High Speed
“Thought I was gonna die.”
Ge-ek—
The moment I picked the fruit, the ground split open like a trap, and as I plunged downward, the dizzying rush of falling made me wonder if this was the end of my life.
“The mushroom cushion saved me.”
A bed-sized mushroom spread flat across the floor caught my falling body as gently as could be.
“Pretty dark down here, huh...”
Down here the mushrooms glowed far more faintly than they had above, leaving the place quite dim.
I reached into my pocket for a flashlight...
“My flashlight's gone.”
Must have slipped out of my pocket during the fall.
Still, there was no way I could let go of the food-tier fruit.
Besides, if this turned out to be a trap, that would just confirm the cliché that this really was a treasure.
The fruit wrapped around my right side had, thankfully, not burst or anything of the sort.
“I wonder what it tastes like.”
Well, that could wait, couldn't it?
To light up the darkness, I pulled a flashlight from my bag and flicked it on.
Click!
The instant it came on, a long passage stretched out ahead of me.
First things first—could I even get back up? I aimed the beam toward a faint glimmer visible at the far end above.
“That's far...”
Climbing a height like that was beyond me.
If I were a non-Earthling like the other Backrooms Gallery users, maybe. But not me.
It seemed I had no choice but to head down the passage that lay waiting in front of me, as if prepared for exactly this.
“So what do we do now, Yagwang-i?”
The greedy treasure-hunting characters always ended up in big trouble.
Ge-ek—
“Right. But come on, there's no way that'll happen to me too.”
I set Yagwang-i on my left arm, which held the flashlight, hugged the Golden Fruit tightly to my chest, and stepped into the dark passage.
“Why you little...”
I'd been walking for quite a while through the endless passage with the gallery open to pass the time.
“This is way longer than I thought...”
It felt like I'd already been moving for hours, and still the passage stretched on ahead.
My stomach growled.
Now even hunger was starting to tie down my feet.
“No... I have to copy it first, I told myself...”
Not that I could copy gold or anything—but if I just ate the fruit, which might prove even more precious than gold in this place, I'd be facing that whole grueling ordeal of having to find another one. That much was obvious.
That was why I'd kept walking, fighting the way my eyes kept drifting toward the fruit.
I suppressed the urge to devour it right then and there—it seemed to give off a faintly sweet scent—and pressed onward, step after step.
With every stride I took, I did my best to ignore the sloshing sound from inside the fruit, walking on for a long while.
Then, lit by the flashlight, a section appeared ahead where the passage widened out to both sides.
“Which way is the way out of here?”
I'd fallen from the cave inside the waterfall, and though I couldn't say which direction was which, I'd walked a long way along one of them.
Thinking about it logically, it could be the lower level where those giant mushrooms grew—the ones I'd passed on my way to the waterfall.
Or it might be a space filled with that pseudo-coffee water from the falls, like groundwater.
Or maybe an entirely different landscape would unfold before me.
Heart pounding at whatever unknown awaited, I walked on.
The passage widened little by little, its floor carpeted with faintly glowing mushrooms.
The luminescent mushrooms scattered sparsely through the darkness made me feel as if I were gazing up at a universe embroidered with stars.
I just kept walking the ever-widening path—and then, at some moment, for some reason, the sensation of contact vanished from my feet, as if I'd stepped into empty air.
“No way, I'm actually floating!”
As if a weightless world had opened up after that final step, my body drifted slowly forward on its own momentum.
Whenever I brushed against a wall or the ceiling, I pulled myself along by the arms, heading deeper inside.
Which side was floor and which was ceiling, whether I was moving forward or climbing upward—all of it grew ambiguous under the weightlessness.
I was simply drifting along in the direction I'd been going.
Then, at some point, with a feeling like a gentle brake being applied to my body, I came to a stop in midair.
“Ugh, what—what is this...!”
No matter how I flailed my limbs, I couldn't move an inch from that spot.
I'd been zigzagging along the walls, so there shouldn't have been any reason to freeze in midair like this—it felt as though some telekinetic force was holding me fixed in place.
Kugugugu—
And then, an ominous sound from up ahead.
“That bastard again—!?”
Of all places, I had to run into it here—trapped with no way to escape being swallowed into that long thing's maw!
Fwooooo—
No, wait, the sound was a little different this time...!
Along with a sound like trembling air, something slowly revealed itself in the depths ahead.
A vast, hazy something, wrapped in what looked like a transparent membrane...
As if the gradually widening space had existed for this very being, it filled my entire field of vision, rippling as it approached—and all I could do was stare at it.
Was I going to die, like this...!
Something extended toward me—part of it, I guessed.
