Yellow Eyes
Bones shattered into fine fragments and scattered through the air.
Blood fountained from the severed stump.
"Ah… Aaaaagh!!!"
"Kyaaaaaah!"
"S-save me! Save me!!!"
Some of those who had fallen into panic came to their senses and immediately began running in whichever direction would take them farthest from the monster.
"This is a dream… This is a dream."
"M-mom… Mom."
"Ugh… Uuuuugh."
Others simply collapsed where they stood, their legs giving out. They trembled violently, faces drained white.
The monster didn't even finish chewing the arm. It turned its head.
It launched itself at a man fleeing in the distance—so fast it seemed to vanish before their eyes.
"Sh… shit… I-I'm g-gonn—"
The large man went down at last.
The last thing he saw before he died was Minel's gaze directed at the floor.
Strange.
Something that big had leapt that fast. Yet the floor hadn't even dented; not a single speck of dust had been kicked up.
Minel flicked his eyes after the monster.
It was hunting down the fleeing people one by one and butchering them. Bodies torn apart, blood soaking everything. But there was not the slightest tremor in Minel's eyes. Fear would be of no use in this situation.
It tracks by sound more than sight…
Having grasped the monster's pattern in that short span, Minel held his breath. And he began slowly putting distance between himself and the creature.
Then the people slumped around him caught his eye. They were making strange sounds that were neither quite sobs nor anything else—if they kept it up, they would draw a fair amount of the monster's attention.
You're not without a conscience. That sound is simply very faint. When the thought "must I really?" arises, trust that it is the voice of conscience.
Thinking what Father would have said had become so habitual that at some point Father's voice simply began to sound in his ears. He had heard it so much since childhood that it now rang of its own accord. Honestly, it was annoying. But there was no harm in listening to Father's words.
"Stay quiet. If you hold your breath, you might live."
Minel told every person he passed while fleeing. Most couldn't understand a word, but a few clamped their hands over their mouths and nodded frantically.
Minel tracked the monster's position by the screams that intermittently struck his ears. He moved without making a sound, carefully putting the place behind him.
"Aaaaagh!"
"S-save me! Aagh!"
"P-please. Please. Ghk!"
Not good. The screams were drawing closer. Desks and chairs cluttered the area without end. If only they had banded together from the start. The problem was that they had already scattered because of that one big man. How many people died because of one man's bad judgment.
"Hoo…"
Having put enough distance between them, Minel took a small breath and eased the tension. Then something unusual appeared far ahead.
An elevator? Could it lead outside?
A means of vertical movement. Minel killed his footsteps again and approached.
Two elevators stood side by side. One's out-of-order light was blinking. The closed doors radiated an eerie pressure, as if forcibly holding something inside. But the elevator beside it was different. Its doors kept opening and closing endlessly.
He saw why—a foot was caught in the gap. Nothing but withered bone remained, yet it was clearly a human foot.
"…"
Minel's whole body seemed to stiffen, but he considered the situation calmly. Was going where human bones lay the right choice? The deliberation ended quickly. An irresistible force rendered the question itself meaningless.
"Grrrrngh…"
As if someone had dumped ice water down his spine, his blood ran cold. His heart skipped a beat; every muscle in his body turned to stone. Minel slowly turned his head to look behind him.
At the end of the corridor, beyond the dense dark—the monster was watching him. A pair of yellow eyes stood out with unnatural clarity in the darkness.
So it was only sensitive to hearing; it wasn't blind after all.
"Grrrrngh!"
He stopped thinking. Faster than his mind, his arms and legs moved first. As if instinct itself were hauling his body, Minel threw himself into the elevator. The yellow eyes nearly followed him through the gap.
Minel seized the bone caught in the door and yanked it inward. Then he reached to mash the close button. His mind was so blank he groped with his fingertips, figuring it had to be somewhere.
But the wall was nothing but smooth surface. No close button—not even a single ordinary number button in sight.
"I didn't expect this."
"Grrrrngh…"
In the blink of an eye the monster had come up and was glaring at Minel from outside the wide-open doors. Minel could not comprehend the form before his eyes. He could not tell what color it was, what shape it had. It felt as if his brain were refusing to interpret it. He could only stare blankly, like someone whose soul had left him.
