Editor’s Survival Guide - Chapter 165

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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 Manual for Editors — Episode 165

ep22. Ⅻ(4)

“I have no obligation to refill a life you’ll just use as a tool. Don’t you think?”
I couldn’t follow the words spilling from the woman’s mouth.
What was she even saying?
She was the one who dragged me into this hell.
She’d spared me until now out of some sense of responsibility, but now she was done with that.
And her reason was that I don’t value my own life in this living hell.
I’d thought of myself as an abandoned animal waiting for euthanasia, and it turned out to be an accurate metaphor.
Pick me up on a whim, use me, pretend to care for a while, then decide to kill me.
The absurdity of it left me too numb to even feel anger.
Instead, lost in a kind of profound confusion, I found myself muttering without thinking.
“Why me, of all people?”
“Because you were there.”
…….
Something collapsed inside me.
At the same moment, the anger I’d been holding down finally surged up.
For an instant, I couldn’t breathe.
“……I was only acting in accordance with the situation, that’s all.”
But I gathered what rationality I could and forced myself to appear composed.
“I only wanted to live as an ordinary editor. You made my circumstances a mess, and because that situation never ends, I have no choice but to do this. I’m struggling to process all of it somehow, so what are you even——”
But the more I spoke, the more my emotions roiled.
Eventually I couldn’t finish and closed my mouth.
I kept thinking.
Why me of all people.
What did I do wrong.
I couldn’t bear to believe this had happened for no reason at all.
So I looked for a reason.
I even blamed some absent god.
And this is what it was.
An absurdly unreasonable being simply found me.
That was all.
The more I thought about it, the more my mind threatened to shatter.
I clenched my teeth to suppress it, then spoke again.
“……You said I could resent you.”
“Yes.”
The woman nodded readily.
I turned to this being—neither generous nor cruel, but something I couldn’t name—and spoke.
“I won’t resent you. Instead, help me one more time. I know what you’ve done for me so far, but you did it all unilaterally, alone. I’m the one who suffered the damage, so why did you help alone and then escape responsibility? This makes no sense.”
“If it makes no sense?”
“Then at least grant me one request. If you do, I won’t resent you. Let that settle your responsibility.”
Resentment wouldn’t improve the situation anyway.
So I spoke the only thing I could do.
At my words, the woman smiled softly and replied.
“You’re still wrong.”
Her voice remained gentle as ever.
“I won’t save your life, and you can’t overturn my decision.”
“……That’s irresponsible.”
“I’m capricious, but not irresponsible. The irresponsible one isn’t me—it’s you. And yet you pretend to be sincere. You turn away from what you should take responsibility for, while clinging to what you shouldn’t—”
…….
“What you need to take responsibility for right now isn’t something else. It’s the promise we made together. You don’t have the authority to break that promise.”
The woman’s voice was only kind in tone.
With a voice that sounded capable of giving everything, she began to encourage my despair.
“And you’re not a story that has to reach completion. Look—did all the deaths in this place have perfect setup, climax, and resolution?”
As if responding to the woman’s words, the space around me transformed into ruins.
Everything shattered, everything burned.
And countless human bodies, charred like trees.
“A complete story with setup, climax, and resolution all the way to the end—that’s only possible within the narrow confines of fiction. The causality of this world isn’t so simple. Some lives simply end in misfortune, and you’re no exception. Not all such incomplete tales are unfinished. They’re just ordinary tragedies that fill this world. And yet people desperately ascribe meaning to escape the unbearable truth of their worthlessness.”
At the woman’s words, I exhaled without meaning to.
But she paid no mind and continued.
“Besides, you already know this well. That this is ‘just one of the things that happens.’ That humans, unable to bear their own insignificance, desperately impose meaning where there is none.”
…….
I realized why she had taken the form of the Author.
Did she want to tell me, wearing the face of the one who taught me how to live, that my life meant nothing?
If that was truly her intention, perhaps I should applaud her craftiness.
“Despite all of this—if you were to survive and leave this place, would that even be a coherent story?”
I simply looked at the woman.
But this time too, she laughed as though she had already heard my answer.
And my body began to fall.
The single thread holding me had snapped.

