The Child on the Second Floor
“Stop!”
Minel shouted and broke into a run.
The man cut the corner and vanished down another corridor. Minel didn’t get far before he had to break off the chase—darkness knotted in front of him, and a pair of yellow eyes punched out of it.
Kwaang!
A Hound. Of course.
Minel drew Silence in the same breath and cut hard across the space ahead. The Hound’s neck split cleanly in two, the brain inside laid bare.
“Minel!”
Hina was already firing, but the Hounds on the 2nd Floor barely stiffened—not even the usual small freeze. Was it because her weapon was still Level 1? Noise’s level, though, tracked the highest floor you had reached.
Kwaang!
A thunderous report punched a hole through a Hound’s skull. The instant it locked up, Hina closed the gap and stuck to Minel’s side. He simply hauled her up under one arm and kept firing Noise in bursts, holding off the Hounds charging from behind.
Keong! Keong! Keong!
Moments ago the corridor had been empty. The instant the switch went dark and the shadows settled, Hounds bloomed out of every pocket of black. Minel put a shot into every yellow pair of eyes that showed and drove toward the direction the man had fled.
“Stay glued to me, Hina.”
“…….”
In her whole life, Hina had never been pressed this close to a man’s body. Looping her arms around Minel’s neck felt impossibly awkward—until he tightened his hold around her waist and dragged her in hard against him.
“Hold on!”
The shout snapped her focus back. She locked onto him with everything she had.
Minel ran, Silence carving the air. The Hounds of the 2nd Floor were a shade faster than those of the 1st, but still slower than him. The physical boosts from the Arcade made carrying Hina no real problem. Veterans of live combat or not, the Hounds were no match for him.
Seogeok—!
Seogeok—!
Minel pushed forward trailing blue light, but the Hounds’ assault was relentless, and the man’s retreating footsteps kept pulling away ahead of them.
Seogeok—!
Seogeok—!
He cut through them like a machine until they hit the next corner. Hina dropped free at once and flung herself at the switch. Hounds lunged for her—she flipped it on.
Tak.
Fluorescent light flooded the corridor. Every Hound still half-born of the dark evaporated where it stood.
“I guess they don’t drop Blood Crystals here… We cut down so many, and there’s nothing.”
“…….”
Minel rounded the corner with Noise already raised—but the man had just reached the far end of the next stretch and was disappearing into another hall, killing the switch as he went.
Dalkak.
Darkness dropped over the corridor. Inside it, Hounds began to form again.
“What a pain.”
“He’s using monsters as a shield. Leave me and go.”
“Then you’ll be in danger.”
“It’s the only way we’ll catch him. I can hold out alone.”
“…….”
Hina nodded—trust me. Minel returned the nod once, lifted Silence, and plunged into the dark.
His speed was nothing like before. The reason was simple: he wasn’t carrying Hina.
A long streak of blue light. The dark hadn’t even finished shaping into Hounds before the cold froze them solid, and Minel’s body tore through the gaps at a dead sprint. Hina blinked, stunned.
“Oh my god…….”
The newborn Hounds never even registered what had passed them—only the blue frost that swallowed them whole. While they stood there wearing blank, stupid faces, Minel was already at the far switch, hand on the plate.
Dalkak.
Light. Darkness and Hounds both winked out. A heartbeat later Minel was gone down the next corridor.
“M-Minel!”
Hina ran. His receding footsteps. The wet sounds of Hounds dying. The click of switches. By the time she hit the corner, he was already at the far end—and a man stood in front of him, just raising a gun.
Tang. Tang. Tang.
Three shots cracked down the hall. Sparks leapt off Minel’s leather jacket with each one. His face went cold. Silence flicked; the man’s barrel sheared clean off.
The man crashed onto his back and scrabbled toward the wall. Minel lifted a boot and drove it through his head with a clean, brutal kick.
Peok—!
As Hina came up, Minel said, “Check the other corridors.”
“R-right—there might be a party. Got it.”
The 2nd Floor offered almost no cover. Hina drew Digital Vein and kept the other mouths of the hall covered while Minel hauled the man up by the collar and started the interrogation.
“Why did you try to kill us?”
The man looked up with a face full of despair. There was no hope left in his eyes.
“I thought you were just some greenhorns who’d crawled up from the 1st Floor… Fuck. I picked the wrong ones.”
Minel aimed Noise at the wall and fired.
Kwaang—!
The impact crater looked like a bomb had gone off. He swung the muzzle back onto the man, and the man’s eyes turned meek as a lamb’s.
“Answer the question.”
“Why do you think? You want to live in the Backrooms, you do what you have to. We eat each other. That’s survival.”
“Party?”
“Don’t have one. Not that kind of thing.”
After a mess this loud, the surrounding halls were dead quiet. Even if he had allies, none of them were close. With the immediate threat settled, one question burned in Minel’s mind—something he needed for everything still ahead.
The man’s bullets had bounced off the leather jacket. In other words, bullet immunity had not triggered. Without the jacket Balan had given him, he might have died for nothing right there. So how had the man punched through it?
“Bullet immunity. How did you break it?”
The man narrowed his eyes.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
He didn’t even know the skill existed. So it was something else.
“What’s your weapon level?”
