Chapter 1
Title: Starting Work Today
Author: Man in Black
I'll come by to hand out burgers when I get my paycheck, you socially orphaned young men. I'm off first.
[Comments]
[Anon(110.12): Burger line]
ㄴ[Burger Collector: Fuck, what do you mean by an anon line? I'm in line too]
[JapanLover: Isn't this the employment-up line?]
[I'llBuyBurgersWithUnemploymentBenefits: Line]
[Anon:—————————- Closing the line]
[RunawayKing: Line]
[Jae-yeon Mom: Line! Please make several of them nice and generous so our kid can eat too ^^]
“Who the hell asks for a set meal.”
I skimmed a few comments that had already broken double digits less than three minutes after I posted it, then closed the gallery.
Though it was a shame this would be my last round of gallery shitposting.
The promised hamburgers?
A burger promise is fulfilled by not handing out burgers.
Goodbye, Employment Gallery. See you again when I quit.
If I can quit, that is.
The Bureau.
An organization that manages, secures, and monitors almost every supernatural being imaginable.
Today was my first day on the job as a new recruit to that monstrous organization.
Apparently, when real life gets so bad you can't keep living like a human, they scout you out.
They said that whatever you imagine, something even more dangerous and unpredictable will happen.
What else could I do? There was no other path.
“It's here.”
I held out my powered-off phone to the front desk.
“Yes~. You can go in.”
Following the attendant's instructions, I entered the auditorium and saw young people in suits seated in chairs.
They were probably fellow recruits like me.
'412... 412....'
I checked the numbers attached to the backs of the chairs and found my seat.
A little while later.
“Ah, ah. Mic test, one two three.”
A booming voice echoed through the auditorium.
“Welcome, new colleagues. I am Manager Kwak Chun-bong, the one in charge of this orientation.”
Clap... clap-clap... clapclapclapclapclapclap!
Starting with applause sparked by someone, all the new hires in the auditorium clapped for the man onstage.
“Thank you. This time I'll only explain very simple things about the job. You'll hear the details once you go to your respective departments.”
Manager Kwak Chun-bong really did explain only the very simple things.
Just copy-pasted bits from the basic work rules we were given after passing.
“Once orientation is over, you'll be issued the terminal used by the Bureau.”
If an agent dies, did they say all the data on the terminal gets stored in the Bureau cloud?
That's probably how records written in blood are made.
“Don't worry about the plan. As an employee benefit, unlimited data, calls, and texts are free.”
After that came about an hour of rereading the preparatory materials and bragging about Bureau benefits.
Everyone gathered here was probably someone who couldn't go back anyway.
“Lastly, here's a tip for you: the phone's default apps include the Bureau's anonymous bulletin board.”
Hm?
“The pre-censorship standards are high, so only small-talk-level posts get through, but it'll pass the time when you're bored.”
Probably an app like Everytime or Blind.
But they sure say “censorship” like it's nothing.
“That's all for my explanation. On your way out of the auditorium, you'll receive your terminals and head to your respective departments. Let's meet alive next time.”
The applause filled the auditorium once more, and following the instructions, we started filing out in order, beginning with number one.
The issued terminal looked a lot like a free phone.
Apparently, you could switch to a better one as your rank went up.
Since performance was all that mattered, I stuffed it into my pocket and headed to my assigned department.
“Hello, my name is Park Seong-bin, and I'm starting work today.”
“Let's see... you're the last new recruit in this cohort. Go sit over there.”
About ten people around my age were sitting where the female employee pointed.
Once I sat down, she began explaining.
“Um... first of all, you'll start work immediately today. We'll give you some essentials, so take them and head straight to the site.”
An absurdly simple explanation.
“I have a question!”
“Go ahead.”
A woman who seemed to share my thoughts shot up her hand and spoke.
“Is that the end of the explanation?”
“Yes.”
“What about the department, or what kind of work we'll be doing...”
“You're in the Field Response Team, and what you'll do will be explained if you're still alive after this job.”
The employee's casual talk of life and death froze the atmosphere in an instant.
“Even if we explained it in detail a hundred times, it'd be useless, so we decided to explain it before your second assignment.”
“That's...!”
“If you came in through the human-rights-forfeiture track, you should've expected that much.”
The resistance that had been twitching on the fellow recruits' faces vanished with the word he spat out.
“If you understand, come get your bags. This batch has it easy, after all.”
Each person was handed a bag. A pretty hefty size.
“Everyone got one? I'll explain the contents along with the work later, so follow me.”
The employee mechanically spat out the scripted lines with no enthusiasm.
What would I be doing on the first day?
Safe entity management or report writing, like I'd seen on the wiki?
Detailed training for new hires?
Memorizing entity traits?
I let various thoughts run through my head and followed the employee walking ahead.
After passing through several corridors, we arrived at a facility lined with unknown machinery.
Countless wires and devices. A single enormous gate connected to all of them.
Though for all that appearance, the back of the gate was just the facility wall.
At that moment, it hit me—I really had gotten hired by the Bureau.
'Fuck... no matter how you look at it, this isn't a tutorial.'
The employee began explaining as if she'd read my thoughts.
“From now on, you will pass through this gate and survive there for one week.”
A very simple explanation, followed by silence.
“Is that it?”
“That's it.”
“What about where that place is, or the explanation about the bag you said you'd give earlier...”
“I thought about it, and it seemed like you'd check the bag yourselves. And I don't know what that place inside is either.”
The employee turned her head casually and looked at the gate.
“Because figuring that out is your job.”
The expressions of the fellow recruits who came with me darkened in an instant.
Cold words followed, as if she'd sensed the shift in mood.
“Like I said earlier, if you came in through the human-rights-forfeiture track and thought we'd spoon-feed you everything, drop that idea right now.”
