Editor’s Survival Guide - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Editor’s Survival Rules Episode 1

ep1. When the Siren Sounds (1)

“It was an honor to share this long journey with you.

I hope you have wonderful days ahead.”

I sent my final email and let out a relieved breath.

Looking at the clock, it was past midnight, and I was alone in the office.

This is often how an editor’s day goes before publication.

No evenings or weekends is standard, and from staring at manuscripts all day, my eyes are bleary, my back aches, and my brain feels slightly fried.

But quite regrettably, I still love this job.

Everyone has their own story.

Editors find the interesting ones among those common or unusual, good or bad stories and bind them into books.

And deliver them to readers.

To be of some help in everyone’s first-time life.

Right, without this sense of fulfillment, who would do such difficult work?

Especially with such low pay that I have to take the late-night bus instead of a taxi at this hour.

After packing up and heading outside, it was already 1 AM.

I wonder why I’m even leaving when I’ll just sleep and come right back to work, but I have a meeting with an author tomorrow.

Just because that author shows up in slippers every time doesn’t mean I can do the same.

So I need to go home, wash up a bit, shave, and put on decent clothes instead of this worn-out hoodie.

I was thinking about whether I had any ironed shirts at home when I stopped walking.

…Where am I?

Just moments ago, I was walking on the familiar road where the bus stop is located.

But now I’m standing in a brightly lit corridor.

The kind of corridor that leads to subways or underground shopping areas.

No matter how drowsily I was walking, I don’t remember entering a place like this.

I looked around and then turned to look behind me.

“Huh…?”

Somehow, there was a wall behind me.

Considering I had been walking continuously, this was impossible both temporally and spatially.

I skeptically placed my hand on the wall.

Thud-

This really was a wall.

A cold cement wall that wouldn’t budge or open.

I stood there stupidly for a moment, then fumbled in my pocket and pulled out my smartphone.

“What the hell, why is this thing dead…”

My smartphone had all its signal bars gone, and the date and time display was strange too.

Month 19, Day 50, 07:16?

What kind of error is this…

I tapped the bricked smartphone and felt my neck.

Fortunately, it was still warm.

It didn’t seem like I had died from overwork.

Then what the hell is this situation?

Teleportation? Entering another world? Dimensional trap?

Various urban legend stories I’d seen online flashed through my mind.

But surely not, this has to be a joke, right?

I have to go to work tomorrow too.

Not knowing what was what, I turned around for now.

Unlike the blocked rear, a path continued forward.

Thinking I needed to get out of here, I walked forward.

Following the corner that turned left, stairs appeared.

Climbing even those stairs revealed a new space.

What is this place now…?

I could see the interior of a modern building.

The space was vast and completely empty without a single person.

The high ceiling was made of glass, reflecting the blue sky.

Blue sky?

What are you talking about, what time is it right now?

I lifted my smartphone to check the time.

But damn it, this thing was dead.

I put away the useless smartphone and looked around.

High ceiling, marble floor, and shops lined up along the walls.

At first glance, it seemed like a department store.

But there were train drawings on the columns.

This was a train station concourse.

I looked around again to check the station’s name.

There happened to be a sign nearby.

But I couldn’t read the letters.

What’s this about now, I can’t read those big letters?

What was written on the sign was definitely Korean.

But no matter how I looked, I couldn’t comprehend it.

Only when I glanced at it peripherally did it seem somewhat like Korean.

Someone who makes a living with words can’t read text.

I concentrated, trying to read the letters somehow.

Then a stabbing pain arose from inside my eyes.

“Ugh!”

The moment I covered my eyes in surprise, a booming voice came from somewhere.

“Hey! You, can’t you hear me? I’m asking where this place is!”

I turned in surprise toward where the voice came from.

Moving a few steps to get out from behind the column, I could see a ticket booth.

In front of the transparent partition of that ticket booth, some middle-aged woman was throwing a fit.

“I’ve been wandering around for ages! Why won’t you answer? Aren’t you an employee here?”

From what she was saying, that person seemed to be in a similar situation to mine.

I headed in that direction, feeling glad.

But the woman suddenly stuck her arm through the hole at the bottom of the ticket-issuing partition.

“Don’t my words sound like words to you!?”

It looked like she was trying to grab the collar of the employee sitting across from her.

I was surprised by her boldness and quickened my pace.

But then, something like a long rope came out of the hole where the woman had stuck her arm.

Swish-

It flailed in the air for a moment, then spun rapidly like a propeller and sent the woman’s head flying.

Swoosh- Thunk!

I followed the round thing bouncing away with my eyes, then looked forward again.

The woman with her head gone was still standing.

Unable even to collapse, she was violently spurting blood like a fire hydrant with its cap blown off.

I couldn’t comprehend the situation before my eyes.

But my body sensed danger faster than my head and started running backward.

Scratching the floor with my fingernails, I pressed myself behind the nearest column like an ostrich that only knows how to hide its head.

What, what is this?

This is a dream, it must be a dream.

This is supposed to be a dream?

I covered my mouth at the threshold of panic.

Then something grabbed my shoulder.

“Hheup…!”

My heart nearly dropped from shock, but I didn’t scream.

