The Living Moon
The mayor went on to explain a few more things.
Houses were distributed one per person by default, though living together was perfectly fine if they preferred. To claim a new house, all they had to do was pick any vacant one. Every home came with a telephone, and no matter which number they dialed, the call would connect straight to the mayor's residence. From there, they could request whatever supplies they needed and receive them before the day was out. The standard rations were water and food — and, he added, tea leaves as well.
Once the briefing was finished, Minel's party stepped outside with Steno. She pulled a car from her inventory and said,
"The houses near City Hall are almost all taken. That's why ours is a bit farther out. If you want a new place, you'll have to look even farther than we did."
But Minel had no interest in housing. Finding the entrance to the 5th Floor was his only goal.
"Can you get a car as a ration, too?"
Steno shook her head.
"No."
"Then how?"
She clicked her tongue and let out a short sigh.
"On the top floor, the rule is you don't ask about each other's pasts. What good would knowing do you anyway?"
"Just tell me how to get a car."
"There is no way."
Steno cut him off flatly, arms crossed. One look at her face made it clear that pressing further would turn into a fight.
What would happen if a fight broke out in this peaceful place? Wouldn't that reveal the true face of the 4th Floor?
Minel's hand drifted slowly toward Silence and Noise — but Hina noticed and stepped in front of him at once.
"Thank you for everything so far, Miss Steno."
Steno didn't return the greeting. She simply watched Hina in silence. Then she uncrossed her arms, lowered her gaze to the ground, and spoke in a heavy voice.
"If you ever find it… tell me, too…"
"Steno?"
Seus's voice came from behind them. Leaning against the doorway, he regarded Steno with a gentle smile and warm eyes. Her gaze wavered. She bowed her head and said quietly,
"I'll be going now."
"Go on, then."
As if yielding to something unseen, Steno climbed into the car, and it soon disappeared into the distance. When Minel turned back, Seus was still smiling.
"If you ever find the wildness hard to bear, come find me. I'll show you a way."
Minel started to reply, but Seus had already gone back inside. The door shut with a solid thud, and Hina immediately turned to him.
"What were you doing?"
"Trying to see the underside of the 4th Floor."
"…"
"Thanks to you, I confirmed something useful."
Chori's eyes went wide.
"What was it?"
"Let's just go."
Minel started walking, and Hina and Chori fell in behind him. Once they were well clear of City Hall, Hina spoke up.
"Steno clearly wanted to escape earlier. That's what you mean, right?"
"And Seus stopped her from saying it."
Chori, listening from the side, tilted her head.
"Why would Steno unnie want to go to the 5th Floor? She said this place was like heaven."
"That's exactly what makes it suspicious. She swore it was better than reality, and yet…"
Chori shook her head, unable to understand.
"But it really is nice here… Why would anyone want to leave? There's a sky like Mom used to talk about, you can walk on dirt, everything's wide open so it feels so free… and there aren't even any monsters!"
She had grown up on the 2nd Floor of the Backrooms — endless corridors stretching forever. To Chori, the 4th Floor was nothing short of a dream. Her voice brightened again.
"Can't we just live here? Just the three of us — Minel oppa, Hina unnie, and me! No monsters, nothing dangerous, we could live in peace forever!"
"…"
"…"
Minel and Hina said nothing. Their goal was the 7th Floor, and then a return to reality. When that day came, they would have to part ways with Chori. Born in the Backrooms, this place was her reality — they couldn't take her with them.
When no answer came, Chori's expression slowly darkened. Minel glanced at her, then spoke to Hina.
"We need to check first."
"Check what…?"
"Whether the 4th Floor is actually safe."
Hina understood his meaning at once. To the two of them, the 4th Floor was nothing more than a path to pass through. Safe or dangerous, they would head for the 5th Floor either way. The only reason Minel bothered to say it was to determine whether this was a place where Chori could live safely going forward.
"Shall we start by meeting the people nearby? It would help to know if anyone's searched for the 5th Floor entrance, and how far they got. And if we can get a car while we're at it, so much the better. Talking to them should also tell us whether this place is truly safe."
"Good."
After that, the three of them made their way toward the houses near City Hall. The residents, seeing Minel's party for the first time, immediately bristled with wariness. Their eyes were sharp, and they seemed uncomfortable even having strangers nearby. Disturbed by the reaction, Minel nearly drew a weapon.
"Minel, let me try talking to them."
Hina stepped ahead quickly and offered a gentle greeting. All she received in return was cold silence. Only when she produced her identification did some of the tension ease — though the distrust never fully left their faces.
It wasn't until the eighth house that they finally managed to start a conversation.
