My consciousness slowly returned. When my eyelids opened, there was no blinding light, no sounds of life—only... white.
Walls. Floor. Ceiling. All plain white.
I was sitting on glossy, milk-colored tiles, the cold pressing against my skin. Above, fluorescent tube lights were embedded neatly into the high white ceiling, humming faintly with an eerie, almost imperceptible sound—adding to the sense that this place was not made for humans.
This wasn't a dream.
I slowly got up and touched the nearest wall. The white paint felt fresh, slick, sterile. No windows. No clock. No furniture. No sign of life. Only branching white corridors, forming a massive building like a secret facility, but empty and silent.
"Wait... Why am I here?"
"I... I was supposed to be home. At my place. The door—the black room... It pulled me in... And then..."
I grabbed my hair, trying to forcibly pull back fragments of memory, but everything was blurred, like these walls—clean, spotless, devoid of information.
Letting out a long sigh, I straightened my body. My head throbbed from too many unanswered questions.
"Standing still will only drive me insane."
I began walking. My footsteps echoed softly against the tiles, blending with the unnatural silence. Every corridor looked identical, as if copied from a single architectural blueprint and pasted over and over. No signs. No writing on the walls. No emergency exits. Not even ventilation grilles.
Just corridors. Corridors. And more corridors.
This building felt too perfect. Too quiet. As if it was designed to erase all sense of time, direction, and hope.
Worse still, there was no smell. No temperature. As if the world here had shut off every element that made a person feel alive.
"Is this some kind of observation chamber? A mental lab? A psychological prison?"
The longer I walked, the more this place felt like it was testing my mind.
Each turn led to another identical hallway. Sometimes there were glass windows, but they only showed other empty rooms. Even the mirror I found didn't reflect anything—just pure white.
My thoughts grew heavy. My steps slowed.
"How long have I been walking...? Am I just going in circles?"
I stopped. My chest tightened. My heart pounded not from exhaustion, but from fear—fear that I might be trapped here forever.
This place felt alive. Not with a heartbeat, but with a lethal kind of stillness.
One more step felt like walking into madness.
But amid it all, in the mind that was starting to fracture, a small voice refused to give in.
"No. I'm not dead. I can still move."
"This place is real. So there must be a way out."
I closed my eyes. Regulated my breathing. Focused my thoughts. I had learned to control stress. This was not the time to fall apart.
"As long as I'm alive... I'll keep searching for an exit. Until the end."
And whether it was because of my mental resolve… or because that was exactly what this place had been waiting for—
The floor began to tremble.
Faintly, a mechanical noise emerged—like giant gears turning deep within the bowels of this building. The corridor in front of me shook. White walls shifted. For the first time, the structure responded.
The walls rotated. Hallways rearranged themselves. And at the end of the newly revealed path—
A wooden door appeared.
Dark brown in color, framed in black metal. An ordinary door. But its presence in this place felt like an anomaly, a tiny blemish in a world that was too clean.
I stared at it without blinking.
"Is that... the way out?"
Without a second thought, I started running. I didn't care if it was a trap. I didn't care if it led to something worse.
All that mattered was movement. Choice. Hope.
As I reached the door, I paused, staring at its handle. It felt cold to the touch. My hand trembled slightly. But there was no time for hesitation.
"No matter what's waiting behind this…
As long as it's not despair."
I slowly turned the handle.
The hinges groaned softly.
And beyond it—
Was not a place I recognized.