Chori's Mother
A situation that made no sense at all.
Minel and the Shocker’s eyes met again, and in that instant the exact same thought flared through both their minds.
An exit.
Minel and the Shocker moved at the same time.
Minel took one step forward and launched himself toward the doorway Chori had opened, while the Shocker planted its forelegs and hurled its body after him.
Chzzzzzt!
Chzzzzzt!
Minel fired Noise toward the Shocker, scooped Chori into his arms, and drove straight through the entrance.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The Noise lodged in the Shocker’s body did not deal so much as a scratch of damage, but it was enough to startle the creature for a fraction of a second.
Even so, it could not delay the blue arcs of lightning that already radiated outward from the Shocker’s hide.
Crackle!
Crackle!
Blue flashes slammed into Minel’s back and raced through his entire body.
An instant later, accompanied by a searing white glare, the Shocker’s foreleg swept in a great crescent.
Flash—!
The Shocker rolled its empty eyes downward to look at its own foot.
Nothing had been caught.
“Grrrrrrrr!”
The Shocker’s face twisted.
An emotion it had never once felt before was exploding inside it.
Rage.
The Shocker inflated its whole body and began thrashing its legs in a wild frenzy.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Hearing the heavy impacts pounding against the doorway from outside, Minel let out a breath of relief.
A moment later and those forelegs would have torn his limbs apart.
He swept his gaze quickly over the surroundings.
The space was a narrow corridor barely wide enough for a single person to walk—something like the emergency hallways found in large buildings.
Then something squirmed in his arms.
“I-I can’t breathe…”
Minel hurriedly set Chori down. She thumped her chest and drew deep breaths.
“What just happened?”
Chori waved her hands as if asking him to wait, caught her breath, and finally spoke.
“This is my home.”
“Your home?”
“I can open entrances along the corridor side. You looked like you were in danger, Minel, so I made one in a hurry. Luckily it worked.”
Chori beamed at him.
Not a trace of malice showed on her face.
Of course, that proved nothing in the end.
So Minel asked at once.
“Where’s Hina?”
“Ah—she’s still lying in bed ever since she fainted back then.”
Back then… meaning after they had split up.
Hina would never have simply fainted; she had almost certainly run into the Shocker.
“Can I see her?”
“She’s in my room. Come with me. I wanted you to check on her anyway.”
Chori finished speaking and set off ahead.
Minel followed at a carefully measured distance, tension held ready.
The corridor was more complicated than expected.
Doors lined both walls at three-meter intervals in considerable numbers.
“Are all of these entrances?”
“Yes. I can make them open onto whatever corridor I want. Up to forty-two of them! Amazing, right? There’s even a shower so I can wash.”
“…”
A comfortable space inside the Backrooms, where danger lurked at every turn—and the ability to create as many as forty-two entrances at will?
Whatever non-combat skill this was, its grade had to be extraordinary.
After rounding three small corners, a steel door that sealed the entire corridor came into view.
It was a hatch of the kind used on submarines or military installations. Chori took the wheel with practiced ease, spun it, and opened the door.
Clank—!
The space beyond the hatch was a child’s room of roughly five pyeong.
A bed, a desk, dolls and toys arranged in a cozy scatter—it looked like a one-room apartment for a single occupant.
Hina lay on the bed.
Her face was bloodless and pale, eyes closed in exhaustion.
Minel went to her at once.
Examining her carefully, he found the muscles of her forehead, between her brows, and at her temples twitching faintly.
“…”
Those were the exact muscles that seized with pain when the mind beheld a Mystery too great to endure.
As he had expected, she had collapsed after confronting the Shocker and being overwhelmed by its Mystery.
“She’ll come around if she rests a little longer. That’s what I was told.”
Told?
Who had said those words was obvious.
“Your mother told you that?”
“Yes.”
Until now he had believed the Shocker itself was Chori’s mother.
Now that the misunderstanding had been cleared, Chori’s mother remained an entirely separate variable.
Judging by the care she had given Hina, she did not seem malicious…
Yet the Miller Party’s insistence that Chori’s mother was a monster still nagged at him.
Just what kind of being was she?
What kind of existence could have raised Chori this long inside the Backrooms?
If she was a monster, they had already walked into a trap.
Even if she was human, safety was far from guaranteed.
“Could I meet her?”
Chori hesitated a moment, then nodded.
“She’s in the main room.”
“…”
Chori pointed to one wall.
Many of the drawings she had made over time hung there; behind them a hatch-style door could just be glimpsed.
“She shouldn’t be asleep yet, so it should be fine…”
As if steeling herself, Chori approached and opened the door.
Beyond it lay only darkness deep as a black hole.
“…”
A room without a single speck of light.
Chori stepped inside with familiar strides.
Minel looked down at Hina a moment longer, brushed the sweat from her forehead, and murmured,
“I hope your instinct is right.”
He followed Chori into the dark room. Even the hand held before his face was invisible.
Then a faint yellow light began to rise on one side.
The glow softly illuminated the upper body of a woman floating in the darkness.
