My body, which had been suspended in midair, dropped straight down onto the cold rooftop floor with a thud.
"Director!! Are you okay?!"
"Ngh…"
Hajun and Hayun, tear-streaked faces desperate, rushed at me and threw themselves into my arms.
Four small hands gripping my clothes were shaking like leaves — that was how badly they'd been scared.
"Haaa… haaa… thanks for catching me…."
I stroked the children's heads as I sucked in ragged breaths.
But I wasn't allowed even a second to catch my breath in relief.
Wooooong—!!!
I turned my head, and what met me was, in the most literal sense, the worst disaster.
"Aaaaaaaagh!!!!"
Along with Sea-ah's scream, vivid blue mana poured out of her small frame, pressing down on the very air of the rooftop.
An awful compression, as though my lungs were being crushed.
The worst thing that could happen — an Awakened whose mind had shattered tearing herself apart from the inside. Unmistakably, the onset of an overload.
Pchhk! Pyaat—!
Along her neck and forearms, vivid blue mana circuits swelled grotesquely and pushed up under her skin like ugly veins.
Ka-ga-ga-gang! Chang! Krrrk—!
Then, with a horrible cracking sound, her innate ability — her barriers — began to run wild as though they had a will of their own.
This wasn't the precise, smooth shielding Sea-ah normally handled.
Hundreds of jagged, razor-edged barrier shards, like shattered window glass, sprang into being out of empty air, wrapping around the screaming Sea-ah and whipping up a vicious storm of blades.
"Khk, ngh…!"
Dark red blood ran from the corners of Sea-ah's mouth and nose as she wailed inside the barriers.
The runaway mana had finally begun eating through her fragile body — and her very life along with it.
I whipped around to the twins and shouted.
"Use your telekinesis right now, grab Number Three, and get downstairs!"
"N-no! Not leaving you!"
Hayun screamed with tears welling up, and Hajun shook his head, clinging to my forearm like a lifeline.
"You're five, what do you think you can do here?! Get down there right now and bring backup!"
Even at my harsh roar the kids didn't budge.
"Cha Yul, Kim Sihyeok — bring the older ones! Right now you two are just in the way, so go!!!"
I forced the cruel words out, trying somehow to peel them off me.
But the terrified twins only looked up at me, faces awash with tears — and then finally burst out crying at the top of their lungs.
"Ag—! Again with the lies!! Director's mean!!!!"
"Whaaah! Whaaah!!!!"
The kids only clung tighter to my waist and wailed themselves breathless.
When had they gotten this sharp at seeing through my lies?
Damn it….
Just as I was struggling to somehow pry them off, that was when.
"Hmm… our Director seems to be in a bit of a bind? Would you like some help?"
Through the mana storm shrieking in my ears, an utterly composed, mellow voice slid in.
I turned — the Fox was creasing his eyes into a smile over the top of his fan.
"Shut up and drop the illusion on Sea-ah first!"
"That, I can't do. But… one more helpful hand is about to be added."
The Fox pulled a silver pocket watch from inside his robe in one leisurely motion and clicked the lid open.
Checking the second hand without a hurry, his eyes soon slid over to Kang Taemin, who was standing there blankly.
"Right about now, I think—"
He hadn't even finished the sentence.
Kang Taemin's body, slack as a broken doll, twitched faintly, and light returned, slowly, to his empty eyes — like a switch flipping on.
"…Kh."
With a low groan he pulled himself upright and swept his gaze around fast.
For a man built solid as rock, little showed on the outside — but his ragged breathing and hard-set jaw spoke plainly to the depth of his confusion.
"Director…?"
His eyes, wavering faintly, found me and the crying twins, then swept the whole rooftop.
The barrier caging the overloading Sea-ah, his own hands and face soaked in blood, and the Fox fanning himself easily.
Kang Taemin connected the dots, and his gaze settled into something horrifyingly cold.
I shouted at him as if coughing up blood.
"Number Three!!! Take the kids downstairs right now!!!"
"!"
The instant the order left me, Kang Taemin's huge frame shot forward like a reflex.
"No! We're staying with the Direc—!"
The twins moved to cling to me and dig in fiercely — but they didn't finish the sentence.
Tak, tak!
Kang Taemin closed the distance like lightning; his big hands came down precisely and without mercy on the backs of the children's necks.
"…!"
They dropped unconscious in one strike, and Kang Taemin scooped them up under each of his thick arms like packages.
Just as he was about to leap down through the collapsed stairwell with the twins tucked at his sides—
"Director…."
Kang Taemin worked his bloodied lips, hesitating, as if to say something.
What flashed across that rock-solid face for a fraction of a second was… a bone-deep, heavy guilt.
But I raised a hand firmly and cut him off.
"Later. Get the kids out first."
At my short, hard command he swallowed a rough breath through tightly clamped lips and, in the end, nodded, silent.
The unconscious twins locked firmly under his arms, he vanished in a blink down into the darkness of the stairwell.
"Hmm…."
The moment Kang Taemin was gone, an interested little sound slipped out from between the Fox's lips.
"Sending the only muscle you had left downstairs? However do you plan to handle this on your own?"
"…"
"A weak little non-Awakened like you."
