Editor’s Survival Guide - Chapter 191

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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 191

ep26. Bodies in Exchange (9)
I was quite startled by the sharpness in Jae-gyeom’s voice.
Of course, what Jae-gyeom had just said was true.
Those fragments were a kind of imitation of the massacre that had occurred in this space.
The original space of the Body Transformation Meditation Center was a long stream that divided the boundary between Gangbuk-gu and Dobong-gu in Seoul.
A massacre had also taken place upstream of that stream that ran along the flank of Bukhansan.
It happened in the autumn of the first year the war broke out.
An outline of the incident was recorded briefly in the Management Bureau’s manual.
A tragedy targeting civilians—even babies and children were slaughtered mercilessly—and I felt a solemn weight as I read through the account.
But…….
“Isn’t it a bit much to handle that so carelessly, so matter-of-factly?”
Jae-gyeom furrowed his brow, making his displeasure plain.
At that, Jin-u looked back and forth between Jae-gyeom and the air bag floating in the stream before answering.
“What else can we do? We can’t carry all of it.”
“But still, I mean…….”
“Carry what? Then do you have a better way?”
“No. There isn’t one, but……! Dammit!”
Whoosh—splash!
Kwak Jae-gyeom threw a stone into the stream like a petulant child.
Jeong Jin-u watched this and clicked his tongue in disbelief.
“Well, well.”
“I don’t even know what I’m saying myself!”
“Yeah, you look it.”
Jae-gyeom spoke in agitation while Jin-u simply nodded.
Please, Jae-gyeom, stop making a spectacle with my face.
Jae-gyeom, like a child feeling bitter injustice for the first time, grew restless and then ran his hands roughly through my hair, groaning.
“I’m sorry—I know the manual perfectly well…….”
“You know it, but can’t control your emotions?”
Nod—
Jae-gyeom nodded glumly, and Jin-u let out a dry chuckle watching Jae-gyeom’s distress play out across my face.
“What are we going to do about this? Agent Seo Do-un, don’t you have any tips for calming down? Jae-gyeom’s about to cry again.”
As if I would know.
“I’ve managed well enough in that body.”
At my answer, Jae-gyeom’s eyes widened as though he’d been betrayed, staring at me in disbelief.
Stop making that expression with my face, Jae-gyeom.
“Hyung—I mean, was I really that composed? Right now I feel like I’m standing alone on a cliff edge.”
Jae-gyeom protested as if wronged.
“The world is vast, but the ground beneath my feet is hollow, and even in the quiet I suddenly feel dragged down to the ocean floor! And those fragments—I didn’t care about them before. But now that I see them, I can’t help imagining what happened then, and once I imagine it, it doesn’t feel like someone else’s tragedy anymore, and ahhh……!”
“Oh, here he goes crying again.”
Mid-sentence, tears came pouring out of Jae-gyeom.
Hey, hey…….
Jin-u looked at me as if to ask, couldn’t I settle him down somehow?
But I had no idea.
Wouldn’t time sort it out?
I was standing there thinking just that when I suddenly felt a creeping chill.
Now that I think about it, something feels off.
Isn’t my thinking right now too simple?
Why does the world look so flat and one-dimensional?
I’d overlooked it because it wasn’t particularly inconvenient.
The world was being perceived as remarkably flat.
This is a Special Zone.
But it’s a pleasant walk.
Easy, good.
Body Thief cleared.
Feeling a bit hungry.
Balloon pops, fragments splash.
Senior Jin-u is looking at me.
Is Jae-gyeom crying? Why are you crying—don’t.
“…….”
I sifted through the fragments of thought in my head, then quietly sealed my lips.
What is this? These choppy, broken phrases.
I’m no infant just learning to speak—why am I thinking in such scattered pieces?
“……Jae-gyeom.”
“Sniff, yes?”
“What do you usually think about?”
“Think about? Just what I need to do.”
“Specifically, what?”
“Tomorrow’s schedule, what the team leader assigned, the cafeteria menu…….”
“…….”
He doesn’t think about why this world exists or the meaning contained in the finite span of a human life.
Hearing Jae-gyeom’s answer, I finally understood.
Unlike me, who’d grappled with vague abstractions as naturally as breathing, Jae-gyeom lived faithfully in the present reality.
But could a person really live concentrating only on what’s directly in front of them?
Is that normal?
Jae-gyeom said he was fine when his body was swapped with his team members.
……So am I the only abnormal one?
No, wait.
This must be a difference in temperament.
The difference between someone who chose a special forces career and someone who took up book publishing as a profession.
I reasoned this through and forced a nod.
In any case, Jae-gyeom seemed confused, having tumbled from a world kept neatly in order into one messily disheveled.
Conversely, I’d stepped out of a wide-open world into one narrowly confined, and now I felt suffocated.
I couldn’t say one world was superior to the other.
It was simply a difference in how we lived.
Understanding this, I grasped what Jae-gyeom was struggling with.
So I shared something I’d learned as a child.
“Jae-gyeom, whether it’s a thought or a feeling, when it comes, just let it pass. There’s always more coming anyway—let them come and go on their own. Don’t follow them in.”
