Born in the Backrooms
The child bit down hard on their lip.
Their lips moved, but in the end no words came out.
"Why is that?"
"……."
The child blinked eyes full of wariness. Their tightly sealed lips would not open.
Minel asked again.
"How long have you been in the Backrooms?"
"……."
With every question that poured out, the child's face slowly filled with fear.
Then, all at once, their gaze turned toward the rear.
Minel turned his head and looked back.
Hina had already walked a long way inward from the corner where the switch had been.
"We don't know who might come."
"I think it would be better if you stayed at the corner, Minel. I'll be the one who talks to the child."
"If it's a monster, it has to be cut down."
A muffled sound of stifled sobs rose from the child's direction, but Minel paid it no mind.
Anything could happen in the Backrooms, after all.
Yet Hina shook her head and spoke in a low voice.
"Monsters always stay in the dark, don't they?"
"We don't know. This is the 2nd Floor."
Minel was about to explain further when Hina continued in a quiet tone.
"The child is truly terrified. A monster would have no reason to be. This is definitely a person."
"A gut feeling?"
"Yes. A gut feeling."
Hina's intuition was reliable.
When Minel said nothing, Hina went on.
"Do you know how scared I was the first time I saw you, Minel? Not just me—even people who killed as casually as eating a meal were utterly terrified. A young child goes without saying."
Minel tilted his head.
He turned to look at the child; their face was deathly pale.
"Is my face that scary?"
"No. It's gentle. But the first impression is definitely frightening."
"Is that so?"
"Like I said before, it's overwhelming enough to scare even people who killed others without batting an eye."
"……."
I didn't know that.
Minel rose from his place without a word.
Hina approached the child.
She stared at them fixedly with eyes that were sharp as could be.
"The child is genuinely afraid. This is no act at all."
It was not a remark born of pity.
Hina had judged it coldly as well.
Minel nodded and began walking toward the corner when the child's voice rang out from behind him.
"That man is a very bad person!"
When Minel turned his head, the child shouted again with all their strength.
"He's killed hundreds of people that way up till now!"
The child clenched both fists tightly.
"That way?"
"By flipping the switches so the monsters kill them instead! Because of that man, so many people have all died like that!"
As Minel continued to look at them, the child finally grew frightened and turned their head away.
He resumed walking and arrived at the corner.
He kept watch by glancing alternately down the adjoining corridors.
In the meantime, Hina held a quiet conversation with the child.
When she soothed them in a gentle tone, the child gave a small nod and listened to her words.
In the tense corridor, a brief stretch of calm and peaceful time flowed by.
How much time had passed?
Hina took the child's hand and walked slowly over to Minel.
The child gripped Hina's hand tightly and stayed half a step behind her.
Their eyes were fixed on Minel, yet their body remained drawn back.
All because Minel's cold presence had been far too frightening.
Hina wrapped the child's hand affectionately and spoke softly.
"You don't have to be scared of this big brother. He's the one who's been protecting your big sister the whole time. He would never hurt you."
The child's eyes wavered for a moment.
With a cautious, hesitant expression, they looked at Minel once more.
Minel did not avert that gaze.
His deep, composed eyes met the child's.
He said nothing, yet there was neither threat nor coercion in that look.
There was only a person waiting quietly.
In that way their gazes overlapped in the air.
A silence that was not short.
But during that time, something slowly melted away.
Beyond the wariness, a small sincerity seeped in, and at last the child opened their mouth very quietly.
"I was born here."
The child's voice, heard for the first time, was quiet and unfamiliar.
A neutral tone that made it impossible to tell whether they were a boy or a girl.
Minel paid not the slightest attention to such minor impressions.
His interest remained solely on the core of the conversation.
"Here?"
"Yes. You asked earlier, didn't you? How long I'd been in the Backrooms."
The child's voice was neat and matter-of-fact, as if explaining an obvious fact.
Minel tilted his head without a word.
His thoughts simply could not keep up.
"Are you saying you're a monster?"
At those words Hina immediately glared at Minel.
But the child merely shrugged as if it were nothing and answered.
"I'm a person, though."
"But?"
A slight crease formed on Minel's brow, and his eyes grew complicatedly mixed.
Until now he had never once considered the concept that "a person could be born" in the Backrooms.
"How long has it been for you, mister?"
At the unexpected counter-question, Minel blinked.
"About a month."
"Then how are you so strong?"
The child's question was pure.
Without any jealousy or envy, it was simply an expression of curiosity.
Faced with those clear eyes, Minel found himself at a loss for words.
"……."
The conversation was strange somehow.
Even in the real world, talking with young children had been difficult.
Minel looked back at Hina and made a silent request for rescue.
Hina let out a small breath and spoke toward the child with a gentle expression.
"How have you been living in the Backrooms until now?"
"I lived at home."
There was a home in the Backrooms?
He could not understand it at all.
No matter how he thought about it, they had to be a monster.
Minel's thoughts showed plainly on his face.
The child's small shoulders hunched, and their fingers clutched tightly at Hina's clothes.
"Minel…… could you maybe soften your gaze just a little?"
Hina's voice was earnest.
At those pleading words Minel wore a momentarily awkward expression before answering grumpily and turning his head.
