Chapter Text
The legend of the Backrooms isn’t something you expect to ever be real. It’s nothing but a creepypasta — something someone made up to scare your friends. But yet the story gained popularity, infecting everyone with the intriguing stories of the hundreds on hundreds of levels and entities. From the very first “Level 0” to the Enigmatic levels like “Level ɑ (Alpha,)” hundreds of stories have been made up to explain (or to share) the scary stories people create to keep others on edge. Or maybe some guy was high and actually saw these things and thought they were real. That’s an option too.
Minho scoffs as he types the last two sentences, deleting them before leaning back in his seat. He runs the paragraph through his head as he leans back and laces his fingers together behind his head. Shuffling his feet against the hardwood, he sits back up and opens a new tab, pulling up the wiki-fandom page for level 0 for the fifth time that evening. No matter how many times he scans over the article or forces himself to read in depth, there’s way too much to ever remember correctly.
Well, that’s not entirely true. He can remember the information pretty well, but some of it just seems too absurd to actually be part of the lore. The minor details add up to make a seemingly simple level into something much more complex and something that’s difficult to write about if you don’t have a clear visual of where each topic should go. It makes more sense to talk about the way the rooms change regularly then transition to the way space moves around, rather than starting by explaining the monochrome look and suddenly jumping to the way you shouldn’t go into the space inside the ceiling.
The infamous Level 0 has its pictures posted all over the internet; yellow wallpaper and fluorescent, hospital-type lighting giving only the basic visual of the level. In reality, the wallpaper is a mustier shade of yellow and the lights buzz and flicker regularly while the ageing carpet is soaked with a mystery substance that when ingested is fatal.
Each room looks similar with the same unsettling colour, noise, and floor yet each room has something different, something unpredictable. No two rooms look exactly identical and when you leave one room, even if you turn straight back around, the odds of you walking straight back into that room are low. The space in this level is non-linear so walking from point A to point B may land you back at point A or even at point D.
Minho pauses his typing to think back to the crawlspace above the ceiling but he bites the inside of his cheek as his finger subconsciously taps against his thigh. There’s not a good way to transition between non-linear space to a crawlspace . He could be cheesy with it: “Speaking of space, there's a small bit of it above the ceiling!” Or he could just change the topic altogether: “If you can manage to get inside the ceiling, there’s a small bit of dusty space, tangled with electrical wires…”
But there has to be a better way of transitioning these subjects. Minho deletes the two paragraphs he spent – he checks the clock – half an hour working out. Rather than immediately diving back in to find a better way to write it out, he takes out his small notebook, the black cover an almost creepy contrast to his pale palm. He opens to the latest blank page but before he can get to mapping out a clear path, a familiar white-static makes him jump and fumble for his notebook to prevent it from falling below the desk.
After making sure his book is securely by his side in his seat, he reaches down to the bottom drawer of his desk as words begin to form through the blank noise from the handheld walkie-talkie radio Felix insisted he, Minho, and Chan should use to communicate rather than their cell phones. It’s been years but the youngest still urges (more like demands) them to use them.
“Minho-hyung, are Channie-hyung and I still allowed to come tonight? Over.”
Minho can’t help but let out a small laugh at the “formal walkie-talkie language” Felix has also kept up with over the years.
“Felix, you’re always welcome here, it’s you that’s always busy.”
“You didn’t say it. Over.”
“ Over. ”
Minho can hear Felix’s smile through his voice. “Channie-hyung is always busy too! It’s not just me. Over.”
Just as Felix finishes, Chan’s voice enters the conversation. “No, it’s mainly you. Over.”
“Hyung, we’re in the same group. My schedule is your schedule. Over.”
“Your’s has more photoshoots. Over.”
Minho laughs. “Idiots. Get over here before your manager pops in another surprise dance practice.”
“SAY IT. OVER.”
“ Over. ”
And with one more laugh as he hears Felix let out a happy “byeee,” Minho puts the walkie-talkie back into the drawer it rested in previously. A bit more static seeps out of the desk before the line goes silent and he decides to take a break from struggling through the first page of his novel.
He closes his laptop lid and decides to head to the kitchen to begin cooking for the night ahead. As Chan and Felix are his best friends, of course they were the first to learn of what his first novel will consist of. It’s been two years since Felix had graduated high school and four since Minho had yet it’s taken this long for him to find what he’s wanted to do with his life. He knows he shouldn’t be upset about it – even if he is now a college dropout, rejected by his family and has a low income from his job at a local grocery store – since he’s lucky to have Felix and Chan who debuted in a band three years ago and demanded for Minho to accept their help and allow them to pay for a small apartment for him. He knows he’s going to owe them his life in a few years, but as of now a good way to repay them is by having them over for a night to watch as many videos as they can of the main subject of his novel – the backrooms.
