The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

Those crazy bastards…!

I stared, aghast, my mouth open.

This wasn't just any building.

It was the heart of the Republic of Korea's judiciary — the courthouse itself.

Dozens of stories high, and inside were judges, court staff, and innocent citizens who'd come for their trials….

Between the hundreds of permanent staff and the people coming and going, close to a thousand were inside at any given moment.

And they mean to blow the whole thing?

The moment it blew, this vast slab of concrete would become a mass grave.

Are they planning to blow themselves up along with it?

But their eyes held only madness — no fear of death.

They must have an escape route. Or some sure way to survive the blast.

"D-Director… are we gonna die…?"

"I'm scared… hic."

Huddled in the corner, Suho and the twins pressed their faces to my waist, on the verge of tears.

At some point the other children who'd been running interference in the smoke had come back to my side.

That was when a chilling machine voice came from the black device stuck to the wall.

[Beep—. Two minutes to detonation.]

"……!"

Two minutes. Not enough time to run, or to hide.

The red indicator blinked fast, in time with my heartbeat.

[Beep—.]

What do I do? What do I—!

I bit down hard and looked around.

The emergency exit… too far.

Windows? The terrorists had them covered.

[Beep—. One minute fifty seconds remaining.]

The seconds slipped away, merciless.

The children were watching me, terror in their eyes.

There's no way out…. At this rate we're all dead.

I pulled the children in against me with trembling hands.

If I gave them my back to hide under, would they survive?

No — with the whole building coming down, my body would be no better than paper.

In the end, there was only one choice left.

"Haah…."

I moved to pry the children off me to say goodbye.

"Guys, just for a second…."

That was when.

[Krrr— Ah, mic check. One-two, one-two. Hiding well, our Director?]

Through the countdown of despair, a familiar voice tore through the loudspeakers.

…Han Jewoon?!

[For exactly the next ten minutes, I'll be lifting the mana-suppression field inside the courthouse.]

His voice went on, unruffled.

[Only, you're a bit of a distance from where I am. Sadly, the knight-in-shining-armor routine looks like a stretch this time~]

Cracking jokes with the bombs a heartbeat from going off.

The man was nothing if not consistent — almost admirable.

[The kids are with you, so figure out the rest yourselves. Try not to die, yeah? See you in a bit~]

Click.

The broadcast cut off.

And at the same moment, the air itself shifted.

"Oppa."

"Yeah."

Yul's short answer.

The blue glow of mana was already back in the children's eyes, keen and sharp as ever.

[Beep—. One minute thirty seconds remaining.]

Fwooosh—!

Deep blue light burst from Sea-ah's fingertips.

The power that had sputtered out for nothing earlier now erupted, explosive from all the pressure it had been held under.

Hummm—!

A translucent hexagonal mana shield settled over us in a perfect dome.

Snapping out of it myself, I shouted.

"Hayun! Hajun! Lift up everything around us and shake it — hard!!"

"Yes!!"

"Let's shake 'em all off!"

Uuuung—!

Freed of their shackles, the twins' mana burst out of their little fingertips.

Broken chairs, desks, and lumps of rebar strewn about the floor ignored gravity and shot up into the air.

Rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle!

The twins' eyes lit up in concentration, and the dozens of pieces of debris hanging in the air began to shake violently, like a broken washing machine mid-spin.

Unable to hold on through that brutal vibration, the stuck-on bombs came clattering down in a cascade.

"H-huh?! Why are those coming off!"

"Get back! They're gonna blow!!"

The terrorists went ashen, screaming.

The dozens of high-yield bombs they'd planted with their own hands were raining down onto their heads. Life or death, this moment.

"Sihyeok! Eat them!"

Instead of answering, Sihyeok silently pressed a hand to the floor.

The shadow that stretched out from beneath his feet spread like a black bog in an instant, then gaped its jaws wide.

Whoosh — gulp.

The bombs falling through the air were sucked into the pitch-black abyss before they could so much as touch the floor.

