Ahead, There's Food
There's food ahead.
Ge-ek—
"Hold on a second, will you?"
Thud!
Thud!
Listening to Yagwang-i's impatient cries, I carved an arrow into the tough cap with my pickaxe. The path I'd been following straight was fine, but anywhere I turned left or right needed a marker.
"Let's head back out."
The way Yagwang-i moved, I suspected, was a route chosen to avoid the smaller mushrooms sprouting atop the heads of these giant ones. Which would mean, whether by sight or by some other sense, the little guy had a way of knowing which things to steer clear of. It fit, too, with how he'd dodged his body away from that hideous thing back in the previous tunnel before we ever ran into it.
And if he was zigzagging like this, it meant the things in these passages were that much more dangerous to touch than the mushrooms we'd already passed.
Ge-ek—
Well, that was just my theory. We couldn't exactly talk it over.
Still, why did this creature follow me around like this? Just as there are animals humans find cute, maybe in his eyes I was a creature that made him want to help? He was like a pet dog I'd had for years. Or no—maybe to him, I was the pet dog?
Yagwang-i turned a corner. Another curve.
Thud!
Thak!
I carved another arrow where he'd turned. Repeating this, we hadn't gone far when—
Shaaaaaa...
A sound like something pouring down came from far ahead. And with it, an unforgettable smell I recognized instantly.
The lifeblood of adults. The eternal companion of office workers. The wellspring that powers you through each and every day.
"Coffee?"
It seemed the direction Yagwang-i was heading was the same one the sound was coming from.
Kwarurururu!
"Whoa..."
Even my gasp of awe at the majestic roar of the waterfall was swallowed up and gone in an instant. A colossal waterfall, like Niagara in America, seemed to be pouring down from three directions at once—front, left, and right—dead ahead.
Back then I'd seen it from a boat, right in the middle of where the falls converged. Now I was looking at it from the footing of a giant mushroom cap. Above the falls, the faint shapes of several massive, tree-like mushrooms were visible, glowing on their own—light of many colors spilling out of them.
Were they neighbors of the giant mushrooms I'd just been walking across? Or maybe the cliff face where the waterfall plunged wasn't a cliff at all, but the head of another enormous mushroom. Unfortunately, the falls' upper reaches, where those glowing giants seemed to grow, were beyond my line of sight—but I could make it as far as the face of the falls, where the water thundered down.
Kwaaaaaa—!
The smell spreading on the steam kicked up by the falling water was, no matter how I took it in, unmistakably coffee.
"So this is the paradise of caffeine, huh..."
Siiiip—hooo...
Closing my eyes, I breathed in slowly, savoring the feeling of fatigue melting away, like a forced awakening effect kicking in.
Gururuk—
"I'm hungry..."
But breathing in all that caffeine-laden aroma only made my stomach growl louder. Even in front of the massive roar of the falling water, the sound rumbling from inside my body came through loud and clear.
"Huh? Where'd he go?"
I looked around for Yagwang-i, who had vanished without a sound, and spotted him pressing forward across the mushroom footing near the left side of the falls. Then he moved even closer to the falling water, until his body was hidden behind the curtain of the falls.
"Don't tell me there's a path behind it?"
A cave behind the waterfall. A cliché, sure. I hurried after him, and there it was—a large cave visible behind the falling water. Sadly, this cliff didn't turn out to be another mushroom. This cave, too, was brightly lit from within by small glowing mushrooms.
"Hold on a second..."
From here, my arm could easily reach the falls. Before going in, I drained the one remaining bottle of water I had left, then held the bottle's mouth up close to the falling water.
"Can't say no to caffeine."
I tilted the bottle, now about half full of black liquid, and let just a tiny drop fall onto my tongue.
"Mmm..."
The soft touch on my tongue first, then the smooth swallow, a feeling that woke my whole body up piece by piece. A heavy bitterness sitting atop a faint sweetness laid at the bottom. Even after swallowing, a rich aroma lingered, seeping up through my nose. This was, without a doubt, the crème de la crème of coffees.
