The Claw Machine by Hyo Jin Ha

I was terrible at the claw machine. It was why I practiced five times a week for three-hour intervals at nearly fifteen reps per hour. Each rep only cost 1,o00 won, but it was 4,500 for a pack of cigarettes and 2,000 for a roasted yam at the convenience store next door. I brought my own plastic stool and stationed myself at the machine, one hand on the joystick and another on a cigarette or a yam. The employees yelled at me when I dropped the peelings, but they always smiled with their teeth afterwards to show that they felt somewhat sorry. 

Behind the glass, they had dolls of every size, textile, and fluff. Some had little wigs, and the bigger ones had fingered hands. Regardless of shape, they always slipped off my claws or fell right before the chute, prompting the machine to shriek, Try again! Sometimes my hands started to shake under the gaze of all the marble eyes watching. Their bodies huddled close together for warmth, their fingers tapped against the glass. I wanted to save just one, but their limbs were boneless and slack; they flopped against the claw’s pincers like loose eels. 

I wished the employees wouldn’t speak at all. They prowled in low whispers behind the counter. She looks just like her daughter. My daughter no longer visited nor called; she didn’t have a phone. They’d never retrieved it from the Han River, beneath the half meter of ice. When the ice thaws, I’ll finally pluck both her and her phone out of the water with my big claw hand and plop her into the chute headed home. But now, it’s the machine’s turn to shriek–Again! Again!

Hyo Jin Ha is a writer from Seoul, South Korea. She holds an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University.

8 August 2025