Editor’s Survival Guide - Chapter 130

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Unnamed Editor’s Survival Manual Chapter 130
ep19. Investigation! Timeless XX! (3)
“The approval request for this operation has been rejected.”
Cha Si-eon’s flat voice echoed through the room.
The Train Station operation members didn’t seem particularly surprised—they’d already heard the news.
Instead, someone asked a question.
“So when do we get to go to Train Station?”
……
“Just push the field work and file the report afterward. What’s the problem?”
“If we go, what can they do about it?”
“Ah, these old hands do good work until they get bored, then they start causing trouble.”
Several agents openly displayed their defiance.
“What are you, thugs? We have to follow procedure.”
“What was the reason for rejection? Can we revise and resubmit?”
“What does the manager say?”
Meanwhile, other agents were trying to judge the situation more rationally.
The team was clearly split down the middle.
And those strong-willed people soon started arguing.
“Ah, don’t you know that these old guys get incredibly frustrated the moment they hold back? How many days have you been doing this?”
“So what, we just do whatever we want and go to prison?”
“Prison? How could they lock us up? Nobody knows what we do in there. Those guys can’t even set foot inside…….”
“Hey, keep it in bounds. We’re public servants either way.”
“Damn it……! So I’m saying we should execute our duties, why all this fussing?! We’ve let it slide this much already—how much longer are we going to leave it alone?”
“You bastard, are you the only one who……!”
“Everyone, quiet down, please.”
As the exchange grew increasingly heated, Cha Si-eon stepped in to mediate.
“The manager said he’ll try to persuade them again.”
……
……
“I’ll also revise the plan and sound them out again. We need quiet standby until we get results.”
Cha Si-eon had apparently decided to stick with proper procedure.
The agents who had been pushing hard fell silent.
They knew Cha Si-eon would never abandon this operation.
Knowing that, this temporary concession was possible.
* * *
The Train Station special operation was rejected just one day after approval was requested.
Naturally, the reason was the high risk factor.
Moreover, upper management expressed considerable displeasure with the operation.
Headquarters had essentially finalized Lee Sol’s disciplinary measures.
But then agents submitted an operation that contradicted that decision, which made the higher-ups feel it was a form of stubbornness or even rebellion.
It sounds ridiculous, but that’s what Deputy Manager Yun U-jeong relayed.
As a result, the Field Team was currently quite heated.
But the complexity of the situation right now wasn’t limited to the Field Team.
“Kim Ji-an’s contamination level came back quite high…….”
Oh Tae-o muttered as he relayed Kim Ji-an’s situation.
I feigned surprise at those words.
“Didn’t you say Kim Ji-an quit over three years ago?”
“Right, exactly three years…… Under normal circumstances, there’s no way the contamination would spike like this…… It looks like the memory loss incident from last time really was connected to the Special Zone…….”
……
Yesterday, the Research Department employees putting the hazmat suit on Kim Ji-an was half a joke.
But when they actually measured the contamination level, the readings came back abnormally high.
Like someone who had just barely escaped from inside the Special Zone.
So Kim Ji-an was currently quarantined at the Management Bureau, and they were monitoring her condition.
“And like we said yesterday? Kim Ji-an had moved around without memories like this before…….”
At Oh Tae-o’s question, I nodded.
Yesterday I’d matched timelines and then belatedly recalled it in conversation.
“I barely found the footage that was shot then. I honestly thought it didn’t exist…….”
Oh Tae-o turned his tablet toward me.
Then he showed me a video.
About ten people in white coats were climbing stairs.
The person filming was following the group, so the footage was all shot from behind.
There was something uncanny about the scene.
I grasped the reason immediately.
White coats belong in well-controlled spaces like hospitals or laboratories.
The problem was the stairs they were climbing.
They resembled those in a ruin or construction site.
Because of that, it looked like a scene of escape from a disaster.
-Are you navigating consciously right now, Ji-an?
-Researcher Kim, please say something…….
A few people murmured with lowered voices.
But no answer came, and the coat-wearing people soon grew agitated.
That was when it happened.
-Don’t look back!
As people started looking around nervously, someone suddenly shouted.
-If you want to live, don’t question it and just follow. If you look back, you can’t get out of here.
A resolute voice.
It was unmistakably Kim Ji-an’s voice.
“……What kind of footage is this?”
“Three years ago, the research team was dragged into a Type 3 Special Zone all together…….”
“Ah.”
I’d vaguely heard of this story.
Back when the all-out war against the Special Zone was in full swing.
The Field Team smashed through the Special Zone almost recklessly, and it seemed to be quite effective.
But as the Special Zone continued to be destroyed, it began showing strange patterns and counterattacked.
One of those was the “mass collapse of researchers.”
From a certain point on, Management Bureau researchers were being dragged into the Special Zone.
Not just one or two—many at once.
Naturally, most of them never came back alive.
Many researchers died during this period, and this incident triggered a crackdown on the Field Team.
After that, the fierce conflict gradually subsided and eventually led to the Management Bureau’s reorganization.
“Kim Ji-an was dragged into the Special Zone back then too, but she actually managed to escape safely while leading out the people who were dragged in with her. It was a zone where no strategy had even been figured out yet.”
……
“So team leaders asked her what happened, but she couldn’t explain. She said she had no memory from the middle onward.”
After that, Kim Ji-an left the Management Bureau.
Because she couldn’t forget the horrific sights of the Special Zone she’d seen before her memory cut off.
