The Door (1)

“Haaam...”

It felt like I'd finally gotten a proper night's sleep.

I picked up my phone and checked the time — about twelve hours had passed. Normally I'd sleep six or seven hours at most. I'd slept nearly twice as long as usual.

I pushed aside the soft blanket wrapped around me, rose from the plush bed, and stretched with a long yawn. Then, as if it had been reserved for the morning, I walked over to the coffee machine — freshly brewed, its aroma drifting up — and downed a cup in one go.

“Well, what the hell.”

Where am I?

Sunlight poured through the wide window, filling the room with light. A huge bed with blankets. A vanity and chest of drawers. A small kitchen. It was practically a hotel suite.

Why am I here?

“Seriously, where is this?”

What was my last memory, again?

“I just... went to sleep.”

After coming back from the cold area, my body had gone all loose and warm, and I'd drifted off right there in the Cave Cavity. My bag, set aside separately — not here. The book I'd pulled out to clear rocks — not here. Yagwang-i, who'd been sleeping by my pillow — of course, not here either.

“No, come on...”

Could it all have been a dream? Being trapped in that cave Backrooms — just a nightmare I'd had after arriving in Canada, before I'd even set out?

I called up the Backrooms Gallery in my mind.

“Ah...”

Sadly, it was the same old gallery as always. Which meant, at the very least, that this place was also a Backroom — and that, unlike inside the seal or the book, my connection to the gallery wasn't being blocked.

I immediately posted my current situation to the gallery.

“A Noclip, they say?”

Inside a Backroom, again? So this place was like a Backroom within a Backroom? Then was this some kind of dream-within-a-Backroom?

“Maybe the sleep was the problem...”

No, that's not it. I slept all the time. It wasn't sleeping itself — maybe it was sleeping too long, or accumulated sleep hours, or some command that triggered if you slept after going through the fifth tunnel and coming back...

“Haah...”

No — what did any of that matter? Better to gather more information about this place first.

I started by opening one of the doors visible in the room.

“Oh, there's even a bathroom.”

Small, but with a bathtub, and a separate shower stall besides. It was definitely a pretty upscale room.

Click!

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I stepped out of the bathroom and tried the door on the other side.

“Outside...”

A long corridor. Long — stretching endlessly in a straight line to the left and right. Except that the ceiling, the floor, and both walls of the corridor were absolutely covered in doors. Some vertical, some diagonal, some horizontal, some hanging open. And they weren't just rectangles — there were round ones, star-shaped ones, pentagonal ones, all manner of variety.

Every door had some kind of number written beside it.

The one I'd come out of was 4T0. Fourth floor, T section, room zero... something like that?

That theory died the moment I looked next door. It wasn't 4T1 — it was 0G1.

0G1 was a door lying on its side.

Click—

When I turned the handle of 0G1, the door folded upward like the lid of a trunk. Beyond it, a dark room.

“...Is there nothing in there?”

Were all the rooms identical, just with differently shaped doors? Or maybe something dangerous was waiting inside.

I went back to 4T0 right away and looked for something to test with. Soap... a bit small. Shoes? Better not, just in case. Two hangers in the drawer. Good. Towels — about three spares. Those would work. Kitchen dishes... too risky. If something really was in there, handing it a knife would be a mistake.

I hung a towel on a hanger, returned to the 0G1 door, stuck it inside, and waved it around.

...No flapping sound. Though I suppose a towel wouldn't flutter anyway unless there was wind or the fabric was really thin.

I kept waving it for a while, but nothing reacted. ...Really nothing happening, huh?

Maybe it was safe enough to go in.

I pulled out the hanger and towel, bent down, and climbed through the 0G1 door. The moment my whole body slipped through the gap—

“Whoa!?”

THUD!

My body lurched sideways and slammed into the floor.

“Ow...”

No — not the floor...

“The wall...?”

When I got up, I realized the surface I was standing on wasn't the floor. It was the wall. Looking back, I could see the door that had been lying on its side now standing upright.

“So the door's orientation indicated the direction?”

Then it followed that the other bent, twisted doors might each hold something different inside, depending on their shape.

Click!

I pressed the switch at my feet and the dark room lit up.

