The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

Inside the rattling car.

Beyond the window, the scenery of a city gone to ruin slid past at speed.

The road, weeds thick between collapsed buildings, was bleak — but to the children in the back seat, even that was just one more wondrous sight to gawk at.

"Director! Director! Just now, outside! A puppy! A puppy went past!"

"Where! Where?"

Suho and Hayun stuck to the window like cicadas, staring out.

"A puppy? People can't live around here, so there shouldn't be any puppies…."

Lee Jinwoo, in the seat next to them, cocked his head in puzzlement and leaned out toward the window.

And exactly one second later.

Where Lee Jinwoo was pointing, a beast with its fur patchily missing and its mouth split open all the way to its ears was chasing the bus, drool streaming.

"Th-th-that's not a puppy, that's… a monster!!"

Lee Jinwoo screamed his lungs out. On the opposite side, Han Soeun, if anything, pushed her face right up to the glass, eyes shining.

"Ohh! That's a Contaminated Wild Dog!"

Han Soeun's eyes lit up as she began reeling off monster info in a stream.

"Bottom-rung F-rank monster! Jaw strength's about five kilos and its stats are pathetic — not threatening at all. You could kick it dead in passing, honestly."

"Then it's a weak puppy!"

"No! It's a monster! How is that a puppy!"

At the peaceful racket between the researchers and the kids, I let out a snort from the driver's seat.

"All right, all right, start getting yourselves ready. We're almost there."

I turned my head slightly from the driver's seat to check the back.

More precisely, my eyes were on Sea-ah, who was leaning listlessly against the window.

"Lee Sea-ah, how are you feeling?"

Sea-ah, face pale and drawn, answered as if it were nothing.

"Just… a little queasy and achy, apart from that… I'm fine. I can handle it."

She said she was fine, but there was no strength in her voice.

"See, I told you to rest… you're the one who dug your heels in and insisted on coming."

I clicked my tongue and turned my face away.

But there was no stopping the way my gut was burning.

"Unnie. You okay?"

"Noona, does it hurt a lot? Should I heal you?"

"No. Suho, it's not that bad."

Sea-ah waved a hand as if it were nothing, reassuring the kids.

"Something I ate earlier must be sitting funny, that's all. I'll be better soon."

Beside her, Cha Yul and Sihyeok kept stealing glances at her, checking her over — and, unusually for them, kept their mouths firmly shut.

A strange tension and worry drifted around the car.

If I'd known she was going to be in this much pain, I'd have held off a bit longer….

Regret came flooding in and left my mouth sour.

The Cha Yul in the original had drunk the artifact and come through perfectly fine, so I'd taken for granted that Sea-ah would too.

But for a girl still that young, the backlash had apparently been rougher than I'd figured.

Heavy at heart, I cast my mind back to the moment yesterday when I'd sat down across from the two of them in the director's office.

"Why did you call just the two of us in separately?"

Sea-ah asked, puzzled, and Yul too looked at me with eyes that said he had no idea what this was about.

"Sit down first."

The two children settled onto the plush leather sofa.

I turned my back on the curious pair and pulled out the teapot I'd prepared in advance from the display cabinet.

Clink.

One teapot and one teacup.

It looked like an ordinary tea break, but what was in the pot wasn't fragrant black tea.

An ominous-looking black liquid.

[Refined Chaos Mana Stone.]

The special artifact I'd swiped from the Bawi Guild's warehouse last time.

Using it, I'd managed to grind the raw, rough Chaos Mana Stone down and process it into a liquid form the body could absorb easily.

Took me a solid month to make.

I sank back into the sofa and looked at the children.

"If there were a guaranteed way for you to get stronger… would you do it?"

"……Sorry?"

"Not just 'get stronger.' A way to smash straight through the wall of your current limits, in one shot…."

I looked at the teapot with the black liquid inside.

"I'm asking whether you'd take it — no matter what pain or price came with it."

The truth was, there was a clear reason I'd called only these two in and left the others out.

They're the real leaders. They need to be the first to get stronger.

If Yul and Sea-ah — the pillar the others leaned on — wavered when the trouble ahead came, there'd be no protecting the children.

For a moment they only looked at me, puzzled.

But maybe they read the seriousness in my eyes.

The moment they understood this wasn't a joke, the two children's faces slowly settled.

"……Director."

Sea-ah stared hard at the black teapot on the table and asked, eyes sharp.

"There's no free lunch. Smashing through your limits in one go, on top of that."

She began to count off on her fingers and press me point by point.

"Is it some kind of banned drug? What about side effects? Any risk of shaved-off lifespan or a wrecked core?"

Her questions cut right to the heart of it.

"And… how much stronger, exactly? I need to know if it's worth the risk before I decide."

I looked at Sea-ah — pressing me so shrewdly, point by point — with quiet pride.

"The price and the side effects… honestly, I can't guarantee a hundred percent either. I'm guessing there won't be any, but."

I said it flat, but inside I wasn't nearly that easy.

If it plays out the way the original went, there shouldn't be any side effects.

In the original, Cha Yul came by this refined stone by chance during his mercenary days.

He'd tossed it back without hesitation, and the result was a total success.

No pain, no side effects — his mana vessel expanded dramatically and his mana volume exploded.

The problem was the timing.

The Cha Yul in the story was already a finished heavyweight — past his limits, Second Awakening done. These kids are, what, barely ten years old.

Truth was, I hadn't wanted to feed it to them right now.

But I wasn't sure I could just leave the processed liquid form of the mana stone sitting around either.

The Cha Yul in the original had downed it the second the processing was done.

Before I called the kids in, worried, I'd even taken a sip myself first.

Thankfully there was no reaction of any kind, but that didn't do a thing for my anxiety about the children.

I'm a non-Awakened.