Like the air shimmering above fire, heat distortion made it impossible to see clearly, so I couldn't even guess what it was.
The approaching thing reached out toward Yagwang-i on my left arm.
Not my Yagwang-i...!
Just as I tried to hide my left arm behind my waist, it occurred to me.
Yagwang-i wasn't reacting...?
Shouldn't Yagwang-i have sensed the danger in advance and fled, or at least done something?
But Yagwang-i just clung to my left arm as if nothing were happening, looking at me.
“Yagwang-i. Is... is this guy a friendly one?”
Ge-ek—
Even at Yagwang-i's calm cry, I didn't let my guard down completely as I watched the thing approach.
It drew closer and closer, until the long limb reached Yagwang-i—
Pat, pat.
Ge-ek—
It stroked Yagwang-i's head a few times, then extended itself toward me like an offered handshake, and simply waited.
A handshake...?
Was it safe to touch?
I shifted the fruit from my right arm to the crook of my left, then lightly gripped the thing with my right hand.
Squish—
Shake, shake—
“Oh... uh, nice to meet you too.”
The moment I took hold of that squishy... hand?, it shook mine once or twice, just like a handshake.
And from that hand, something vast washed over me—a presence of overwhelming magnitude.
Something standing atop the very concept of a world...
Something touching the transcendent. That was the feeling it gave.
An endless—something I should not, could not, come to know—
The moment it released my hand, my mind snapped back to itself.
“What... was that?”
It felt as if I'd been granted some realization that was not mine to have.
“What... are you...?”
It answered nothing, simply extending its hand? further and wrapping it around my waist.
“Whoa... you're a little too eager with the greetings...”
The thing gripped my waist firmly, coiling around it about twice.
Ge-ek—
Yagwang-i moved from my left arm up on top of the fruit.
A sudden, rising anxiety made me clutch the flashlight tighter and hug the fruit close with both arms.
“I don't usually go for tentacle stuf——!!”
In that instant, a sensation of being yanked away with tremendous force and speed—
“..!~..!!”
The scenery before my eyes streaked past as if someone had cranked the playback speed to maximum.
“......!!”
I think I tried to say something, but even my own voice was swallowed, left far behind by that incredible speed.
Through that instant of being dragged by an immense pull, all I could do was hold the fruit and Yagwang-i tight and refuse to let go.
“......!”
Faster,
faster—
Heading somewhere.
The glow of countless mushrooms streaming past from every direction, as if time itself had accelerated.
A speed beyond perception—
just a few seconds—
of it,
passing—
and then,
it stopped.
“Hah... hah...”
It had surely been only a few seconds of acceleration and stop, but even though the acceleration had ended as abruptly as it began, I couldn't get my head together.
Tap—
The thing carefully lowered me so my feet could touch the ground,
but my legs gave out and I crumpled straight down.
Shake, shake—
I could feel it waving its hand? in front of my face, but I had nothing left to respond with.
Ge-ek—
Slap. Slap.
From atop the fruit I held tight, Yagwang-i stuck out its tongue and swept it across my cheeks, left and right, like little slaps.
“...I'm—”
The words wouldn't come out right.
Ge-ek—
Slap. Slap.
“I'm... okay...”
Only when I said that did Yagwang-i kindly stop slapping my cheeks.
I looked back.
A hazy, enormous something.
A something I couldn't even look at properly.
It turned and receded into the distance, as if to say its work here was done.
A human? No—that had to be something beyond life itself.
Was even that something unable to escape the Backrooms?
“Where... did it drop me off?”
It seemed to have set me down near the end of the passage, so I moved forward.
Gravity had returned too, apparently, and I could walk properly again.
This is...
The Central Cavern.
The cavern, more than half of it painted in fresh red.
“I made it back.”
One of the backward tunnels—the one with the glittering, jewel-like thing.
That was the tunnel I'd returned through.
“So it wasn't a jewel after all.”
It must have been withered, glowing mushrooms giving off that faint light.
Only now that I knew I was back did the relief set in, and my head started working again.
“What was that thing, anyway?”
Something enormous—not just in size, but in presence itself.
“If it's something inside the Backrooms...”
Could it be one of the gallery users? I wondered—and immediately wrote a post.
The photo didn't come out either.
Could it be a gallery user? Who is it?
“Oh... good point.”
Ge-ek—
Yagwang-i... browsing the gallery?
That was something I couldn't even imagine.
“There could be any number more of those beings out there...?”
For some reason, this place called the Backrooms felt a little more frightening now.
“First things first: copy it. Copying comes first.”
Step one was to copy the fruit and fill my stomach.