Whoooosh—!!
"Wind... It’s really wind."
Standing before the door, I let the wind wash over me.
In an instant, freshness filled the Backrooms.
My hair fluttered as if it were dancing.
"This really is outside, right? It’s not another location-type ghost story or something?"
「P R O B A B L Y」
"Ha, hahaha..."
I pinched my cheek, realized it was real, and let out a hollow laugh.
Had I been trapped here for about a hundred days?
Over that time—long if you called it long, short if you called it short—I had lost a great many things.
I had long since lost my sense of time, and even the faces of my parents and acquaintances had grown blurry.
Ah, I never knew my parents’ faces to begin with.
I’d been in an orphanage since the moment I opened my eyes. Right.
"Grrrrrrk!!"
"Zzzing! Wheeeee!!"
"Are you guys congratulating me? You little punks. You don’t even know why I’m looking for an exit."
When I turned my head, I saw the Goe Bungs celebrating in their own ways.
The original Goe Bung was giving a standing ovation from the front row.
Another had its arms around the Goe Bungs on either side, making metallic noises.
And one was wiping at its eyes with its fingers, as if brushing away tears...
No, you don’t even have tear ducts.
Anyway, they were all genuinely happy that I was escaping.
"You’ve all worked hard until now. It couldn’t have been easy understanding what I said."
「E S P E C I A L L Y A T T A C K I N G」
"Right. You worked hard holding yourselves back from attacking the gallery users, too."
The Goe Bungs.
The original Goe Bung, especially, had suffered the most.
They said low-intelligence anomalies attacked everything they saw because of instinct.
But under my orders, the Goe Bungs had endured as best they could and tried not to pounce on the anomalies beyond the doors.
‘The gallery users said it was probably like teaching a goldfish how to do backflips, didn’t they?’
I felt grateful to the Goe Bungs all over again.
It definitely couldn’t have been easy, yet they had gone through all that just to indulge my unreasonable demands.
Sure, at first they had slipped up and attacked the gallery users...
But it all worked out in the end, so all’s well that ends well.
All right, enough getting sentimental.
"I should get going, guys. Don’t get hurt. Take care of yourselves."
"Grrrrr!!"
With my back to the door, I said goodbye to the Goe Bungs.
Did they know this was the last time?
The Goe Bungs clung to one another and bounced up and down as they saw me off.
After looking at every single Goe Bung,
I also offered my thanks to my benefactor—the biggest contributor to my escape.
"Backrooms, you worked hard too."
「Y O U M O R E」
Even at the very end, Backrooms gave me warm words.
For some reason, the letters staining the walls looked wetter than usual.
"For some reason, saying goodbye to you feels even sadder."
「M E T O O」
"Thank you for everything you did for me."
「T H A N K Y O U」
Stroke, stroke.
After gently stroking the wall of the Backrooms,
I faced the exit head-on.
"Public service worker Kim Goe Bung! From this moment onward, I declare my escape from this ghost story!"
"Zzzzzzzzzzt—!!!"
"Father, Mother! I hate you!!"
With the Goe Bungs’ metallic screeches as my cheering song, I threw myself forward with a mighty shout.
「...I’M W O R R I E D」
「T A K E T H I S」
Plop.
And just like that, I was able to return to reality.
**
[Info]: The Bureau has finally gone insane
Author: Doppelganger
(A photo of Kang Seoyun and Yoon Chaewon walking through the city)
That one in the suit is Yoon Chaewon, right???
She’s talking to that armored woman in Seoul right now. Holy shit.
I seriously have no idea what’s going on.
She disappeared after that incident, and now all of a sudden, what the hell—
Wait, hold on, we just made eye contact. Fuckfuckfuckfuck
I have to run, so I’m not taking questions.
[Total comments - 13]
YoungIsBest: ...? Who’s that?
└DontTurnAround: Ah, kids these days wouldn’t know.
└CleanlinessKing: She’s one of the Bureau’s famous superhumans.
└YoungIsBest: What did she do?
└CleanlinessKing: Took part in a raid against a Source-rank anomaly.
└YoungIsBest: ???????
EightSpiderLegs: I fought that bitch once before.
└PureCombatManiac: For real? How’d you survive??
└EightSpiderLegs: She was fucking strong, seriously.
└EightSpiderLegs: My healing factor’s supposed to be pretty damn good,
└EightSpiderLegs: but the scar she gave me on my chest still hasn’t gone away..
└HeartCasino: Show us a picture.
└EightSpiderLegs: Shut the fuck up. I’m only showing it to Rookie.
**
"Hehehe. You tempting little thing, get over here right now!!"
I tightly hugged my girlfriend on the bed.
For the record, my girlfriend is a blanket.
She’s a very sexy woman. Because when I wake up, she’s fucking hot.
Flop.
"Ah, this is comfortable. Blankets really are the best. Way better than sleeping bags."
I pulled my girlfriend all the way over my head.