She looked as though she sat high above and was leaning her torso far forward.
“Mom! You’re not asleep yet, right?”
Chori ran and threw her arms around the woman.
The woman did not react in the slightest, as if she were already dead.
Hair white.
Skin a bloodless gray.
Expression the peaceful stillness that comes just before death.
The woman’s upper body seemed barely able to hold its shape.
The only sign of life was the gentle yellow light that seeped from her flesh.
“Have you already fallen asleep? No, right?”
As Minel’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he made out a shape beneath the upper body.
Buried in shadow, its exact form was unclear, yet its size was unmistakable.
Something enormous and round, roughly five meters across.
Nothing that could ever be called a human lower body. From time to time it twitched in the dark.
“…”
A human torso fused with a monster’s lower half.
Should he regard it as a person, or as a monster?
If this monster had been deceiving Chori all along, then regardless of what Chori believed, he would have to eliminate it here and now.
Bringing Hina here—and luring Minel himself—could very well be part of its design.
Minel’s hands moved toward Silence and Noise.
The instant any variable appeared, he would use the weapons.
A monster capable of exploiting a child would not be ordinary.
He would give it no opening and finish it in a single blow.
Just then Chori rummaged in her clothes and produced a Blood Crystal.
After a long hesitation she spoke quietly.
“Mom said to wake her only once every three months… but I really wanted to introduce you, Minel… so once should be okay, right? Heeheehee.”
Minel saw it for the first time.
Chori smiling with pure, childlike delight.
Without thinking, he loosened his grip on the weapons.
If the monster had only abused and used her, that smile would never have existed.
Chori carefully brought the Blood Crystal to the woman’s lips.
Suddenly the mouth that had seemed utterly dead cracked wide open.
The dry corners of the lips tore, and the jaw dropped with a dull pop.
As if nothing were strange, Chori placed the Blood Crystal inside. Instantly the jaw began to work, chewing furiously.
Chomp chomp chomp.
Chomp chomp chomp.
It was… eating the Blood Crystal?
A doll wrapped in soft yellow light, mechanically working only its mouth.
Minel drew a deep breath and ran every possible scenario through his mind so he could respond to whatever came next.
Then, in an instant—
the woman’s eyes snapped open.
“Ah… Chori… you… woke me too soo… n… I can’t… take much more, Mom’s… Wait. What. Who are you!”
Fierce yellow light blazed in the woman’s once-feeble eyes, thick with killing intent.
Minel felt a chill race down his spine as if his back had frozen solid.
“Ugh.”
At the same moment a crushing pressure and headache slammed into him.
He clung to consciousness by a thread and gripped Silence and Noise.
The sudden pain of the Mystery was less severe than expected.
That was because Minel had already witnessed an unusually large number of the Backrooms’ Mysteries.
His mind, tempered by those Mysteries, could endure even the sight of a being that mixed human and monster.
He recovered his reason in a flash and prepared to swing his weapons at Chori’s mother.
At that exact moment—
Chori flung her arms around the woman.
“Mom! It’s okay! He’s my friend!”
The words had barely left her mouth when every trace of murder vanished from the woman’s eyes.
“A… friend?”
“Yeah! A friend!”
The woman’s face, which had returned to the empty expression of a doll, now wore a warm smile.
It was a human smile—something no monster could ever imitate.
“Our sweet Chori brought a friend? You’ve made a friend for the first time… Mom is so happy.”
“It’s not the first time! Hina unnie is my friend too.”
“Hina?”
“The unnie you and I rescued together! Don’t tell me—no way! You’re forgetting things again? You already forgot?”
The woman’s emotionless eyes blinked.
She gave a faint smile, slowly raised a hand, and stroked Chori’s hair.
“Of course I remember.”
“…”
“You did well. You did so well. I worried so much because you had no friends. You really did well, Chori.”
Chori laughed happily in her mother’s arms.
Minel simply watched Chori and Chori’s mother.
A monster and a human gazing at each other with loving eyes, holding each other close.
Even seeing it, the sight was hard to believe.
Then Chori’s mother asked in a gentle voice,
“What is your name?”
She strained to focus both eyes on Minel.
Yet the strength would not come; her pupils refused to lock properly.
“Minel.”
At that the woman smiled radiantly.
“Chori always wanted a friend her own age. At some point she grew too old for pictures and dolls to ease the loneliness. Thank you for becoming her friend.”
“N-no, Mom! I wasn’t lonely at all! The dolls you made and the pictures you drew were plenty!”
The woman managed to lift her drooping hand again and stroke Chori’s head.
She was so weak that it looked more as if Chori were moving her own head beneath the hand.
“It’s all right, Chori. Lately you couldn’t even see Mom often. Once every three months was too cruel, wasn’t it? Since I’m already awake, come here. I want to hold you tight.”
Chori’s face lit with a smile she could not hide, and she threw herself into her mother’s arms once more.
Yet the mother somehow looked strained.
To Minel the sight was painfully familiar.
When he was little—
his own mother, battling cancer, had been the same.