The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

"After that incident, I decided that simply standing by was no longer an option. So... I came up with one clever move."

"Wh... what was it?"

Number Four leaned his upper body forward, as if entranced, and asked.

Instead of answering, I sent a glance to Lee Jinwoo, standing at my side.

The moment Lee Jinwoo caught my eye, he started in alarm and shouted into the microphone.

"Overall authority! The Director had full authority over the project delegated to him! He petitioned the Bureau Chief himself and—!"

The moment Lee Jinwoo's testimony ended, I nodded, grave.

"That's right. There's a saying, isn't there — to catch a tiger, one has to enter the tiger's den."

With a look that commanded the whole audience, I declared:

"I resolved to become the head of that hell myself, to record and expose every last one of their crimes!"

Just as the audience was about to break into admiration.

"Hold on!!"

Number Three, the government man, slammed the desk and threw cold water over the whole thing.

He waved the stack of documents in front of him and shot back, sharp.

"That doesn't hold together! Let's grant that, as the witness says, he was delegated full authority. Then he should have halted the experiments the moment he took his post!"

"……."

"Look at the experiment logs submitted here! Even after you took full authority, training and experiments targeting the children carried on brazenly! How will you explain that?!"

Number Three's point was sharp.

The hall, moved to feeling only moments before, began to stir again.

"Huh? Now that he says it, yeah?"

"He had full authority — why did the experiments keep going?"

Amid the pouring suspicion in the looks turned my way, I slowly shook my head.

"Haah… Committee Member Number Three, really…."

"Wh-what?! If you have something to say, out with it! You're stalling because you've got nothing to defend yourself with!"

"It's not that I'm making excuses. I just find your narrow point of view exasperating."

I snapped it out coldly and went on.

"If I'd halted the experiments right on the spot, wouldn't Park Wonjin and the researchers loyal to him have caught on? I'd been granted full authority on paper only. My actual power inside the institute at the time was next to nothing."

"So?! Because you had no power, you cravenly kept the experiments running — is that it?!"

"I kept them running, yes. But… the contents were completely different."

At my leisure, I snapped my fingers.

[ Snap—! ]

The picture on the screen changed.

"On the outside, I made a show of pressing ahead with 'Project R.' On the inside, I slowly improved the children's environment. Have a look."

[ Snap—! ]

The first photograph. The dreary, prison-like holding room without a single window had been transformed into a cozy room bathed in bright artificial light.

[ Snap—! ]

The second photograph. The unidentifiable protein-lump meals, no better than dog food, had been swapped for a hotel-grade menu with balanced nutrition.

[ Snap—! ]

The third and fourth photographs flipped by in succession. The hard steel beds, replaced with top-of-the-line mattresses, cloud-soft to sink into.

The stark, white space had been filled with warm pastel-toned wallpaper and countless toys for the children to play with.

"Whoa…."

"It's a completely different place!"

Gasps of admiration broke out here and there from the spectator seats at the dramatic before-and-after — hell turned to heaven.

I didn't stop there. I drove the point home.

"I didn't just change how they ate and slept. I introduced a formal educational curriculum so the children could grow up not as test subjects but as proud, upstanding 'Awakened.'"

A dense curriculum appeared on the screen.

Systematic, professional training regimens — the kind you'd only see at a Bureau-affiliated academy or a top-tier guild.

"Th-this…."

Number Three's mouth hung open, and he opened and closed it wordlessly, unable to find a retort.

I looked at him — no, at the whole world — and spoke, firm.

"Even if I were gone, I wanted the children to have the power to protect themselves. That was the path I chose."

"…"

A silence followed.

I could feel the air in the hearing chamber shift.

The bloodlust that had been out to tear into me was gone; the crowd was watching my lips as if entranced.

Now.

I had to bring an 'authority' down onto this heated mood — one no one would dare object to — and put an end to the game.

"I'll let you see for yourselves whether what I'm saying is true or not."

I looked toward the tightly shut entrance doors and called out.

"I request the next witness."

With that, hundreds of pairs of eyes swung toward the door as one.

Creeeak—.

Along with the heavy sound of the hinges, the tightly closed door swung wide open.

Into the pouring light, a slight, elderly woman leaning on a cane walked slowly in.

Neat, silver-white hair, a face lined with the marks of years.

But her eyes were as sharp and unshakable as ever.

"Uh…? Who is that?"

"S-surely not…?"

The first to recognize her was the elderly Number Four.

He shot up out of his chair as if he'd seen a ghost.

"T-Teacher Kim Sunja?!?!"

"What?!?!"

The moment that name was called out, the hearing chamber erupted as if a bomb had gone off.

"No way! She retired eight years ago!"

"How is the Soul Blacksmith here, of all places!"

"It's a scoop! Hey! Get it on camera, fast!!"

Fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip—!

A cascade of flashes burst out, fierce enough to make the ones from Lee Jinwoo's turn look like nothing at all.

When the racket fit to tear the hearing chamber down carried on, Kim Sunja — who had reached the front of the platform by now — knit her brow.

"Enough of the noise!"

Bang—!!

She had only tapped the floor lightly with the cane in her hand.

But the shockwave rolled out like a storm and pressed down on the air of the hall.

The absolute presence of an S-rank Awakened.

As if cold water had been dashed over it, a silence like death settled over the hearing chamber that had roared moments before.

Taking in that overwhelming scene, I swallowed a private note of admiration.

That's Teacher for you.

Honestly, I hadn't been sure.

