Editor’s Survival Guide - Chapter 160

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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 Editor’s Survival Manual Episode 160

ep21. Shrouded in Fog (10)

“Dead again. I’m disappointed in you.”
The woman who spoke those words had a kind, beautiful face.
A face I knew well.
None other than Baek Sa-ra’s face.
Moreover, she wore the same long skirt she’d had on at the National Theater.
I stared at her for a moment, then let my eyes fall away.
Then I answered in a dry voice.
“Before expressing disappointment, shouldn’t there be some prior explanation? If you simply say you’re disappointed without context, I have no grounds for reflection.”
“Is that what you have to say now?”
The woman wearing Baek Sa-ra’s face laughed as if baffled.
“I thought you’d react more.”
…….
“Or would this form be better?”
The woman’s voice changed.
I lifted my head again and silently held my breath.
The woman had now become Lee Sol.
Lee Sol in surgical garb.
…….
I still didn’t know exactly what stood before me.
But her temperament was definitely of the worse sort.
I glanced past her shoulder.
All white.
A vast expanse of white—whether empty or shrouded in fog, I couldn’t tell.
I sat inside a coffin placed bare in the center of it all.
Buried in white roses just as I’d been at the moment of death.
White roses, not white chrysanthemums or lilies.
Finding the combination odd, I looked again at the woman perched on the coffin lid.
At that, the woman wearing Lee Sol’s face let out a soft snicker.
“Got it. I’ll take a form that’s easier for you to deal with.”
The woman generously changed her appearance once more.
Now she had short hair.
But she was still as small as a child.
Draped in an oversized hoodie that made her look even younger.
……It was Nabbit.
“This suits best, doesn’t it?”
The woman laughed with Nabbit’s face.
Watching her, I silently held my breath.
It was better than before.
But still felt alien.
Nabbit’s face wearing such an arrogant expression.
Yet seeing that face stirred my memory.
True to the woman’s words, we had met before.
This was our third encounter, and each time the woman had worn Nabbit’s face.
But when I died the first time, shock prevented me from recognizing it.
Only on the second occasion did I truly register that face, so I left a mark secretly.
And now, the third time.
I asked the woman who had revived my dead self, who claimed she had “created me.”
“Are you Nabbit?”
At my question, the woman smiled broadly.
Unfamiliar, as always.
The author I knew would never smile with such disdain for others.
“Who knows? If you’re curious, why not check for yourself?”
The woman grabbed my left arm and pulled.
Then she rolled up my sleeve and traced her fingertip across a scar barely visible now.
“I even let you sneak a mark down. Considerate of me.”
At the woman’s whisper in my ear, I recoiled.
The spot she had just touched was where I’d carved into my own flesh with my nails.
Where I’d etched the letter B—or rather, the numeral 13.
“Coward.”
…….
I didn’t bother with excuses.
For the first time, I wondered if this woman might not be Nabbit at all, but I didn’t press the question.
The fact that I was dead felt strangely unreal anyway.
If I had to describe my state of mind, it was like putting down a game controller after dying in a difficult game.
No sorrow. No urgency.
Just a sense of acceptance.
What troubled me, though, was……
“Am I dead?”
“Yes.”
“Can you bring me back to life?”
“What?”
At my request, the woman burst into laughter as if absurd.
Then, tilting her head, she asked back.
“What would you do alive?”
“I wish to finish what I started.”
“What were you doing?”
What I was doing.
The suppression operation at the Train Station.
Securing the Core of the Great Siren.
Saving Lee Sol.
Those were the original objectives.
But goals I’d once thought achievable now felt infinitely distant.
So I spoke miserably, like a gambler cast out from the betting table.
“I wish to revive the Management Bureau agents.”
What’s done is done.
Yet if possible, I wanted to undo it.
“That’s ambitious. Resurrecting the dead—what are you, a god?”
But the woman scoffed at even that.
So I asked her in return.
“Is it impossible?”
“Not necessarily. But I’m torn.”
Torn?
“Whether to revive you or not.”
“Please revive me.”
I asked at once.
At that, the woman knitted her brow and smiled.
“Weren’t you listening? I said I’m disappointed in you.”
…….
“You lost this time. Utterly defeated, no excuses—so why should we revive you?”
“……Wouldn’t it be a loss for you as well if I died like this?”
“Hm?”
“You wanted something, so you used me. If I die now, all your efforts so far will be wasted.”
“What? Puh—ahahaha!”
At my words, the woman suddenly burst into roaring laughter.
At that great sound, I feigned surprise.
The woman wearing Nabbit’s face laughed like a child, or like a demon.
After laughing for some time.
The woman wiped tears from her eyes with her fingertips.
Then, her face flushed from laughter, she whispered.
“I don’t really care either way.”
What……
“I don’t care who wins.”
What is she saying?
That she doesn’t care.
Weren’t you desperate too?
As if reading my thoughts, the woman murmured languidly.
“My sibling, though—she seems quite desperate.”
Sibling……?
“That thing you call the Big Cat. She’s conscientious. A bit deficient, too. I wonder if something went wrong in the extraction.”
The Big Cat is a sibling.
Disparaging her sibling as deficient had a sisterly quality to it.
But it didn’t match what you’d expect from entities within the Special Management Zone.
The “four creatures” I’d seen in the play.
Were they not just a group, but more like siblings?
Then what’s their current situation exactly?
“……That Big Cat bit me to death.”
“Ah, what have you been saying since earlier, really!”
The woman burst into laughter again.
So my mind grew even more tangled.
Enjoying my confusion, the woman chuckled, then thrust her hand into my chest.
“You’re confusing this one with me, aren’t you?”
Before I could react, the woman’s hand withdrew.
In it she held a black bird.
The Raven, still limp.
The woman cradled the bird tenderly in her arms.
At that affectionate gesture, my confusion deepened.
The Raven.
The one who made me.
The bird that guides souls.
And the one standing before me.
I thought they were the same thing.
Weren’t they?
Or even if not the same, they should at least be on the same side—shouldn’t they?
Swallowing my bewilderment, I asked the woman.
“What is that Raven?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“What do you mean……”
“That’s enough.”
The woman, who had been answering playfully, suddenly cut off my question.
“Either way, if you live, you’ll forget everything; if you die, you’ll know it all. So don’t ask. Answer instead. Should we really bring you back to life?”
I couldn’t follow all of the woman’s words.
So I gazed at her in confusion.
Then she gazed back at me.
Her eyes were black and deep.
Fathomless as an abyss.
That hollow darkness began to strangle my breath.
When I forgot to breathe and flinched, the woman smiled again and closed her eyes.
“This is your last chance. Now speak.”
Then I understood.
That this woman held my life in her hands.
That her disappointment would operate on me like divine punishment or divine providence.
“……You said you were disappointed earlier.”
“Yes.”
“Then before you were disappointed, what did you expect from me?”
At my question, the woman smiled faintly.
“An interesting story.”
A story?
“You were entertaining. That’s why I watched with joy for once.”
At her words, my mind went blank again.
And simultaneously, I remembered.

