Editor’s Survival Guide - Chapter 170

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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 170

ep23. Liberation (2)

Boom-! Crash-!
Whoooosh-!
Two doors burst open in quick succession.
Water poured out with terrifying force, as if a dam had just opened.
Within moments, it surged to knee height.
Splash-!
The overwhelming current swept us off our feet without mercy.
“Outside!”
Cha Si-eon shouted.
We scrambled back to the concourse, using the floor to propel ourselves like swimmers.
Most of the wide concourse floor was still dry.
But water was flowing from the corridor beyond at an alarming pace.
And worse—
Boom-! Crash-! Crash-!
Whoooooosh-!
Doors were opening everywhere, water gushing from multiple points.
Hell, were they actually opening floodgates?
“Get to the tunnel—!”
“Wait!”
Cha Si-eon suggested retreating to the tunnel, but I pushed past him, scanning the concourse frantically.
More doors opened, more water poured in.
If I didn’t act, we’d lose any advantage. I bolted toward a door that was still closed.
And I wrenched it open.
“Seo Do-un!”
A warning cry from Cha Si-eon.
And beyond the door I’d opened lay an impossibly high sky.
“Team Leader, we have to open the doors! Before they flood on their own, we need to open them first!”
That was when Cha Si-eon grasped my intention.
From that moment on, we ran through the concourse, throwing open every door we could reach.
Dribble-
As the sky appeared through opened doors, the pooled water naturally drained outside.
I watched it pour out and shouted again.
“Open spaces to the sky!”
Out of all the doors we’d opened so far, about forty percent led to the sky.
So aligning the space with the sky wasn’t particularly difficult.
The real problem was the mysterious force working against us—opening doors and flooding the space faster than we could work.
Boom-! Crash-! Crash-!
Shwooooosh-!
In the end, every door in the concourse was open.
But the score was devastating.
Doors flooding with water outnumbered doors leading to sky by roughly three to one.
It was only a matter of time before the water level rose.

* * *

Twenty-six hours into our isolation in the Train Station concourse.
The 1st Floor Concourse was submerged, so we’d relocated to the 2nd Floor.
We opened one of the doors there and explored the Wide Meadow beyond.
“What did you find?”
I asked Team Leader Cha as he returned from surveying the field.
Though honestly, I didn’t really need to hear his answer.
His grim expression said everything.
“It’s endless. It doesn’t seem to be a proper space at all.”
“…….”
It had been two hours since the flooding started.
The water’s intensity showed no signs of slowing.
And it was steadily filling the Platform below the concourse.
How long until the water level reached us here?
I couldn’t even estimate.
It could be hours, or it could take days.
Among our options, the Wide Meadow was our best bet to avoid being submerged.
Spaces with ceilings—tunnels, stalactite caves—meant certain death if flooded.
And we couldn’t very well dangle from that impossibly high sky.
But the Wide Meadow, promising as it looked, offered no real solution either.
“Still, let’s leave this door open just in case.”
If forced to choose between drowning when water reached the 2nd Floor or being trapped again in an endless meadow, the latter seemed preferable.
“You said earlier you’d had a dream.”
Then Cha Si-eon asked me something unexpected.
“That Lee Seob told you to wait.”
“……It’s not certain. It feels like I had that kind of dream, and even if my memory is accurate, it might have just been an ordinary dream.”
Cha Si-eon nodded at my explanation.
He had a contemplative expression.
After securing the door to the Wide Meadow, we sat down where we could see the 1st Floor concourse clearly.
We ate a meal we couldn’t classify as breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and then I spoke.
“What was Lee Seob’s background? What did he do before?”
We’d stopped hiding Lee Seob’s name.
We were already in the Train Station anyway—no point in being cautious now.
Cha Si-eon seemed to share the thought, answering without hesitation.
“He was a veterinarian.”
An unexpected identity, now revealed.
“So when someone got injured, he could perform simple field surgeries.”
“……?”
Well, sure. That tracks.
People are animals too, after all.
It was an emergency situation.
So this isn’t a violation of medical law—it’s emergency medical treatment. Right.
“What was his character like?”
“He was a rare exemplary person. Especially in the Management Bureau.”
This was the answer I’d expected, so I nodded.
But then I caught the implication in what Team Leader Cha had said and froze.
“Then what about the Director?”
“…….”
Team Leader Cha didn’t speak, but he wouldn’t lie either.
“So what about Director Kwon Mu-seop’s character?”
“The Director has many qualities worth emulating.”
“Does that include his character?”
“His current character certainly fits that description.”
“What about his past character?”
“I’d rather not comment.”
Classic Team Leader Cha.
He’d sooner die than speak a careless word.
Though from what I could tell, Director Kwon was unusually strict with Cha Si-eon.
But if that was an improvement from before, how exactly had the Director treated him in the past?
Actually, I could probably guess without asking.
If someone who’s not quite two meters tall earned a sympathetic nickname like “Poor Thing,” well, that says it all.
I let out a dry laugh and turned over Cha Si-eon’s words in my mind.
Then I murmured absently.
“……He must have been a good father to Lee Sol.”
“If he’d been with his family, he would have been a better father than most.”
Was that affirmation or negation?
Phrased that way, it was closer to negation, so I gently took Lee Seob’s side.
“But he didn’t leave of his own accord.”
“…….”
“That should make him a good father.”
The Lee Seob I’d seen in dreams was always weeping, begging.
For help.
Not for himself, but for Lee Sol’s salvation.
If that wasn’t just some phantom dream, then Lee Seob was undoubtedly a good father.
And if the voice I heard in the dream was truly Lee Seob’s, then we should wait here.
In this space where water was slowly rising.

