6. The Back Alley Between Alleys
6. The Back Alley Between Alleys
6. The Back Alley Between Alleys
Twenty years ago.
A small Gate began to open in a certain alley.
That night was draped in an especially deep darkness.
One man discovered that Gate.
It was just large enough for a single person to pass through.
Humans are creatures of curiosity.
Back then, the word "Gate" had only just begun to appear in the world.
If a gap was wide enough to enter, it was his road to take.
What would happen if I went inside?
Unable to contain his curiosity, the man slipped through that small Gate.
What he saw before his eyes was a single zone.
Tall buildings stood, but it could not be called a city.
Low buildings stood, but neither could it be called the countryside.
A space where magnificent, glittering structures coexisted with houses like heaps of trash.
Witnessing that scene, the man realized in a flash.
This place would be the site of his new beginning.
And that he was the new king of this quiet, uninhabited land.
After that day.
As if afraid someone might take it from him, the man began to gather people who dealt in illegal business into that place.
Those who formed the foundations of things: all manner of weapons, drugs, and trades.
These were people who had grown deeply disillusioned after heroes appeared, so they were easily persuaded.
In this way, the man expanded his forces.
He built connections with powerful figures and accumulated wealth.
He constructed his own kingdom.
And now, in the present day.
The Back Alley, the kingdom he built, has been designated a zone that no one may touch.
That was the background on the Back Alley I knew from playing V. AGE.
"Hah. Never thought I'd end up in a place like this."
I let out a small sigh.
Those shadowy backstreets had always been far removed from my life.
Since my Stamina was 2, moving around after finishing classes was exhausting.
But if things went well in the Back Alley, I could build up my stats considerably before graduation.
Just put up with it this once. Later, I'd raise my Stamina so I wouldn't get tired even after walking for hours.
I forced my trembling legs to hold out and exited the subway station.
An hour on the subway.
Thirty minutes on the bus.
Thirty minutes on foot.
After enduring a full two-hour ordeal, I managed to find the path leading into the Back Alley.
"...I'm supposed to go in here?"
The routes to the Back Alley branched off in many directions, but there was only one Gate to enter by.
To keep people from getting confused, a staircase symbolizing the Back Alley was marked on the wall.
A path marked with that wall pattern.
The place was so shrouded in darkness that I could barely see ahead.
Still, after coming all this way, I couldn't turn back.
I stepped forward into that dark alleyway.
"Haah... Is this right?"
One step, then another.
At first, I'd feared the darkness out of pure assumption, but once I actually walked forward, my heart steadied again.
If I had set my Will stat below 6, I might not have even been able to approach this place.
Setting a high Will might have been the last genuinely smart thing I did.
Well done, you insane bastard with 2 Stamina and 8 Will.
Come to think of it, Yu Ha-yeon was afraid of the dark, wasn't she?
Walking along this lightless path, my thoughts turned to her.
Our childhood. Back when we were in elementary school.
The day of her birthday.
Yu Ha-yeon lost her parents in a fire.
A child standing alone in a funeral home, having lost her mother and father.
She had no relatives at all; even by blood, she was utterly alone.
My parents, who lived next door and had met her parents before, couldn't bear to just watch her like that.
"If you're okay with it... would you like to come with us?"
Even with all my memories mixed together, that scene was something I could never forget.
Yu Ha-yeon looking at my parents' outstretched hands with hollow eyes.
From her unfocused gaze, small tears fell, and she took my family's hand.
So, why does she hate the dark?
It was something that happened on Yu Ha-yeon's first night at our house.
In the evening, my parents, who had given her a spare room as a temporary measure, turned off the fluorescent light so she could sleep.
Yu Ha-yeon pulled the covers over her head without a word and supposedly fell asleep.
From my parents' perspective, that is.
At dawn, they went to check if she was sleeping well on her first night. When they lifted Yu Ha-yeon's blanket, they screamed.
'H-Honey!! Ha-yeon, she's...!'
I remember being jolted awake by that sound.
When I went to her room, what I saw was Yu Ha-yeon, deathly pale, her small body trembling violently.
Under the blanket, nobody had known, but from the moment the lights went out, she had been trapped in fear, unable even to scream, completely frozen.
Maybe because the fire started when they turned off the fluorescent lights to light the birthday cake candles and celebrate her birthday.
Yu Ha-yeon had developed a terror of darkness itself.
'...If it doesn't get dark, I don't have to turn the lights on.'
Even now, Yu Ha-yeon's room was surely brightly lit, even in the evening.
Even when she always annoyed me, that side of Yu Ha-yeon made my heart ache.
Lost in a flashback, surfacing from those remaining memories, I caught sight of a Gate glowing in the darkness.
"So this is a Gate."
Seeing in reality something I'd only ever seen in a game made the situation feel all the more real.
One more step and I'd be in the Back Alley, heading toward a world of darkness.
So I've finally arrived.
I grew troubled.
Because the Gate was far larger than I'd expected.
It had room for far more traffic than just a single person entering.
I'm 170 centimeters tall, so...
Five, maybe six times that?
The Gate's size was one piece of bad news.
Not that it's my problem...