-Everyone is watching you.

The message I’d found at the Hotel.
Could it have meant this?
Was I being watched?
By beings who enjoyed my struggles?
I stared at the one wearing Nabbit’s face, speechless.
The realization that I was not an instrument of use but merely an object of amusement felt like my heart was freezing.
Disillusionment, long deferred, welled up and overflowed.
Yet the woman continued speaking, smiling still.
“That’s why I revived you several times, but this time opinion was divided. You’ve already lost—do we really need to revive you again?”
The woman wore the guise of someone precious to me.
But I could feel no more affection for the being before me.
Only revulsion filled me, yet I swallowed it and answered.
“……Yes. Please give me a chance.”
Almost begging, I spoke to the woman who looked down at me with arrogance.
“Traditionally, one is given three chances. So please revive me one more time.”
“Three?”
At that, the woman burst into laughter again.
She mimicked human speech, raising her voice in laughter, then asked me back.
“How many times do you think we’ve revived you?”
…….
Then.
A conversation I’d forgotten came back to me.

-What do you mean, the fourth?
-That means you’ve already died four times, doesn’t it?

Every hair on my body stood on end.
And all my deaths came rushing back to me at once.
When I fell in the Hospital lobby.
When I was shot shortly after entering the Mart.
When I was dragged away by the Three Creatures.
And when I was bitten by Delta and buried under the Ant Trail.
I had died.
I’d died each time, and each death had inflicted supreme terror upon me.
How could I have forgotten this.
The moment I acknowledged all my deaths, cold sweat poured down.
I hastily clamped my mouth shut.
To swallow the nausea rising in my throat.
“You’ve worked hard all this time.”
Taking pity on me, the woman spoke in a voice grown tender.
“So it’s okay to rest now.”
The woman laid her hand on my cheek as she spoke.
She was offering me mercy.
But I pulled away her hand and forced out my voice.
“……I cannot end it like this.”
“Do you really want to live?”
Just as I was about to nod, the woman spoke first.
“What if only you could leave here alive?”
…….
“Would you still choose life?”
It was a question that made no sense.
I couldn’t answer.
At that, the woman smiled as if she’d already gotten her answer.
“Alright then. I understand.”

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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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