Editor’s Survival Guide - Chapter 148

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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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Survival Rules for an Editor, Episode 148

ep20. The Editor’s Checklist (5)
At the unexpected question, I turned to look at Kim Ji-an.
A young woman with narrow, elongated eyes and striking features—that was my first impression of her.
There was nothing familiar about it, no sense of déjà vu whatsoever.
“I don’t remember anything. Are you referring to some particular time……?”
I asked back, seized by a vague sense of obligation.
Kim Ji-an then answered, looking slightly embarrassed.
“I’m not sure either.”
“Pardon?”
“But somehow, it feels like I’ve seen you before somewhere.”
Surely he wasn’t going to talk about past-life connections.
That’s when Oh Tae-o muttered from beside me.
“This is because of the Raven…….”
“The Raven?”
“Yes. Ji-an and the Director’s contamination patterns are almost identical.”
“……?”
“Depending on where the contamination originates, the levels rise or clear in different ways. So by looking at the pattern, you can infer the source of contamination…….”
“You’re saying that Kim Ji-an and the Director have the same contamination source, and that it’s the Raven?”
“That’s our hypothesis…….”
As Oh Tae-o mumbled, Kim Ji-an spoke again.
“But Seo Do-un feels strangely familiar to me. Especially your voice and tone. So I wondered if we’d met before, and that’s how this happened…….”
So he was saying he’d been caught by the Raven perhaps because of that?
I’m hardly a host for the Raven or anything.
True, the late Director did get dragged into this through me.
But Kim Ji-an’s case is different.
“Didn’t you say Kim Ji-an had similar blackouts before?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Then shouldn’t we assume he was affected before me, rather than through me……?”
“That’s also true. But it seemed strangely familiar, so I asked just in case.”
Yet the familiarity Kim Ji-an speaks of seems to exist only as a feeling, with no substance behind it.
Given that he couldn’t pinpoint, much less guess, when or how we’d met.
And I truly had no prior memory of Kim Ji-an.
I shook my head with a look of complete ignorance, and Kim Ji-an reluctantly accepted this.
But even so, his eyes still held a trace of uncertainty.
“Anyway, I’d like to ask about the performance at the National Theater. Manager Oh asked me to interpret it, and I was planning to look into it myself. Is that all right?”
Kim Ji-an first asked for permission, perhaps thinking it strange that an outsider like himself would get involved.
It didn’t trouble me.
An expert from a department that no longer exists within the Management Bureau was offering to help with the interpretation.
Rather, I’d been wondering if the real problem was that we’d left interpretive material unaddressed all this time simply due to chronic staffing shortages.
“Yes, I’m fine with it.”
I nodded readily.
Then I recalled what Kim Ji-an had said earlier and hesitated.
“But have you also seen the message I transcribed at the Hotel?”
“Yes…….”
“That should be restricted viewing…….”
I studied Kim Ji-an, who replied with an oddly downcast tone, with some skepticism.
Apart from my handler Cha Si-eon or Oh Tae-o, it’s material that even regular personnel and researchers still can’t access.
Because it also involves Lee Seob.
So how did an outsider like Kim Ji-an see it?
Even if access through Oh Tae-o was possible, I couldn’t imagine Kim Ji-an opening it himself.
After all, Kim Ji-an left the Management Bureau out of fear of being dragged to the Special Zone.
And on top of that, he lost his job when contamination occurred this time.
I looked intently at Kim Ji-an’s pupils, wondering
if they might have darkened pitch-black again.
But Kim Ji-an’s pupils were a natural dark brown.
Moreover, they seemed to grow sadder at my question.
“It wasn’t that I wanted to see it on my own—Manager Oh mentioned it while I was looking at the National Theater report.”
“……?”
“He said there was something like this too, and only after he mentioned it did I learn it was classified information.”
“…….”
I was at a loss for words and turned back to Oh Tae-o.
“I thought you’d be curious…….”
Oh Tae-o made excuses for what was nearly an act of sabotage.
Still, his voice was quieter than usual, suggesting he did feel some remorse.
So Oh Tae-o had deliberately opened the restricted report using my handler’s authority, and then casually mentioned it to Kim Ji-an.
Kim Ji-an really does seem like a good person.
The way he keeps calling Oh Tae-o senior.
“Well, fortunately nothing serious came of it.”
“Yes…… really, we’re fortunate.”
Kim Ji-an, who had been downcast, forced a smile at my words.
“In any case, what you saw at the National Theater and this message he brought seem to resemble the same symbolism. So I don’t think what you saw then was a simple hallucination. Do you usually see such visions in your daily life?”
“No…… not at all.”
“Then what do you think the content of the performance you saw that day was about?”
“Human history?”
“And what about the objects shown here? The wheels, people, a lion, an ox, a bird.”
“Aren’t those symbols from the Bible?”
“Do you have a religion?”
“No. I attended church as a child, following my mother, but that was a long time ago.”
“Then you’d have some knowledge of Abrahamic religions.”
I nodded as though it were obvious.
Though honestly, I think this owes more to being a reader and editor than to attending church in childhood.
