Editor’s Survival Guide - Chapter 162

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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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Editor’s Survival Manual, Episode 162

ep22. Ⅻ(1)

The space shattered into fragments and crumbled away.
As if, now that those watching had left, there was no need to maintain its shape any longer.
The mask it had been forcing itself to wear fell away, and it began to scatter into its true form.
I fell.
Plummeting beneath the broken space, I watched.
The train, receding into the distance, left behind the disintegrating space.
Yes, all things considered, not a terrible choice.
I told myself this, and closed my eyes.

* * *

I think I need to correct what I said earlier.
This is terrible. Terribly, catastrophically so.
It might be worse than I could have possibly imagined.
I was still falling.
“Ughhhh—!”
Falling endlessly was something like being pummeled continuously by a typhoon.
The friction of the air made it hard to breathe easily.
My hair and the hem of my clothes fluttered about relentlessly.
Moreover, the fragments of space scattered around me left only afterimages as they whipped past.
How long had it been since I stepped off the train?
It felt like about thirty minutes had passed.
I was still only falling.
Surely this state wouldn’t go on forever.
The very thought made my skin crawl.
When would this finally end?
“Stop… stop it—!”
Thud-!
The moment I cried out in desperation.
My body, which had been falling endlessly, suddenly lurched to a halt in mid-air.
The surrounding scenery that had been rushing past me like tunnel lights froze in place as well.
“…?”
Why did it really stop?
“…falling?”
Whoosh-!
As if understanding my words, my body suddenly dropped again.
“Stop! Stop!”
Thud-!
The fall stopped at my cry.
Could I control this?
Why didn’t anyone tell me this earlier?
I’d been falling for thirty minutes feeling like my heart was about to give out…
I took slow breaths to steady myself and looked around.
“Heh.”
Even after stopping the fall, I could only sigh.
Despite all the distance I’d fallen, I was still at Yongsan Station’s platform.
Except the space wasn’t just one.
Around me, every moment lay unfolded like pages in a catalog.
Night and day.
Sunlight, snow, driving rain.
Times of crowding, times of emptiness.
People boarding the train, people who’d missed it.
The modern era, ancient train stations, accidents, severed station attendants, seas of flame, even older stations.
And beyond that, a meadow even more ancient.
Before my eyes lay every single moment.
The layers of the past that would normally be buried beneath the surface of the present, invisible.
What kind of space was this?
Suddenly, something Nabbit had said came back to me.

—If there existed some higher-dimensional being who could unfold time like space and look at it, what would this place look like? With peaceful people drinking tea while flames shoot up beside them, charred bodies with children on bicycles passing by, shopping mall music mixed with the sound of exploding shells and sirens all tangled together—it would be incredibly chaotic and rich, wouldn’t it?