* * *

Forty-eight hours into isolation.
Whoooosh-!
The 1st Floor Concourse finally submerged entirely.
And as the doors that poured water in sealed, and those that drained water closed, something unexpected happened.
A violent whirlpool formed in the water that had accumulated in the concourse.
Drowning in rising water was bad enough; now we had waves like a water park.
In about three or four hours, that water would reach the 2nd Floor.
But that was still hours away.
Right now, my priority was completing the bingo grid in front of me.
“Yun U-jeong.”
“Kim Woo-in.”
“Ha Yu-ju.”
“Kwak Jae-gyeom—that’s three bingos finished.”
I declared victory and showed Team Leader Cha my notebook.
I know it might seem absurd to play bingo in circumstances like this, but doing something was far better than nothing.
Just watching the water level rise felt like psychological torture, as if we were preparing mentally for drowning.
To manage the stress, we drew lines in the notebook again.
“Team Leader.”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you regret coming back to get me?”
“Seven to three.”
“Seven regret, three acceptance?”
“Seven for having to take that thing out, three for that one spouting nonsense again.”
Maybe it was from being isolated together for a day and a half.
He referred to me as “that thing” without even a hint of hesitation.
I stared incredulously at Cha Si-eon’s vocabulary and phrasing, then asked back.
“Is there anything that scares you, Team Leader?”
At my question, Cha Si-eon’s pen stopped moving.
He paused to consider, then spoke in a voice grown quieter.
“I hate being helpless. Watching from the sidelines. I’d rather die than feel that way.”
I looked at Cha Si-eon for a moment, then turned my gaze back to the bingo grid.
As I was filling in words on the grid, Cha Si-eon spoke again.
“Seo Do-un.”
“Yes?”
“What did you write in your will?”
“Sigh…….”
I’d almost managed to forget about it.
“Just thoughts that came to mind, nothing more.”
“Content that could damage your social reputation?”
“No, nothing like that…….”
How does this man see people?
“So what exactly are you worried about?”
I’d worry about the overall content I’d written.
But explaining it specifically was too awkward, so I kept it brief.
“It’s overly sentimental.”
“You’re overly sentimental in general, Seo Do-un.”
“…….”
I felt a surge of emotion and looked at Cha Si-eon, who for some reason avoided my gaze.
Now that I thought about it, it was this bastard who made me write an embarrassing will in the first place.
Did he feel any responsibility at all?
Right—if things go wrong here, his will gets published too.
……Maybe I can find some comfort in not being alone.
Boom-!
Just as I was trying to console myself.
Crash-! Bang-!
The sound returned.
We stopped what we were doing, senses on high alert.
And yet……
“The sound seems closer than before. Doesn’t it?”
“I agree with that assessment.”
Something was approaching.
Then, a sound that seemed to tear through our eardrums rang out.
Shrieeeeeek-!
“……!”
I reflexively covered my ears, then forced my hands down.
That—wasn’t that the cry of Big Cat?
Sharing the same thought, Team Leader Cha pulled out a tablet.
He started recording.
Bang-! Boom-!
The sound continued, followed by vibrations.
Big Cat seemed to be making sounds too, but the noise of the water drowned it out.
We focused on those sounds intently.
Screech-screech screech screech screech-!
Bang-!
With an otherworldly sound, the glass ceiling above cracked catastrophically.
Whoooooosh-!
As if waiting for that moment, water bombs poured through the broken ceiling in torrents.
“……!”
It was water on a scale incomparable to what came from the doors.
As water fell like a waterfall, the accumulated water below churned into even fiercer rapids, spinning violently.
At this rate, we’d drown not in hours—within one.
“We have to leave for the high ground now.”
Cha Si-eon spoke with urgent haste.
The door connecting to the Wide Meadow we’d secured.
That door would soon be submerged as well.
If we were going to leave, it had to be now, but……
I looked back and forth between the ceiling where water poured and the door to the meadow, then asked Cha Si-eon.
“What about waiting like he said?”
“I defer to your decision, Seo Do-un.”
Damn—he’d already made up his mind. Now he was dumping the choice on me.
Suddenly responsible for the decision, I thought frantically.
Something is coming.
Water is rising.
Lee Seob said to wait.
But that might just be a dream.
Helplessness is unbearable.
Better to die than watch from the sidelines.
Lee Seob was a good father.
“……I’ll wait here.”
In the end, I made the choice I’d probably regret.
And an hour later.
Forty-nine hours into isolation.
The water had risen to the ceiling.
We clung to the steel beams below the glass ceiling, enduring the raging current with our entire bodies.
And as our breath grew thin.
I suddenly felt the urge to confess.
That all that talk about being an editor—it was all a cover story.

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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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