"This is an SSS-tier item."
Only after filling the bottle to the brim did I head for the cave behind the waterfall.
Ge-ek—
The little guy was crying out ahead, as if he'd been waiting.
"It was worth the wait, my friend. There's Korean blood in these veins, you know."
Anyway, the mushroom-lit cave seemed bright enough, so I switched off my flashlight and tucked it into my pocket. Then I followed him, slowly making my way deeper into the glittering cave.
Not just in the corners—glowing mushrooms sprouted here and there across the floor, too.
"Are these safe to eat...?"
Yagwang-i didn't seem particularly wary of them, so I picked one or two.
Tuduk.
Sniff sniff—
"Doesn't really smell like anything."
Since Yagwang-i only glanced over briefly at the sound of me picking them before moving on, I figured they were probably fine to eat.
Nyam.
I popped a yellow-glowing triangular mushroom straight into my mouth and chewed.
"Tastes kind of sweet, maybe...?"
Aside from a faint sweetness, there wasn't much flavor. But these finger-sized things weren't going to fill me up—especially since mushrooms are mostly hollow balloons with barely any nutrition. Though some of those balloons are filled with poison, admittedly.
Um-nam.
I put a pink-glowing round mushroom in my mouth.
Jigeuk—
"Ughk—!"
Ptui!
One bite and the overwhelming bitterness hit, and I spat the mushroom right out. It was more bitter than any herbal medicine from an apothecary. I tried the other mushrooms one by one after that. They were either so faintly sweet I could barely taste them going down, or bitter enough to snap my eyes wide open.
And then it dawned on me.
"The Coffee Waterfall is brewed from these."
A faint sweetness, a bitterness. The giant mushrooms blooming above the falls were probably just grown-up versions of these many-colored little ones, spreading their influence.
"So it wasn't coffee, it was Mushroom Water..."
Not caffeine—spores...?
"Hey, as long as it works, who cares."
Your name is Coffee now. If you've got objections, speak up.
None? Then it's decided. You are Coffee. Bam bam.
Following Yagwang-i deeper into the cave, the yellow light ahead began to grow steadily more intense. Gradually, it felt as if the cave itself was glowing, dazzlingly bright.
"This isn't magma or something, is it...?"
It wasn't getting any hotter, but the reddish light kept intensifying until my eyes stung. Still, Yagwang-i kept going, and I couldn't exactly bail on him alone.
Following the cave's path around a bend, I looked ahead and—
"Golden... fruit...?"
Hanging from a stem descending from above was a single fruit, glowing a dazzling gold, about the size of a soccer ball.
Is it real gold? When I touch it, it's a little squishy.
"Hmm..."
So maybe this was the Backrooms' version of a stocked food supply?
"Then I'll gratefully accept."
I gripped the stem above and the fruit itself firmly, one in each hand.
"Surely it's not one of those deals where I tear it off and the whole cave collapses and I have to run for my life?"
I'd seen that one plenty in movies. Speaking of movies—come to think of it, movies had a lot of great adventure stories, hadn't they? Jungles, caves, the ocean floor, pyramids, ruins, space, other worlds, and so on. Plenty of famous classics, too. Stories of people constantly entangled with ancients and defeating them. A historian who purely enjoyed exploration, even. Maybe watching all that was what had shaped me into this.
Tuduk—
Like a cherry tomato, the fruit separated cleanly from the stem above and dropped away.
Tuk!
Maybe it was because I'd been thinking exactly that.
Kurururu!
"Don't do this..."
The cave began to shudder violently, as if it might collapse at any moment.
Ge-ek—
Yagwang-i leapt straight from the fruit onto my arm.
Kururrung!
"Ughk, it's shaking—!"
I tried to bolt right then, but the ground heaved so violently I could barely stand upright.
And then—
Kururrung!
"Aaaagh!"
Like falling into a trap, the floor split open with a crack, and I plunged down into the dark below.
Clang!
All that remained at the lip of the great hole was a single flashlight, slipped from my pocket, lying abandoned in the glow.