He spends over an hour making sure everything is nice and that his laptop is charged and loaded up with the first five hour compilation of backrooms levels explained. By the time there’s a knock on the door, Minho’s grown impatient from the waiting, suppressing the impulse to leave a bruise on Felix’s shoulder from a punch and biting his tongue to stop himself from snapping, “What took you so long?”
He’s actually glad when Felix throws his thin arms around his shoulders in a warm, loving hug. Despite his past reputation of rejecting physical affection, he wraps his arms around Felix and represses the sudden urge to suffocate the boy. However when a deflating balloon suddenly rushes through the doorway, Minho rolls his eyes as he sees the familiar, dimpled grin. He rushes to lead Felix inside, leaving Chan standing in the doorway with an offended look on his face.
“So, you abandon me just like that? For Felix?”
Minho sticks his tongue out at Chan before disappearing around a corner. He’s fully aware of the drastic difference between the way he treats Chan versus Felix, but to him it makes perfect sense that he’s harsher with the friend that’s older than him. And even despite his teasing, he’s not all that surprised when Chan manages to sneak him into a tight hug while he finds a seat at the small dining table.
The table itself is round and only big enough to hold three chairs around it but as they’re going to be watching from the same equally-tiny screen, all the chairs have been comfortably spaced to face one end of the table. Minho sits in one off on the side so one of the others can sit in the middle with a better view. Although this doesn’t last long as Chan drags him up by the shoulder with a loud complaint.
“Hey, you’re the one writing about this, you should be sitting in the middle.”
Rather than grumbling about the poor view the other two chairs get, Felix nods his head to agree with Chan. “Yeah, you’re the one that needs to get the best view.”
Minho knows it’s pointless to try and reason with them, so he wordlessly lets them shift around so he’s between them, Felix on his right and Chan on the left.
He lets out a quiet grumble that they should start eating before the food gets cold, and he bites his tongue to stop himself from laughing at the way Felix’s straight face goes to one of a large smile.
The three eat and watch the video intently, only shifting their attention away for short seconds to assure they don’t choke. They only seem eager to speak when an ad pops up an hour into the video and Minho takes the opportunity to take the dirty dishes to the kitchen.
“Hey, hyung.” Felix follows him as he cleans up. “Do you think no-clipping really works?”
The soft scratching of a rag against metal stops as Minho pauses his movement to look at Felix with a blank stare. “I don’t know. Haven’t tried it yet.”
“Yet?”
The corner of Minho’s lip twitches upward, but he moves to finish cleaning the pan before he answers Felix. “I think it would be interesting to try to no-clip out of reality. I want to try it some time.”
“We could try it tonight.”
Minho pauses again to look at Felix. “We? No. Me. I’m not letting you try, just in case it does work. You need to be in reality as an idol. You can’t disappear randomly without a trace.”
“I only would if it works, which it won’t. The backrooms are made up and not real. The worst that’ll happen is we run into a wall and pop a joint.”
“Still detrimental to your career.”
“We’ll try all together or not at all.”
“Fine.”
Chan walks into the kitchen and into the growing tension. He, ignoring the suspense or just not sensing it, Minho doesn’t know, begins to whistle, grabbing a dry towel and tossing it to Minho before coming forward and wrapping an arm around the younger, wordlessly dragging both him and Felix to the dining room.
“Well,” he says finally, “if we’re going to try, sooner is better than later.”
Minho sighs. “Okay, but just in case it does work, everyone needs to pack a bag and their walkie-talkie. Even if they’re unreliable most of the time, they work more often than phones. Also pack a flashlight and batteries and a phone charger–”
Felix cuts him off. “We’re not going to need that stuff because it’s not going to work.”
“Just in case.”
For the first time, Minho actually feels irritated thanks to Felix. When he rolls his eyes, Minho‘s fingers itch with the urge to strangle him. After watching an hour straight of backrooms levels, he would’ve thought Felix would have a sense of fear when it comes to attempting to enter the backrooms. Even if they’re not confirmed to exist, watching the level that may or may not be real has to be at least a tiny bit worrying.
