Chapter 2. Bathroom
I briefly organized the information about the bathroom and posted it.
The reaction was explosive.
Though mostly in a negative way.
└A place like that can actually exist? Is it magic? But you said your world doesn’t even have mana;;
└This is obviously fake lol. Can’t believe people are falling for it.
└I’m on my 1,700th regression, and I’ve never heard of anything like this. Pretty sure it’s fake.
└I’ve been using this Gallery for around 2,000 years and I’ve never seen anything like that either. Yep.
└Dude, stop using the Gallery so much lololol.
└I’m just blocking this guy lol. He’s sitting there spewing ridiculous fantasies straight out of his head lolol.
At first, the comments were mostly people trying to guess what the bathroom really was.
But as time passed, people gradually started doubting me.
Once more than half the comments were calling me a liar, I made a decision.
I would prove it.
At this rate, I was going to get branded as some annoying idiot everyone hated.
That wouldn’t exactly be pleasant.
For the sake of my future life on the Gallery, I needed proof.
Thinking that, I picked up my phone.
Then a question suddenly came to mind.
“But how am I supposed to prove it?”
If this were an ordinary internet community, I could simply record a video with my phone and upload it.
But the Regression, Possession, Reincarnation Gallery didn’t use the internet.
The medium for accessing the Gallery was nothing more than a strange blue window that had no physical sensation even when I touched it.
Even if I recorded a video, there was no way I could upload it to the Gallery.
There had to be some method, though.
I had seen plenty of posts with pictures attached.
After thinking for a while, I made a post asking about it.
And I got an answer.
This was actually pretty amazing.
Apparently, the Gallery itself had a camera function.
When I carefully looked at the top-right corner of the Gallery window, I noticed a camera-shaped icon.
The moment I pressed it, a familiar interface appeared in the center of the blue window.
It looked exactly like an ordinary camera app.
I switched from photo mode to video recording mode and started recording.
A cheerful sound effect rang out.
It was working... right?
With a little uncertainty in my heart, I took a step forward.
“Ha...”
I really didn’t want to go in there.
Suppressing that thought, I kept walking.
Eventually, I arrived in front of the bathroom.
I carefully opened the door.
The pitch-black interior of the bathroom appeared before me.
It was so dark that it almost looked as though someone had covered the entire room with sheets of black paper.
I squeezed my eyes shut and stepped inside.
A moment later, I opened them again.
There was absolutely no difference.
Darkness that seemed like the very concept of darkness given physical form swallowed me whole.
Complete darkness was far more frightening than I had ever imagined.
Inside the bathroom, forget seeing the scenery ahead of me—I couldn’t even perceive my own hands.
I walked while feeling around with my hands.
The toilet.
The sink.
The mirror.
Their textures brushed against my fingertips one after another.
After what felt like making a full circle around the room, I placed my hand against the wall so I could start heading back out.
I had left the door open.
So if I just kept following the wall, I should eventually find the exit.
As fear slowly built inside me, I quickened my pace and continued circling the bathroom.
Five minutes passed.
Then ten.
“No...”
Fifteen minutes.
I still couldn’t get outside.
This was unexpected.
This was something that should never have happened.
Maybe it was because I had been careless.
Just because I had left the door open, I should never have thrown myself into a place like this.
Something strange had already happened once.
There was no rule saying it couldn’t happen twice.
The door could have disappeared.
Or I could have been transported somewhere else.
Yet I hadn’t considered either possibility.
Damn it.
Swallowing a curse, I dropped down onto the floor.
No.
Was I really sitting on the floor?
I wasn’t sure anymore.
My sense of balance twisted until I couldn’t even tell whether the direction I was facing was forward, backward, sideways, up, or down.
The place I was sitting on could have been the ceiling.
Or maybe even a wall.
At least, that was what my sense of balance was telling me.
My senses were completely distorted.
Nausea surged up along with dizziness.
For now, I slowly lowered my body.
Then I stretched my arms as wide as possible and moved them around as though I were swimming.
My fingertips touched nothing.
That was strange too.
I was over 180 centimeters tall, and my arms weren’t exactly short.
In a bathroom this size, I should have touched something.
Had I not merely been isolated?
Had I actually been transported to another space?
Like... the Backrooms or something?
My fear passed its limit and began overflowing.
My mind went blank.
Terrible possibilities flashed through my head like a panorama.
One of them was a future where I could never escape and slowly starved to death.
I spent some time unable to properly think.
Then, all of a sudden, I remembered one last hope.
Clinging desperately to that single ray of light, I shouted.
“Stop recording!”
I definitely spoke aloud.
Yet I couldn’t hear anything.
Still, I could feel one thing.
A blue window appeared in front of me.
Just as I had hoped, it seemed the Gallery worked perfectly fine even inside the bathroom.
The recording function on the blue window turned off, and the Gallery opened.
I immediately wrote a post and attached the video.
[PLEASEHELPMEIMTHEGUYWHOASKEDHOWTOGETSTRONGER]
[Author: ㅇㅇ]
[(21-minute video)
Bathroom proof.
I’m trapped inside right now.
I can’t touch anything, and I think the door disappeared.
Please help me.
How do I get out of here?]
Until I finished writing the title, my mind had been frantic.
But little by little, I began calming down.
