Same as Ever
"Same as ever," Yujin muttered, surveying his surroundings.
A silent corridor. The kind you might find in a hotel or resort. An ominous red carpet stretched underfoot, as if it had been dyed in blood.
"The smell's fucking awful too."
A stench stabbed at his nose like he'd wandered into a heap of poorly dried laundry. Yujin frowned and let out a sigh.
"Figured the second time around would at least be different."
It was the exact same place as the first round. He would have preferred somewhere easier, if he was being honest.
"Well, at least I can get my bearings from the start. That's something."
It hadn't been like this before. He had remembered nothing — as if he'd been struck with amnesia. Why he was in a place like this, who he was, even what time it was. Clearing the floor had taken a long time because of it. Across the entire Tower, floors that had taken longer were few and far between.
"Let's move."
Standing around any longer could get him into real trouble. Scratching his head, Yujin started walking without hesitation.
"Room 444, Room 444, Room 444."
Guest-room doors lined both sides of the corridor. He scanned their numbers with his eyes — every one of them composed solely of that most unlucky digit, four. Yujin ignored them and kept walking straight ahead.
The corridor stretched so far that even his vision, which had long since surpassed a human's, could not find its end. He walked for a long while across it.
Then, abruptly—
"Found it."
He stopped.
Room 4444. A room whose number had one extra digit clinging to the end — so small you would never notice it unless you looked carefully.
"First time around I missed this and wasted a ridiculous amount of time."
An unfamiliar space. An incomplete mind. A terrifying atmosphere. Spotting a detail this small under those conditions was no easy feat. Even Yujin had failed at it.
But now was different.
With a bored expression, he reached for the doorknob of Room 4444.
Click.
Locked.
"…Ah. Right."
Come to think of it, you needed a key to get inside. Walk the endless corridor, find the hidden clues, solve them one by one, and eventually you earned a key. Only then could you enter. It had been so long ago that he had momentarily forgotten.
"Tsk."
Yujin clicked his tongue. This was not something you finished in a day or two. You had to think in months at the absolute minimum. Compared to the time it had taken him to climb from the first floor to the fifth, it was an absurdly long stretch. He could hit level fifty hunting in that much time. Wasn't it far too wasteful to go through the same motions all over again?
So he decided on a different approach. The fastest, surest, and most confident method he had.
"I'll just smash it."
He shoved a hand into Chunbae's mouth.
"Kkyaaaaang—!"
With a small cry, a long tachi emerged into view.
Low-Grade Weapon
Not particularly satisfying — but it would have to serve as Yujin's hand for a while.
Huuuum—.
As he began to slowly circulate his mana, the Solar Blade [D] started to glow faintly. Of course, despite the name, its brightness did not even come close to the tip of the real sun's toe.
"This should be enough."
More than enough to punch through a single locked door on the sixth floor.
Heavy Strike [E]
It was a common, low-grade attack skill that most players possessed. But more important than a skill's rank was the ability of the one who cast it. And Yujin was, across both the present and the future, the greatest player there was.
The sealed door of Room 4444 exploded outward as if struck by artillery.
Hundreds of pieces. Thousands. Tens of thousands. Aside from a few larger fragments, it was shattered so completely that no trace remained.
"Not bad."
The power was solid enough that he could use it as his main weapon for the time being. It hadn't been this strong the first time around, he was fairly sure. Looking at the destruction that had bloomed from his own hand, Yujin wore a reasonably satisfied expression.
"Hmm."
Beyond the doorway of Room 4444, everything was black. It was a different quality of dark from a room whose lights simply weren't on — more like a vast hole had been punched through space itself.
Step.
Yujin set his foot toward that interior.
Silence settled over him. Even his hearing went muffled, as if he had submerged underwater. Vision swallowed by darkness, his five senses began to lose their function one by one.
It's fine.
Yujin did not panic. He kept walking toward what he believed was forward. At some point even his sense of touch was cut off; he could feel nothing from the feet that should have been planted on the ground.
First time around, this was pretty terrifying.
Abandoned alone in an unfamiliar place with every sense sealed off — anyone would feel fear. Yujin had been no exception. And he still wasn't. From deep in his chest, an ominous dread began to seep and crawl its way up.
It's fine.
This darkness did no harm. It was nothing more than a process to pass through. No different from a night that had no choice but to end soon. Yujin steadied his heart with that thought.
How long did he walk after that?
Just as he was starting to feel that he was almost there—
Whoooosh—!
Every sense that had vanished came flooding back.
"Urgh."
The first thing his restored vision caught was yellow wallpaper, fluorescent lights flickering at irregular intervals, and a damp carpet.
A space both deeply familiar and deeply strange.
"The Backrooms."
To end up walking back in here…
"Fucking hell."
Meanwhile, Park Ji-hoo was lost in a mountain swallowed by darkness.