The employee walked up to the device connected to the gate and started tapping the keys.
Ziiiiing.
The gate's empty opening filled with purple in an instant.
Even when I looked closely, I could only see a rippling purple space; nothing else was visible.
“As I said earlier, this cohort has it easy.”
The employee said as she worked the keyboard furiously.
“The place you enter through this gate is somewhere a signal can reach, so after a week you'll be forcibly sent back.”
Wow, you really hit the nail on the head.
Interpreted that way, it meant we didn't know what was beyond the gate.
But it also meant, “This is easy because a guaranteed escape is possible.”
What kind of bullshit difficulty setting is that?
If you're lucky and there's an exit on-site, you can come back without having to wait the full week.
Schrödinger's exit, huh.
“But if I were you, I wouldn't do that. Here's a pro tip: don't go into suspicious places for no reason, and just wait out the full time.”
The place we're going into right now is suspicious, though.
I was a little annoyed by the employee's casual attitude, like it wasn't her problem, but there was nothing I could do.
That's the human-rights-forfeiture track for you.
“Go in one at a time.”
Following the instructions, we entered the gate one by one in order.
The fellow recruits vanished in an instant, as if they had never existed, the moment they touched the gate's purple light.
Once everyone was in, it was my turn last.
Before going into the gate, I turned and looked back at the employee.
Short brown bob, and a slightly ditzy-looking face.
If it weren't for this situation, maybe I would've wanted to get close to her.
I'm not lonely enough to feel attracted to someone who looks at me like I'm not even a person.
“Aren't you going in?”
“Huh? No! I'm going, I'm going.”
Leaving the employee behind, tilting her head at me, I stepped into the rippling purple space.
My vision flickered for a moment.
***
“Team Leader.”
“What.”
Research Team Leader Choi Min-su looked at the new recruit who had only recently come in.
He looked so bewildered that, ten years ago, he himself probably would have been the same.
“No matter how I think about it, it's obvious he'll die. Isn't it wrong to send in an employee when he's not even N-rank?”
Even if he'd never actually worked a job before, it was a perfectly obvious and reasonable question.
No matter how much the Bureau was a place where people got ground up for real, and even if he had come through the human-rights-forfeiture track, using such an inefficient method was obviously strange.
“What else can we do? If HQ says do it, we do it.”
“That Field Response Team leader over there is the same. He might die, and they still explain things so sloppily...”
Common sense, common sense, common sense, common sense. The plain, correct line of reasoning.
If this were an ordinary company, he'd have given the team leader's seat to this new recruit and gone in as the rookie himself.
“Yun-deok.”
“Yes?”
If this weren't the Bureau—let alone the capital region.
“That team leader over there thinks he's saving people right now.”
“Huh?”
“He thinks that if your life is in danger, we'll get you out. Then we wipe your memory and send you back into society.”
The new recruit's face filled with shock. Still, you're a person after all.
“He's trying to be considerate in his own way so they won't be able to keep working here. Once someone's been memory-wiped, the Bureau can't lay a hand on them unless they're a defector.”
Because the fact that nobody working for the Bureau dies of natural causes was a fact written even in the Goguryeo Subakdo.
“Then what did those people do wrong? They came to the Bureau to start a new life! If you need sacrifices, then just put in N-rank personnel!”
“Haah....”
Choi Min-su sighed and rubbed his forehead with one hand.
Because the sight of him speaking so fervently overlapped with his own from twenty years ago.
“They don't like N-rank personnel.”
“Yes?”
“They don't like N-rank personnel being part of the minimum quota. So they say if we bring civilians, it won't run wild.”
A bead of sweat ran down the new recruit's forehead.
“So that's why you made a human-rights-forfeiture track and shoved people into it?”
Choi Min-su shook his head at the new recruit's words.
“Yeah. Only for the Seoul-area Bureau.”
Choi Min-su couldn't bring himself to say how many millions of lives it was saving, and simply stared at the CCTV.
A Bureau that was being managed by others. And it really didn't live up to its name.
***
What I saw was a space filled with a faded yellow hue.
Yellow walls, yellow floor, walls jutting out irregularly.
The noise of old fluorescent lights filled my ears instead of complete silence.
A musty, fishy smell rose from the floor.
“No, fuck, the Backrooms right from the start is a bit much.”
A space so famous even people outside the Bureau would know it.
So famous it had become fodder for kids' endless headcanon nonsense: a liminal space.
I had been dropped into an endless maze on my first day, and I had to find an exit or survive for a week.
And since the Backrooms have no exit, the former was out.
Though if “escape” meant getting out of here only to be teleported into the real world's sky and fall to my death, then it might be possible.
I gave up on thinking and walked toward the nearest wall.
Figuring out the situation came first. I had plenty of time.
I had to quickly figure out whether this Backrooms was the one I was thinking of, or whether some other prank had been set up.
Otherwise I might die today, never mind a week.
“110V....”
As if boasting that it was foreign-made, the outlet at the bottom of the wall had slim straight slots instead of round holes.
Then charging is totally screwed, isn't it?
“Right, the bag. Let's check the bag first.”
The contents the employee had said she'd explain on-site, but then skipped over, so I still didn't know what was inside.
What was inside would determine my chances of survival from here on out.
Clatter!
I sat with my back against the wall and dumped out the contents of the bag.
And the things that came out were, well, not just a little—way too many.
“...So the bag was custom-made too, huh.”
The things that spilled out of the bag were far too many to imagine from its original size.
A generous amount of drinking water and food, a sleeping bag, a flashlight, spare clothes, a small medicine pouch....
And a 110V outlet adapter plug and a phone charger.
“...From now on, I'm going to try surviving in the Backrooms for a week.”
Backrooms challenge, start.