Thinking back, there was a time when I couldn’t manage my emotions either.
I’d been swept away by waves of feeling day after day, getting thrown around repeatedly.
It wasn’t until I became an adult that I barely learned to handle it, and I’d completely forgotten.
So I offered what wisdom I had, and Jae-gyeom stared at me blankly before furrowing his brow again and muttering.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying…….”
“If you don’t understand, cry till you do.”
“What…… what is this…….”
Jae-gyeom washed his face with dry hands, bewildered.
Then he suddenly turned the tables on me.
“Hyung, isn’t this body’s efficiency pretty terrible?”
This bastard…….
I felt a surge of indignation, but I had no good rebuttal.
As Jae-gyeom said, I didn’t seem to be a particularly efficient human being.
Earlier, Jae-gyeom had said it.
That I seemed to be standing on a cliff edge.
That the world is wide but the ground beneath is hollow, and even in stillness I suddenly feel myself falling into the sea.
Trying to describe a precarious human without malice, the words came out surprisingly lyrical.
Through them, I grasped my own nature anew.
And I felt no urge to deny it.
But still.
If you’re born human, isn’t it right to think as deeply as you can?
* * *
Jae-gyeom’s body certainly was efficient.
Even watching body fragments being pulled through the water, he didn’t seem particularly bothered.
Hearing what Jae-gyeom said earlier, I did wonder belatedly if maybe it was something.
But only that much.
Since no deeper feeling arose, it was easier.
Instead, there was a separate unease.
It came from learning the principles behind the Special Zone through the Guide.
A Special Zone is composed of memories stored in that space.
The space itself is a kind of phenomenon.
I think it’s closer to a combination of specific moments, like sunlight streaming down or rain falling.
Only the masters of the Special Zones exist to combine and use that space.
Actually, this mirrors something humans have done since ancient times.
Humans have always existed on primordial earth, yet draw lines to claim ownership.
They build walls and set traps as needed.
Sometimes they spread poison to exterminate what was originally there.
They impose their will upon simple space, reshaping it into something entirely new.
What the Special Zone masters do is fundamentally the same.
Only, their actions are profoundly insulting to humanity.
The victims who died in this quiet stream lay buried there for a long time.
Then, after decades, their remains were excavated and their existence revealed.
And they created a Special Zone layering corpse fragments on top of that very ground.
When the Big Cat constructed this place, did it also boast it was a “masterwork”?
Just how much do they despise humanity?
“Should we do a midway accounting?”
It had been two hours since we entered the Meditation Center.
Jin-u, who’d just expelled the Body Thief, sent a radio communication to Cha Si-eon.
Cha Si-eon’s reply came at once.
—We’ve secured eighty-one fragments.
“We have fifty-seven.”
Team Jin-u and Team Cha Si-eon, just as planned, had penned the Body Thief along the stream path and beaten it methodically.
As a result, we’d collected a substantial number of fragments.
“Think we can call it here?”
—Yes. If the Body Thief comes this way, we’ll chase it out onto the stream path. Please head into the Meditation Center building first.
“Roger. See you soon.”
Jin-u, finishing the communication, gestured to us.
As if asking if we’d heard.
I answered at once, and Jae-gyeom gazed at the stream, sighed, then reluctantly nodded.
Following the stream path, we came to stairs leading upward.
Climbing the stairs, a three-story meditation center building emerged from the forest.
The Meditation Center’s Prayer Hall was a wide wooden-floored space.
I left Jae-gyeom in the Prayer Hall first, then crossed the stream with Jin-u, moving the body fragments.
We’d just finished moving dozens of body fragments into the Prayer Hall and were resting briefly when it happened.
Familiar figures appeared at the Prayer Hall entrance.
It was Cha Si-eon and Han Ji-su.
“Team leader…….”
Jae-gyeom, seeing Cha Si-eon, called out with suddenly watery eyes.
“…….”
At that, Cha Si-eon’s expression froze immediately.
He stopped dead in the doorway, then fixed Jae-gyeom with a sharp, cold stare—not cloudy, but cutting eyes.
As if to ask if he’d lost his mind.
“That’s Kwak Jae-gyeom.”
Unable to bear the silence, I murmured quietly.
At that, Cha Si-eon looked between me and Jae-gyeom once, then spoke—not to me, but to Jae-gyeom.
“What’s that state you’re in?”
“There was a lot that happened.”
“Jae-gyeom broke Agent Seo Do-un’s leg.”
“It just happened to break during the course of normal events…….”
“Are you senile?”
Cha Si-eon spoke to Jae-gyeom while directing insults at my body without reservation.
I bit down on my back teeth, feeling the surge of indignation.
“Stop the snide remarks and just bring the fragments.”
At my words, Cha Si-eon and Han Ji-su entered carrying a large bundle.
Now it was time to assemble the fragments.

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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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