I was panting so hard I had no breath left.

Instead, as I opened my mouth wide, I heard a sound urging silence from beside me.

“Shh!”

When I forced myself to turn my head, I saw a man.

He was holding my shoulder with one hand.

And his other hand had only the index finger extended, pressed against his own lips.

The man asked quietly in that position.

“How long have you been here?”

I could only move my lips without being able to answer.

“Don’t tell me you just came in?”

This time too, I had nothing to say.

I didn’t even know whether I was new or old, let alone why the expression “came in” would even make sense.

At my dumbfounded appearance, the man cursed and asked again.

“Hey, you’ve been to the military, right?”

“Huh? Yes, yes.”

“Then get it together. You don’t want to die here, do you?”

The man who snapped at me like that appeared to be around my age.

He was dressed casually with piercings in his ears, and even though glasses covered about half his face, he still looked handsome.

I wondered if he might be some celebrity I didn’t know.

I was observing the man when I startled again at a clattering sound.

Clatter, clatter, thud-!

The sound came from behind the column.

At the suspicious noise, the man peered beyond the column.

I hesitated, then stuck my head out too.

Blood was still flowing steadily in front of the ticket booth.

But the dead woman was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, someone in a suit was vigorously mopping the puddle of blood.

A janitor?

His outfit was a bit strange, but his role seemed about right.

Next to him was also a cleaning cart with a large trash bin attached.

But something was off.

No, everything was off.

Someone died, so why aren’t they calling the police and cleaning first instead?

And that janitor, why is he smiling so brightly while wiping up blood?

I groaned again at that bizarre scene.

“What the hell is that…?”

“I don’t know either.”

“Where is this place?”

“I don’t know that either. I was on my way home after practice when I suddenly ended up here.”

The context made no sense.

But I had experienced the same thing.

“I was leaving work.”

“That’s pretty similar to the other people.”

“There are other people?”

“They’re dead now.”

“How many…”

“Two people.”

As my complexion turned pale, the man smiled and added.

“But we can live now. This thing, we found it earlier…”

The man was taking something out of his pocket when a roar poured down from the ceiling.

Weeeeeeeng-!

It was a siren sound.

I covered my ears at the eardrum-bursting resonance.

Looking to the side, I saw the man also covering his ears with a grimace.

Fortunately, that sound didn’t last long before it died down again.

“It’s been damn noisy since earlier.”

When the surroundings became quiet, the man clicked his tongue and searched his pocket again.

Then he pulled out a crumpled paper and held it out to me.

It was a common tri-fold leaflet you could see anywhere.

When I took it, the man spoke quickly.

“So look there—”

I was looking down at the leaflet when his words cut off strangely.

So I raised my head again to look beside me.

Squish-squish-squish-!

The man who had been next to me was crumpling up like a rubber doll.

Like those human-shaped rubber dolls that children stuff heads into bodies and manage to break.

Squish-squish- crack, snap-!

The man continued to be crushed.

Then in the end, he became flat like a can that had been stepped on.

Splash-!

His blood overflowed onto the floor and soaked my shoes.

Almost simultaneously, there was a rattling sound.

Following the sound to look beside me, the janitor was smiling right next to me.

The suit-wearing janitor passed by me and lifted up what had been the man.

Then he threw it into the trash bin he had brought with him.

Clatter, clatter, thud-!

The exact same sound I had heard earlier rang out.

When I came to my senses again, I was running away.

Every person has their own story.

I’m the same way.

But the story I had been creating for myself was something whose flow I could sufficiently predict—truly mundane and therefore peaceful.

It wasn’t something this bizarre and merciless.

But why?

Why do I have to experience something like this?

A short sentence flashed through my head that was full of question marks.

『There’s no great meaning to it.』

This is a sentence from my author’s novel.

『It just happened that way, there’s no profound meaning or anything. Even if there were, it wouldn’t matter.』

『It’s okay, death might be gentler than you think.』

Ah, maybe that’s how it is.

The woman’s head suddenly flew off, and the man was abruptly crushed.

It just happened that way.

Meaning and such things aren’t important.

No, maybe there was none to begin with.

Then what about me?

Should I also die in some strange way and just nod saying ‘it just happened that way’?

That would actually be more comfortable.

Death might be kinder than I thought, after all.

No. Don’t be ridiculous.

You’re not dead until you’re actually dead.

If I’m going to die anyway, I might as well try anything.

The only thing more pathetic than struggling recklessly is not even trying at all.

I forced more air into my already saturated lungs.

Then I barely managed to exhale the trapped breath.

Earlier, that man said we could survive.

And in my grip, I still held the leaflet the man had given me.

I unfolded it.

Once again, the text wasn’t easy to read.

But as I kept fumbling through it, there was a paragraph inside the leaflet that caught my eye.

There, written in letters I could clearly read, it said:

—

Survival Guide for Missing Persons within “Siren-Sounding Railway Station”

You are currently located in the “Siren-Sounding Railway Station” managed by the Republic of Korea government.

This is a dangerous situation where you may lose your life, so please familiarize yourself with the survival guide below and evacuate promptly.

—

I’m determined to survive somehow.

But at the same time, I wondered what the hell I was supposed to do about this.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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