Was this the sight the author had been describing?
She had seen the same things I did, yet inside her mind had drawn this hidden layer beneath.
If she had committed that inner landscape to words.
And if I had edited those words, would I have felt relief rather than shock the first time I saw this spectacle?
Ah.
I was gazing in wonder before I belatedly came to my senses.
Now that I thought about it, I had set an ending for myself.
The ending for this strange story that had suddenly invaded my life.
That was supposed to be examining Nabbit’s new work, but it seems that ship has sailed.
I felt a certain wistfulness settle over me.
But then again, this sort of thing happens.
More often than not, things don’t go according to plan.
Besides, I don’t think this ending is the worst possible outcome.
Whether it’s complete or incomplete is a bit ambiguous, but at least it’s not a meaningless death.
After all, someone lived to leave.
And since I got twelve for the price of one, it wasn’t exactly a losing bargain.
An ending like “I leave the rest to you,” perhaps.
So there’s no reason for regret.
Even if there is some disappointment.
I collected myself and looked around once more.
But how long am I supposed to stay here?
Could this be what death is?
I was staring blankly at the expanse of time around me.
Crackle-crack-!
Something shattered, and the space above my head blazed white.
Crack—crackle-crackle-!
The sound of the world tearing.
I looked up at that sound and light, and my breath caught.
A vast expanse of pure white filling my vision.
Wings made of light—countless wings whose reach I couldn’t fathom—descended toward me.
It felt as though the sky itself was drawing near.
Overwhelmed by the sight, I froze in place.
Then came the touch of a small, soft hand against my cheek.
Only then did I notice her.
The woman who had brought these wings down.
In that brilliant white light, the woman cradled my cheek gently.
“Let’s go now.”
Her whisper made my heart plummet.
In that moment, I understood instinctively.
That I stood before death itself.
That I was about to die.
Survival instinct late-arriving, kindled fear within me.
But I could not resist.
The being before me was too vast, and I could only wait like one already dead for this gentle hand to sever my thread of life.
Press—
But then…
Poke—
For some reason, she was only pressing my cheek with her palm.
“…?”
Poke—poke—
As she poked and prodded my cheek like she was teasing a child, I felt the awe and fear gradually receding.
I stared blankly up at her, and she looked back down at me.
Then she murmured, sounding puzzled.
“Strange. Why is this happening?”
“Um… is something wrong?”
“What did you do?”
“What?”
“You’re caught in this space right now.”
“Caught?”
“To put it in terms you’d understand… you’ve become a Bound Spirit?”
“…!”
“No, that doesn’t mean you’ve become a ghost. You haven’t even died yet.”
“…?”
“But you’re bound to this space. Something is still tying you to it.”
The woman turned my cheek this way and that as she spoke.
Her manner was casual, as if inspecting a broken watch.
“So what happens to me now?”
“I’ll take you with me.”
“But you can’t take me now, can you?”
“You’re bound by karma, so eventually it will loosen. Whether that takes years or centuries, I couldn’t say.”
“Centuries?”
“It’s alright. I’m patient.”
That’s not alright for me!
You want me to spend centuries in a place like this?
At my shock, the woman withdrew her hand and spoke.
“If waiting gets tedious, you can sleep. I’ll wake you when your bonds are loosened.”
“What exactly is keeping me bound?”
“The bonds between you and this world. There’s still something that hasn’t come undone. I can’t see exactly what yet, but it will slacken soon. Your world will treat you as dead from now on.”
“…”
It was something I’d already prepared myself for, but hearing it aloud made it suddenly real.
“Once all of it comes undone, will I die?”
“Yes.”
“What is death like?”
“I can’t say. But I’ll guide you there.”
A bird that guides souls.
Perhaps that was what this woman was.
The woman, judging that she couldn’t take me immediately, settled herself on the empty air beside me.
What is this?
Do I really have to wait hundreds of years like this?
…Couldn’t I just go back out there and live another fifty years or so before coming back?
I couldn’t quite grasp the scope of this situation.
Then my fingers found my cheek where her hand had touched.
Her touch had been tender, and warm.
There seemed to be no malice in how she regarded me.
Besides, it was this woman who had saved my life all this time.
If that were the case, could I say her feelings toward me were closer to goodwill?
I began to examine the woman more closely, then noticed the white wings behind her shimmering.
Grandiose as they already were, the sheen made them impossible to look at comfortably.
“Couldn’t those wings behind you be hidden?”
“Wings?”
At my request, the woman turned to look at her own back.
Then she laughed softly and said:
“Those aren’t wings. That’s my territory. Where you woke up before.”
“…?”
Now that she mentioned it, the white expanse behind her had no definite shape.
It was simply spread out white, and I had merely assumed it was wings.
But that was the space I’d been in earlier?
“This is my younger brother’s territory, so I can’t move about freely. That’s why I brought my own territory with me.”
What kind of worldview was that…
“But before, it didn’t seem to shimmer like that.”
If that was the space I’d been in, there had been only a coffin and white all around.
It hadn’t glowed so brilliantly.
The woman answered my question in a flat voice:
“It’s because they’re complaining right now.”
“Complaining?”
“Mostly grievances. Apparently they weren’t happy with the situation I just created.”
Grievances?
Now that I thought about it, this woman sometimes spoke in the plural.
She had let slip several times that she used “we,” revealing that she was not singular.
I asked her tentatively:
“What exactly wasn’t to their liking?”
“Everyone has different opinions. Why did you save the losers, you should have saved Seo Do-un too, the forced choice just now was terrible, and so on…”
“Are there any complaints in favor of my survival?”
“There are.”
The woman nodded lightly.
“Originally it was split whether to kill you or save you. But the situation just now changed things a bit. There’s a growing consensus that you should live because you’ve proven yourself worthy.”
“Then just let me live.”
I blurted out the words without hesitation.
Even death row inmates are released if their execution fails.
You just tried to kill me and it didn’t work, so just let me go.
If my death isn’t certain but can be changed on a whim by you all,
And besides, you don’t particularly hate me or want me dead anyway.
I placed my hope on this woman’s subtle goodwill.
Indeed, she had been smiling at me this whole time.
And even now, the woman spoke with a smile playing at her lips.
“No.”
“…”
“I don’t want to keep watching you.”
“…Why?”
“Because you’ve taken my fancy.”
An incomprehensible answer.
“I’ll end your life and grant you peace.”
An incomprehensible way of thinking.
…But then again, it made a kind of sense.
Yes, hearing it put that way, I understood.
This was the older sister of that creature called the Big Cat.

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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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