20

Editor’s Survival Guide — Chapter 20

Episode 4. Welcome to the Special Management Bureau (5)

“If you hadn’t taken off your mask back then, you would have died, Otter.”

Baek Sa-ra’s words were matter-of-fact—and absurd.

That made me remember.

The thanks Baek Sa-ra had given me earlier.

—I was truly grateful at the hospital. Thanks to you, Otter, we were able to complete the mission without any sacrifices.

Thinking about it again, that sentence was strange too.

No. Baek Sa-ra had told me outright from the beginning.

Both why she was grateful to me and what exactly she meant.

I wasn’t a benefactor who had saved Baek Sa-ra in a moment of crisis.

I was merely a helper who had enabled her to finish the mission without a sacrifice.

Then whose sacrifice had she been talking about?

Mine.

The sacrificial offering chosen as a substitute for Black, who had suddenly died.

That was me.

As soon as I realized it, a scene I had overlooked came back to me.

Baek Sa-ra, refusing to pick her weapon back up in front of the 「Moving Gun」.

At the time, I’d thought she looked as though she had accepted death.

I had almost been right.

The only difference was that the death she had accepted wasn’t hers. It was mine.

A muted shock washed over me at the danger I had noticed far too late.

Then Baek Sa-ra spoke as though there was nothing left to hide.

“That’s right. At the time, I was calculating how to send a stray round your way. I thought it would be dangerous to keep fighting, so I wanted to end the battle.”

Baek Sa-ra’s voice was no longer vague.

She had recovered her usual gentle tone and sounded perfectly calm.

“I don’t think my judgment was wrong. At the Bureau, they call an agent a complete idiot if they die trying to save one or two civilians. If an agent the state spent a fortune training dies for the sake of a handful of people right in front of them, that’s a national loss.”

It was familiar logic by now.

Civilians are advised to escape by their own efforts.

But an agent can be rescued.

About 4,500 people a year barely even registers.

Because this is a place that does what is necessary, not what is right.

Reciting those supremely rational sentences to myself, I opened my mouth.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I thought you should know. That there’s no such thing as ordinary human decency here. You belong to the Bureau now too, Otter.”

Baek Sa-ra answered with a smile.

So I asked her another question.

“Do you perhaps feel sorry toward me?”

“No.”

Baek Sa-ra answered firmly.

No—hastily.

Had she just flinched?

In any case, it was a vehement denial.

Even the smile she had been using to feign composure vanished without a trace.

Baek Sa-ra faced me with a grave expression, but I paid it no mind.

After all, it would be a mistake to think editors only corrected grammar and typos.

We were people who dealt with authors, no less.

I patiently met Baek Sa-ra’s gaze until she was eventually the one to look away.

Then, as though taking back what she had just done, she looked at me again.

But it wasn’t long before she turned her head once more.

Baek Sa-ra repeated that about twice before finally biting down hard on her lip.

“You do feel sorry, don’t you?”

“……Maybe. A little.”

When I asked again at just the right moment, I got a full confession.

Having confessed, Baek Sa-ra bit her lip even harder.

She looked troubled.

Truthfully, I was fairly unsettled myself.

I had been glad to find someone I thought was a comrade-in-arms, only to discover she was a schemer who had planned to use me as a human shield.

How was I supposed to react now?

Should I fly into a rage over the betrayal?

—So I took off my mask and threw myself around to keep you from dying, while all you did was think about killing me? And then you told me to value my life? Do you have a conscience?

Even if I condemned her like that, Baek Sa-ra would probably listen without a word.

She might even be waiting for that exact reaction.

Then should I resent her coldly instead?

—So what do you expect me to do? You’re not even apologizing properly. Do you think it’s enough to confess just to make yourself feel better? You only thought about yourself from beginning to end, so what exactly do you want from me?

That would probably hit harder.

Or I could demand compensation like this.

—If you’re sorry, at least show me you mean it.

I deliberated for a while amid the quiet, lingering shock.

Then I looked at the eye patch covering one of Baek Sa-ra’s eyes.

And at the adhesive bandage on her cheek and all the little scratches.

After studying her appearance, I found my bearings and spoke.

“Why don’t we just say I saved you, Ms. Baek Sa-ra?”

“What?”

Baek Sa-ra stared at me as though I’d said something ridiculous.

Had that been too much of a stretch?

No. I could make it work.

I was an editor capable of ruthlessly pruning even an author’s endless tangents.

“First of all, you don’t intend to apologize to me, do you? By your own standards, it was the right decision, after all.”

At my observation, Baek Sa-ra hesitated, then nodded.

“But your guilty conscience won’t let you keep quiet either.”

“I didn’t have a guilty conscience.”

“If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be making this confession.”

“Ugh…….”

“In the end, you’re trapped in a dilemma with no answer. Meanwhile, I was already feeling intimidated in an unfamiliar environment, and now this incident has shocked me into distrusting humanity, hating the world, and despairing of life itself.”

“What are you even……?”

Baek Sa-ra muttered in distaste at my tragic forecast.

But I continued, unconcerned.

“At the same time, I’ll understand your position, which will only confuse me more. Some days I’ll resent you for coming all this way in an injured state just to tell me this, and other days I’ll feel sorry for you. It’ll be emotionally exhausting.”

“…….”

Reading between the lines was another essential skill for an editor.

If Baek Sa-ra’s declaration that she had tried to sacrifice me was the densely packed prose on the page, then coming to see me in spite of her battered condition was what lay between the lines.

What I read there was somewhat tender and quite warm.

Too much so to make an enemy of her over this.

“This way, we both lose, and I’m at a particular disadvantage. What do you think?”

I asked the way I would ask an author who had taken a wrong turn.

Author, will you be able to deal with the consequences if you write it this way?

