The Pure White World
“Where.. am I..?”
I remember getting smacked in the face by that flying notebook, at least.
“Yagwang-i's gone too..”
Yagwang-i, who had hidden behind me, was nowhere to be found — not clinging to me, not anywhere I looked.
Ahead of me, behind me.
Up, down, left, right — no sky, no ground, no distinction at all. Just an endless, blinding white world.
It felt like standing in a field of fresh snow.
No — more like being dropped alone into a completely empty world.
“Am I floating in midair..?”
As it turned out, that wasn't it either.
I was standing on nothing but a small black platform that had appeared beneath my feet.
When I tentatively stretched my foot out over a spot with no platform—
Tap.
A black platform materialized the instant my foot touched down.
“So it's like an invisible platform that only exists once you step on it..?”
I just hoped there wasn't some spot where the platform wouldn't form and I'd go plummeting.
Worse still, aside from front and back, invisible walls seemed to block me on either side — I couldn't even move sideways.
Only forward and backward. Left and right were sealed off.
“It's like the corridors.”
Was this what the path to the afterlife looked like?
No way. Surely not.
“So walking forward takes me to the afterlife, and walking back brings me to the land of the living? Is that what this is?”
Or maybe something had happened to me because of that notebook I'd seen last.
What were that desk, that chair, and that notebook, anyway?
Sitting abandoned in the middle of a cold, empty cave.
“Did someone wandering the Backrooms before me leave them behind?”
Was it someone from a world where magic developed instead of science, like Etral?
But somehow, they felt far too hostile for that.
“Does the Gallery even work?”
Thankfully, the screen did turn on.
“I can't see anything..”
The Gallery screen looked as though the text had been forcibly erased from it.
Emptied out — just like this space.
Still, the fact that the Gallery turned on at all meant I probably hadn't escaped the Backrooms yet.
In other words, I hadn't died and gone to some afterlife beyond the Backrooms. That much I could assume.
“So this place is part of the Backrooms too?”
Had I been split off into here, leaving Yagwang-i behind in the cave?
Maybe something like magic had been written in that notebook, and a space spell had flung me away — like what happened with the Main Moderator.
Or, assuming I was still in the cave, it meant I'd been swallowed by that book.
Either way, the first priority was figuring out how to get out of here.
The only paths were forward and back.
Both directions looked identical, with no end in sight — but like those invisible walls, maybe there were invisible doors somewhere too.
Well, if there was one upside compared to the cave, it was that instead of darkness there was nothing but white — no need to carry a flashlight.
Wandering the Backrooms was hard enough as it was. I couldn't afford to waste time here too.
And if the only path was a straight line, what was there to deliberate?
“Straight ahead it is.”
Move forward. That's what learning means — finding out by going.
Ge-ek-
I should have been more on guard.
If something was suspiciously placed there, I should have felt more unease, not less.
All I could see was a world of white.
A pure white page, as if nothing had ever been written on it.
With my weakened sub-body's strength, was even something like this enough to take me down easily?
Geok-
Even if my body was fragile, should I have chosen combat power instead?
I'd prioritized durability above all else to minimize risk, and this was the result.
No — this world itself rejected most mystery, so prioritizing toughness really had been the right call.
Ge-ek-
Whew. How did I end up going through this kind of ordeal, of all things?
Forward and back. It looked like a space open infinitely in only those two directions, but..
My eyes could see it.
Forward and back connected to each other — I would simply sprint down a road that repeated forever.
Which meant the place I actually needed to go was beyond these walls, left and right.
Instead of avoiding the gaze I felt pressing in from the directions perceived only as invisible walls, I turned and faced it head-on.
If this space itself was constructed through observation, then it would shift according to that observation.
Chak-
If I thought of it as a wall, then surely I could climb it.
I set my four legs against the wall and began slowly scaling it.
Tap. Tap.
Geok.
And then it struck me.
Yagwang-i? Isn't that a far too careless thing to call someone?
Tap-tap! Tap!
“Hah.. hah.. am I seriously trapped..?”
No matter how long I walked, no matter how much I outright ran, there was nothing but the white world.
It felt like I'd been hurled into an empty space where nothing would ever change.
And then, one more thing.
“The color is draining from my body..”
My skin, the blood beneath it, my bag, my clothes — everything was gradually fading into flat, monochrome shades.
It felt as though I was being assimilated into this empty space itself.
If there was such a thing as leftover empty space from when the world was made, surely this is what it would look like.
And I, hurled into the empty space 'outside' the world, was dissolving and breaking down — being consumed as scarce 'outside' resources to make up the difference—
“No, that's not it.”
For one thing, being sealed off left and right was too narrow for that.
Since when did the world scroll sideways?