In a matter of three minutes, both Chan and Felix have small backpacks stuffed with batteries, a flashlight, a phone charger, and a walkie-talkie. Minho only moves to pack his own bag when he’s sure they’re both packed and ready. Even then, he takes Chan’s hand and drags him by his side as he goes to grab his walkie-talkie from his desk.
“Are you really okay with this? Shouldn’t we try to talk Felix out of it?” Minho gets on his knees to better reach the bottom drawer, taking the walkie-talkie from the top and digging around for his phone charger.
“Do you really think it’s going to work?” Chan answers the question with one of his own, invoking a dark glare from Minho as he slams the drawer shut.
“Do you remember my friend Jackson? Back in high school? You and I went to different schools but Jackson went to school with me. He and I began to talk about and research the backrooms just for the heck of it, and one day he joked that he was going to try to noclip into the rooms. That was the last day I saw him. It was the last time anybody saw him. Chan, if this works and we end up stuck there, we could die and nobody would know. We’d be gone. ”
Despite the fact Minho is looking down as he finishes speaking, he knows Chan is shocked at the way his voice cracks on the final word. Chan drops to his knees beside Minho, pulling the boy into his chest and for once, Minho doesn’t shove him away or pretend to not want it. Instead, he buries his face in Chan’s shoulder, wrapping his fingers into the fabric of the older’s shirt. He can’t start crying, even if he is scared. He doesn’t know if it’ll work but Felix is right. It most likely won’t. It’s nothing to cry over. Jackson simply went missing — it’s not like everyone that goes missing has made their way into the backrooms.
He forcefully pulls back from Chan, shoving his arm into the small gap between their chests when Chan tries to keep him close. Staring up at his friend through tear-soaked lashes, Minho’s suddenly conscious of the way Chan’s hands are strong and firm on his shoulders and how Chan’s knees are spread apart to accommodate Minho sitting between them. He silently curses himself before sniffling and pulling away completely, scrambling to his feet and picking up his charger and walkie-talkie.
“It won’t work as the backrooms aren’t real.” Minho forces back the memory of Jackson as he opens the top drawer and pulls out a flashlight and a brand new package of batteries. Chan gets to his feet slowly just behind him. Before Chan can respond to him, he’s rushing out of the room to his bedroom, finding his old backpack from school in the corner. He throws his things into it and zips it shut, throwing it onto his back before finally joining the other two back in the dining room.
“We have to no-clip through a blank wall by running straight at it and visualising where we want to go, at least, that’s what I assume.” Minho tries to give the best instructions he can over the topic he knows nothing about. “So, we need to run full speed at this wall while putting our focus into visualising level 0 of the backrooms, got it?” He finishes explaining to both boys before putting one foot in front of the other, ready to run. Felix follows his position, ready to dart towards the brick wall.
Chan hesitates before following as well. “I cannot believe we’re doing this.”
Minho shakes his head, glad for the far distance between where they stand and the wall. Fear courses through his veins but he’s so close. As much as he wants the others safe, he’s been wanting to try this for years but has chickened out for just as long. He first wanted to try when he found out Jackson went missing, but he managed to convince himself he was going crazy. The backrooms weren’t real so of course if Jackson tried to no-clip (similarly to them with no idea as to how) there’s no possible way he got there. His disappearance was a coincidence. As was the little girl later that week and the elderly man the next month.
But if Jackson was sent there… Minho bites his tongue. Even if the backrooms are real, finding out if Jackson is there cannot become his top priority. With so many levels and hundreds of people, finding out if Jackson is alive would be like looking for a needle in a haystack when you’re not even sure anyone put it in. But the possibility of the needle being there is not zero.
He begins to run without warning, picturing what he knows the first level of the backrooms looks like. The yellow walls and fluorescent lights, squishy and moist carpet beneath his feet. Fixating his thoughts to be centred around the level, he imagines his feet sinking into the floor with every step and envisions the minimal details in the walls, paper peeling and deteriorating in some spots.
He closes his eyes to better focus on the picture as he awaits the inevitable impact he’ll make with the wall. But he keeps running until his vivid picture of squishy carpet under his feet feels almost too real. There's a distant and faint squelch of his feet on old, soggy carpet accompanied by a bothersome hum of electricity. Once he catches the dull odor of dust, he stops running and opens his eyes, shutting them when a wave of panic washes down his spine.
The backrooms are real. A real place you can simply “no-clip” into. A real, dangerous place with creatures and inhabitable conditions. A place that takes years to explore and escape from. A place where at least half of the missing people in the world had to have gone to.
