Editor’s Survival Guide — Chapter 1
Episode 1. When the Siren Wails (1)
「It was an honor to accompany you on this long journey.
May every day ahead be a good one.」
I sent the final email and let out a relieved breath.
When I checked the clock, it was past midnight. I was alone in the office.
A day in the life of an editor with a book nearing publication often looked like this.
Having no evenings or weekends was a given, and after staring at a manuscript all day, my eyes would be bleary, my back stiff, and even my brain would feel slightly fried and out of commission.
And yet, regrettably enough, I still liked this job.
Everyone has a narrative of their own.
An editor finds the interesting ones among all those ordinary or unusual, good or bad stories and binds them into books.
Then delivers them to readers.
So they might be of some help as everyone stumbles through life for the first time.
Right. Without even that sense of fulfillment, who would do this grueling job?
Especially for pay so meager that, even at this hour, I had to take the night bus instead of a taxi.
By the time I packed my things and stepped outside, it was already one in the morning.
I wondered what the point of going home was when I would only sleep and come right back to work, but I had a meeting with an author tomorrow.
Just because that author showed up in slippers every time didn’t mean I could do the same.
So I needed to go home, wash up, shave, and put on something presentable instead of this worn-out hoodie.
I was wondering whether I had an ironed shirt at home when I stopped in my tracks.
……Where am I?
Until just a moment ago, I had been walking along the familiar road where the bus stop was.
But now I was standing in a brightly lit passageway.
The kind that led to a subway station or an underground shopping arcade.
No matter how sleepily I had been walking, I had no memory of entering a place like this along the way.
I looked around, then turned behind me.
“Uh……?”
Somehow, there was a wall at my back.
Considering that I had been walking continuously, it was impossible in both temporal and spatial terms.
Half in disbelief, I reached out and touched the wall.
Tap—
It really was a wall.
A cold cement wall that neither budged nor opened.
I stood there stupidly for a moment, then dug into my pocket and pulled out my smartphone.
“What the hell? Why isn’t this thing working……?”
Every signal indicator on my phone was dead, and the date and time display was strange too.
The fiftieth day of the nineteenth month, 7:16 a.m.?
What kind of error was this……?
I tapped at my now-useless phone, then touched my neck.
Thankfully, it was still warm.
It seemed I had not, at least, worked myself to death somewhere alone.
Then what in the world was this situation?
Teleportation? Entering another world? A dimensional trap?
All kinds of urban legends I had read online flashed through my mind.
But surely not. This had to be a joke, right?
I had work tomorrow too.
I had no idea what was going on, but for now, I turned around.
Unlike the path behind me, which was blocked, the way ahead continued.
Thinking that I needed to get out of here, I started forward.
When I followed the passage around a corner to the left, I found a staircase.
I ran up those steps as well, and a new space opened before me.
What is this place now……?
I could see the interior of a modern building.
The space was vast and utterly empty, without a single person in sight.
The high ceiling was made of glass, and a blue sky showed through it.
A blue sky?
What was I talking about? Did I have any idea what time it was?
I raised my smartphone to check the time.
Then remembered—damn it, the thing was dead.
I put away the phone that had turned into a useless brick and surveyed my surroundings.
A high ceiling, marble floors, and shops lined up along the walls.
At first glance, I thought it might be a department store.
But there was a picture of a train on one of the pillars.
This was a railway station waiting hall.
I looked around again, trying to find the station’s name.
There happened to be a sign nearby.
But I couldn’t read the letters.
What did that even mean? I couldn’t read those huge letters?
What was written on the sign was unmistakably Hangul.
Yet no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t comprehend it.
Only when I caught it out of the corner of my eye did it register as something resembling Hangul.
Someone who made his living from words, unable to read.
I focused, determined to make out the letters somehow.
At once, a stabbing pain flared behind my eyes.
“Ugh!”
The instant I recoiled and covered my eyes, a booming voice rang out from somewhere.
“Hey! Can’t you hear me? I asked where this place is!”
Startled, I turned toward the voice.
After taking a few steps out from behind the pillar blocking my view, I spotted a ticket counter.
A middle-aged woman was raging in front of its transparent partition.
“I’ve been wandering around forever! Why won’t you answer me? Don’t you work here?”
From the way she spoke, she seemed to be in a situation much like mine.
Glad to see someone else, I headed toward her.
But then the woman abruptly shoved her arm through the opening at the bottom of the partition where tickets were issued.
“Do you think I’m talking just to hear myself!?”
It looked as though she meant to grab the employee sitting on the other side by the collar.
Taken aback by her boldness, I quickened my steps.
Just then, however, something like a long rope emerged from the opening into which she had thrust her arm.
Sssshk—
It flailed in midair for a moment, then spun rapidly like a propeller and sent the woman’s head flying.
Whoosh—thump!
My eyes followed the round object as it bounced away before I looked forward again.
The headless woman was still standing.
Unable even to fall, she gushed blood like a fire hydrant whose cap had been blown off.
I could not begin to comprehend what was happening before my eyes.
But my body sensed the danger faster than my mind. I spun around and began to run.
My fingernails scraped the floor as I scrambled away, then I pressed myself behind the nearest pillar like an ostrich that only knew how to hide its head.
What the hell? What the hell?
This is a dream. It has to be a dream.
This is a dream?
On the brink of panic, I clapped a hand over my mouth.
Then something seized my shoulder.