The world isn't a 2D plane, is it?
For a so-called empty world, the fact that it was walled in was far too suspicious.
Suspicious. Very suspicious.
And what do you do when something's suspicious?
Obviously — when you're curious, you find out.
The moment that thought crossed my mind, I pulled the pickaxe from my bag without hesitation.
The outline of the drawn pickaxe stood out as sharply as if it had been painted, making its tip look even more lethal.
Almost like an enchanted item.
So this is what a pickaxe would look like if you drew it in a notebook.
A notebook, huh.
That made the theory that I was inside a notebook all the more plausible.
“So in the end, this is the only thing I can trust.”
Gripping the pickaxe in both hands, I stared at the invisible wall.
Well then — shall we find out?
“I just hope it's not the wrong answer..!”
And with everything I had, I swung my arm at the wall.
A wooden desk, sitting abandoned in the middle of a cold cave.
A single notebook, spread open upon it.
And in the wooden chair before the desk, a blurred figure.
Somehow it looked like a misty shape, painted only halfway — as though wearing a bag and an oxygen tank.
On the left page of the notebook before the seated figure:
A tiny drawing, no bigger than a thumb, was nearly reaching the top edge of the page.
On the right page of the notebook:
A drawing of a person, who seemed to have been running back and forth for ages, appeared to face forward — then drew a pickaxe from their bag.
Pak! Pak! Pa-pak!
With every swing of the pickaxe, the space seemed to carve away, slowly revealing a black wall behind it.
Pabak! Jek, jijik!
Amid the continued swinging, a tearing sound rose from the wall being carved open—
Jiiiik!
I felt something tear at the tip of the pickaxe, and at the same moment, as it broke through to the outside, the pickaxe was yanked by a powerful force — and the body holding it was dragged along, lifted into the air.
“Whoa—!”
Then I was sucked through the gap in the wall, and where I landed was—
“The cave again..!”
The cave — or rather, the middle of a corridor in a cave full of icicles radiating cold from floor to ceiling.
Right in front of the wooden desk sitting at its center.
“I got out!”
Boing!
Pa-pak!
Geok-
At the same time, on the left page of the notebook atop the desk, a lizard's arm shot out toward the page's edge — and a yagwang lizard popped right out.
“So you were here too, Yagwang-i!”
The moment I caught the leaping lizard, it clung straight to my left arm.
Shwarararak!
Kiik-
The notebook flipped through its pages atop the desk, rising into the air once more.
And the blurred figure rose from its chair.
“Overall, it's like you plagiarized me..!”
One look told me — the thing that had been draining color from my body hadn't been after just the color. It had been stealing my very appearance.
Parararak!
The notebook came flying at me again.
“You weren't so lucky, were you, you.”
Instead of dodging the incoming notebook, I elegantly swept my left arm forward.
“I was a little worn out, so I was having some coffee-.”
After all, my left hand had been holding a bottle of coffee the whole time I was swinging that pickaxe.
Shwaak!
Parararak!?
The notebook, drenched head to page in black coffee, dropped with a thud to the floor.
Thud..
Soaked and heavy, the green notebook lay face-down, unable to lift even a single page.
I tore my eyes from the notebook, which could clearly no longer move properly, and turned to the blurred figure rising from the chair.
“Strong.. maybe strong enough to match me.”
From what looked like a bag on its back, it too drew out something gray resembling a pickaxe.
But you—
Ge-ek-
“Right. You don't Gek- at all.”
Because the Yagwang-i with me right now isn't the type to run from you.
As the thing charged at me like it was pouncing, I too refused to back away — I charged to meet it.
As we closed the distance, its pickaxe came swinging down.
Something you don't have. Something I do.
“That's my partner-.”
Kakak!
Pak, pak!
I let the flat of its descending pickaxe graze along Yagwang-i's back on my left arm, deflecting it, then swung my pickaxe in rapid strikes across its head and chest as I slipped past.
“A sure feeling wrapped around my swinging hand.”
It had stolen my appearance so clumsily that it seemed to have inherited even humanity's weaknesses along with it.
“I'll just say this: what a shame. Fake.”
Crash.
Fsssh—
Its new form collapsed and instantly disintegrated into fragments, and the color returned to my body all at once.
“What you should have stolen wasn't my appearance. It was my heart.”
After all, the heart that drives me toward the unknown — that is the true wellspring of my strength.
Ge-ek-
Yagwang-i's cry sounded like it was holding a grudge against the nonsense I'd just spouted, but I'm sure I was imagining it.
“By the way — were things like that always part of the Backrooms..? Or did they wander in here too, just like me?”
Asking the Gallery members would clear that up, wouldn't it?
Thinking I might write up a victory report while I was at it, I opened the Gallery window.