The Illusion of the Backrooms
Lee Munhyeok's life had fallen apart in a single instant — a man who once attended a prestigious university in Seoul, the kind of name that made people gasp, "Oh my, you go THERE?"
It had all started when a man he met at a soccer club heard the name of his university and asked him to tutor his daughter. Lee Munhyeok was, of course, entirely blameless. So he'd stolen one light little kiss during a tutoring session — was that really so terrible? He got reported, and sentenced to five years in prison.
He served his debt to society the hard way and returned, only to find his family cutting him off in disgust, unable to land a job because of the electronic ankle monitor clamped around his leg, until he finally settled in the shantytown — the only place that would have a body like his.
With a life already wrecked beyond repair, he'd gone out to buy liquor, and on the way back, Lee Munhyeok saw her again. That tiny, golden-haired child who set his heart racing.
He meant no harm. He only wanted to look at her a little longer — that was all — so he followed. But the moment he caught himself glancing over and over, his steps quickening, something inside Lee Munhyeok changed.
What did I ever do wrong? I just followed behind her, and she treats me like a potential criminal? The seed that had sprouted five years ago began to bloom again in his heart.
"Heh heh heh—"
His life was already ruined past saving. He had nothing left to lose, so things getting even worse wouldn't exactly break him.
The child had climbed the long hill until, at some point, she stopped beneath a flickering streetlight and was looking down at him.
As those blue eyes swept down over his body with a look of fear, Lee Munhyeok felt the last thread of reason inside him snap.
"Want to have a little chat with oppa?"
He walked forward slowly, flashing a warm, friendly smile, his gaze locked on the child.
She blinked those blue eyes slowly, staring down at him with a frightened expression. Yes, that's it. Don't run. Stay right there.
The distance between them closed until he could reach her with an outstretched arm. And then, the child's gaze — which had been looking down at him — was somehow looking up.
"Come to oppa's house!!"
That unblinking stare children had — Lee Munhyeok couldn't hold back any longer. He threw both arms wide and lunged to embrace her.
Whoosh—
He was certain he'd wrapped his arms around her. And in that very instant, the child's small body scattered like heat haze and vanished. All that was left cradled against his chest was a black plastic bag of liquor, swaying forlornly.
"Did I… see things?"
Had he finally gone so mad with lust that he was hallucinating? No. Impossible. There was no way that sweet child's scent still lingering in his nose could be a lie.
Lee Munhyeok turned his head, searching for the vanished girl.
And in that moment, the scenery before his eyes changed.
Where a graffiti-covered wall had stood, there was now a wall wallpapered in sickly yellow. Instead of the streetlight flickering overhead, cold-white fluorescent tubes stretched across a ceiling.
But strangest of all —
He'd been outdoors mere seconds ago. Now, somehow, he was indoors, sealed inside a room walled in on every side by the identical yellow wallpaper.
A chill he couldn't name shot through Lee Munhyeok's entire body.
Bwaaaam—
The buzz of the fluorescent lights bored into his ears.
"What… is this."
There was nothing Lee Munhyeok could do in this situation except roll his eyes around in their sockets.
"Ugh."
The sweet fragrance that had lingered at the tip of his nose was gone, replaced by a musty, damp stench that stung his nostrils.
That wretched smell jolted his frozen thoughts back into motion.
"Fuck…"
What the hell was going on? He had been standing on the hillside of the shantytown, ready to seize the golden-haired child standing before him. And now, in the blink of an eye, he'd been teleported into some bizarre space he'd never seen before?
As far as Lee Munhyeok knew, exactly one kind of being on Earth could pull off something like that.
An Awakened.
Had he ever earned an Awakened's grudge? He rifled through his life at high speed. Right up until prison, he had lived a perfectly enviable life behind the mask of the model young man. That much was certain.
So who would do this to him? It had to be the family of that girl he'd laid hands on. Could she have Awakened? Was that it — coming for revenge on him?
"FUCK! I already paid my debt!!!"
Five years locked in a cell without so much as sunlight. He'd taken the punishment this country handed down like a man and walked out the other side. And now, cut off by his family and living like a wretch, what exactly was revenge supposed to accomplish?
"This is vigilante justice! That's a crime, you bastard!!!"