I went to church before I was even ten years old.
The only things I remember from my time there are singing hymns that sounded like nursery rhymes, folding my hands and closing my eyes, and then eating snacks in small groups afterwards.
I came to understand that worldview concretely through books.
The Bible serves as a reference for many literary works.
And it’s not just the Bible—so do many mythologies.
Religion, mythology, and literature are siblings with the same roots, and all the texts that humans seek are narratives of humans and the great and small deities they encounter.
“I think what you saw was the Wheels and Four Creatures from the Book of Ezekiel.”
At Kim Ji-an’s words, I nodded.
I’d also done a quick search after leaving the National Theater.
To find out where these symbols appeared.
The Wheels and Four Creatures in the Book of Ezekiel were ‘God’s throne and angels.’
The Book of Ezekiel is a section of the Bible.
The setting is the time when the Israelites were captives of Babylon.
The prophet Ezekiel recounts a vision he saw, urging his people to repent and endure the bleak era.
“But the Four Creatures didn’t have four faces on one body—they were each different creatures, right?”
“Yes.”
“And their bodies were all different colors too.”
“Yes.”
“White, red, black, and a bluish color—what do you think these colors represent?”
“Isn’t that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelation?”
“It fits quite well. I think that’s what you saw.”
“……Then are you saying this crisis is the apocalypse foretold in the Bible?”
I felt a chill run through my chest.
But then Oh Tae-o flinched along with me.
Kim Ji-an glanced at the flustered Oh Tae-o and whispered.
“Manager Oh got into trouble for talking like that before.”
“That… don’t talk about that…….”
Oh Tae-o put his hands inside his glasses, struggling.
I’d heard this story before.
Manager Oh had gone around prophesying doom and nearly got beaten by the Research Manager.
So what was it then?
Was what I saw merely baseless rumor?
Sensing my confusion, Kim Ji-an continued.
“First, the Four Creatures in Ezekiel have the heads of a human, a lion, an ox, and an eagle on one body. These same Four Creatures appear in Revelation too, but there they’re four independent beings with separate bodies.”
“So what I saw was from Revelation?”
Wouldn’t that be an even bigger problem?
The Armageddon—the final war, the great catastrophe—is also from Revelation.
“But the Four Creatures in Revelation don’t have wheels.”
“……?”
“And the Four Creatures and the Four Horsemen are different entities. So what you saw was perhaps a mixture of several biblical symbols, which is actually your subjective interpretation.”
“My subjective interpretation?”
“Yes. If you’d been more knowledgeable about Buddhist culture or Eastern mythology, the stage might have featured the Four Deva Kings or the Four Celestial Guardians instead.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
When I confessed my honest confusion, Kim Ji-an paused to think.
Then he asked like this.
“You think I’m a woman, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m actually a man.”
“What?”
I looked at Kim Ji-an wondering if this was some kind of joke.
The Kim Ji-an in front of me was unmistakably a woman with black hair that fell to her shoulders.
The narrow jaw and slender shoulders were feminine by any measure, and the voice was no different.
“Why don’t you believe me when I’m telling you?”
As I awkwardly darted my eyes around, Kim Ji-an smiled and spoke.
“You’ve never directly verified my sex.”
“One doesn’t usually need to directly verify someone else’s sex…….”
At my awkward response, Kim Ji-an finally burst out laughing.
Then he nodded and continued.
“That’s right. Even without direct verification, people usually figure it out roughly. But that’s not because you’re discerning truth itself—it’s because you’ve accumulated data and established criteria. When a new person appears, you compare them against those standards and draw rough conclusions. You haven’t directly examined their chromosomes to see if they’re XX or XY, but you assume: if she’s a woman, her voice should sound like this; if he’s a man, his skeletal structure should look like this.”
At Kim Ji-an’s explanation, this time I nodded.
I understood the point.
No matter how hard people try to be objective, they can’t be perfectly objective.
As long as you exist as an individual, subjectivity seeps into everything you perceive.
So Kim Ji-an is a woman after all……? Right?
Leaving me in confusion, Kim Ji-an continued speaking.
“And when something unfamiliar appears, people bring all their knowledge to bear to fit it into their framework of understanding. That’s where the phrase ‘I assume everyone else is like me’ comes from. This is similar. You saw something, but didn’t fully understand its nature, so you marshaled everything you know and reinterpreted it.”
“You’re saying I distorted my understanding by mixing in my subjectivity, trying to understand something my mind alone couldn’t comprehend?”
“Yes.”
“So what did I actually…….”
see? I let the sentence trail off.
What I saw.
But cannot remember.
And what can be symbolized as ‘four.’
I looked at Kim Ji-an as the thought flickered across my mind.
Kim Ji-an, as if already aware of my line of thinking, nodded.
“This vision might be a reinterpretation of what you saw then.”
Yes—this was about the Three Creatures and what made me.

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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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