Exchange (1)
“Where are you going?”
“Just checking the Banquet Hall.”
“You just went over there and handled things, didn’t you?”
“I’ve got stuff to do, too... Nango, you study up with Jemmin on how to make dried food. Anything in the Banquet Hall that can be dried, dry it out so we can carry it around.”
“Uh... oh, and this just turned normal again.”
Nango held up a sandwich with one bite missing.
“You were saying it felt like your stomach was going to burst open?”
“I thought maybe it could work as a digestive aid, the way food used to make you hungry... but I just couldn’t force myself to eat it.”
So the food had gone back to normal, at least.
Having a reliable food stockpile was a welcome gain.
In the Backrooms, the weird stuff was terrifying, sure, but loneliness and hunger were far more painful. Those basic needs came first.
“So where’d the cart go?”
“Huh? When did it disappear... maybe it vanished when dinner service ended?”
“You were standing right next to it and didn’t notice? Guess we’ll have to wait until lunch then. Might as well see if the janitor refills, too.”
“Phew... I thought you were leaving me behind.”
The Banquet Hall’s no-clipping seems to run on a schedule.
Still, what was I supposed to do with this coward?
Now that I had intangibility too, even if all I had was Black Moon, I should’ve been able to wipe the floor with the janitor. And yet he was still acting like that.
Honestly, he’d be better off giving it to me.
There was no way this wasn’t a pearl necklace on a pig.
* * *
“Then I’m off. You wrote down every no-clip point from the mall to the Banquet Hall, right?”
“Yeah. If anything comes up, I’ll go to the Banquet Hall.”
“Don’t waste those energy bars as snacks. Save anything portable if you can. You’ll need it when we enter other Backrooms.”
“I said I got it. Do I look like a pig to you?”
After what I’d seen yesterday, I probably shouldn’t answer yes.
Anyway, in the cleared School, the janitor and the exams didn’t come back anymore.
Not even the students were showing up for class, so maybe the School’s reputation had taken a turn for the worse.
And the dagger.
▶ Hungry Fang Dagger (B): Feast
The dagger I’d carefully chipped and shaped from the surrounding debris was less a sword than a conical spike specialized for stabbing.
On top of that, it had a bizarre function I couldn’t make sense of.
Eat, huh? What, was I supposed to feed it meals like some kind of pet sword?
I’d brought rice over just in case, but thankfully, that didn’t seem to be the case.
Anyway, the dagger I made while waiting for lunch ended up being three in total.
I gave one to Nango just in case and hung the other two from my belt.
Then I packed the remaining two teeth into my bag.
“Why are you bringing that too? I thought you were only going for a minute.”
“I need to check whether the Agui shows up, and if the no-clip passage closes while I’m gone, this can keep me busy.”
“You’re carrying around monster teeth because you’re bored... this is making me dizzy.”
“Each and every one of these is a valuable piece of gear. Anyway, I’m going. Surf the gallery or whatever and get some maintenance done.”
“Yes, yes. Off with you.”
After giving Nango one more shove, I returned to the Banquet Hall.
The food still gave off that warm, delicious smell.
The sandwich I’d taken was refilled, too.
“Hahhh, this broth is killer.”
After I finished a bowl of gukbap, the other dishes beside it caught my eye. That looked delicious, and so did that one.
Was this a feature of the Banquet Hall Backroom?
Back in the School, the sandwich had returned to being ordinary food, but here, even after I’d emptied a bowl of gukbap, I didn’t feel full.
Could the Agui be getting refilled too?
- Current Area: Banquet Hall
- Explored Paths: School, ■■
Seeing that the lantern was functioning normally, that didn’t seem to be the case.
This must be a property of the space. Fake hunger.
It was dangerous enough even without the Agui.
At this rate, if I kept eating, I might actually make “bursting my stomach and dying” come true.
Maybe I really did need to put up a warning for anyone who came in here. Something to keep people from shoveling food into their mouths without thinking.
I took out the pen I’d brought and walked over to the wall.
All right, what should I write?
1. This is the Backrooms. Don’t panic. Stay calm.
2. Don’t eat as much as possible. Just endure it.
3. If you do eat, you’ll probably get hungry, but it’s fake hunger, so don’t touch anything else. It only gets worse.
4. If you wait long enough, someone in a school uniform will come get you.
That should do it.
I didn’t write down the no-clipping method.
Even when you hand someone an instruction manual, some people still manage to do things wrong, so I didn’t want them recklessly blundering off and getting flung somewhere worse.
And besides, Nango would be coming by every day to bring supplies anyway.
“The broken teeth are still here, too.”
They looked like they’d be decent as bait.
I picked out the ones a little smaller than my fist and stuffed them into my pocket.
There were also those spiderweb-like things, and for testing reactions by throwing them, this kind of debris seemed fine too.
Where did this path lead?
The corridor had been restored, except for the shattered teeth.
Following the light, I kept walking until I reached the end of the hall, where a bathroom sign hung over a row of fixtures already installed there: a urinal, a sink, and a toilet.
Who installs a bathroom like this?
I’m short on gear... maybe I should go one more place.