“Shit.”
Minho wipes his hands on his jeans, pulling his sleeves to cover his hands. Despite having studied pictures of the place, seeing it in front of him makes everything look brand new. The photos show the lights and show the walls and show the carpet, but they can’t go into detail on how bright the walls really are, how loud the lights really buzz, or how the carpet really squelches under any light step.
He shrinks back a step, the reality of the environment setting in hard. His arms tremble as they go up to cover his ears, hoping to block off the buzzing. It almost sounds as if it’s getting louder the longer he stands and listens. Even through his sweater-wrapped hands, the buzzing reopens the scars in his brain that haven’t faded through the years. Wanderers have stated the fluorescent lights are similar to those in hospitals, but Minho didn’t think they’d be so familiar after all these years.
Trying what he can to block out the sound, he takes a deep inhale that nearly chokes him and lets out a long, deafening yell. Of course, the buzz continues when his scream dies out.
His fingers slip out from their warm hiding spot in his sleeve, reaching around his ears to bury themselves in his hair. He begins humming the tune of his friend’s newest released song to distract himself, finding that as he focuses on his own voice the buzzing turns to white noise in the back of his mind. Even if it hadn’t faded, the need to check on the others beats Minho’s need to care for himself.
He takes a shaky breath and takes his backpack off his shoulders, digging around for his walkie-talkie. The blocky device slips in his fumbling fingers when he attempts to turn it on, anxiety making his entire body tremor and making it difficult to even hold his backpack. Dropping to his knees and hunching over his bag, he ignores the unidentified fluid soaking into his jeans while he manages to get a proper hold on the walkie-talkie.
“Is everyone okay?”
The only thing that answers is pure static.
Minho’s shivering intensifies and he starts speaking again with a tears streaking down his cheek. “Can you guys hear me?”
There’s more static and he wonders if that’s all the others are hearing when he tries to talk. He doesn’t even know if they made it through to this first level. For all he knows, they could still be in his apartment, worried for him as he’s the only one that made it through. He was the only one with the strongest knowledge on how the first level looks and even sounds like.
He throws his walkie-talkie back into his bag, pulling out his phone and texting their group chat, only to get a “message not delivered” notification.
Of course — he thinks back to the article he spent hours poring over — this level doesn’t have wifi.
He lets out a noise that falls somewhere between a defeated sigh and terrified whimper, turning around to get to his feet as he shoulders his backpack again. He startles and steps back when his forehead is abruptly smacked into one of the vintage, yellow-papered walls. Cold fingers on his lightly throbbing head, he finishes getting to his feet while glaring at the wall as if he could stare a hole straight through it. Anger begins to blend with his fear, Minho biting his cheek to stop from lashing out at thin air.
I let them come here, I agreed to let them try coming here. Minho closes his eyes with a sigh, letting his head fall forward to rest his chin against his chest as the rising anger rapidly dissipates, leaving him with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He leans forward to rest against the wall, but stumbles when the wall is no longer where it was. His eyes shoot open and he turns around, facing the same wallpaper with his back now to the open room.
Shaking his head in disbelief, he turns back around to walk away, but walks straight into a wall – the same wall.
The situation makes him scoff and stare down the wall as he backs away. When he deems himself far enough, he turns to look where he’s going, successfully making it through a doorway and into a new room. Eyes darting around, he manages to spot a hallway, quickly rushing towards it and nearly slipping on the slick carpet. He gets to the dark entrance unharmed but hesitates rather than moving forward. The lighting is inconsistent and leaves the majority of the hall before him pitch black. He makes the mistake of looking behind him, finding another wall where there should’ve been the room he was just in.
It’s fine if there’s a wall, just go into the hallway, ignore the darkness, and don’t look back anymore, Minho pressures himself, but when he faces back to the hallway, it’s on the opposite side of the now open room.
Anger floods back into his mind and he yells out in frustration, twisting his fingers through his hair and yanking hard. When the wanderer accounts explained the non-linear space, nobody ever mentioned the rooms shifting to this extent. You can look away from a wall for a single second and it’s suddenly against your back. If that’s the case, how does anyone find this place as a safe level?