It had been a request I'd sent expecting to be refused, figuring I had nothing to lose.

But the answer that came back was surprisingly matter-of-fact.

[It's all out there already. Doesn't matter. If anything, making it public that I'm with you will be safer for Ari.]

In the heavy silence, Number Four gripped the microphone with a trembling hand.

"H-how did the 'Soul Blacksmith'… come to be here?"

The living legend of Awakened education in the Republic of Korea.

Number Four's voice, calling her by her epithet, was full of awe.

Kim Sunja gave a snort, lifted her cane, and pointed it right at me.

"How did I come? This one called me, so I came."

"……!!"

"Hurk—!"

Everyone in the hearing chamber drew a sharp breath at the same moment.

To think there was anyone who could summon the great Kim Sunja at will.

I cleared my throat once and courteously extended a hand toward her.

"As for how devoted I've been to the children's education… Teacher Kim Sunja, the 'Soul Blacksmith' here, will testify to that herself."

At my words, Kim Sunja leaned on her cane and clicked her tongue, tsk, tsk.

"Well… persistent, I'll grant him that. Hunted down an old woman living out of sight, then came pestering me day and night. Really."

At her gruff admission, Number Three raised his voice with veins standing out, as if he couldn't believe it.

"Wh-why on earth?! You turned away all the top guilds of days past, and every high government official besides! And of all things, on the request of a parachute appointee like that…!"

Unable to master his fury, he trembled and pressed the point unreasonably.

"Was it power? Did you come out here against your will because you were afraid of his backing?!"

In that instant.

She slowly turned her head and looked Number Three dead in the face.

At that single, simple look, the color drained from Number Three's face, like a herbivore facing down a predator.

"Y-yeep…!"

"You think an old woman like me would bow to that kind of power? Do you have any idea how many top-level figures in this country — no, in the whole world — I know, before you dare talk to me like that?"

"……!"

Kim Sunja pulled her gaze off Number Three, who was trembling like a leaf, and glanced at me offhandedly.

"The reason I made up my mind to teach children again… is purely because of this one's sincerity."

"Sincerity, you say?"

At Number Two's careful question, Kim Sunja answered evenly.

"At first I took him for one of the usual con artists trying to trade on my name for a payoff."

When she shot Number Three a cold glance, he flinched as if stung and dropped his head.

"But this fellow had no interest at all in my reputation. Not a single press release, not one interview."

Her deep eyes came to rest on me.

"The one thing this fellow came after me for, day and night, doggedly — was just this one thing."

"Wh-what was it?"

"'Just make the children strong.'… That was the only thing."

At her testimony, the hearing chamber began to stir again.

"Well, come to think of it…."

"If he'd really been trying to use her, he'd have shouted from the rooftops that he'd brought Teacher Kim Sunja on board and made a huge fuss of it."

In the Republic of Korea, the weight the name 'Kim Sunja' carried was beyond imagining.

For all that she'd been living in seclusion for years, a great many of today's top-tier rankers were her disciples.

The single fact of bringing her back into society would have been enough to send his reputation and stock through the roof.

And yet, even with such a living cheat code in hand, he'd kept it strictly under wraps, purely for the children's education.

Where else in the world could you find proof of sincerity more certain than this?

That was when it happened.

"If that's the case…."

Number Five, at the far right end, who had kept her silence up till now, spoke for the first time.

The voice that came through the microphone was far softer than I'd expected, with a strangely coquettish lilt.

"How will you explain the 'Gate assault footage' that recently reached the media? Will you tell us that too was part of the education?"

She cocked her head slightly and drew up the corner of her red lips.

"An A-rank Gate at that, no less."

That one line brought the dying spark back to life.

Number Three, who had been thoroughly deflated, snapped his eyes open and slammed the desk.

"Y-yes! There's that! Exactly!"

Number Three, back in his element, puffed up with confidence and raised his voice.

"Witness! Education or not, taking minors along to clear an A-rank Gate — does that make any sense?! This is a plain violation of the law—!"

Letting Number Three's shouting wash past me, I watched Number Five and the strange look she was sending me closely.

The moment our eyes met, she tipped up the corner of her mouth, her eyes curving into a smile.

……?

Those eyes, curving into crescents.

And that strange, mesmerizing air.

I'd seen it somewhere before.

Very familiar… and ominous.

While I was rummaging through my memory, this time it was Number Four who burst out shouting.

"What kind of talk is this fellow spouting now?! Of course that was part of the training too!"

Number Four jabbed a finger at Number Three.

"Teacher Kim Sunja was on the scene alongside them, wasn't she?! Would the great Soul Blacksmith stand by and let a dangerous thing happen?! It must have been fully controlled training!"

"Even with the Teacher there, come on! Taking kids along to clear an A-rank Gate is training? Does that make sense by any reasonable standard?!"

"Education is precisely about breaking common sense! That's exactly why you don't grow!"

"Wh-what?! Why, you doddering old—!"

In an instant, the hearing chamber was thrown into bedlam by the fierce quarrel between Number Three and Number Four.

As the two of them shouted at the top of their lungs, veins standing out, Number Five went on watching me, that unreadable smile still on her lips.

That was when it happened. A sharp shout cut through the bedlam.

"Chairman!! I! I am a witness too! Grant me the right to speak as well!!"

There stood Park Wonjin.

Somewhere along the way he'd worked the gag off; he was thrashing with the injustice of it, veins bulging.

"On that matter, I too have something to say! Grant me a chance to testify as well!"

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