Let’s think this through. Do we really need to take a path that’s nothing but difficult and isn’t even entertaining? Really?

I smiled like a door that appeared open but was actually locked tight, then waited for Baek Sa-ra’s answer.

After a long while, Baek Sa-ra murmured with a bewildered look on her face.

“But that would be a lie.”

“A lie is fine if no one is fooled by it.”

Read only on MUGEX

“Is there even such a thing……?”

“I mean it. At least no one will be deceived and harmed by this lie. Unless you have a better solution?”

She wouldn’t.

At least, Baek Sa-ra had no alternative to offer right now.

I asked despite knowing that perfectly well, then silently watched her struggle.

“……Fine. Do whatever you want.”

“Shall we do that, then?”

Baek Sa-ra finally surrendered to my cunning pressure.

I promptly agreed, and she stared at me like someone who had just been robbed in broad daylight.

So, to drive the point home, I put on a solemn expression and said,

“I’m glad you’re safe.”

Baek Sa-ra looked even more dumbfounded.

Then, still looking awkward, she hesitantly replied,

“Thank you for saving me.”

I nodded, and Baek Sa-ra finally laughed.

It was a laugh somewhere between a sigh and a snort.

The revision was a little contrived, but I found it quite satisfactory.

Baek Sa-ra spoke with laughter in her voice.

“Could you give me your hand?”

My hand?

Not knowing which one she meant, I held out both palms.

In the meantime, Baek Sa-ra removed the ring she had been wearing.

It was a pitch-black metal band.

She turned over my hands, which I had obligingly spread out as if inviting a slap, and slid her ring onto one of my fingers.

A ring, all of a sudden?

Feeling awkward at the foreign sensation, I asked,

“What is this?”

“A body part from a named hazardous entity in the Special Zone.”

Aaaargh!

I recoiled in horror with my fingers splayed wide.

Baek Sa-ra responded by pressing the ring even more firmly onto my finger.

“I went through hell to tear that off. It’ll help you if you keep it on.”

“H-help me……?”

“Some hazardous entities will mistake you for a higher-level entity. If you use it well, you may occasionally find an underhanded escape route. This has saved my life several times, so you can trust it.”

Baek Sa-ra’s words startled me more than a little.

If it had saved her life several times, shouldn’t she be the one keeping it?

“Are you sure you can give me something like this?”

“Why wouldn’t I? You’re the savior of my life, Otter.”

Baek Sa-ra answered brightly.

That abruptly made me feel burdened.

No, that was merely a relationship we had redefined for convenience. It wasn’t supposed to involve exchanging material goods like this…….

When I looked uncomfortable, Baek Sa-ra kept smiling as she said,

“You’ve already pushed me around to your heart’s content, so take it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I gave up resisting.

Because there was something resembling bloodlust in Baek Sa-ra’s voice.

At this rate, I thought I might end up laid out and pummeled like Orange.

When I meekly kept the ring on, Baek Sa-ra spoke with a much lighter expression.

“Live as long as you possibly can, Otter.”

It was a remarkably ambiguous well-wish, and one perfectly suited to this sinister environment.

* * *

“Don’t tell me Sa-ra Noona gave you that.”

After Baek Sa-ra left, Gwak Jae-gyeom spotted my ring and asked.

“Wow. She absolutely refused to take it off when I asked to see it. Hyung, did she explain what it is?”

“Yes, more or less.”

“That’s crazy. She actually gave it to you?”

Gwak Jae-gyeom turned my hand this way and that, marveling at it.

Then he abruptly grew serious and asked me,

“Hyung, do you know what Sa-ra Noona’s nickname is?”

Mad Blade Dance, or something like that?

“Anti-Teresa. ……What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing.”

I should never, ever say the nickname I’d just thought of out loud.

Setting aside how insulting it was, he might question my character.

I quickly wiped away my cold sweat and asked,

“Uh, what does it mean?”

“You know Mother Teresa, right? She’s her exact opposite, so she’s Anti-Teresa.”

“Ah.”

That nickname was well chosen.

It sounded elegant, but in the end, it meant Mad Blade Dance after all.

“Be careful, Hyung. Anti-Teresa is dangerous.”

“Ah, yes…….”

“That ring really is good, though, so make sure you keep wearing it.”

Chuckling to himself, Gwak Jae-gyeom headed into the living room.

Then he pointed to a large box sitting on the floor.

“Speaking of which, there were some useful survival items among the gifts from S.O.C.H., so I picked them out for you.”

I approached him without thinking, only to be stunned by the heap of objects filling the box.

“All of this?”

“I told you. People are sincerely committed to saving the otter right now.”

“Even so, this is a bit much…… Don’t they need these things themselves?”

“Well, yeah. Of course they’d be nice to have.”

“But is it really all right for them to give everything to me?”

At my question, Gwak Jae-gyeom stared at me.

Then, as if he had to explain things from the very beginning, he said,

“This isn’t so much giving things up as it is someone who eats three proper meals a day handing their lunch box to a person suffering from malnutrition.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m saying everyone else goes exploring in a team, with equipment.”

Oh.

Damn it.

That was right.

Goddamn it.

I was the only one who got dragged away.

I had just been forced to face reality far too painfully.

“So take them without feeling burdened. It’s just veteran players, delighted by a newbie learning to walk, handing out low-level items they’d left gathering dust in storage. Everyone’s doing this because they want to see you live a long time, Hyung.”

Reality was merciless, but this was kind of funny.

People whose faces I didn’t even know were wishing me a long life.

Hadn’t they said there was no such thing as ordinary human decency here?

They seemed fairly generous for people who claimed that, so I made up my mind too.

I would repay their support by surviving somehow.

It was thirteen days later.

That I was dragged into yet another living hell.