* * *

I was running.
In a body less than ten years old, I ran breathlessly.
Then something blocked my path.
I collapsed straight into it.
It was a woman who caught me.
A woman I knew well—in the form of a certain author.
I looked up at her, still gasping, my eyes confused.
The woman held young me in her arms and asked.
“Why are you running so hard?”
“There’s a person over there!”
“Lee Sol?”
I nodded urgently, wanting her to let go of me.
But she ignored my impatience and spoke casually.
“Is that your last lingering attachment?”
“……?”
“Why is that child holding onto you so tightly?”
What was she asking?
I looked up at her, baffled.
The woman slowly released my body.
But I couldn’t bring myself to run again and simply stood there.
She lowered herself, resting her weight on one knee.
Meeting my eyes at my level, she asked again.
“Your friends who came with you—they had plenty of resentment piled up, didn’t they? So they had motivation and plausibility in abundance. But you?”
Me?
“Why did you get involved and grind yourself down? You said it yourself. That child means nothing to you, and you’re no hero.”
The woman’s question was too difficult.
No—it wasn’t the question that was hard. It was my answer.
So instead of answering, I asked her back.
“Why won’t you let me go?”
“To save you.”
“Save me?”
“From killing yourself.”
…….
“So tell me. Is it that you want to be a hero?”
“That’s not it.”
“Is it pity, then?”
“It’s not that either.”
I shook my head repeatedly at the things the woman was presuming.
“Then why are you doing it?”
At her counter-question, I hesitated before finally speaking.
“Circumstances can’t be helped, but actions can be chosen.”
At my words, the woman paused to think.
She considered for a moment, then asked me back.
“Are you perhaps choosing the most ideal action?”
“No.”
When I shook my head, she looked at me again.
As if asking me to explain properly.
But young me couldn’t explain this sufficiently.
So I spoke only the sentences I held inside.
“Circumstances can’t be helped, but actions can be chosen. But my choice becomes someone else’s circumstance.”
I spoke earnestly, seeking her understanding.
“My choice changes another person’s circumstances.”
Did she understand my words?
A smile crossed the woman’s lips.
She asked warmly, smiling.
“So?”
“So, I want to give them circumstances they can endure.”
“Why?”
“Because everyone has to fight their own circumstances.”
“I see.”
The woman nodded.
I clutched the hem of my clothes and looked at her.
For some reason, I felt tense as I waited for her response.
“So do I. I also want to give you a gentle death.”
The woman embraced me again as she spoke.
It was a warm embrace, but not what I wanted.
“So you can stop running now. There will be no more suffering.”
I remained in her arms, looking past her shoulder.
There was still work to be done.
I had to escape from this embrace.
As I tried to push her away, she whispered to my ear.
“You can’t refuse my mercy.”
That single sentence strangled me on the spot.
It took form like something tangible, freezing my body, and to frozen me she whispered again.
“Now I am your circumstance.”
I felt something break inside me.
As strength drained from my body, the woman stroked my head and laughed.
“What a good child.”
I had no choice but to accept.
There were no other options.
Because this woman was already my circumstance.
“Thank you for the entertainment. Don’t be disappointed that your attempt failed. It’s not your fault. I simply wanted you dead so very badly.”
At the woman’s consolation, I accepted in silence.
She had chosen.
My death.
And so it became my circumstance.
It happened everywhere in the world.
When you trace any circumstance back to its source, you always find someone’s choice.
A small choice ripples through the world and becomes an unbearable circumstance; people call it fate and are crushed beneath it.
I am not ignorant of this truth.
So I stopped resisting and closed my eyes.
“Now then, let’s go.”
The woman whispered as she cradled my cheek in her hand.
Press—
And yet.
Squeeze—
“Why are you really doing this?”
……That’s what I wanted to ask.
I opened my eyes again as the hand pressed against my cheek.
I was an adult again, and the woman wearing Nabbit’s face was, as before, rhythmically poking my cheek with her fingers.
“It seems like things are winding down, but why won’t you move? This kind of binding shouldn’t hold at all……”
The woman muttered things I couldn’t quite make sense of.
Why did this woman keep being so careless, making me think of the real Nabbit even more……
I looked at the woman with complicated feelings.
I wasn’t sure whether I should be grateful that my life was extended, even briefly, or whether I should just ask her to kill me quickly and get it over with.
Then it happened.
Crash-crash-crash—!
The dark space surrounding us suddenly moved.
Suddenly floors appeared and walls rose up, and in a flash the space transformed into the waiting hall of the Train Station.
“……?”
I wasn’t the only one startled.
The woman too looked around in surprise, as if this situation was unexpected.
Crackle, crackle-crackle—
Then the veil of darkness spreading behind the woman began to shrink.
As if she could no longer maintain such display of power.
The fluid time and space that had been wandering formlessly began to harden again.
“The space, why——”
The woman began to murmur in confusion.
Bang—!
A distant explosive sound.
Crash—! Boom—!
Was someone bombing this place?
The woman’s brow furrowed slightly; she opened a nearby door.
Looking beyond it, she let out a low sigh.
“Ha.”
I looked past the door to see what was happening, then felt the same shock.
Beyond the door stood a person I knew well.
It was Cha Si-eon, literally smashing apart the Abnormal phenomena of the primordial Train Station.
A new circumstance had been given to 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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