But I still hate the thought of lots of people dying...
This was beyond what I could do anything about.
All I can do is pray.
"Why do you think the Gate is still here? You stupid bastards..."
The established rule was that a Gate only closes when its core is destroyed.
The larger the Gate, the greater the power its core held—meaning its danger level rose accordingly.
A monster that had been growing for twenty years.
My head was starting to hurt, so I decided to stop thinking about it.
Let me just take care of my own business.
Who am I to be worrying about anyone else?
I slipped into the Gate.
***
The moment I entered the Back Alley Gate, an endless sea of staircases appeared before my eyes.
The higher you climbed, the more the economic levels diverged; the lower you went, the more slums stretched out.
The Back Alley, ruled by the logic of money and power.
Right. This place was always this rotten.
I'll just do what I came for and get out fast.
To make it back to school, I had to catch the last train, so I hurriedly began climbing the stairs.
That's a hell of a lot of stairs, seriously...
What if I collapse and get trafficked?
That might actually happen.
Dragging my quaking legs along, I managed to reach the floor I wanted.
B Block, located in the middle of the Back Alley.
I pulled my hood down even further and entered the alleyway.
Seriously, I'm scared to death here.
As I climbed the stairs, most of the people I saw off to the side were completely out of their minds.
Men with unfocused eyes, drugged out of their heads.
A woman with a crazed look waggling her finger at me, beckoning me over.
The people I'd seen on the lower floors hadn't ended up here by choice.
You might come in of your own free will, but leaving is another matter entirely.
The Overseers forcibly addict anyone who comes here out of sheer curiosity—or anyone dragged here by force.
Since the Gate was in a sparsely populated area, manpower was precious.
And once you're addicted, they can make you do anything they want.
I couldn't afford to let my guard down for a single second.
God, I want to go home.
I quickened my pace toward the shop whose location I remembered from the game.
Step.
I passed by countless bars.
Step.
I passed by an illegal weapons shop.
Step.
I passed by the entertainment district.
Just a little further to go.
Not much left.
two people emerged from the shop ahead of me.
"So I'm telling you, I wrecked that guy."
"Bullshit. Not with that face of yours, you didn't."
"Heh, by now he's probably in a dumpster. Though I guess he's too dead to even call a 'guy' anymore, right?"
Bastards cackling among themselves about killing someone or whatever.
On their name tags hung the insignia of the Back Alley Overseers.
Ah. This is a bust.
Their faces flushed red with drink, they lifted their heads and looked at me.
"Huh? Ain't you a new face?"
"...Hey, you in the hoodie up ahead. Come here."
If I'd just gotten a little further... What a shame.
After grasping the situation, I spun around and bolted.
"Hey, you! Stop right there!"
"You'll kill me if you catch me, so why the hell would I stop?!"
That wasn't just a figure of speech—if they caught me, they really would kill me.
Defying the Overseers was considered rebellion against the higher-ups, so I wrung every last drop of my Stamina dry and ran.
Right turn.
Then left.
The Back Alley's buildings and paths twisted like a maze.
For someone on the run, that was actually a good thing.
If I were a normal person, that is.
I should've raised my Stamina just a little more...
All the sharp turns meant the stamina drain was at its absolute worst.
Behind me, the sound of footsteps kept drawing closer.
I was cornered in a life-or-death crisis.
"Shit."
A dead end.
There was nowhere left to run.
In the middle of this chaos, my ears were filled with the sounds of hurried footsteps closing in.
I'm going to die like this?
Seriously?
The people I read about in novels all lived happily ever after, didn't they?
I couldn't just blame fate; I knew this was mostly my fault for taking such a huge risk.
Step. Step.
The sound of their footsteps was slowly tightening around my throat.
Was there any way out of this?
Beg Yu Ha-yeon to save me?
Should I call her right now?
'H-Help me! Yu Ha-yeon...!'
As if that would work.
I'd die long before she could get here.
There has to be another way...
I looked around. On the ground lay small shards of glass and broken bricks.
Wait, a brick?
Got it.
I'll hide around the corner of this turn and smash the first one's head in when they come around.
As for the other one...
I'll think about that when the time comes.
What matters is taking at least one of them out.
It's a stopgap, but it's the best way to raise my survival odds.
Step. Step.
The quiet footsteps told me someone was nearing my position.
Just a little, a little closer.
Close enough that they won't have time to react...
The moment the footsteps sounded right next to me and I saw a human shape around the corner—
I swung the brick with all my strength toward the person's head.
Thwack!
But instead of a dull impact, what I heard was the sound of flesh meeting flesh.
From my arm, still gripping the brick, I felt the distinct sensation of another person's touch.
Wh-Who the hell is this?
"My, what could this possibly be, attacking without warning...?"
"Who..."
The figure who appeared from the alley and blocked my attack was someone I'd never seen before.
Not one of the men chasing me, but a woman with long, white hair.
Her eyes, as red as blood, were fixed on me.
"I was about to ask you the same thing. Who might you be?"
She spoke as she ran her tongue over her crimson lips, her eyes utterly captivating.
Why is she looking at me like that?
Her eyes held a kind of indescribable menace.