How Did I End Up in the Backrooms?

How did I end up in the Backrooms?

I turned the question over in my head for a long, long time, and after all that thinking I arrived at a single, airtight conclusion.

Fuck if I know.

There was no reason. I hadn't committed any particular sin. I didn't have some great regret gnawing at me, and there was no buried trauma waiting to explain it all. I had, quite literally, fallen into the Backrooms one ordinary day for no reason whatsoever.

An endless maze. Yellow wallpaper no matter where you looked. Nothing in the air but the neurotic, never-ending buzz of fluorescent lights. The humidity of a space that was neither damp nor dry was enough to drive a person insane.

At first, I walked. Day after day, the only sound was the thud of my own footsteps, loud enough to clog my ears. I'd fill my starving stomach with the pomegranates scattered here and there, sip at the inexplicably clear water pooled on the floor, and keep walking. Over and over.

It was strange. Subtle, even. If I wanted, I could wash. I could drink. I could eat. But washing made me uneasy, drinking made me anxious, and eating was never satisfying. Too unpleasant to call boring, too peaceful to call terrifying.

Then one day, I met an Entity.

It barely resembled a human. No features I could make out — the face was just barely holding onto a shape. In a word, it was simply black. Something black, walking on two legs, mimicking a person.

I ran without looking back. I gasped like a drowning man, heat flooding every inch of me like midsummer, but I couldn't stop. Fortunately, it didn't chase me. It wasn't motionless, either, though. Near me, it would simply freeze and stare. Once I got far enough away, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it would wander off somewhere.

After that encounter, life in the Backrooms changed completely. I was terrified of sleeping too long and waking up to find it standing over me, so I'd crouch in a corner, doze for an hour or two, and jerk awake. Repeat. I became hypersensitive to every sound I made. Washing? I couldn't even think about it beyond a light splash of water on my face. There was no stimulation anywhere, and yet every nerve in my body went razor-sharp.

My old life hadn't exactly been happy. Compared to this zombie-apocalypse existence, though, it had been infinitely better.

The Backrooms itself hadn't changed much. I'd only run into that black thing three or four times since, and I'd fled the instant I saw it, so nothing catastrophic had happened. But I was scared. I was genuinely, sincerely losing my mind.

That was the moment I became genuinely convinced I'd gone insane. The yellow wallpaper and those blinding white fluorescents had finally chewed through whatever was left of my mind.

A blue glow asserted itself with swagger amid the white fluorescent light, standing there like it owned the place.

I've lost it. I'm in pretty deep, huh.

I rubbed my eyes. I even took a long sleep for the first time in ages. The blue message window, of course, did not go away. And then it clicked. If the Backrooms could exist, why wouldn't a System?

Caught between anxiety and anticipation, I reached out and slowly touched the window with a fingertip.

A status window, and four buttons beneath it.

It was real. What had appeared in front of me wasn't a hallucination. It was a genuine System.

I wondered if I ought to shed tears of gratitude, but maybe because I'd slept so well, I settled for being moderately moved. Yeah — when you're losing your mind, the answer is always a nap.

The status window, honestly, looked pretty useless. If it had handed me some kind of authority or a skill, maybe. Name, gender, world? Especially for a guy who'd fallen into the Backrooms, those were about as helpful as a screen door on a submarine.

What really made my chest tighten was the Community.

I had been living alone for a long time, with even talking to myself kept to a minimum. The only thing that moved around here was that black bastard I'd piss myself at the mere sight of. My imagination was so bankrupt I couldn't even invent an imaginary friend. In other words, from the moment I dropped into the Backrooms, I had not once shared a single thought with another living soul.

Right now, I missed talking to another person more than anyone else alive.

A nickname. The kind of thing that felt incredibly important and, at the same time, like ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it maybe didn't matter at all. Something that didn't look like I'd agonized over it, easy to recognize, and preferably wouldn't stand out too much…

The deliberation was shorter than expected. I'd never planned to overthink it in the first place.