No roar. No flames.

Like pebbles cast into a deep lake, that whole batch of bombs evaporated in a silence chilling enough to raise the hair on your neck.

[Beep—. One minute.]

"We can't get the ones stuck to the wall off! There's too many!"

The twins wailed, faces crumpling.

They'd shaken loose everything sitting on furniture, but the ones fixed to walls and pillars they couldn't even see properly.

"Damn it…!"

I bit down on my lip.

At this rate, the building was coming down.

It wasn't that there was no way to live.

Sihyeok's shadow.

If I took the children right now and hid inside the pocket dimension of Sihyeok's shadow?

We could live.

Even if the whole building collapsed into dust, inside that other-dimensional space we'd come out without a hair harmed.

But….

What about everyone else?

The moment we vanished into the shadow, the hundreds of innocent people inside the courthouse would be buried alive under the concrete with no way out.

Run and save just ourselves?

As a teacher, and as a human being, that was unforgivable.

What do I do…! There's no way out!

[Beep—. Fifty seconds.]

The countdown battered my ears like a death sentence.

Just as my terror-locked thoughts were about to seize up—

Step.

Cha Yul walked forward.

"I can do it."

"What?"

"If I absorb the energy the moment they go off, that solves it."

"What? Don't talk crazy! That's suicide!"

When I moved to grab his shoulder, Yul roughly shook my hand off.

Without so much as looking back, he said, flat.

"It's the only way."

"Cha Yul!"

"And with the way you are, it's not like you'd save just us and let all those people die."

"……!"

The words dried up in my mouth.

He'd seen straight through even to my guilt, and was trying to shoulder that burden in my stead.

A kid barely ten years old.

"Yul, please…!"

But as if he'd heard enough from me, Yul turned razor-edged eyes on Sihyeok and shouted.

"Kim Sihyeok! Swallow it all into your shadow. Now!"

The words hit like a lash.

[Beep—. Thirty seconds.]

"……No."

Sihyeok's always-blank eyes were shaking wildly.

"I'm not going without hyung."

Bang!

Yul roughly grabbed Sihyeok's collar and slammed him against the wall.

"Snap out of it. You planning to let Chae Junhyeok die like this?"

"……!"

Sihyeok's pupils shook wildly.

[Beep—. Ten seconds to explosion.]

The merciless machine voice hammered at my eardrums.

"I'm not dying. So stop worrying."

"……hyung."

"You protect the Director and the others. That's your mission."

"……Don't you dare."

Sihyeok bit down on his lip and murmured.

"Don't die. Hyung."

[Beep—. Five seconds to explosion.]

Kwoooo—!

Sihyeok slammed a hand down onto the floor, and a shadow like a black tidal wave surged up and began to swallow us whole.

My vision drowned in blackness.

"No! Sihyeok! Stop! You have to take Yul too! No!!!"

I screamed and stretched my hand out desperately toward Yul as he receded.

But he stood facing the oncoming blast, ramrod-straight, not giving so much as an inch.

In my dimming vision, the last thing I saw was his back — a back you'd never believe belonged to a ten-year-old kid. It looked… enormous.

"Yul!!!"

The scene cut to black.

Cold darkness swallowed my whole body.

"Sihyeok! Let me out! Let me out right now!!!!"

Inside the shadow space, I screamed like a madman and pounded at the air.

"…"

But all that came back was a smothered echo.

How long had it been?

The five seconds until the explosion had passed, no question.

No — it felt as though an eternity had gone by.

"Sihyeok! It's over now! Hurry, let us out! I have to check on Yul!"

At my cry, Sihyeok waved a trembling hand.

The black dome around us slowly melted away, and the real world came back into view.

The acrid smell of gunpowder.

Thick, gray dust.

In the center of that hellscape where everything had turned to ash—

"……."

There stood one small back, still unbroken.

The blast had torn his clothes to rags, and the floor around him was gouged in, but he was still standing, feet planted.