Turning back around, he sees the room having flipped again, leaving where the wall was the now open space, his desired hall, again, on the opposite side. It’s as if the level is playing tricks on him. It’s like he's a little hamster in a maze and the level is alive and loving watching him scramble around cluelessly. He retaliates against the living maze by letting out another yell and attacking the wall, putting all his anger behind a single punch. As one would’ve expected, the wall is unharmed despite a loud crack that manages to echo over the humming lights.
Minho pulls his hand to his chest, stinging pain lingering in his knuckles yet only seconds later, he punches the wall again. And again. And again.
The wall remains solid, the only change being the way it begins to stain with splatters of blood as the force of Minho’s punches forces his skin to split. Tears flood his eyes but he reminds himself the pain he feels is deserved as he brought not just himself, but his best friends as well, to this hellish place. How can he be mad at the level itself when all it does is exist? It’s him who doomed his favourite people.
He lets out another loud scream with shut eyes, almost smiling at the fact he feels relieved when he opens them to see the bloodied wall still in front of him. In fact, he does smile, laughs, even, a choked scoff that makes him realise just how fast one’s sanity can drop. Rather than calming himself and walking away, the laugh grows in his throat.
Minho wishes one of the guys could come shut him up. Punch him in the jaw, shove a sock in his mouth, crap, he wouldn’t be mad if they take a microphone and shove it down his throat. All he knows is his own laugh invokes a fear in his heart he didn’t know exists. Knees shaking, he feels the squishy carpet under his palms, laugh catching in his lungs and coming out as a choked sob. Maybe he’s laughing or maybe he’s started to cry, it doesn’t matter – it’s all the same here.
But no, he’s definitely laughing. The way his voice echoes over the buzz yet stays confined in the one room, it only seems to make him laugh louder. He’s sure Felix would find it funny, he finds everything funny. Chan would call him insane for laughing. He would remind him that pain and suffering is nothing to laugh at. But to that he and Felix would laugh anyway. What does he know? Pain and suffering are the funniest things in the world. Minho knows that for a fact. His mother and father were always right, they taught him everything right.
Minho jumps at the echo of his most psychotic sounding laugh yet. He smiles at the wall in front of him. He guesses he can talk to it, it’s his only friend after all. Felix and Chan are just temporary, people always are.
But why should he use words when they tell so little?
The crazed laughter fades to soft giggles, yet it rings around the walls just the same. It spikes in volume when Minho strikes the wall again with his fist, not noticing his already swollen and purple knuckles. Pain flares up his arm, but it doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter. It’s nothing compared to what he used to feel on the daily.
The memories make him smile and in an almost masochistic way, he misses the hurt. His heart swells at the thought of feeling it all again, the way the belt hit his skin, the way his head hit the floor, even the way the hands split his skin. His head pitches forward to smack against the wall, this time making full contact and sending a weak excuse of an ache down his spine. The mad laugh picks up again, powered deep in Minho’s lungs. In an almost involuntary movement, he pulls his head back and slams it into the wall, sticky fluid dripping down his pale skin as his skin tears. Similarly to the punches, he slams his head into the wall over and over until his ears are ringing and he’s seeing stars.
Most people would try to stop the bleeding, but the blood seeping from his forehead and around his eyes feels so good when it drips down his cheek. He lays back on the floor, bringing his knees out in front of him and kicking his heels up onto the wall. He lets out a final sigh with a grin, chuckling at the way his shoe smears around the blood dripping down the wall. He had never considered being a artist, but the way his homemade red paint drips down the yellow canvas make painting seem so appealing.
Stiff from sitting so long, he raises his arms above his head in a quick stretch, yet when he fidgets with his hands out of his view, he hits something hard that’s appeared in the middle of the room. Neck cracking as he looks, he finds a glass bottle with a white label. For the first time in a while, he falls completely silent, staring blankly at the familiar packaging of the backrooms-supplied almond water.
He lets out a gasp, hand flying to his head as pain erupts in his skull. The almond water falls on its side and begins rolling away, leaving Minho helplessly in pain. Finally, he comes to notice his swelling hand, almost letting out a cry at the way his fingers have grown to the size of baby carrots and the way they’ve turned a dusty plum colour. Eyes swelling with tears, he finds the almond water bottle stopped a metre away. Whimpers escape him when he crawls his way forward, head spinning when the bottle rolls again.
Making a sudden, rash decision, he gathers his strength and lunges forward, managing to wrap his fingers around the cold glass. He wiggles his way back onto his knees and pops off the lid, forcing back a cough when he chokes, chugging the entire bottle.