He jabbed a finger at empty air, at whoever might be watching. Maybe, just maybe, they'd get spooked and let him go.
For a long while he spat curses at the yellow walls, but nothing changed. All that existed here was an idiot cursing into the void — himself.
Lee Munhyeok let out a ragged breath and sank to the floor. He was, whatever else you could say about him, a prodigy who'd once gotten into a top university. His rusted brain spun up fast, analyzing the situation.
"These sick bastards want to watch me suffer."
They probably saw themselves as omniscient gods, locking him up in a place like this, toying with him the way a child pokes at an ant with a stick. He was clearly nothing but a plaything to them.
He refused to play into their hands. He would not give those sadistic freaks the show they wanted — no groveling, no tears, no suffering for their amusement.
First, he had to move. Sitting still was as good as begging them to kill him.
Lee Munhyeok hauled his exhausted body upright and walked to where the graffiti wall had stood moments ago. He stared at the yellow wall before him for a beat, then cautiously reached out his hand.
Scritch, scritch—
The texture of the wall rasped against his fingertips. It told him one thing, and one thing only: this pathetic excuse for a space was real. Worst-case scenario confirmed. He'd been teleported by an Awakened's power into a space of unknown origin.
"Goddammit!"
A spatial-type ability was rare enough to rake in money by the wheelbarrow. And someone with a power like that was wasting it on revenge against him? All he did was steal one little kiss—
AAAAAAAARGH—!!
"Wh-what the hell!!"
A grotesque sound rang out from somewhere. Something close to a beast's cry — and the fury that had been blazing to the top of his skull vanished in an instant.
"F-fuck!! I was wrong, I'm begging you!!! Please, just let me live!!!"
Lee Munhyeok dropped to his knees where he stood and began rubbing his palms together frantically. How badly did they want him dead? They'd gone so far as to release a monster into a place like this.
He was just an ordinary civilian who'd never even Awakened. If that thing got its hands on him, he'd be torn apart and eaten alive.
"Please!! Please!! I was wrong! I'll do anything! Just let me live!!!"
He slammed his forehead against the floor of the corridor where the yellow carpet stretched on endlessly, pouring every ounce of his being into that single desperate plea.
THUD——!
THUD——!
But the hearts of the ones who'd trapped him here did not waver. As if this Lee Munhyeok person simply had to die in this space.
The sound of massive footsteps drew closer, step by step.
"MOTHERFUCKER!!!! What did I ever do wrong!!!!"
Lee Munhyeok raised his bleeding forehead and stared down the corridor where the sound was coming from. Maybe — maybe he was misunderstanding something. Clinging to that tiny shred of hope.
THUD——!
The footsteps stopped.
Lee Munhyeok saw it. Something black emerging from around the corner.
A hand. No — something twisted, shaped like a hand.
"F… fuck."
Slowly, the thing's full form revealed itself from beyond the corner. A body so enormous its head brushed the ceiling — and atop it, something barely deserving to be called a face. It looked as if dozens of people's faces had been mashed together like clay into a single lump.
Dozens of eyeballs, each pointed in a different direction, twitched and writhed—
Then, all at once, they turned toward him.
"AAAAAAGH—!"
Only one thought remained in his head.
Run.
That thing was not a monster — no, that wasn't right. Whatever it was, there was no explaining it. Instinct simply screamed it at him: that is something you were never meant to lay eyes on.
Lee Munhyeok whirled around and bolted — back the way he'd come, toward where the shantytown's hillside had been, down the long corridor stretched before his eyes.
—Stumble.
His foot slipped. It wasn't that his legs tangled in the panic of the moment. He had clearly, unmistakably stepped on the yellow tiles of the endless corridor.
His body pitched forward. Like someone who'd sprinted down a slope too fast and lost their footing.
Clatter-clatter—!
He went rolling down the corridor. He couldn't comprehend the impossible phenomenon. No — he couldn't comprehend it, because even in the moment he was trying to, the monster was closing in on him.
THUD——!
THUD——!
"AAAAAH!! SAVE ME!!!"
He could see the body. An abnormally massive bulk too large to take in with a single glance. He could see the eyes — dozens of grotesquely twisted eyeballs, all fixed on him. He could see the hand — a huge, warped black hand closing in to kill him.