How I had missed this comfort.
It made me realize all over again how amazing special forces soldiers were, sleeping in sleeping bags every day.
Thank you for always protecting our country.
Amen.
"Anyway, returning is great and all, but..."
Having finished spouting nonsense,
I moved my finger and turned on my phone.
Then there it was: a screen so familiar now that it almost felt dear.
[Ghost Story Minor Gallery]
"Why are you still here? Shouldn’t you have disappeared after I left the Backrooms?"
The Ghost Story Minor Gallery homepage glowed in the darkness.
"I seriously don’t understand your purpose. Weren’t you operating by borrowing Backrooms’s name?"
Tap, tap.
I snapped at my phone while punishing it with my fingernails.
Until now, I had thought the gallery operated through the Backrooms’ power.
You know how it is.
Like a kid borrowing their parent’s account to post on the internet.
That was exactly what I thought this was.
"Of course, I never got to do that even once because I don’t have parents."
Naturally, I had assumed this account belonged to the Backrooms, and I had never doubted it.
But would you look at that?
Even after leaving the Backrooms, I could still log in just fine?
I gave the phenomenon some serious thought,
and came to a single conclusion.
Slide.
"This is probably the problem, right? It looks exactly like something Backrooms tossed me."
The mysterious cube I had just pulled from my pocket.
Its sickly yellow color made it obvious that it belonged to the Backrooms.
It must have sent it as a gift before the door shut.
Oh, and for the record, the exit automatically closed after I crossed through it.
I had come through my closet door, but when I opened it again, there were only plain T-shirts inside.
"It’s not bad for me, though. I can keep in touch with the Goe Bungs, too."
To think it helped me all the way to the end...
Just as I thought, the grace of Mother—no, Backrooms—is as vast as the heavens.
I was feeling grateful in my heart and about to continue browsing the gallery when—
Bang bang bang!!
"Hey, debtor! Pay up, you bastard!!"
"Ah, fuck."
The biggest reason I had attempted suicide.
Mr. Kim, the loan shark next door, was pounding on my front door.
"Fuck, you were alive? You didn’t say a word for a month, so I thought you were dead."
Maybe he had heard my voice. Mr. Kim’s crude curses came through the door.
A month.
It had been a month on Earth.
I had heard that some location-type ghost stories distorted time, too.
It looked like the Backrooms had been one of them.
As I was lost in thought and delayed answering,
Baaaang!!
A huge impact shook the front door.
"Are you ignoring me!? If you’re alive, hurry up and give me my money!?"
"What the fuck? I paid back the principal ages ago, and you’re still going on about money?"
A burst of anger rose in me, and I walked toward the front door to answer Mr. Kim.
I had borrowed ten million won.
I had repaid twenty-five million won.
And even after paying that much, I still had over a billion won in debt left.
In other words, those loan shark bastards were charging utterly insane interest.
"Hah! You have to pay the interest! The interest! I let a broke deadbeat like you live, and where do you get off raising your voice at me?!"
"You son of a...!"
"What, want to open the door and take a swing at me? No need to worry. I brought tools to rip this door right off today."
Bang!! Bang!!
Before his words had even finished, the front door shook violently.
He was probably trying to break it down.
That crazy bastard. Usually he would curse a little and leave, but he had finally crossed the line.
‘What do I do? If he has tools, I don’t stand a chance.’
As I frowned deeply and searched for an answer,
one word suddenly came to mind.
Backrooms.
"If Backrooms were here at a time like this..."
KABOOOM!!
The instant I muttered those words, a huge hole appeared in the front door.
Mr. Kim shoved his body through it and came inside.
"Goddamn it, for a cheap one-room apartment, they put in a fucking sturdy door."
"..."
"Is that some toy moving around in your hand? You don’t have money to pay your debt, but you had money to buy that?"
"Huh? What are you—"
At Mr. Kim’s words, I looked at my right hand, then jumped in shock.
"...What’s wrong with this thing?"
The cube that had been perfectly quiet until just then.
It wriggled grotesquely,
then—
Shlunk!
—swallowed Mr. Kim and me whole in an instant.
**
[Chat]: Hunting proof lol
Author: Anonymous (999.1)
(A photo of a wounded man surrounded by Goe Bungs)
Oh, and don’t get the wrong idea.
I was seriously just sitting there,
then this human suddenly came over on his own and smashed down my front door.
[Total comments - 5]
EightSpiderLegs: Wow, what a fucking fearless guy lol
└EightSpiderLegs: Of all the anomalies out there, he had to pick Rookie lol
└AshesMimic: That one really did die of natural causes, yeah..
└ElectricalEngineeringNeeded: Seriously, how does he do something even low-intelligence anomalies don’t do lol
└Anonymous (220.3): Seriously lol seriously lol seriously lol seriously lol seriously lol seriously lol
ProtectJustice: What happened?? Tell us the story.
└[Author] Anonymous (999.1): So, here’s how it happened..
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