And apparently she’d been living as ordinarily as possible since…….
“If something in the Special Zone connected with her back then…… it might be manifesting again now…….”
At Oh Tae-o’s speculation, I swallowed deeply.
I don’t know if what happened to Kim Ji-an three years ago and what happened this time are the same phenomenon.
But if they were, Kim Ji-an would have formed a connection with the Raven before me.
And this timing came after Agent Lee Seob went missing.
If the Raven is what Manager Kwon Mu-seop called a “modern person helping primitive man,”
then couldn’t we say the Raven approached sequentially—Lee Seob, then Researcher Kim Ji-an, and now me?
“And I also traced the origin of the email Kim Ji-an sent me…….”
“Yes.”
The email sent under Kim Ji-an’s name, which informed Oh Tae-o of my schedule faster than anyone.
He’d said he’d verify where that email came from.
“The email was sent from an officetel in Dongjak District.”
Dongjak District.
And an officetel?
I looked at Oh Tae-o, feigning shock.
“Surely not…….”
“That’s right. It was sent from your apartment using your personal phone.”
What did he just say?
My original residence, empty for several months now.
An email was sent from my personal phone left there?
“Who broke into my apartment?”
“No, we checked and there were no signs of external intrusion…….”
“So you’re saying the phone I left at home moved on its own and sent an email?”
I said this to mean it didn’t make sense.
But Oh Tae-o nodded, and my composure crumbled.
“Yes, at this point that’s the only way we can look at it…….”
I lost all words.
An unpleasant chill crawled up my shoulders.
In my head, I could hear the cry of a raven.
* * *
The Management Bureau considers the Raven to be an ally.
We’ve actually received various forms of help, so it makes sense to think of it favorably.
But what about me?
Is something that pushes me into a predicament without my permission or consent, that invades and takes control of my life without bothering to hide, truly an ally to me as well?
I do acknowledge its effectiveness.
In some ways, I even think of it as fortunate.
Because of being manipulated by it, I was able to save several people.
But my daily life has stopped and been set adrift because of it.
And unknowingly, it’s been twisting.
“Sigh…….”
I exhaled a long breath and steadied myself.
Then I left my residence and crossed the Management Bureau corridor.
It’s absurd when I think about it.
If the Raven controlled Kim Ji-an, if it was the Raven who spoke with me in the cafe and moved alongside me,
then did the Raven perform an act right in front of me?
An act of shock and sorrow, with trembling hands?
That correction—”Agent Cha Si-eon, or rather, Team Leader Cha Si-eon”—and the way it covered its mouth at the sight of Lee Sol.
Now, thinking about it, it all seems absurd.
Planning to send me to Train Station while going so far as to act…….
But because of the Management Bureau’s opposition, all that tearful effort came to nothing.
How will the Raven make its move now?
Will it give up and devise another plan?
Or will it manipulate our situation through some other method?
I couldn’t predict.
I knew nothing about the Raven that would let me make any estimates.
Not its identity, not its purpose, not its nature, not why it’s doing this to me specifically.
Shortly after, I arrived at the Director’s Office.
It was the first time I’d been there since my appointment.
When I bowed to the secretary sitting in front of the Director’s Office, she asked me a question.
“You’re Agent Seo Do-un, aren’t you?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Please wait a moment.”
The secretary left me standing there and picked up the intercom handset.
“Director, Agent Seo Do-un has arrived.”
Then she put the handset down and spoke to me.
“The Director is inside. Go on in.”
I nodded, then knocked on the Director’s Office door beside me.
When I opened the door and stepped inside, three people were sitting on the Director’s Office sofa.
Two middle-aged men I was seeing for the first time and Manager Kwon Mu-seop.
Those two must be the Director and Deputy Director of the Special Management Bureau.
They were superiors at the manager level, but they were the first people of that rank I’d met.
The Director and Deputy Director didn’t use the Management Bureau headquarters building and kept separate offices in an external annex instead.
The newly appointed Director after the Management Bureau’s reorganization viewed the headquarters building as inauspicious.
During the past all-out war, a phenomenon known as “collapse” had occurred in the Management Bureau headquarters—an indiscriminate inflow of the Special Zone.
So the new Director avoided entering the Management Bureau building, and ultimately kept his office in the external annex while having managers visit him there.
The reason that person appeared at the Management Bureau today was simple.
There was an external audit in the afternoon.
“Welcome, Agent Seo Do-un. I’m Director Go Hong-sang.”
The man sitting in the most prominent seat, perhaps in his late forties, spoke.
The man, Go Hong-sang, had a somewhat austere impression and was wearing glasses.
Combined with his high-end suit, his appearance alone conveyed the atmosphere of a high-ranking civil servant.
Director Go Hong-sang extended his hand and offered to shake mine.
But before I could grasp his hand, he withdrew it.
Then he scanned me with his eyes and muttered.
“It’s better to skip the handshake.”
……
Was that because he was afraid of being dragged into the Special Zone?
Go Hong-sang simply returned to his seat without explanation and spoke.
“I called you to see your face before the audit team arrives. You’ve worked hard.”
“Not at all.”
“The audit team might want to see you too, so please stand by.”
Go Hong-sang’s manner was quite indifferent.
I wondered if he was even aware that I was his subordinate.
Director Go Hong-sang of the Special Management Bureau was subtly finicky and carried a considerably overbearing atmosphere.
But an hour later.
Director Go Hong-sang was crying.
And the Raven really was a fucking lunatic.

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