Head pain fading and hand numbing, Minho lets out a gasp and a cough, shaking all over when he turns to look at the blood-soaked wall. His heart races, tears stinging his eyes as his fingers rise to his forehead, wiping away blood to find his skin painless and with no cuts. A chill runs down his spine as he reaches for his backpack, throwing the empty bottle in before shouldering the bag. He eyes the hallway that started the mess, opting to exit through one of the larger doorways that, unexpectedly, also leads to a long, dark hall.
Hesitating will kill you, he pressures himself into keeping a constant pace, biting back the laugh that bubbles in his throat. And laughing helps nothing.
₀
When Chan realised he was far past the kitchen wall and finally stopped running, he slipped and landed face first into the soggy floor. He could vaguely remember hearing about the liquid from the floor being unsafe for humans, so he spit out whatever got into his mouth immediately. Still, he somehow managed to swallow some, leading to the lights being far too bright and the constant buzz way too loud. His breathing became heavy and inconsistent while every other step made him dizzy — he had to sit down occasionally.
Even after most of the effects have worn off and he’s able to walk in a straight line, his stomach feels like it’s trying to claw its way through his skin. He ends up stopping in a corner of one of the many blank rooms to throw up.
When we get out of here, I need to tell all the backroom fanatics that the stuff in the floor is more toxic than they made it out to be. Chan holds his stomach tightly as he laughs to himself, the ability to joke about his pain being the only thing keeping him from sobbing. Still, he swallows when the laugh begins to grow in his throat. He can laugh, but only enough to get through the pain. Laughing purely because he’s in pain… that won’t help anything.
He rises to his feet and stumbles, rushing to grab a hold of the nearest wall. However, it disappears, the space around him shifting and allowing him to fall to the floor again. Pain shoots from his shoulder and down his arm after he instinctively dodges faceplantig again, but Chan laughs off the fall like he did the vomiting, seeing as how he managed not to swallow anything hazardous this time.
The second attempt to stand goes just as bad as the first. This time, he only manages to reach a sitting position before falling onto his side, the liquid seeping into his sleeve. He then shifts one of his backpack straps off his shoulder, moving the bag onto his stomach so he can fully lay back and rest his throbbing head.
The carpet is soft due to being soaked, moulding to hold Chan like a soft mattress would. He finds himself staring at the blinking lights above his head and wishing he had a blanket as he knows he can easily give in and fall asleep right there. The buzz of the lights seems to grow louder, yet plays the part of a strange, loud lullaby. Black seeps into the edge of his vison, ceiling beginning to spin above him as his eyes begin to flutter.
Mind drifting, he wonders how Minho and Felix are doing. Did they get here, or did they not? If they didn’t at first, did they panic when he did? Did they come here out of the sole purpose of finding him? If so, then why should he stay here while they’re probably panicking?
He lets out a strangled whine, forcing himself to turn onto his side despite the ache in his shoulder, slowly rising to sit up. He can’t stay there when he knows Minho and Felix are wandering around somewhere. He needs to get up, needs to keep looking.
But the carpet is so inviting…
Five minutes won’t hurt. Chan drops his head onto his arm, twisting his hurt shoulder in a painful way and lying back down as his muscles relax and his eyelids begin to flutter again. The hum of the lights has gone from a roaring buzz in his ears to a distant white noise, almost like a far away thunderstorm on a cool night. It’s just as comforting as the yellow wallpaper that’s gone from a seemingly neon lemon colour to a pale, baby yellow, the pattern only interrupted by…
Is that blood?
Chan forces his eyes to focus and sits up. The room spins and he feels like he’s just stepping on land after months at sea, but he manages to take a few wobbly steps toward the out of place design on the wall.
Chan hesitantly touches the red, finding it to be warm and sticky, scattered unevenly like water from a water balloon on a sidewalk with the colour being heavier in some spots. Parts are drying and turning brown while some are still dripping heavily. The fluid had started to pool on the floor long ago, spreading along the carpet thanks to the previously watered material. If the red swirls were made by water and artificial colouring, they may be considered pretty, but the fact it’s blood spreading through a toxic substance makes Chan feel sick from his stomach again.
Still, he can’t help but hope it’s from Felix or Minho. Sure, it would mean they’re most likely hurt, but it also means they’re alive. Alive and in this crazy place, but alive nonetheless.