"……Fine."
The child's shoulders gradually relaxed.
Hina lowered herself again to meet the child's eye level.
"We came up from the 1st Floor. We have absolutely no intention of harming you. We're just…… looking for a way to get out of the Backrooms."
Wariness still lingered on the child's face, yet a slight change stirred at those words.
They brushed the hair stuck to their cheek with a finger and blinked slowly a couple of times.
"I don't really know a way out, though."
Minel immediately followed up with a question.
"Do you know about the vending machines? Or the merchants?"
The child's small mouth pouted briefly.
An answer flowed out in a careful, hesitant tone.
"I don't know much about those either."
"……."
That put them back at square one.
It felt like hitting a wall with no path.
But then the child's eyes sparkled again.
As if they had found a memory rising to the surface.
"But Mom might know. I'll go home and ask her."
At those words Minel and Hina looked at the child at the same time.
"You have a mother?"
"Is she at home?"
The child narrowed their eyes, then after a beat spoke in a low voice.
"If I ask Mom she'll definitely know, so please let me go."
"We never kidnapped you."
The child wordlessly looked Minel up and down.
In those eyes lingered a sharpness and wariness unbefitting a child.
They added in a quiet voice.
"And if you let Big Sister Hina go too, I'll take you both to our house."
"I never kidnapped Hina either."
Hina let out a sudden snort of laughter.
It was a light smile he had never seen before, as if the innocent misunderstanding were amusing and the situation itself absurd.
Yet she made no particular effort to explain.
Minel frowned slightly.
"You're just going to leave them under that misunderstanding?"
At Minel's unrestrained remark, Hina finally burst out laughing aloud.
Soon Hina bent down and met the child's eyes. The child wore a look of confusion.
Hina's eyes were warm and gentle, and her tone carried sincerity.
"Minel may be scary, but he's really a good person. You can trust him. I wasn't kidnapped either."
The child's gaze lingered on Hina, then after a pause shifted to Minel.
Doubt was still mixed in those eyes, yet a somewhat softened air was visible as well.
"But why is someone as pretty as you hanging around with a person like this?"
"A person like this?"
When Minel asked, the child clamped their mouth shut and turned their gaze away.
I really don't get along with kids.
Minel shook his head from side to side.
Then, suddenly, the child grinned and spoke in a lively voice completely different from before.
"Follow me. I'll guide you the fastest way."
The child took the lead with a bright smile.
"And my name is Chori!"
"……."
"……."
Minel and Hina quietly followed behind Chori.
Like that, every time they passed a corner Minel frequently pulled out the map and checked their position.
But at a certain moment.
Faint yet unmistakable footsteps could be heard from the corridor behind them in the distance.
Other people?
Or it could be the dead man's party.
"Did you hear that?"
At Minel's question Hina gave a slight nod.
"Yes."
Hearing their conversation, Chori stopped in surprise.
Minel quickly gestured for them to walk farther ahead.
Chori understood the meaning with their eyes alone and resumed walking as if nothing had happened.
The kid's got good instincts.
Minel and Hina acted casually as well, yet they strained every nerve toward the unfamiliar sound lingering in their ears.
The moment they rounded the corner, Minel stopped walking.
Hina and Chori followed his gaze.
Minel pointed ahead and whispered low.
"Go first."
"……."
"……."
"Don't stop."
Hina and Chori nodded quietly and advanced slowly with unhesitating steps.
Minel pressed his back flat against the wall and stood hidden at the corner.
A short distance down the opposite corridor, Hina and Chori stopped again and looked back at Minel.
He signaled with both hands for them to go farther, and they disappeared behind the corner.
Left alone in the corridor, Minel waited calmly.
But even as time passed, no footsteps could be heard.
Minel drew Silence.
Then he moved swiftly back toward the corridor they had come through.
Passing the corner and looking into the previous corridor, he found it empty.
Quiet, almost desolate.
At this point one might think no one was pursuing them any longer.
But Minel's instinct whispered.
Something……
was there. Definitely.
Perhaps.
Had they noticed he was waiting?
There were all sorts of skills in the Backrooms.
With some particular skill they might have seen through the fact that Minel was standing by in one place.
Minel looked around.
Gray cement walls and the pipes tangled along them, plus the old clasps that fixed those pipes in place.
On the floor dust had seeped into the gaps of peeling tiles, and overhead a single creaking fluorescent light could be seen swaying precariously.
Minel made a quick decision.
With Silence he pried out one of the clasps and fixed it beneath a tile.
He pulled out one fluorescent light, shoved it underneath, then left the spot without lingering.
After rounding a few corners, Hina and Chori were waiting.
"How was it?"
"There wasn't anyone, right?"
Minel muttered as he walked wordlessly forward.
"We'll know soon enough."
The three of them resumed walking slowly once more.
Around the time they neared the next corner—
Crunch—!
The sound of a fluorescent light shattering traveled along the corridor.
The enemy had stepped on Minel's trap.
Anyone who paid even a little attention would have noticed it.
"Seeing as they fell for such a simple trap, they must be non-combatants. Stay here."
Minel drew Silence and Noise and began racing like a storm toward the direction of the sound.