"Yul!!!"

I kicked off the ground and ran at him like a madman.

But before I could reach out, the boy who'd been standing straight and tall tipped, losing his balance.

"…Huh?"

Like a puppet with its strings cut, Yul's body pitched forward, boneless.

Thud!

"Yul!"

I dropped to my knees, throwing myself into a slide, and just barely caught him as he fell.

"Wake up! Cha Yul! Please, open your eyes!"

His body was hot as a furnace.

I moved to check him over with shaking hands and drew in a sharp breath.

"Wh-what… what is this…."

The aftereffect of absorbing energy past his limit.

Not just his slender arms and legs and neck — even up onto his face, dark red veins swelled and stood out in lumps, fit to burst.

"S-Suho! Quick! Suho!!"

At my frantic cry Suho came running, half-tumbling.

The moment he saw the state Yul was in, the blood drained from his little face.

"Y-Yul-hyung… n-no. Don't die… please…."

Fwash—!

A brilliant green light poured from Suho's fingertips and wrapped around Yul's entire body.

But.

"Grrgh…! Khhk!"

Far from improving, once the outside energy was fed in, the dark red veins covering Yul's body only writhed harder, as if they'd met their next meal.

Yul's body convulsed violently.

A horrific seizure — he couldn't even get out a groan of pain.

"No! Yul!"

I clung to him and tried to hold him steady, but the fireball heat of him was hot enough to burn my skin.

"D-Director…."

Suho, gone ashen, grabbed at the hem of my clothes.

"I can't… the healing isn't working…."

"Ah, ahh…."

My hands were shaking. Right before my eyes, the protagonist — no, a child — was dying. Because I was useless.

"No… no…."

I cradled the boy, hot as a furnace, and lifted my head, howling like an animal.

"Help! Someone save this child, please!!"

But all I could see was chaos.

Guards busy pinning down terrorists, reporters setting off flashes to grab their scoops….

Nobody, not a single person, was paying us any mind.

Right in front of them a child who had saved every last one of them was dying. And the world was going on, so callously indifferent.

"Please… please…. Someone…!"

Just as my voice ran dry and cracked, the body in my arms convulsed once more, as if it had hit its limit again.

The veins, swelled fit to burst, writhed grotesquely, as if any moment they'd tear through the skin.

No, no… please, Yul….

My own helplessness cut into me to the bone, and just as my vision was going black—

"Tsk, tsk. You'll kill the boy that way. Out of my way."

A rough hand shoved me aside.

I lifted my head, dazed, and there stood a woman leaning on a cane, clicking her tongue.

Kim Sunja.

"Teacher…?"

She snatched Yul's wrist without a moment's hesitation.

"This foolish boy, honestly. Swallowed all that enormous explosion energy into his own body — of course his insides aren't in one piece!"

"…!"

"It's overload. What came in is a mountain, and the outlet's blocked. Can't spit it out, only swallowed it in — so it's rotting away inside him."

Kim Sunja immediately set her fingers straight and drove them into Yul's solar plexus and lower belly like lightning strikes.

Tap-tap-tap-tap—! Thock!

"The mana has to move, one way or another. Have to open him a way to breathe."

The movements looked rough on the surface, but the paths they traced were uncannily precise, uncannily quick.

"Mm…."

It was something close to a miracle.

The dark red veins that had bulged and writhed fit to burst began to subside, as if it had all been a lie.

"T-Teacher! Yul's breathing…!"

"Get a hold of yourself, boy! This isn't a moment to be pleased about."

Kim Sunja snapped it out, voice sharp as frost.

"This has only put out the immediate fire. All I've done is press on the pressure points to hold the overload back for a moment."

"Th-then…."

"Dam's full, you open the floodgates. Leave him as he is and he won't last five minutes before he bursts."

She pushed Yul back into my arms and shouted.

"Get him to a training ground, anywhere — force him to use that power, one way or another! Otherwise this child bursts from the inside and dies!"

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