Chapter 20

Chapter 20 . Welcome to the Special Management Bureau (5)

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

Baek Sa-ra’s words were calm and absurd.

So I remembered.

The thanks Baek Sa-ra had given me earlier.

“I was truly grateful in the Hospital. Thanks to you, Mr. Otter, we were able to complete the mission without casualties.”

Thinking back, that was a strange sentence too.

No, from the beginning, Baek Sa-ra had said it openly.

The reason she was grateful to me, and what that meant.

I had not been the benefactor who saved Baek Sa-ra in a moment of crisis.

I had only been a helper who allowed Baek Sa-ra to complete the mission without sacrifice.

Then whose sacrifice had Baek Sa-ra meant?

Mine.

The sacrifice she had chosen as an alternative to Black, who had abruptly died.

That was me.

The moment I realized that, a scene I had passed over without thinking came back to me.

Back then, Baek Sa-ra had not picked up her weapon again in front of the 「Moving Gun」.

I had thought that looked like she had accepted death.

I had almost been right.

It was just that the death was not Baek Sa-ra’s, but mine.

At the danger I had realized too late, a quiet shock washed over me.

Then Baek Sa-ra spoke as if there was no longer anything to hide.

“That’s right. At the time, I was calculating how to send a stray bullet toward you, Mr. Otter. I thought it would be dangerous to keep fighting, so I meant to end the battle.”

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

She had recovered her usual soft tone and was merely calm.

“I don’t think my judgment was wrong. In the Bureau, an agent who dies while trying to save one or two citizens is called an idiot. If an agent raised at great expense dies because of a mere few people in front of them, that is a national loss.”

It was a logic I had grown used to by now.

We recommend self-escape for citizens.

But if you are an agent, we can rescue you.

About 4,500 people a year do not show much.

This is a place that does not do what is right, but what is necessary.

I repeated those extremely rational sentences and opened my mouth.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I thought I had to let you know. That there is nothing like human decency here. You are part of the Bureau now too, Mr. Otter.”

Baek Sa-ra answered with a smiling face.

So I asked again.

“Are you perhaps sorry to me?”

“No.”

At my question, Baek Sa-ra answered firmly.

No, she answered hastily.

Was that a flinch?

In any case, she denied it strongly.

Even the smile that had been pretending at ease disappeared without a trace.

Baek Sa-ra faced me with a serious expression, but I did not care.

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

We are, in fact, people who deal with authors.

When I faced Baek Sa-ra with patient composure, Baek Sa-ra was eventually the one to avoid my gaze.

Then, as if canceling out the action she had just taken, she looked back at me again.

But before long, she turned her head away again.

Baek Sa-ra repeated that twice or so, then finally bit her lip hard.

“You’re sorry, aren’t you?”

“……Perhaps a little.”

When I asked back at the right time, a confession returned.

After confessing, Baek Sa-ra bit her lip even harder.

She looked troubled.

In truth, I was quite troubled too.

I had been glad to see her, thinking she was a comrade, but as it turned out, she was a schemer who had intended to use me as a bullet shield.

How should I react now?

Should I flare up in betrayal?

“I took off my mask and rolled around so you wouldn’t die, but you were thinking of killing me? And after that, you tell me to know my own life is precious? Do you have a conscience?”

If I accused her like that, Baek Sa-ra would quietly listen.

Perhaps she was even waiting for that kind of reaction.

Then should I resent her coldly instead?

“So what are we doing here? You’re not even properly apologizing. Do you think it’s enough to spill this out just so you can feel better? You’re only thinking of yourself until the end, so what do you want me to do?”

This side seemed like it would hit harder.

Or I could demand compensation in this way.

“If you’re sorry, show some sincerity.”

Within the quiet shock that continued to linger, I thought for a while.

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

At the adhesive bandages stuck to her cheek and the small scratches as well.

I looked her over, then found my direction and said,

“Should we just say I saved you, Ms. Baek Sa-ra?”

“Pardon?”

Baek Sa-ra looked at me in bewilderment.

Was that too forced?

No. I could do this.

I am an editor who cuts away even the endless side branches of authors.

“First, you have no intention of apologizing to me, do you, Ms. Baek Sa-ra? In any case, by your standards, it was the right judgment.”

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

“But your guilty conscience won’t let you stay still either.”

“My conscience is not guilty.”

“If your conscience weren’t guilty, there would be no need for this confession.”

“Urgh…….”

“In the end, Ms. Baek Sa-ra is stuck in a dilemma with no answer, and I was already intimidated by an unfamiliar environment, but because of this incident, I was shocked, fell into distrust of humanity, began hating the world, and became pessimistic about life.”

“What are you…….”

At my tragic forecast, Baek Sa-ra muttered in horror.

But I did not care and continued.

“On the other hand, I would also understand your position, so I would be confused. Some days, I would resent you for coming here in an injured state to deliberately tell me this, and some days, I would feel sorry for you, so the emotional toll would be great.”

“…….”

Reading between the lines is also an editor’s virtue.

If Baek Sa-ra’s words about trying to sacrifice me were a densely written block of text, then the act of coming to meet me with a body far from intact would be the space between the lines.

The space between Baek Sa-ra’s lines that I read was somewhat fragile and rather kind.

Enough that it would be a waste to become enemies like this.

“If this happens, both sides lose, and I am especially disadvantaged. What do you think?”