Time passed. Only after the elevator doors closed of their own accord did he come back to himself.
"Haa… haa…"
It felt as if a blocked throat had cleared. A splitting headache and eyes that hurt so badly he wanted to tear them out were the worst of it. The pain lessened with time. As for the monster, he could barely remember it, as if it had been a dream. Only one thing remained sharp in his mind—those yellow eyes that had stared, unmoving, from outside the elevator.
Why… didn't it come in?
The elevator sat motionless with its doors shut. The monster outside was silent as well. Minel searched for buttons again. There was nothing that could operate the elevator—nothing at all.
A sealed space. His only company: a single skeleton. Under ordinary circumstances, panic would have been the natural response. But Minel was rarely affected by such things.
Then he noticed a book tucked into the skeleton's chest. It looked dangerous, but the book might hold information.
"I'll borrow this for a bit."
Minel tapped the skeleton's skull a couple of times and took the book. The skeleton's arm rose with it. The withered hand gripped the book with uncanny strength. Nothing but bone, and still that grip? How much attachment had this person carried to the grave over this book? In the end he had to pry the finger joints free one by one.
"Backrooms… Field Notes?"
So this place really was the Backrooms, just as that man muttering like a madman had said before he ran. He knew The Travels of Marco Polo—the famous account left by the thirteenth-century Venetian merchant who journeyed through the East. Then was this book a record of explorations through the Backrooms? In a world where everything was alien, the most necessary thing was information.
Minel carefully opened the book. It was so old it would not open properly. When he finally managed it, clear writing as if freshly written filled the first page.
The monster wears the blessing of darkness and can never be killed by ordinary means. Newbies who do not possess Cold must flee.
"Newbies… Using game-like language?"
Then the elevator doors suddenly opened. It was so abrupt Minel could not react.
"…"
What appeared as his eyes opened was deep darkness. Within it, yellow eyes lurked everywhere. Not one pair. At least several dozen. Had it brought friends?
But.
"So they still can't come inside."
Minel picked up a thigh bone and threw it at the nearest pair of yellow eyes. It should have hit that massive body, yet it simply vanished into the dark. Killing intent flashed in the yellow eyes as they came right up to him. Still they did not enter through the door. Did they have no physical form?
Minel took another thigh bone and carefully prodded near the yellow eyes. At that moment, a monster's arm suddenly shot out of the dark, seized the thigh bone, and yanked. Minel reflexively let go; the bone disappeared into the darkness.
Almost got dragged out with it.
Minel pressed himself against the inner wall of the elevator and watched outside carefully. Beyond the doors, the darkness writhed. The yellow-eyed monsters seemed to be waiting only for him to come out.
No elevator buttons either. How am I supposed to escape?
Minel tried to open the Backrooms Field Notes again to see the later pages. But the pages were stuck fast; the next ones would not open, and the writing on the first page had not changed. So that was it. Minel stopped the pointless effort and sat down where he was.
"A strange place. An unknown world divorced from reality…"
However cold and clever Minel might be, he was still a twenty-first-century young man barely past adulthood. Having crossed the line between life and death several times already, exhaustion hit him hard. He could not leave because of the monsters. Should he sleep a little here? He didn't know what might happen, so he should tuck the Backrooms Field Notes inside his clothes for now.
Minel lay down reasonably and looked out the doors. Something kept writhing and stirring through the dark. In this state there was no way he could go outside.
And then.
A blue light flashed and cut through the darkness. Half the blackness split as if sliced by a blade.
"Kieeek!"
"Kieeek!"
"Kieeek!"
Hideous screams rose one after another. Far from sleeping, he could not even close his eyes. Blue light flashed in successive straight lines, carving the dark as if slicing a radish.
Slash.
Slash.
The light scattered vertically, horizontally, and diagonally; along its path the darkness froze like ice and was chopped away in chunks. The severed pieces fell, melted away in midair, and scattered like dust, leaving round things behind. As the spectacle repeated, the dense darkness that had settled began to thin.
And within it, a man began to appear.