My fear also started to fade, and my mind became peaceful.
It felt as though someone was here with me.
Like I wasn’t alone.
Was this why people used online communities?
Feeling much better, I pressed refresh.
Comments had already appeared.
Every time I refreshed, more comments piled up.
After about a minute, there were already dozens.
The comments were all different.
└This is actually real? What the hell kind of world is this?
└Feels like a world we’ve never seen before. This is crazy interesting ㄷㄷ And apparently it even has a modern setting.
└Wasn’t the last time a new type of world appeared like 500 years ago, with immortal cultivation worlds?
└The Gallery’s gonna be obsessed with this topic for a while lololol.
Some comments tried to speculate about my world.
└This doesn’t look like normal darkness. I’m at the Absolute Realm, and I still can’t see anything;
└Even someone at the Absolute Realm might not be able to see if there’s literally zero light. But I’m an Archmage and I can’t see anything either;
└Info) Once you reach the level of Archmage, your sensory organs are reconstructed, so you can see even without light. Therefore, the space shown in the video has definitely been altered by magic.
└The OP said his world doesn’t even have mana;; What magical alteration? Maybe you’re just lying about being an Archmage.
└Bullshit. The OP could be lying, or maybe the OP simply doesn’t know that mana exists in his world. You seriously have no imagination.
└What the fuck did you just say to me, asshole?
Some comments were people fighting with each other.
└That really is a bizarre place. You said your bodily senses are gradually disappearing too, right? If you had magic or martial arts, maybe there’d be something you could do, but if you’re just a normal person, I don’t see any way out.
└Even magic or martial arts wouldn’t help, would they? If you lose all bodily sensation, you wouldn’t be able to move mana or internal energy either. Pretty sure the only ending there is death.
└If you’re really desperate, try using your innate qi or something.
└Is that supposed to be an efficient suicide method? lolol. If he tries dragging out his innate qi when he can’t even feel his body, he’ll probably drop dead instantly lololol.
And some comments were genuinely trying to help me somehow.
Countless comments appeared.
But even after the number rose from dozens to hundreds, nobody had come up with a clear solution.
Even so, I remained calm.
Partly because the community itself had helped settle my nerves.
But also because I had found a clue for escaping.
A clue.
More precisely, it was a clue about what I needed to do next.
I repeated the comment that had given me the idea.
└If it’s a space where your senses disappear, then there’s nothing you can do except wait until you die.
If you had no senses, you couldn’t do anything.
That seemed to be the shared opinion of the Gallery users.
Which also meant—
If I had my senses, then there might be something I could do.
Maybe I was forcing the logic.
But I had to try something.
I focused while imagining the sensations of my own body.
I thought about my body.
My arms and legs.
My hands and feet.
I remembered what each part of my body felt like whenever I moved it.
Even then, nothing changed.
My body remained completely numb.
It felt as though every part of me except my brain had melted away.
I refused to give up and tried again.
Twice.
Three times.
Then ten times.
And finally, I received a response.
A finger twitched.
My body, which had felt as though it had become one with the darkness itself, finally moved.
It was only one finger.
But I could vaguely see the possibility now.
I continued struggling to awaken my senses.
After more than a hundred attempts, I regained enough sensation to move my hand.
After several thousand attempts, I finally recovered the feeling in my arm.
My right arm moved from side to side according to my will.
Good.
This was enough.
I stretched my right arm forward.
Unlike before, when I couldn’t feel anything, my fingers touched something hard.
Calmly feeling around it, I imagined the shape of the object beneath my hand.
A bathtub.
No.
A toilet.
It was probably the toilet.
If that was the case, then I could also guess where the door was.
I moved toward the location I had estimated.
I used my right arm like a leg.
I stretched my hand forward, planted it against the floor, then pulled my body toward it as though doing a pull-up.
I continued moving like that.
Before long, something square blocked my path.
This was...
The door.
The door!
That meant the threshold was right in front of me.
The threshold separating the inside of the bathroom from the outside.
Darkness from light.
I moved my hand around until I finally grabbed the threshold.
At that moment, I felt a strange texture against my hand.
I ignored it.
I gathered every ounce of strength in my body into my arm and pulled myself upward with enough force to rip the threshold apart.
“Huaaaagh!”
The darkness around me peeled away.
The normal world finally entered my vision.
Sunlight and the glow of LED lights, which now felt strangely unfamiliar, wrapped around me warmly.
My senses gradually returned as well.
My hearing came back first.
Then the rest of my five senses began awakening one by one.
My sense of smell picked up the faint scent of blood drifting through the air.
My vision engraved the bright light and countless colors into my mind.
Finally, my now even more sensitive sense of touch detected something wet, sticky, and strangely soft.
“What... is this?”
Only then did I realize there was something on my hand.
Looking closer, I saw black liquid flowing over my right hand.
Could this really even be called a liquid?
It was something so bizarre that it was difficult to describe with words.
It looked as though sticky tar had been wrapped around my hand like a glove.
Even the color was pitch-black, just like tar.
I tried to peel it away with my left hand.
But I couldn’t grab it.
Until the moment my hand approached, it had been thick and sticky.
Yet the instant I touched it, its properties changed and it flowed like water.
It seemed this incident still wasn’t over.