I asked as I would an author who had taken the wrong direction.

Author, if we write it like this, can we handle what comes after?

Let’s think about this carefully. Do we really have to take a path that is only difficult and not even interesting? Do we?

I smiled like a door that seemed open but was, in fact, tightly closed, and waited for Baek Sa-ra’s answer.

After a long while, Baek Sa-ra muttered with a confused face.

“That would be a lie.”

“A lie that fools no one is fine.”

“Where does such a thing exist……?”

“I’m serious. At least with this lie, no one is deceived and suffers a loss. Or is there a better way than this?”

There would not be.

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

Knowing that full well, I asked back and quietly watched Baek Sa-ra look troubled.

“……Fine. Do as you want.”

“Then shall we?”

Baek Sa-ra eventually surrendered to my sly pressure.

I agreed immediately, and Baek Sa-ra looked at me like someone who had just been robbed.

So, to drive in the wedge, I spoke with a serious face.

“I’m glad you are safe.”

Baek Sa-ra looked even more dumbfounded.

Then, with a face that was still awkward, she hesitated and said,

“Thank you for saving me.”

I nodded, and Baek Sa-ra eventually laughed.

It was a laugh somewhere between a sigh and a hollow chuckle.

It was a little artificial, but it was a fairly satisfying revision.

Baek Sa-ra spoke in a voice mixed with laughter.

“Could you give me your hand?”

My hand?

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

Meanwhile, Baek Sa-ra took off the ring she had been wearing.

It was a pitch-black metal ring.

Baek Sa-ra turned over my hands, which I had held out in a way that made them look easy to hit, and put her ring on me.

A ring, all of a sudden?

Feeling awkward at the foreign sensation, I asked,

“What is this?”

“A body part of a named dangerous entity from a Special Zone.”

Aaaagh!

I froze in horror with my fingers spread wide.

Then Baek Sa-ra pressed the ring on even more firmly and said,

“I really struggled to tear this off. If you wear it well, it will help you.”

“H-help me……?”

“Some dangerous entities will mistake you for a higher-ranked dangerous entity, Mr. Otter. If you use it well, you can sometimes find a loophole-like way out. I survived several times thanks to this too, so you can trust it.”

I was more than a little surprised by Baek Sa-ra’s words.

If this had saved her life several times, should she not be the one keeping it?

“Is it all right for you to give me something like this?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? You are my lifesaver, Mr. Otter.”

Baek Sa-ra answered with a bright smile.

Thanks to that, I rapidly grew burdened.

No, that was a relationship we had reset for convenience. It was not something to exchange actual goods over…….

When I looked troubled, Baek Sa-ra kept smiling and said,

“If you have tossed someone around this much, accept it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I gave up resisting.

Because something like killing intent had mixed into Baek Sa-ra’s voice.

Because I felt like if I kept this up, I would end up lying down and being beaten thwack, thwack like Orange.

When I humbly wore the ring, Baek Sa-ra spoke with a much lighter face.

“Live as long as possible, Mr. Otter.”

It was a truly ambiguous blessing, one suited to this ominous environment.

---

“Don’t tell me Sister Sa-ra gave you that?”

After Baek Sa-ra left, Kwak Jae-gyeom saw my ring and asked.

“Wow, when I asked her to show me, she never took it off. Hyung, did she explain what this is?”

“Yes, roughly.”

“That’s insane. She gave this to you?”

Kwak Jae-gyeom turned my hand this way and that, admiring it.

Then he suddenly turned serious and asked me,

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

Mad Blade Dance, something like that?

“Anti-Teresa. ……Why are you like that?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

I should absolutely never say the nickname that had just occurred to me out loud.

Leaving aside the fact that it was insulting, my character might be doubted too.

I quickly wiped off my cold sweat and asked back.

“Wh-what does that mean?”

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

“Aha.”

They named her well.

The sound is elegant, but in the end, the meaning is Mad Blade Dance.

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

“Ah, yes…….”

“And that ring is really good, so keep wearing it.”

Kwak Jae-gyeom cackled on his own and headed toward the living room.

Then he pointed at a large box on the floor.

“Since we’re on the subject, there were some survival items among the S.O.C.H. gifts, so I picked them out.”

I unconsciously approached beside Kwak Jae-gyeom, then was startled by the items piled inside the box.

“All of this?”

“I told you. Right now, people are serious about saving the otter.”

“Even so, this much…… Aren’t these things necessary for them too?”

“Yes, well. Of course they’d be good to have.”

“Then is it all right for them to yield them to me?”

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

Then he explained again from the basics.

“This isn’t exactly yielding. It’s more like someone who eats three meals a day properly giving their lunchbox to someone suffering from malnutrition.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m saying other people take equipment and go in as teams when they explore.”

Ah.

Damn it.

That was right.

God damn it.

I was the only one who got dragged in.

I had ended up facing reality far too painfully.

“So accept them without feeling burdened. Old-timers are finding a newbie learning to walk so admirable that they’re tossing out low-level items they had shoved in storage. Everyone’s doing this because they want to see you live a long time, hyung.”

Reality was cruel, but this was a little funny.

People whose faces I did not even know were wishing for my longevity.

They said there was no such thing as human decency here.

For that, their generosity seemed quite abundant, so I made up my mind too.

To survive somehow, in order to repay their support.

It was 13 days from that day.

When I was dragged into another living hell.