I hid the complicated tangle inside me and tapped a fingertip against the teacup.

"But this much I can promise you: the effect. Drink this and… your mana vessels will expand. And when they do… your current ranks will change too."

At the explanation, Yul's and Sea-ah's eyes wavered.

Not just plain "get stronger" — the sweet possibility that their rank itself might change.

Without a word, I tipped the teapot.

Glug.

With a heavy, viscous sound, the black liquid poured into the teacup.

Slosh.

The pitch-black surface climbed right up to the rim.

"The choice is yours. Drink this and get stronger, or pass on it."

"…"

"…"

A heavy silence filled the director's office.

I waited without a word so the two of them had all the time they needed to think.

The one who broke the silence was Cha Yul.

"I… don't need it."

At that firm voice, Sea-ah's and my eyes went wide at the same instant.

"What? Don't need it?"

Sea-ah asked back as if she couldn't believe it, and I stared at him too, startled.

He was kicking away a chance to bump his rank up in one shot, of his own free will?

Yul met my eyes without a flicker and nodded.

"I… want to get strong by my own power. Not leaning on drugs or tools — with real, my-own strength I earned with my own blood and sweat."

He clenched both fists tight on his knees.

"I felt it in my bones this time. The me from before… there's no way I could've absorbed all of that huge explosion at the courthouse."

Yul said something chilling in an utterly matter-of-fact voice.

"If it had been before the training with Teacher… I'd have burst on the spot and died."

"……!"

For an instant my breath caught.

The heavy guilt I'd barely managed to keep down drove straight through my heart again.

He really… almost died?

The protagonist of the original. This world's hope, the child I had to protect and lead, without fail.

And the thought that my meddling, the butterfly effect my existence had set in motion, might have pushed this kid toward an earlier death — my whole body went cold.

But contrary to the anxiety gnawing at my insides, Yul, if anything, offered a faint smile.

"But thanks to Teacher's hell training I held on, and I made it out alive. And… I really felt it — that I'd gotten at least a little stronger than before."

His straight eyes shone bright and steady, unclouded.

"That feeling… was better than I expected. Crossing my own limits with my own strength — that."

Yul worked his lips as if choosing his words, then slid the teacup gently over toward Sea-ah and added.

"So… that power? Give it to Sea-ah instead of me."

"……!"

"That's… going to be the better way to protect the younger ones."

Only meeting his straight, steady eyes did I finally see it.

Deep in his gaze there was, without a doubt, the same instinctive hunger to get stronger, burning red-hot.

Who wouldn't want to seize a sweet temptation like that — a shortcut to strength.

Especially in a brutal world like this one where life and death played out every day.

But he held it in.

The cold-eyed judgment that with him on offense and Sea-ah on defense, the younger ones would be safer if she was the one who held this power.

And a sacrifice he took on without flinching.

Far too grown-up a yielding for a boy of ten to carry — and, for that very reason, one that pulled achingly at the chest.

Sea-ah, too, seemed to have read the depth of her brother's heart, whole.

"Got it, oppa. I'll protect the kids."

Not a flicker of hesitation in the child's eyes as she made the promise.

"This is the one, right?"

There was no time to stop her.

Sea-ah lifted the cup and, without a moment's pause, brought it to her mouth.

Gulp. Gulp.

"Lee Sea-ah!"

I shot up from my seat and shouted, but she squeezed her eyes shut and forced the sticky liquid down her throat.

"Ugh…! Ngh!"

Done drinking, Sea-ah scrunched up her face and gagged.

Apparently the taste was pretty vile.

But she swallowed the last of it down and set the empty cup on the table with a clack.

"Haah… haah…."

"You okay?"

I hurried over to check on her — and suddenly she clutched at her chest and started letting out pained groans.

"Ngh! Nnghhh…!"

"What! What's wrong! Where does it hurt?!"

Face gone white, I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her frantically — and then her small, hunched-over shoulders started to shake.

"Pft, pff-pft…."

Her head shot up and Sea-ah, unable to hold it in any longer, burst out laughing.

"Puhahaha! Kidding!"

"……."

"It's just… the taste is a little — actually, monumentally awful. Your face was so funny I couldn't help it."

She stuck her tongue out and grinned at me, cheeky.

"You li-… little…!"

At the word "kidding," the strength went right out of me — I didn't even have the energy left to be angry.

Or maybe closer to the truth — relief that she was safe crowded in first, and the moment to be angry slipped past me.

I fought to settle the wild pounding in my chest, put on an at-ease face, and cleared my throat.

"… Fine. So how are you actually feeling? Anywhere hot, mana going haywire?"

"Hmm… I think I'm okay? Nothing off."

Just as she said, on the outside she really did look perfectly fine, no different from usual.

"If anything happens, tell me right away. The slightest thing off — right away."

I hammered it in, and Sea-ah nodded brightly, saying she got it.

Right. Up until that point, I'd honestly thought she was fine.

But this morning, the day after, Sea-ah's face had been a little more drawn than usual.

She didn't look seriously ill, but there was an oddly limp quality to her.

"Lee Sea-ah, you rest today. You're not doing well."

But Sea-ah shook her head hard.

"No, I can go. It's not that bad."

"What if you push it out there and drop?!"

"Still… if I don't go, who takes care of the kids? Yul oppa can't handle them on his own."

For the one reason of the younger ones weighing on her mind, that stubborn girl wouldn't budge to the last.

In the end, the one who threw up his hands was me.

"Haah…. Fine. But on one condition."

I looked her straight in the eye and laid it down.

"The instant you feel off, or it looks like too much — no arguments, you rest in the car. Got it?"

Just in case, I made sure to load the trunk up with plenty of high-grade healing potions and painkillers too.

And so, unable to break her stubbornness, I'd ended up putting her in the car — and this right here was the result.

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