“Hhk……!”
My heart nearly stopped, but I didn’t scream.
I had no breath left for it through all my panting.
Instead, as my mouth fell wide open, I heard someone beside me urge me to be quiet.
“Shh!”
Forcing my head around, I saw a man.
One of his hands was gripping my shoulder.
He held the index finger of his other hand to his lips.
Still in that position, the man asked in a low voice,
“How long have you been here?”
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My lips merely twitched. I couldn’t answer.
“Don’t tell me you just came in?”
Again, I had nothing to say.
I didn’t even understand how the phrase *came in* applied, let alone whether I was new or old.
At my clueless expression, the man muttered a curse and tried again.
“Hey, you’ve done your military service, right?”
“What? Yes. Yes, I have.”
“Then get a grip. You don’t want to die here, do you?”
The man snapping at me looked to be around my age.
He was casually dressed and wore an earring. Even with glasses obscuring half his face, it was obvious he was handsome.
Handsome enough to make me wonder if he was some celebrity I didn’t know.
I was studying him when a rattling sound made me jump again.
Rattle, rattle, thud—!
The sound came from beyond the pillar.
The man peered around it at the suspicious noise.
After a moment’s hesitation, I stuck my head out too.
Blood was still streaming across the floor in front of the ticket counter.
But the dead woman was gone.
Instead, a person in a suit was vigorously mopping the pool of blood.
A cleaner?
The clothes were a little strange for it, but the role seemed to fit well enough.
Beside the person stood a cleaning cart fitted with a large trash bin.
But something was wrong.
No—everything was wrong.
A person had died, so why was someone cleaning before calling the police?
And why was that cleaner smiling so brightly while mopping up blood?
I groaned again at the bizarre sight.
“What in the world is that……?”
“I don’t know either.”
“Where are we?”
“Don’t know that either. I was on my way home after practice, and suddenly I was here.”
It made no sense in context.
But the same thing had happened to me.
“I was on my way home from work.”
“More or less the same as the others, then.”
“There are other people?”
“They’re dead now.”
“How many……?”
“Two.”
As my face drained of color, the man smiled and added,
“But now we can live. We found this earlier……”
The man was pulling something from his pocket when a deafening roar poured down from the ceiling.
WEEEOOO—!
It was a siren.
I covered my ears against the sound, which felt as if it might rupture my eardrums.
Beside me, the man was grimacing with his ears covered as well.
Fortunately, the noise soon subsided again.
“Damn thing’s been loud as hell from the start.”
Once our surroundings went quiet, the man clicked his tongue and searched his pocket again.
Then he pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper and held it out to me.
It was an ordinary tri-fold leaflet, the kind you could see anywhere.
When I took it, the man spoke quickly.
“So, if you look in ther—”
I was looking down at the leaflet when his words cut off strangely.
So I raised my head and looked beside me again.
Crrrunch—!
The man next to me was crumpling like a rubber doll.
The kind of human-shaped rubber doll that children ruin by forcing its head down into its torso.
Crrrunch—crack, cr-rack—!
The man continued to be crushed.
In the end, he was flattened like a can stamped on while standing upright.
Splash—!
His blood flooded across the floor and soaked my shoes.
Almost simultaneously, I heard a scraping rattle.
I followed the sound and saw the cleaner smiling only a few steps away.
The cleaner in the suit passed me and effortlessly lifted what had been the man.
Then the cleaner dropped it into the trash bin that had been wheeled over.
Rattle, rattle, thud—!
It was the exact same sound I had heard before.
By the time I came back to my senses, I was running away.
Everyone has a narrative of their own.
So do I.
But the story I had built for myself was peaceful in how utterly predictable its course was.
It was not something this grotesque and merciless.
Then why?
Why did I have to go through this?
A short sentence flashed through my head, which until then had been filled with nothing but question marks.
『There’s no grand meaning to it.』
It was a line from one of my author’s novels.
『It simply happened that way. There’s no grand meaning behind it. Even if there is, it doesn’t matter.』
『It’s all right. Death may be kinder than you think.』
Ah. Maybe that was all this was.
The woman’s head had suddenly flown off, and the man had abruptly been crushed flat.
It had simply happened that way.
Meaning didn’t matter.
Maybe there had never been any to begin with.
Then what about me?
Should I die in some bizarre way too and nod along, saying, *It simply happened that way*?
That would certainly be easier.
Because death might be kinder than I thought.
No. Don’t make me laugh.
I wasn’t dead until I was dead.
If I was going to die anyway, I might as well try everything I could.
The only thing more pathetic than struggling recklessly was not struggling at all.
I forced even more air into my already overfilled lungs.
Then barely managed to expel the breath trapped inside them.
Earlier, that man had said we could live.
And I was still clutching the leaflet he had handed me.
I unfolded it.
Once again, the writing was not easy to read.
Even so, after I kept turning it over, I found a paragraph inside that leaped immediately to my eyes.
Written there, in letters I could read clearly, was the following.
—
Survival Rules for Missing Persons Inside the 「Railway Station Where the Siren Wails」
You are currently inside the 「Railway Station Where the Siren Wails」, which is under the management of the government of the Republic of Korea.
As this is a dangerous situation in which you may lose your life, please familiarize yourself with the survival rules below and evacuate promptly.
—
I intended to survive, no matter what.
At the same time, though, I couldn’t help wondering what exactly I was supposed to do.