Exploring the Unknown

Do you know what the unknown is?

Simply put, it's what we don't know. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Put it in harder terms, and it's still just what we don't know—only because it hasn't been discovered yet. Places, concepts, things like that.

And I am obsessed with digging into that unknown.

The world is full of mysterious places. Especially the unexplored regions no human has ever set foot in. The deep sea down there, caves in the mountains or deep beneath the earth—places where even coming back out is a struggle once you enter.

I'm a man addicted to the thrill of pushing through those dangerous, unexplored regions. An ordinary office worker by day, but every year when the long vacation came around, I'd risk my life exploring places like these for fun. Call me a wilderness exploration specialist, if you like.

Thrill? Dopamine?

No. It's nothing like that.

I'm just curious. I'm a man obsessed with finding things out.

"Heh heh hee~"

At home, I happily packed my flashlight, rope, pickaxe, oxygen tank and connecting mask, food and water—and even a ball of homemade red yarn to mark my way back.

Today's target was a cave in Canada I'd been gearing up for over several months.

After making some progress from the cave entrance, I squeezed through a narrow crevice—and there, planted in front of me, stood a sign that sent a faint chill down my spine.

But was I going to be scared by something like this? No. If anything, I could feel the corners of my mouth curling up in delight on both sides.

Ah, do you know what this is? It's a sieve that filters out the cowards.

A sign like this would normally come with warnings of fines or penalties for violation, but usually there's nothing of the sort. That's because a fair number of the people who ignore it never come back. In other words: your life is your own responsibility.

But for me—someone who has spent years exploring the unknown, descending into deep ocean trenches and the uncharted depths of caves like this one?

If anything, it read like a welcome statement for professionals.

Ah, yes. It was an arrogant thought, but I figured a man like me could fairly be called an expert of the unknown.

Of course, even with a sign like this, the route up to a certain point was already known. Which meant the place I was heading for was one that didn't even appear on this cave's map—the kind you could find if you looked it up.

Exploring a place no one knows, and bringing it to light. That's the whole point.

I tied the red yarn firmly near the entrance and slowly stepped into the pitch-black darkness. My heart pounded at the thought of the unknown, the unexplored. How exhilarating is the unknown!

If maps had navigation, it would probably look like driving down a road that hadn't been updated yet—like punching straight through terrain that wasn't a road at all.

Relying on the single beam of my flashlight, I pressed on for a long while—through narrow passages, wide chambers, winding corridors.

This unknown is a remarkable thing. It differs from ignorance by a single letter, and yet what appears before you isn't merely what you don't know—it's what you couldn't even have imagined.

"Oh. A glow-in-the-dark dinosaur...!"

...or rather, a glow-in-the-dark salamander that you might call the descendant of a descendant of one.

Tap tap tap—

"A moving mushroom!"

...or running into a mushroom that had grown legs and was wandering around spewing spores.

For instance,

"Ugh, aaagh?!"

...thinking I'd misstepped, only to find my ankle snagged on what felt like the arm of a corpse, sending me tumbling into a narrow crevice. Then rolling head over heels down a slope, falling this way and that.

"Tsk. That hurts..."

But handling mishaps of this level with ease—that's what makes me a veteran of the unknown, doesn't it?

Naturally, I'd been unspooling the yarn the whole way so I could find my way back and—

"Huh?"

It was snapped. Apparently it had caught on a sharp rock during one of my tumbles.

Deep inside a pitch-black cave, where the only light was a small flashlight and my phone, standing before countless branching tunnels with no way of knowing which direction I'd rolled in from.

"...I'm screwed."

In that instant, despair took over my mind. The terror and hopelessness of realizing I might die alone in a place no one knew about.

I hadn't wanted to die alone in a place like this. But what if I pressed forward? Maybe I could still find my way back.

I headed up a slope I figured I could climb, picking a direction at random. And just as I was thinking the steady upward climb must be the way back—

Kirrik, kirrik!

A chilling, laughter-like sound that made my whole body shudder stopped me mid-step.

Kirrik!

With trembling hands, I slowly raised my flashlight and shone it forward.

And there it was.

Something with a pale, twisted, face-like head spinning round and round, with long, floppy black limbs, was closing in on me fast.

"H-huaaaaagh!"

Run. I have to run!

There was no time to think. Following my screaming instincts, I spun around and bolted.

Thud, thud! Thud!

Kirrik! Kiririk!

Behind me, the thing pounded the floor as it chased me down, closer and closer.

Without any real grasp of what lay ahead, I ran, and ran again, out of my mind. And the moment my lungs hit their limit—

Thwack!

"Uwaaagh!"

Who knew there'd be a senior colleague lying in wait even here to trip me up again? (To those who explore the unknown: the corpses lining your path are the honored seniors who walked this great road before you.)

It was a pit I'd clearly leapt to avoid, but the modestly protruding bones of a senior grabbed the hem of my clothes and sent me diving straight into the hole—a genuine hole-in-one.

"Uwaaaaaagh!"

Then, like riding a slide—wheee—but this place hadn't passed any safety inspection, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠so up and down flipped, then front and back, and before I knew it I was riding a butt-slide face-first.

Then—pop!—my body launched into the air. And the sensation of falling—

"Uwaaaaaagh!"

Splat!

Thankfully, this slide attraction that had slapped my cheeks raw did observe safety regulations at the very end—or maybe the design was just meant to humiliate me further—because it concluded by burying me in a soft mound of mud.

When I raised my flashlight and looked around, I found I'd fallen into an enormous cavern riddled with holes everywhere—a place where I couldn't tell what lay one step ahead, or whether any direction was the right one.

How on earth had I ended up stranded in a place like this?

"Haah... haah... What was that? What WAS that thing just now?"

It seemed the seniors planted in the ground had saved my life, in a way—but then again, wasn't that thing just now the very reason those seniors had become seniors?

"I wanted to explore the unknown, not explore the great unknown beyond!"

But come to think of it, saying it out loud—does the afterlife actually exist? That made me a little curious too. If the afterlife really does exist, wouldn't it be part of the unknown? Nothing about it is known anywhere, after all.

Just as my grip on sanity was starting to slip,

Ring!

"...Huh?"

Some hologram-like thing had appeared before my eyes.

What is this?

"Backrooms Gallery?"

A window floating in midair like a hologram, welcoming me. It really made me wonder if any of this was real.

Ah-ha. So the psychosis has arrived, has it? You're screwed, you're screwed, you're screwed—screwed three times over, I hereby officially certify myself as screwed.

I blinked and blinked again, but the Backrooms Gallery didn't disappear.

"This is... real?"

I pressed on one of the posts at random.

"Is this some kind of Backrooms-themed photo gallery or something?"

But if this wasn't actually a hallucination—if it was a real gallery of some kind—then couldn't I ask for help from the people trapped in here like me?

At that thought, I immediately hit "Create Post."

A nickname? Uh... this place is a cave, going out? Escape? I felt like I'd seen an item with a similar name in some game once.

So I settled on a nickname and wrote my post.

Within seconds, the comments came flooding in.

"What is WRONG with these commenters?! A man is dying here!"