Hisssss—
A warmth spread through his lower half, and Lee Munhyeok's vision flickered.
That was the last thing Lee Munhyeok ever saw.
Click—!
A small, bright sound rang out in the place of yellow wallpaper and musty, aged stench.
A single light snap of the fingers.
In an instant, the yellow corridor, the fluorescent tubes packed into the ceiling, the hillside where the ankle-monitor man lay bleeding from his tumble — and the monster about to swallow him whole — all of it vanished.
"Phew. Thank god. I almost panicked when he touched the wall."
She'd built the illusion over the graffiti wall, so if he'd noticed the texture was different, the whole trick might have been exposed.
"Uh… did he just piss himself?"
He'd gone into convulsions and fallen over while running away, so she'd crept closer to check if he was okay — and holy moly, what was this. The entire crotch region of his pants was soaked through with yellow liquid.
Granted, she'd been a little rattled by her own Blue Dragon too, but that was a single trickle at most. Not the full dribbling puddle he'd managed.
"He's going to be so embarrassed when he wakes up…"
There was some blood, but that was nothing — just scrapes on the skin oozing a bit. Nothing life-threatening.
And honestly, who told him to come sprinting at me out of nowhere? He startled me so badly I instinctively manifested that YouTube video I'd watched before bed. What was it again — something like "Understanding the 'Backrooms,' created by a kid genius"?
It was kind of scary, honestly. Not that she was a coward or anything, but after watching it, the images kept flickering back into her head and she'd slept badly. If the delivery guy hadn't knocked, she might've overslept entirely.
"Hmmm… is this Illusion thing actually useful?"
So it wasn't just CGI cosplay or pure aura-flexing like she'd feared after all?
She spent a long while staring at the ankle-monitor man sprawled face-down in his own piss, when—
Twitch, twitch—
"Gah."
Suddenly he started squirming like a corpse in rigor mortis. He wasn't — he wasn't actually dead, right? Had he been such a scaredy-cat that he died on the spot, just from looking? Uuugh… please no.
Just as she reached a foot toward the splashing puddle to check whether he was breathing—
"Uuuuh…"
A faint groan drifted up from the man.
Phew, thank god. That was almost a one-way trip to a prison cell. Hmm, that's enough spectating for me. No guarantee the Illusion would work on him twice if ankle-monitor man woke up.
Ignoring the twitching man, she dashed home. Such were the sorrows of an owner stuck with a skill that dealt zero damage.
Creeeak—
"Dadada-da~"
The moment she got home, she peeled off her clothes and changed into a hoodie. Seriously — it looked cute and all, but was it fair to call it uncomfortable just because she'd never worn clothes like this before? Looking was one thing, being the one inside them was another, and the discomfort was nothing to sneeze at.
"Yeah, yeah. That's the stuff."
A hoodie that hung down to just barely above her knees. The single greatest garment in existence — no pants required. It used to carry a faintly stale old-bachelor smell, but lately it just smelled sweet, which she liked. Sniff sniff—.
"Oops, oops — that's not the important part."
Straight under the covers. She burrowed into the Hunter Gallery and binged the trending posts top to bottom. Normally she'd be refreshing the feed all day at home, following everything in real time, but she'd been out in public for the first time in ages, so she was behind on the flow.
"Now, what's today's hot gossip~?"
She gripped the phone in both hands and scrolled fast. She used to manage one-handed, but after the body swap her hands were so tiny it was a struggle.
"Hmm… just the usual Hunter Gallery stuff."
The same old WWE — the admin sporting his blue checkmark getting speared through with a plastic fan-stick, and the whole thing wrapping up with him spitting out a chocopie instead of his entrails.
"GAAAAH! My chocopie!!"
Checking the timestamp, the thread had wrapped up five minutes ago. If she hadn't run into ankle-monitor man, she could've been standing in line for her free chocopie right now. So unfair… If her Illusion dealt even a scrap of damage, she'd have vaporized the guy's nether regions by now.
So she was scrolling through the chocopie verification posts when a familiar username caught her eye. SusuGang — the one who'd even bought her dinner.
"GAAAAH! This is betrayal!"
Hadn't they reached an unspoken agreement never to expose each other's identities? And now she was striking first?
With trembling hands, she clicked the post where the upvotes were pouring in by the flood.