The instant the nickname locked in, the Community I'd been waiting for finally opened.

…The vibe here was a lot darker than I expected.

They'd said something about ruined worlds, so this really was a place where only apocalypse survivors talked to each other. There was an old internet proverb about lurking before you posted, but unfortunately, a guy starving for human conversation didn't have that kind of patience.

Still, the atmosphere here was obvious at a glance. Read the room, act accordingly, and I'd be fine.

That should do it, right? I'd read the room well enough and matched the vibe. I was basking in the satisfaction of my monumental first post when the comments started rolling in.

So what am I actually supposed to do…

The comments were all empty jokes. I was starting to think this wasn't that kind of helpful place — and then the actually helpful people showed up.

It felt a little lacking for a monumental first conversation, but it wasn't like I couldn't talk more later. For now, I'd follow the kind senpai's advice.

"Go into Guide, he said. But what even is Guide?"

From the name alone it looked like a tutorial. Then again, if you thought about whether they'd really bother pinning a tutorial to the main menu, it probably wasn't one.

I left the Community and hit the Guide button sitting right there in front of me. Blue light bloomed outward like a radar sweep.

"Urgh?"

I took the flashbang completely unprepared and squeezed my eyes shut. At some point I'd started being able to stare at the fluorescents for over an hour no problem, so I'd assumed I'd gained light-element immunity.

I blinked a few times, and once my vision came back, what appeared in front of me was a message that made absolutely no sense.

Survivors. There were other survivors in this Backrooms besides me?

I had walked for so long without seeing a single trace of another person. Even so, I'd held onto hope. This was a bizarre place that restored itself no matter how much you dirtied it or tore it apart. We just hadn't met because it was too vast — they were definitely here. I'd believed that.

That hope, at last, was about to—

Ah.

The System didn't even give me time to taste the despair. It drove the nail in with absolute certainty: there were no survivors. Goddammit.

Yeah, okay. It said it was checking for survivors, not that there were any. Right. If it looked and didn't find any, what can you do. Yeah. That's all it is. Obviously.

"Haaah…"

Don't despair. Even without survivors, I got the Community. That was better than believing in people I couldn't even talk to.

More pressingly, I needed to check that Main Quest. Originally it had been Civilization Restoration, right? And the System had declared that impossible and was cooking up a new one. I needed to see it. Checking objectives through Guide was probably talking about the Main Quest.

If it was the Main Quest, then surely, in this hopeless Backrooms, it would give me the answer…!

I closed out of the Guide screen.

Huh. So there were five Entities. Super useful information.

…

……

Haha. Poor bastard.

Having to hunt those monster-looking things — whoever got stuck with that job was a truly pitiable soul. If it weren't something I had to do, I'd buy the guy a drink and sincerely cheer him on. Work hard out there.

"This is actually happening…"

If the Entities were just reasonably scary, the kind I simply couldn't pick a fight with, I wouldn't even complain. But those things were the type of monster that froze you solid the moment they stood in front of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you. You couldn't even move. In shonen manga terms, I was the farmer standing in front of a power level of 530,000.

"N-no, wait — that wasn't the only thing he told me to do!"

Right. Inventory and Barter. If I opened Inventory there would surely be a holy lance that banished all evil, and if I handed over a pomegranate in Barter they would definitely give me a heavy machine gun. It had to be that way!

I clicked Inventory with the desperation of a drowning man, and just like with Guide, blue light began to bloom. This time, though, it didn't spread into the distance. It came straight at me.

Ownership. Come to think of it, did I even own a single thing in this vast Backrooms? My conscience twinged a little, but it wasn't like I had nothing to say for myself. There's no other survivors anyway! So if I claimed ownership of the Backrooms itself, who'd even complain…

……Huh?

No matter how hard I looked, there it was, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sitting in my inventory like it was the most natural thing in the world: the Backrooms. And inside the parentheses were every last component that made the place up.

"Is this for real?"

And that was how I came to own the Backrooms.