The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

Just when the children had finally regained a little peace, the uneasy look began to creep back across their faces.

Oh no... looks like the accident really did leave a mark on them...

I was worrying about it inwardly when—

"Um..."

The voice calling me was, unexpectedly, Lee Sea-ah's.

She hesitated for a moment, then, as if she'd finally made up her mind, spoke.

"The little ones are really uneasy. Because of yesterday's accident..."

"..."

"So... could you stay here beside them? Just until they fall asleep?"

For a moment I lost my words.

This child, who'd been so wary of me — asking me for something like this?

A nine-year-old, bending her pride toward an adult she couldn't stand, for the sake of her younger siblings.

It ached to see the weight on those small shoulders, but at the same time a rush of pride welled up in me — because for the first time, she was sharing that weight with me.

...Yeah. Not just until you fall asleep — if you want, I'll stay by your side as long as you need.

That was what I wanted to say.

But...

I forced down the hot lump climbing up my throat.

And I said the exact opposite.

"Why would I? I need rest too. Do I look like your nanny?"

At my retort, Sea-ah's face hardened — but the child didn't back down.

She just kept looking steadily up at me.

...Ugh.

Under that unwavering look... I couldn't bring myself to keep saying no.

Right, that's enough of playing hard to get. Even the real Chae Junhyeok... probably would've folded under a look like that. Probably.

I gave in like it was a chore, scratching my head roughly.

"Ugh, seriously, you're a pain. Fine, fine. Just until you all fall asleep. The second one of you starts snoring, I'm out — got it?"

With that, I dropped down against the wall and slouched back.

Only with my permission did the children finally head for their beds, looking relieved.

But of them all, Suho alone didn't go to bed — he hovered around me instead, hesitating over something.

He clutched a picture book to his chest with both hands and shot me nervous glances, and then, as if he'd made up his mind, cautiously held the book out.

"Director, this... the story about the lion king... would you... read it to me?"

Argh...

That was a double hit.

That tiny hand offering up the picture book like it was some precious treasure... that was cheating.

I am Chae Junhyeok. I am a foul-tempered brat. This child is not cute to me. I do not smile. I do not smile.

I chanted the mantra desperately.

"You're asking me to read to you? Some nerve you've got. I'm tired. Get to bed. Now."

But Suho wouldn't back down. He just pushed the book out a little further with both hands, staring up at me with brimming eyes.

"...Ugh, fine! Fine, fine. Give it here!"

"...!"

"But if I read this, you're going straight to sleep. Promise."

I deliberately read the first line in the flat, wooden voice of someone reading aloud from a textbook.

"Once upon a time, there lived a very brave lion king."

Even with me reading it that half-heartedly, the children... were drifting toward me like magnets.

The youngest, who'd been wriggling around on their beds, were suddenly plastered to my side; even Sea-ah, who'd been standing off at a distance, seemed to catch interest in the story and quietly took a spot behind them.

Even the little mountain of blanket on Sihyeok's bed — the one that always faced only the inside wall — had inched, bit by bit, closer to my side of the bed.

If they're going to focus this hard, I can't just half-ass it...!

I cleared my throat quietly and adjusted my voice.

From the next line on, my voice came out completely different.

"When the lion king let out a mighty ROAR!, the cowardly hyenas tucked their tails and ran for their lives!"

All those hundreds of times I'd read to kids in the past — the practiced ease of it came out of me whether I wanted it to or not.

Before I knew it, I was doing perfect voices for the lion king's gallant tones and the hyenas' sly ones.

I don't know how long I read. By the time the story ended, the children gathered around me... were all breathing evenly, sound asleep.

I quietly closed the book and carried them one by one to their beds.

I didn't forget to pull the blankets up to their chins.

Once I'd confirmed everyone was asleep and was about to leave the room — that was when I met a pair of eyes staring at me out of the darkness.

Cha Yul. He alone hadn't fallen asleep. He'd been watching me.

"You should sleep too."

Cha Yul didn't answer for a long time; he just glared at me. Then, as if he'd made up his mind, he spoke.

"I'll never trust you."

With that, he made a point of pulling the blanket up over his head.

A dry laugh escaped me.

That boy, fighting me with everything he had.

The sight made me proud, but at the same time it hurt me to think about how badly he must have been wounded to end up like this.

Yeah. You're doing great. Until the day you can smile at ease — I'll protect you, no matter what.

I quietly left the room. From that night on, storytime was added to the nights in the containment room.

A month had gone by since the bookshelf accident.

Between adjustments here and there for the children's comfort, before I knew it the containment room had changed quite a lot.

But even more than the once-bleak room, what had changed the most was the children's attitude toward me.

The reactions split sharply along age lines.

The older ones — Cha Yul, Sea-ah, and Sihyeok — on the surface hadn't changed much from a month ago.

Cha Yul and Sea-ah were still wary of me.

But instead of glaring at me like they wanted to kill me, or tracking my every move as before, they'd started, little by little, to focus on their own things.

Sea-ah settled in front of the bookshelf and read quietly, and Cha Yul silently worked on his body in a corner of the room, doing bodyweight exercises to train himself.

Ever since the day he'd first eaten in front of me, he'd been going at food and training more aggressively than any of the others.