The man swallowed dryly, half-surrendered.
“Three.”
A Level 3 gun, then—enough to pierce bullet immunity? If you could get a Level 3 weapon even on the 2nd Floor, an enhancement system almost certainly existed.
“Why didn’t you use a gun that good from the start?”
“Huh?”
“You kept playing games with the switches.”
The man’s nose twitched. Minel brought the muzzle closer; the answer came fast.
“I-I can’t aim for shit.”
“…….”
“Unless it’s right in front of me, I c-can’t hit anything.”
He hadn’t even learned proper marksmanship. Slowed by monsters or not—Minel had almost died to this man. But there was nothing strange about that. The Backrooms were that kind of place. He had beaten strong people before; that never meant a weak one couldn’t kill you.
Beside him, Hina carefully raised a finger to her own eye.
“There’s yellow light in your eyes, Minel.”
He thought back to the charge a moment ago. Wildness had climbed during the fight. He would have to watch that from now on.
The man made a thin, moaning sound.
“I-I’ll give you everything I’ve got. Just let me live.”
The voice was pitiful. He flicked his middle finger and opened his inventory. A few Blood Crystals and some drinking water spilled out—nothing more. Minel glanced at Hina. She said flatly:
“There’s more.”
“She says there’s more.”
The man’s mouth twitched. He surged up off the floor, thrusting a hand forward—and gray fog burst from his palm, swallowing Minel.
But—
“Guh!”
Minel cracked him across the cheek with the flat of Silence. He had already expected a stunt; he hadn’t even needed Noise. Two molars flew from the man’s mouth. A short dagger clattered from his hand—the whole blade rusted through, useless even against a monster.
“Every one of you does this.”
“Because in the same situation, they would have killed the other person without thinking. They’re reaping what they sowed.”
People predicted others by measuring them against themselves. In short: you only see what you’re looking for.
The man clapped a hand over his mouth, then bolted upright and fled wildly down the hall.
“Sh… shit!!!!!”
Running a corridor with almost no cover wasn’t going to save him. Full panic.
“Minel. Are you all right? That strange smoke came up a second ago.”
“Yeah. Looked like plain smoke.”
Even then the man was sprinting full-out. Hina’s voice stayed empty of feeling.
“Want me to put a hole in his leg? So he can’t walk.”
“…….”
The light in Hina’s eyes had gone yellow. Minel started to stop her—and somewhere far down the hall, a switch clicked.
Dalkak.
Someone around the opposite corner had killed the lights. The stretch the man was running went black in an instant.
“Wh— wha—?”
He was already halfway down it. Yellow eyes opened in the dark, fixing on him from front and back. His face went bloodless—and then the Hounds’ claws came down.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaah! Aaaaaah! Aah! Aaaaaaah!”
Five or six Hounds tore one man to pieces, fighting over the scraps.
Dalkak.
The switch came back on. Light returned. Where the Hounds had vanished, only the man’s shredded corpse remained.
But the silhouette at the corner was unusually small—and it was already gone.
Hina’s voice jumped.
“Did you see that? They were only half my height.”
“A kid.”
“Even being generous, maybe ten years old? Elementary school age, I’d guess…….”
How had a child that young survived a place this vicious—and not even on the 1st Floor, but the 2nd? The physical boosts from the Arcade didn’t care about age or gender, but a child lasting in the Backrooms was still no small feat. Using the switch to call monsters and kill a man meant the kid understood how the Backrooms worked. That meant information.
“We chase.”
They raised Noise and Digital Vein and ran. Minel paced himself to Hina’s stamina, but even so they were faster than the child could pull away.
Five minutes later they rounded a corner and saw the kid tearing down the middle of the next hall—small frame, messy short hair, a shirt frayed at the elbows, shorts blotched with dark stains.
Perfect timing. Minel allowed himself a thin smile and killed the switch.
Dalkak.
Heavy dark slammed down over the corridor. The child screamed at once.
“Kyaaak!”
The darkness inside the hall writhed and gathered; yellow eyes began to open inside it. The child collapsed where they stood, scrambled to the wall, ducked their head, and shook.
Dalkak.
Light. The monsters were gone. Only a trembling child remained.
Hina lowered her gun and spoke quietly.
“Looks like they don’t have the strength to protect themselves.”
“Could be an act.”
The child realized the lights were back on, shoved upright, and tried to bolt the other way.
“Stop.”
Even at Minel’s warning, the child kept running. Fine, then. Minel’s hand found the switch again and cut it.
Dalkak.
Dalkak.
Off and on again in a heartbeat. The child jolted as if struck and froze.
Hina spoke to them.
“We’re not going to hurt you. We just have questions. But if you run again, I turn the switch off. So stay right there.”
Minel pointed at the floor for Hina—hold the corner. The child watched him approach, shaking hard with terror, but still couldn’t bring themselves to run.
Minel stopped in front of the half-sprawled child and crouched, bringing his eyes level with theirs, studying them without hurry.
The child’s face was exhausted beyond any easy description. Hollows under the eyes. Lips cracked dry. The look of someone who had already endured far too much—as if they had lived a long time in this hell.
Minel asked in a flat, colorless voice:
“Why did you kill him?”