Originally, I’d planned to stock up on food and rest a bit before moving on, but after all that effort, what I’d gotten was an awkward little self-defense dagger, which left me wanting.
For some reason, it felt like if I went somewhere else, something better would turn up.
The feeling of a jackpot.
That anticipation rose in me.
Besides, I already had Vortex, Black Moon, and a dagger. I was basically a weapon master by now.
Weird thing? Just say how you want to be cut apart.
- Nango, I’m going out to buy some supplies
In case I didn’t come back right away, I left a note and pressed the stopper on the sink the lantern was pointing at.
As I kept pressing the stopper, which normally no one would ever bother with, the world suddenly turned pure white.
“...Tch. Something smells weird.”
A modern bathroom.
But the familiar smell curling around my nose was unpleasant.
- Current Area: Dental Clinic
- T■■■■ ■ : ■■ic, ■■■ ■■■
“Aw, come on... of course. It was the smell of a hospital. A dental clinic, no less.”
No one liked the dentist.
And this was the Backrooms, of all places...
I didn’t even want to think about what kind of monster would live in a dental clinic.
It wasn’t going to be some bizarre phenomenon about treating teeth, was it?
“Might as well go out and see.”
When I opened the bathroom door, a perfectly ordinary, unlit dental clinic appeared before me.
No, not ordinary.
Something came flying at me from the reception desk.
A fairy...?
The skeletal-looking arms and legs were a little grotesque for that, and its body was plain and featureless.
On the head, which was as big as the rest of its body, there was only a huge mouth. No eyes. No nose.
Was this bastard really coming at me head-on?
“Kiek-!”
Black Moon flashed darkly, and the fairy split cleanly in two and dropped to the floor.
Weirdly enough, the blood was white.
That was more anticlimactic than I expected. Had I blown it again?
I poked at the fairy, but there was no sign it was made of material or anything useful.
At best, it was about the size of an outstretched hand, so even if it did yield material, I’d need hundreds of them to make anything.
Then the dead fairy twitched, and the severed cross section stitched itself back together like dough.
It regenerates?
The revived thing came flying at me again, just as before, without any change in behavior.
Cut it again, and it repeated the same thing.
Cutting something that kept flying straight at me at the same speed, without even reacting to the attack, got old fast, so this time I put Black Moon away and watched it while holding the dagger.
What was it trying to do, coming at me so slowly?
If it was planning to attack, I was ready to slash it the moment it got close.
Just then, the fairy stretched out toward me and tugged on my clothes.
Was it telling me to follow?
Curious what this monster was even trying to do, I let it lead me along.
What the hell, I thought it was dragging me off somewhere shady, but it just sat me on a sofa.
The fairy that brought me there opened its mouth wide, as if delighted, and inside were rows upon rows of tiny but sharp teeth.
Monsters were monsters, all right.
But what was it asking for with both hands spread out like that?
The thing kept buzzing around in front of me, almost as if it were a guide demanding payment for its service.
I didn’t have any money.
And I wasn’t about to hand over my weapons.
Ah. Maybe I should give it this.
I plucked one shard of Agui tooth from my pocket and held it out. The fairy spun around wildly, squeaking excitedly before flying off.
The one that zipped over to the reception desk clutched the tooth shard to its chest and started gnawing on it with that enormous mouth.
What the hell was that?
It kept coming back even when I killed it, and it didn’t seem to do any harm.
And given how much it liked teeth, maybe it really was a tooth fairy?
A spirit from folk tales that traded children’s lost teeth for new ones.
Of course, it didn’t look like that at all, but the sight of it fluttering harmlessly around while gnawing on teeth was, in its own way, kind of cute.
“Tasty?”
“Kiek?”
“Kiek-kiek!”
“Kiek!”
At the single question of whether it tasted good, more tooth fairies suddenly popped out from somewhere.
What, why were they so excited?
As the fairies swarmed around me, I scattered the shards I’d gathered in my pocket.
Only after each tooth fairy had grabbed one shard of its own did they calm down and sit there quietly, gnawing away.
Were they looking at my teeth or something?
I’d better keep my mouth shut.
Just imagining those things clinging to my face and chewing on me made my skin crawl.
Monsters really weren’t something to get involved with.
I was the idiot for relaxing even for a second.
Just as I resolved to cut down however many there were, the first fairy that had taken the tooth approached carrying a box.
“......?”
“Kiek, ki-kiek!”
The thing set the box on my lap and flew off.
What, was this a thank-you gift for the teeth?
I untied the ribbon on the tiny box, and inside was a perfectly ordinary Zippo lighter.
A present... kind of small.
No, wait. Could this be an item too?
After all, that movie ticket had once saved my life.
I flicked the lighter once, but it only produced a normal flame. Nothing special about it.
A little later came the gift barrage from the fairies that had finished devouring the teeth.
From sunscreen to a tiny key to a hand mirror, all sorts of things came flying out.
And then a shadow fell over us all at once.
“Kiek. Kiek-kiek-kiek. Kiek-”
A tooth fairy the size of a person, dressed in a nurse’s uniform for all the world like it belonged there, was gesturing toward the examination room in a sight so disgusting it was almost impressive.