Almost tripping over his feet, Chan rushes towards the nearest doorway, fighting his growing headache to turn left into a long hallway that ends up being a dead end. Well, a dead end for around ten seconds as he closes his eyes then opens them to find the hall opening into a new room. If one of the guys is bleeding, who knows what could happen if it goes on for too long. Chan doesn’t know what kind of creatures lurk in the shadows here but it’s possible for one or two to be attracted by the smell of blood.
For a moment he’s scared he may have stumbled his way into the same room he was in before as it’s laid out the same way – a single random corner that’s made from an external corner rather than an internal one – but there’s no blood spattered on any of the walls and there’s no vomit in any of the corners. The only thing that’s unique about this room is the small bottle along the far wall.
The bottle in question is made of thick glass as Chan finds out when he picks it up and hears the clink of his fingernails against the material. There’s a label wrapping around it, reading “Almond Water.”
He cocks his head to the side. He’s never even heard of almond water. Is it safe? Can he drink it? Would it have similar if not the same effects as whatever is in the carpet?
Chan makes a note to himself to question Minho about it when he finds him as he shoves the bottle into his backpack. It clinks against his walkie-talkie that has laid silent since the storm of static. When one of the others had tried speaking, all he had heard was static, he didn’t even know which of them it was. Static came through three times, so it’s possible both of them had tried to speak, but it may have been just one. Still, Chan’s sure that whatever he heard come from the device had been the same thing the others heard when he tried to reply.
Zipping his backpack back up, he continues to stumble through the next doorway.
₀
Felix is proud of the way he climbed his way into the ceiling. The buzzing is the loudest above the tiles, yet he’s sure using the wires along the top can be used as a practical way of navigation. Once he manages to pull himself through the hole left by the single shifted slate, he covers the hole back up and digs through his backpack.
There’s loud clinking that echoes through the darkness when his collection of glass almond water bottles clash with each other as he searches blindly for his flashlight. He pulls it out along with one of the several bottles, uncapping it and taking a small drink before flipping his flashlight on.
Only when his flashlight illuminates the long corridor before him does he realise just how dirty and dusty both the “floor” below him and wires above are. Large dust bunnies glide through the air as Felix lets out a cough and disturbs the ones right in front of him. He decides it’s best to hold his breath the best he can to avoid inhaling what’s not oxygen, but when his hand slides across the floor, his fingers come back coated in grime.
Fixing everything in his backpack, he swings it onto his back and begins to make his way forward, humming as he drags himself along with a thin beam of light guiding him. It takes him far too long to realise he’s humming the same tune he had been when he was first calming himself. The song is one from the first album he and Chan released in the group – it had reminded him through the loud murmur of the lights and vulgar squishing of the carpet that he has a reason to not give into his fear and has a reason to get back to reality.
He had been the one that was adamant about attempting to enter the backrooms despite Minho’s warnings and refusals. It wasn’t that he wasn’t scared of being sent here, he had fully believed the backrooms were made up. You’re supposed to walk in a straight line and end up in a spot that was in the direction you were moving. You’re supposed to see exactly what someone else sees when you’re standing together in the same area. You’re supposed to touch a wall and actually touch a wall, not go through it. Nothing about the backrooms makes scientific sense and therefore none of it should’ve been real.
When Felix nearly slipped after running through the kitchen wall, he opened his eyes and promptly fainted. When he woke several minutes later, he cried for another few. It’s his fault they're there as it was him that was stubborn and wanted to prove they wouldn’t get to the backrooms by running at a wall. It’s when the song started playing in his head and memories of his fellow members made him realise that simply sobbing about his own guilt wouldn’t help anyone. That’s when he got to his feet and instantly noticed the loose tile of the ceiling.
He begins to mutter the lyrics of the song under his breath, singing softly in the small crawl space. The more he stays in the ceiling, the smaller the area seems to become and more cramped he is with the dust shoving him around and making him suffocate. Slowly, he finds the tiles under him to be weaker than expected as they occasionally break under his hands and feet, sending his limbs crashing down. It’s happening more and more often, Felix’s thick skin being scratched at by the jagged edges to the point of blood seeping through.
A rough cough forces its way out of Felix’s throat, leading him to realise he shouldn’t try to stay in the space any longer out of regard for his health. He stops moving when his hand dives through yet another tile, sending pain up his arm for the nth time. Pulling it back to his chest, he uses the other to gently dislodge the broken slate, setting it to the side and carefully crawling forward to attempt to step down. He places a hand on the far edge of the opening, leaning his weight forward to bring a leg into the hole. There’s a faint crack that rings through the air, covered by the never-ending buzz and Felix’s singing that comes to an abrupt stop. Just as he begins to shift his weight back to his legs, the tile below his fingers all but shatters into pieces, sending him flying through the ceiling to the wet carpet below.
