The Shopping Mall (2)
“If someone greets you, you greet them back, you bitch!”
Jesus, that startled the hell out of me.
I whipped the hammer at the mannequin head that had turned its neck to stare at me on reflex. It only cracked a little. The head didn’t come off.
The ones before had shattered at this level of force...
Had they gotten tougher?
“...I’m screwed.”
The nine mannequins left were all in the middle of turning away from their original positions.
If the crying angel rumor was right, then thankfully they didn’t move while you were looking at them, but now came the real problem.
I kept my eyes open as much as I could, blinking as fast as possible without ever fully closing them, and even then they twitched in tiny increments.
Bang-!
Yep. Their durability really had gone up.
Did their whole nature change the moment they became aberrations?
Smashing these things with a hammer while keeping all of them in view was way harder than I’d expected.
They were already tough, and with no clear point of impact, I couldn’t put my strength into the hits properly.
Unless my eyeballs were as loose as a chameleon’s, I had to spend everything I had just to break one, which meant there were always moments when my vision slipped...
Fine. Let’s see whether I can break you faster than you can move.
At this point, it was all or nothing.
More than anything, my eyes felt like they were about to tear open!
Even alternating which eye I used felt like it was giving my face cramps, and the moment I accidentally shut both for a fraction of a second, the mannequins all flinched at once!
I couldn’t keep this crap up forever, so I decided to go with hit-and-run tactics.
I gripped the hammer with both hands and drew it back until it touched my back.
Cleanup hitter Kim Daejang.
Right now, I imagined myself at bat in the bottom of the ninth, two outs, bases loaded, down 1 to 9, and tightened my grip on the handle.
If I messed up, I was dead to those twitching freaks over there.
“Huuup-!”
I shifted my gaze and locked onto the mannequin right in front of me.
Heavy footsteps rang out immediately, but I only had one target.
I took the white head for the ball and brought the hammer down with everything I had.
Crack!
“Aaaand it’s a hit!”
As the hammer smashed the head apart, the mannequin collapsed.
I hurriedly backed away and brought another mannequin into view.
Shit, they were fast.
I’d only looked away for a moment, and they’d already closed the distance by three steps.
If I kept the spacing under control, I might be able to handle them one by one.
The ones in the back were bunched together, though.
“Hit, hit!”
By the time I took down two more, my back hit the wall.
The remaining six were practically glued together. The second I aimed for one, I felt like the others would grab me in return.
Okay. Calm down.
I was getting better at smashing them little by little, and as long as I kept looking at them, they couldn’t move. That gave me the advantage.
Let’s edge along the wall on my backside.
The back of those tempting heads was basically begging me to swing, but if I got caught there, I was done for.
Thinking about how one of them had turned its neck a full 180 degrees, I figured their arms might bend backward too and grab me.
Safety first. One at a time.
“Isn’t it kind of gloomy in here? Wanna go somewhere nicer with me?”
I grabbed the collar of the mannequin at the very back and yanked it toward me.
Then I widened the distance from the others just enough and went into a full swing.
The shattered head flew off into the distance.
“What, you’re just flattering the lighting? Shut up.”
I took one out, then dragged another in.
“Unnie, those guys over there want to join up. What do you think? You can just say hi and leave!”
“Causing a scene here is not advisable. Please step outside first.”
“You little tramp, you never come home and just go dancing all day! And what is that outfit? Kim Ye-eun, this won’t do. Come out right now!”
Maybe it was the red lighting, or maybe the whole situation had just gone completely off the rails.
I chewed through them one by one while spouting nonsense.
At last, only the final one remained!
I returned to my solemn batting stance and raised the hammer again.
“Kim Daejang, number four hitter, blazing his way back from a 9-to-9 tie! Can he make history tonight?”
The last mannequin must’ve tripped while coming over, because it was lying there in a crawling pose with its head positioned perfectly.
A blazing fastball coming straight for the strike zone!
With the crowd roaring, I swung without hesitation and smacked the ball!
KWAANG-!
I did a bat flip, or rather a hammer flip, at the head as it flew out of the store with its face shattered.
“Haa, haa... I tore through them. Huff... I feel like I’m gonna die...”
I’d somehow managed to take care of them all, but swinging a heavy hammer at full power was exhausting as hell.
My eyes felt like they were about to pop out, and my arms already felt like they had.
I sat down, opening and closing my trembling fingers.
Thank God their weak point was the head.
If they’d still moved even after losing their heads, that would’ve been horrifying.
“There aren’t any more, right?”
I checked around just in case, but the shopping mall was quiet.
Good. Nothing else had popped out from outside or anywhere in here.
Still, resting with my eyes closed under this red light felt wrong, so I went back over to the cash register terminal.
They were really going at it.
I proudly dropped a victory report into the thread about whether I was alive or dead.
That scared the crap out of me.
It really was the crying angel thing.
Out of nowhere, all the mannequins started turning their necks at once, fuck.
Seems like they turn into aberrations during closing time?
Everyone seemed pretty skeptical.
But as I kept chatting while making sure to look around from time to time, they finally seemed to buy it a little.
The red lighting still bled out that grotesque glow, but talking to people made everything feel a lot better.
I was tired, but there was no way I could sleep.
If I nodded off, I might wake up as a mannequin.
Yeah, okay. I had it pretty easy.
For Namgogoedam, it was a nightmare where he had to dodge aberrations at night and study during the day.
Come to think of it, I’d only been able to take the mannequins down because they couldn’t move.
If they’d kept moving, I would’ve been done for before I could do anything.
...
Right, there was that... no-clip.
It referred to phenomena where, under certain conditions or in certain locations, you slipped outside the laws of physics and got transported into a Backrooms space like this.
In game terms, it was like clipping into the terrain or getting warped somewhere and trapped.
If you thought about it the other way around, that no-clip might lead to an exit. But more often than not, it seemed to lead to another Backrooms level instead.
A different set of rules. A different kind of aberration. A place where you had to adapt all over again.
On top of that, this gallery could only be accessed through an electronic device, so if you got unlucky and ended up somewhere remote, you’d be completely alone.
A strange Backrooms without the gallery? That’s horrifying.
More than advice, the gallery was precious because it meant I wasn’t alone. It meant I could talk to someone.
Without it, I might go insane pretty fast.
Jemmin really did know a lot.
If it weren’t for his advice, I would’ve been in real trouble right from the start after cutting down half of them.
Hoo... I still didn’t really know what was what.
With Namgogoedam gone somewhere along the way and a few others saying they were going to sleep, the gallery got quiet fast.
...I’m sleepy.
Now that the tension had eased and the conversation had gone spotty, drowsiness came crashing down on me.
No good.
I needed to do something to shake off the sleep.
What a mess. Maybe I should clean up the pieces a bit.
The mannequins with no heads were scattered all over the floor.
If any more showed up, they’d probably get in the way, so I decided to pile them up in one place.
There was an arm near my feet.
I picked up the one that had come off when I broke its head and shoulder earlier.
At that moment, a tiny status window appeared.
Reinforced Plastic (E)
...Huh? Material?