"You lot… came up from the 3rd Floor recently, didn't you?"
"That's right."
At Hina's brief reply, the old man finally nodded, slow and deliberate. The wariness on his face remained unchanged.
"We're looking for the entrance to the 5th Floor."
Minel broached the subject carefully, but no answer came right away. The old man hesitated, then muttered in a low voice,
"I searched for it until I grew this old. Did no good. Eventually I stopped even leaving the house."
Mayor Seus had framed it as people staying because they loved this place too much to leave. But the old man didn't sound content. He sounded like someone who had simply given up.
The next house was no different. Sharp eyes watched them through the windows before the door even opened, and only after they showed their identification did it finally unlock. Even then, the gazes that followed them stayed cold.
"This is the top floor. There's no path going any higher."
"I tried looking for quite a while at first, too, but it was all for nothing, I suppose."
"Everyone got tired of it. Nobody even brings it up anymore."
The answers were all similar, but the feelings behind them were nothing like the "comfortable settlement" the mayor had described. It was resignation dressed up with a smile — or the sense of being blocked by some invisible wall.
Chori just blinked, wide-eyed, unable to make sense of the atmosphere. Minel felt a heavy suspicion settle deep in his chest.
Something was wrong. Behind the peace on the surface lay a shadow he couldn't explain. House by house, the more he listened, the more certain he became. Some inexplicable force seemed to be binding these people here. And that fact only made the question of whether Chori could live here safely weigh heavier still.
But there was no clear lead.
"The mayor said they distribute tea leaves, too, didn't he?"
Hina's question came from behind him. When Minel turned, her brow was furrowed as if she'd been turning it over for a long time.
"Yeah. Why?"
"Think about everyone we talked to. Every single one of them was drinking tea. Holding a cup, or setting one nearby, or brewing it inside."
Drinking tea wasn't strange in itself. But every single person doing it — that was definitely strange.
"You're right."
"Even when Miss Steno first served us tea, something felt off. I had this instinctive aversion to it, but she and Riale didn't seem to have any ill intent at all. So…"
"That made it even stranger?"
Hina nodded, then lifted her head to look at Minel.
"Of course, you can't compare them to the electricity-addicted cultists we saw on the 3rd Floor. Everyone here can hold a normal conversation, and there's no wildness showing in their eyes. But the fact that every person we meet is drinking tea is definitely strange."
Her reasoning was sound. If they wanted to unravel the secret of the 4th Floor, those tea leaves felt like an important key. Isil had said they weren't toxic, but the Backrooms Field Guide might yield different information. And it didn't seem likely they'd get anything new from the people they met going forward.
"Let's settle in any house for now and request a tea leaf ration. Preferably the one closest to where Steno lives."
After that, they stopped seeking out more residents and walked straight in the direction of Steno's home. No matter how far they got from City Hall, the same scenery repeated itself. After about two hours of walking, they finally found an empty house.
"How many houses have we passed so far?"
"Somewhere between twenty and thirty."
Minel ran the numbers quickly in his head. Assuming people preferred to live near City Hall, treating the city as roughly circular, and factoring in the spacing between houses…
"Around three thousand houses…"
If that many people had all tried and failed to find the entrance to the 5th Floor, then at the very least it wasn't anywhere near here. From now on, they'd need to borrow Steno's car just to cover ground — which was why they'd headed toward her house in the first place.
The moment they stepped into the empty house, Chori's eyes lit up. She dashed from room to room, opening doors, wiping windows, and dragging wooden chairs together to serve as a bed, thoroughly delighted.
"It's our house! Our house!"
"We should let the mayor know we've settled in."
Hina took the telephone from above the stove and connected to City Hall. She reported their situation in a calm voice, and a reply that sounded almost relieved came back through the receiver.
"The tea leaves will arrive tomorrow. I ordered water and food as well, so we don't raise suspicion."
"Good work. We'll sleep here tonight."
Time passed, and a quiet darkness settled over the house. The sun's light gradually faded, and at some point it simply became the moon. Chori dozed off on the sofa with a happy face, rubbing her sleepy eyes, and Hina collapsed beside her — but Minel couldn't sleep at all.
He sat by the window, watching the silver shadows the moonlight cast across the furniture.
The 3rd Floor had fanatics enslaved by electricity. The 4th Floor seems calmer, but everyone drinks tea to a strange degree. Completely different, and yet somehow the two images overlap…
He stared at the moon for a long while. Then his eyes slowly narrowed.
"What is that?"
For an instant, the moon's surface seemed to ripple, its patterns twisting in a subtle optical illusion. At first he blamed eye strain — but the longer he watched, the more certain he became.
That moon.
It was a living creature.