“Nothing in here...”

Unlike 4T0, there was no bed, no refrigerator, no drawers, no kitchen — just a bare, empty room with no tools at all. No point searching further, really. There was nothing here to search in the first place.

Keeping the gravity shift in mind, I slowly eased my way back out of the room. Leaving through the door was a little scary — it felt like there was a deep pit below, and if the gravity didn't switch back, I'd fall straight down the length of that long corridor.

Fortunately, the moment my whole body made it through, I could plant my feet properly on the floor again.

0G1... Was the G in the middle for Gravity? Maybe, since this was a dream, the letters were being substituted based on knowledge I already had.

“Phew, not exactly easy...”

Then a D in the middle wouldn't mean Die or Death and kill me instantly... right? Probably worth keeping in mind anyway.

So, 0G1 was... an empty room. With weird gravity. And 4T0, where I'd woken up, was a pretty decent room. With normal gravity.

T... what could that be? Since I'd been brought here — Teleport? Maybe the letter in the middle indicated that room's gimmick.

Then did the strange door shapes and orientations have nothing to do with gravity? If there was nothing linked to the middle letter, was I just supposed to think, "it's an unusual door, that's all"? It nagged at me a little, so I'd keep that in mind too.

Across the way was 0M9, a round stone door. And in the floor along the path there was 0C3, an ordinary rectangular iron door.

The floor was closer, so I'd try that one first.

When I opened the floor door, a ladder came into view first. Then the walls and floor, black as far as the eye could see. The ladder beside the door meant gravity didn't point toward the standing door, as I'd suspected. And running along the side wall of the corridor leading from the room were gray steel pipes, crisscrossing every which way.

Was I not supposed to step on that corridor's floor? Was I meant to move by gripping only those pipes, like climbing a jungle gym...?

“I won't know until I go in, I suppose.”

I gripped the ladder tight and climbed down slowly. Even after my whole body passed through the door, gravity didn't pull me sideways — I descended the ladder just fine. So the door's orientation really didn't matter unless the middle letter applied.

“Alright, here we go.”

I reached the floor. A straight corridor stretched out ahead of me, its length filled with steel pipes running across to the opposite wall. Behind them stood a single door. That door had no number written on it.

This room — 0C3. If the 0 in 0G1 meant "nothing," then this place would have nothing too. Honestly, part of why I came in was just to confirm that.

A switch nearby. That was probably a light switch too, right?

Click!

The overhead lights came on, and the pitch-black room brightened slightly, as if its overall luminance had been nudged up a notch.

“So I'm supposed to move using only the pipes, right?”

Was there some trap on the floor? The moment I reached out and grabbed one of the pipes—

My hand passed straight through it, and at the same time—

Sizzle!

“Hot, hot, HOT!!”

A searing heat where the pipe had passed through my hand.

“Hoo, hoo...”

Blistering was pretty much guaranteed at this point. Wait — that wasn't a pipe, it was an obstacle? Was it some kind of laser or something?

My hand was turning red... no, gray...?

At the thought that flashed through my mind, I yanked out my phone and turned on the screen.

Black and white. Ah-ha. Figures.

C. It was Color.

And I'd already eaten a loss over something this simple. Still, at least it wasn't a cutting beam — or a melting flame. What I'd felt was just a warm tingle, like static electricity.

“I've never done any security-bypass acrobatics before.”

Isn't that the kind of thing you only see in movies, in some megacorp vault?

If 0 really meant "nothing," there probably wouldn't be much beyond the door at the end of this beam corridor either — but I'd check anyway. Luckily, I could see a route where, if I crawled, I wouldn't touch the beams and could slip past them.

I got down on the floor and crawled forward slowly, careful of the black-and-white beam rods. Oh floor, you're so close, and I regret doubting you. Pipes or whatever — I'm sorry I suspected you.

Right, then left, then right again. After wriggling this way and that, I finally reached the door. There was just enough room to stand up. I rose from the floor and grabbed the handle.

Click! Click!

“Figures...”

It wouldn't open. Which meant it was a fake.

And then—

VMMMMMMMM!

“Now what...”

The gray beams of light that had been sitting quietly in the walls behind me began shifting their positions, this way and that.