Maybe because of that, in about a month, the outline of a fair amount of solid muscle had started to show on his once-skeletal frame.

Sihyeok, too, was changing bit by bit.

After I set up a teepee for him in one corner of the room, using the excuse of "I can't have my dolls kept in filth," he stopped crawling under the bed.

And at mealtimes, he quietly came out of the teepee and sat at the table with the other kids to eat.

He still didn't speak, but even that one small action was enough.

Unlike the older three, the youngest trio — Suho, Hayun, and Hajun — were opening up to me at an astonishing pace.

Kids who used to play only among themselves would now, the moment I settled into my corner, come lugging their toys over with a grunt and plant themselves around me.

Then, as if staging a little protest of look at me, please, they'd build block castles and draw crooked little pictures right at my feet.

They'd bump their small heads together and whisper among themselves — but those little eyes kept sneaking glances up at me, never stopping their read on how I was reacting.

...I'm going to lose it. They're too cute, seriously.

I had to hide my face behind my paperwork to keep the smile threatening to break free from leaking out.

Then I remembered, out of nowhere, the first time Suho had worked up the courage to come to me last week.

Suho had circled me nervously, watching for his moment, and had finally set one of his drawings carefully on my knee.

Then, in a small voice, he'd said:

"This is... a lion."

A lion?

I looked down at the drawing.

There, drawn in crooked lines, was a somewhat unconvincing animal... with only three legs.

"It's missing a leg."

At my words, the child tilted his head.

I took the crayon from his small hand and quickly drew in the fourth leg.

"And... a lion needs a mane."

Since I was at it, I added a full, magnificent mane around its head.

In an instant, the lion in the drawing had turned into something valiant and full of life — worlds apart from what it had been before.

"Here."

Once the finished drawing was back in his hands, the child's round eyes locked onto it.

Before long, unmistakable joy spread across that tiny face in waves.

From that day on, the four-legged lion drawing became Suho's most precious possession — treasure number one.

Maybe Suho's courage was contagious.

The very next day, the twins came up to me hand in hand.

The younger twin, Hajun, never once opened his mouth to me directly.

He communicated only through his sister, Hayun.

That day was no different. Hajun darted behind his sister, stretched his neck up, and whispered something in Hayun's ear.

"Mm-hmm... really? That? Mm-hmm. I like it too."

"..."

The two of them whispered back and forth, and then Hayun, as if she'd made up her mind, looked up at me.

"Director, Hajunie wants to know... could you give him just one of your hairs... he says it's shiny and he likes it."

I'm Chae Junhyeok. I'm a foul-tempered brat. I do not, upon a child asking for a hair, gleefully pluck one out for him.

I bit down hard on the soft flesh inside my lip to keep from laughing.

"Is my hair a toy? No. Go play with something else."

At my words, the two of them drooped and drifted off to somewhere farther away.

But they were more persistent than I'd expected.

That afternoon, watching from outside the reinforced glass, I caught the two of them making some very suspicious movements.

Hajun and Hayun crouched down around the chair I'd been sitting in and started combing every inch of the floor, then picked something up and grinned like they'd found treasure.

What on earth are they...

What the children were carefully sweeping up with their little hands... were a few strands of my blond hair that had fallen to the floor.

Hajun clasped the gathered hairs preciously and pulled out a small wooden box he'd hidden under his bed.

Inside was a button off a teddy bear, an empty gem-shaped candy wrapper, a scrap of foil that had almost lost its shine — every shiny thing in the world a child could scavenge.

He carefully placed my hair among his treasures and, with a satisfied face, hid the box away again.

I watched all of it, dazed, through the glass.

So that's their treasure.

Something so humble and pure about that little bit of greed brought a smile to my face without my noticing.

From that day on, using the excuse of my dolls have too little to play with, poor things, I started slipping tons of shiny toys into the room.

I was smiling to myself, satisfied, thinking about all of that, when—

A familiar voice reached my ear.

"Director, Director! Come look at this!"

I pulled myself out of my thoughts and looked up.

Suho, who'd run right up to me, was holding out a rumpled sketchbook and calling out.

Today's star was a rabbit with only one ear.

"You messed up again."

I took the crayon he handed over as though it were the most natural thing in the world and drew in the rabbit's other ear.

"Whoa... a rabbit, a rabbit! A healthy rabbit!"

Suho giggled, and at the sight of it, the twins clambered up onto my knees before I knew what was happening and started pestering me.

"Director! Director! Anything shiny today?"

I pulled out the shiny stickers I'd prepared in advance and slapped them haphazardly onto Hayun's forehead and Hajun's, who was hiding behind her.

"Noisy. Take these and go play over there."

Even at my curt tone, the children just looked at each other's foreheads and burst into giggles.

The once-bleak containment room was slowly filling with the sound of children's laughter.

Of course, from the corners of the room I could still feel the sharp watch of Cha Yul and Lee Sea-ah, and Kim Sihyeok showed no sign of emerging from his teepee.

But... I found myself pretty satisfied with this small peace.

Like this, very slowly. Would it really be so bad to just keep going like this?

...Or so I was complacently thinking. That very evening—

[...I've used up too much power. I need to rest for a bit. Go on ahead, hyung... I'll catch up soon.]

A line from the original that suddenly surfaced in my head turned my thinking completely upside down.

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