words are repeated: “I must never go outside. I’ll melt away.”