His eyes flutter open as he inhales shakily, bright stars dotting the edge of his vision as he attempts to focus on his surroundings. Ringing in his ear accompanies the continued buzz of the lights, feeding into his headache. The ceiling above him is perfectly tiled with a single light off to the side, yet he can’t seem to remember just why that seems odd.
Uncomfortable lying on his back, Felix manages to roll over on his stomach and prop himself up on his arm. He lets out a whine doing so, tears prickling the corners of his eyes as he not just feels a severe, throbbing ache in head, but now sees the room rotating around him.
Right, he remembers, backrooms, ceiling, falling…
Absolute agony erupts in his shoulder when he tries to use his left arm to bring himself to his knees, punching out a choked gasp from deep in his throat. The stars reappear in his eyes and he blinks hard, trying to clear his vision again. Tearfully, he turns his neck to look down, eyes widening as he finds his shoulder swollen and bruised at some spots. He reaches to hold it, finding that holding his arm still makes the pain slightly more bearable. However, moving his fingers closer to his shoulder, he lets out another gasp, closing his eyes as a tear slips out.
He must’ve kept his eyes closed too long as when he opens them, the room is spinning again, making him dizzy and sick to his stomach. Once one tear falls he finds it difficult to hold the rest back, the pain in his head and ache in his shoulder mixed with the twisting in his stomach makes him–
Twisting to the side, he coughs hard, choking on his own vomit as his stomach forces out pure acid since it has to have been hours since he ate with Chan and Minho. It burns his throat and his mouth and when he tries to breathe the fumes burn his lungs. Whatever’s inside him rushes out of him leaving him weak and empty, barely able to sit up. When he retches to find nothing spewing out, he takes a deep breath and scoots away from the large pool, forcing himself to stay upright long enough to pull his backpack into his lap.
There’s the familiar sound of bottles clinking as he shifts through the bag yet again, realising he must’ve lost his flashlight back in the crawlspace. Forcing his fear of the dark to the back of his mind, his hand begins to hover over the open bottle of almond water, silently shocked over how none of the glass bottles shattered when he fell. He takes the bottle and drains the half that’s left.
When he first picked up the almond waters, he thought they were nothing more than just water. He remembers in the compilation they watched about the backrooms that it’s meant to have sanity-saving abilities, but nothing else was really said about it. It wasn’t until he slipped and smacked his head into a wall that he found out the water seems to have the ability to dull pain and mildly cure injuries. With a single sip of water the sharp pain in his head had receded leaving it at a bearable ache. It wasn’t a complete fix, but it made his pain tolerable.
Felix gingerly touches his shoulder, finding the water has numbed the pain a bit, making it easier to move his body without worrying about accidentally shifting his arm. Of course, it does still ache like hell and the light purple has become much darker, but the swelling has paused its growth. Similarly, the room has stopped spinning and he’s able to focus his eyes without stars popping up.
He ends up rushing to his feet without thinking, grabbing his backpack and running out the nearest doorway, back to mindlessly exploring the halls as if the ceiling, his fall, and his throwing up never happened.
It's been hours. At least, Felix thinks it's been hours. He checks his phone but it died around the time it hit midnight in reality. It had been around five in the evening when he and Chan had entered Minho’s apartment.
He’s back to singing his comfort song, almost bursting into tears at the part that was originally sung by Chan. He does let out a sob when the part he let Minho listen to before the official release repeats over and over in his mind.
Squishing noises made by his steps gradually turn to sloshing as he begins to drag his feet below him. Walking becomes a difficult task as the effects of the almond water begin to wear off, pain returning to his shoulder as well as a cloud of haze pouring over his skull. He sways like a drunk man as he walks, bumping his good shoulder into the wall as he uses it for support.
There’s a dragging weight in the back of his head that makes his eyes blur as he stares in front of him. The distant buzzing in his ears nearly fades entirely as the full effects of his injuries sink in.
He almost forgets the walls are capable of shifting until he’s feeling something against his arm that’s not just a simple, blank wall.
It’s torture to have to turn his head yet he manages, almost dropping from relief right there when his eyes focus on a door. He stumbles when he reaches for the metal bar, leaning his weight onto it as he forces it open, hoping it leads out of the level and into somewhere that has a more tolerable view.