An ordinary mountain, no different from the hillside behind any neighborhood. There was only one thing that set it apart: the eeriness. It was past cool and into cold — yin energy so strong that most shamans would have shuddered.
Park Ji-hoo was running hard through that mountain forest.
There's no path.
It had been about three hours, he guessed. Three hours since he had opened his eyes in this strange place.
Where the hell is this?
He had no prior memories at all. When he had come here, from where, or what he had been doing — nothing came to mind. The only memory remaining in Park Ji-hoo's head was his own name.
I have to get out.
He was anxious. It was closer to a premonition than a feeling. If he failed to leave the mountain, something bad was going to happen — that much felt certain. For Park Ji-hoo, who had spent his childhood reading the room to survive, hunches like that tended to land with uncomfortable accuracy.
So he ran without rest. It was a little strange that he never tired at all, but he didn't have the mental energy left to question it.
Not this way?
He was sure he had been heading downhill — and yet, whenever he checked his surroundings, he found himself higher than where he had started. The shrinking distance to the summit made that clear. But he couldn't exactly start running upward either, could he?
Park Ji-hoo bit down on his lip and sprinted for the downhill path again.
They said you should look for water at times like this.
Follow the direction the water flows and you'll find your way out of the mountains. He had heard something along those lines on MeTube once.
He worked his feet hard and opened his ears and nose wide, hoping to catch the sound of water or that distinctive fishy smell.
That was when it came.
"Trickle-trickle—."
He froze. A tiny sound. From the left? He focused his hearing.
"Trickle-trickle-trickle—."
When he strained his ears, it came through even more clearly. It was definitely the sound of flowing water.
Not far.
If he could hear it this well, the water had to be close. A hundred meters at most. At the speed he was running, even on a mountain path, it wouldn't take twenty seconds.
Judging that, Park Ji-hoo changed direction and ran toward the sound.
How long did he run after that?
"…What?"
There was no water. He had been running for over a minute, never mind twenty seconds, and still nothing. Something was wrong.
"Trickle-trickle—."
The sound of water kept coming. Clearer than before. But no matter how hard he ran toward it, it never got any closer. It felt as if the stream was pulling away by exactly as much as he advanced.
Does that make any sense?
He may have lost most of his memories, but common sense had not vanished with them. A stream that moved on its own? Nothing like that existed in the world. Even if it did, it would take years. It wasn't a living creature. It couldn't move on a second-by-second scale the way this one was.
Feeling a wrongness rising in his chest, Park Ji-hoo stopped walking for the moment. Then he opened not only his hearing but all his other senses as well.
…There's no water smell.
Park Ji-hoo's senses right now were keen beyond anything a normal human should possess. Even his sense of smell surpassed that of a dog or a cat. He could catch the fragrance of nameless wildflowers blooming far away, and that alone made it clear. And yet there was no fishy smell of water. Only the sound.
Park Ji-hoo swallowed dryly and looked around. Only the moonlight filtering through the branches lit the forest. The pale blue light was beautiful — and even more than that, it was deeply sinister.
"Trickle-trickle-trickle—."
The water sound came again. This time he didn't miss it; he looked straight that way, every nerve in his eyes focused.
Ssshk—.
Something entered Park Ji-hoo's vision.
A pure white shape. The moment it noticed his gaze, it slipped behind a large tree with startling speed.
Hah!
Seeing that, Park Ji-hoo drew a sharp breath before he could stop himself.
"Trickle-trickle—."
He was certain now. It was the mouth of that unknown white thing. That was where the water sound was coming from.
The instant the truth hit him, Park Ji-hoo spun around and ran.
It's not a person.
Not a beast either. Something that was not alive. Probably something that did not belong to this world.
Park Ji-hoo forced the thought out of his head and focused only on putting distance between himself and it.
But…
"trickletrickletrickletrickletrickletrickletrickletrickletricklehehehetrickletrickletricklehehehetrickletrickletrickletrickletrickletricklehehetrickletrickletrickletrickletrickletrickletrickle—"
It was following. The water sound. Faster than Park Ji-hoo could run. The sound that had been so faint kept growing. The laughter mixed in between sent chills crawling over his skin.
I can't get caught!
An instinctive certainty. If that thing caught him, nothing good would come of it.
But the anxiety tickling the back of his neck forced Park Ji-hoo to look over his shoulder whether he wanted to or not.
It was right behind him.
Long, trailing white fur. A build similar to a human's, but with grotesquely elongated arms and legs. And eyes that glowed red.
"Trickle-trickle—!"
Inside the mouth that was mimicking the sound of water, he could see razor-like teeth packed in without number. Red scraps of flesh were lodged between them. And with every breath it exhaled, a thick smell of blood came rolling out.
That thing, closing in at a terrifying speed as if it were flying through empty air — Park Ji-hoo had seen it once on MeTube.
"Jangsanbeom."
That was the name it went by.