"None of your business."
I chewed his provocation up cold and turned my head roughly away.
There was no time to be jerked around by that silver tongue of his.
Where my eyes landed, Sea-ah's situation had, in that short span, turned into something more hopeless than I could have imagined.
This is unreal.
The storm of ominous mana pouring out of Sea-ah's body had stopped.
But this was no time for relief.
Where Sea-ah had been, dozens, hundreds of layers of jagged barrier had clumped together in an ugly mass, forming a horrific cocoon.
Beyond the shell, mindlessly multiplied as though refusing all contact with the outside, I couldn't even make out the outline of the child.
A perfect severance.
What in god's name was happening in there.
Without thinking I ran up, hammering wildly on the rough, unyielding barrier, screaming.
"Sea-ah! Lee Sea-ah!!"
I pounded until it felt like my knuckle bones would crumble, calling for her, desperate — but inside that huge cocoon, there was nothing but dead silence.
The overload… stopped?
By some miracle, the mana storm that had raged as if it would rip the whole rooftop apart had stopped.
But there was no way to see a hair of what was happening inside that awful shell, and my insides were charring black with helpless worry.
"Hmm…?"
Just then, behind me, the Fox's voice came, puzzled.
"That's strange. The overload really should have gone off by now… why has it stopped? There's no way Sea-ah's vessel could have held all that mana pouring out of her…."
The instant I heard his muttered thought, one thing struck through my mind like lightning.
Wait… is it because of that 'Refined Chaos Mana Stone' I gave her yesterday?
But there was no room right now to sit and puzzle any of it out.
I forced the question welling up in my throat back down and refocused everything I had on the huge cocoon in front of me.
"Sea-ah! Can you hear me?! Please, just open it! Sea-ah!!!"
Kwang! Kwang, kwang, kwang, kwang!
I don't know how long I pounded.
"Ha, ha…."
My bloodied fists slid uselessly down the barrier.
Black despair began crawling up from under my feet.
Thinking of how alone she must be inside that cold, pitch-dark shell, something in my chest caved in.
Suddenly, Sea-ah's voice from the training room the other day came back to me, calm and quiet.
'If it ever comes to it later that you have to abandon us — please don't let the younger ones know. I'll just… pretend we're the ones who left.'
'They… really love you, Director. They're still little… they won't know they were abandoned. So please, work with me on that.'
A child who took being abandoned for granted, and still tried to shoulder that whole weight alone because she couldn't bear the younger ones being hurt.
She had always played the dependable eldest sister without so much as a whine… but in the end, she was only a nine-year-old.
'Yes…. You be careful too, Director. And….'
'…'
'Don't let anyone catch you being sweet, either.'
"Sea-ah…."
Pressing my forehead against the blood-slicked barrier, I whispered small, as if grinding the words out.
"Please, open it. Yeah? Let me be in there with you."
My throat closed as though I couldn't breathe.
"Even if you hate me, you love the younger ones, don't you. Do you know how heartbroken Hajun and Hayun were crying a moment ago? So please… please, Sea-ah…."
I begged, over and over, clutching at straws.
But no matter how I whispered, the huge barrier didn't so much as twitch — brutally, hatefully quiet.
Total powerlessness.
Had this body, without a scrap of mana running through it, ever been so revolting to me?
At every crucial moment I was shoved to the back and protected by the children, and right now, all I could do was let a nine-year-old face an overload alone.
I needed strength.
Not a piece of luggage clinging to life behind these children's backs — I wanted to be a solid wall that could stand between them and everything else, without flinching.
Blood dripped in fat drops from fists clenched hard enough to grind bone.
I wasn't asking for a miracle. Take everything I have, if that's what it costs.
Just once. Give me the power to break through that solid wall.
That was when.
Thud—!!
"…!"
Along with a heartbeat pounding at an unnaturally sharp pace, a heat suddenly bloomed from my lower belly, near my navel.
The heat spread in an instant, changing into an awful pain that seemed to wring my whole gut from the pit of my chest down.
"Khhk…!"
Before I could brace against it, hot blood came gushing up out of me.
"!"
And in that very instant, when the blood I'd coughed up touched the barrier—
Sluu—.
The fortress that had felt like it would never break began, from the spot the blood had touched, to slide slowly open.
And the next moment.
"Huh…?"
At the same time, an immense pull seized me, with no chance to resist it.
Before I could even flail, my body was sucked helplessly into the huge cocoon.
As my vision guttered out and the noise of the world faded, the very last thing to catch on my eyes was one thing only.
The Fox, always insufferably composed, whose perfect mask had cracked for the first time — his fairly startled face.
With that satisfying look as the closing shot, my consciousness sank heavily down into a deep abyss.
Total blackout.
Sea-ah was only seven, but she was very well aware that she was abnormally clever compared to other children her age.
While her classmates learned addition and subtraction folding and unfolding fingers, Sea-ah was flipping through the thick books on the shelves at home, teaching herself functions and calculus.
But Sea-ah also saw right through the fact that showing off that cleverness wasn't going to be good for her life.
Parents so buried in work they hardly ever made it home.
And two younger siblings she was responsible for looking after.
What would happen if the world found out she was a genius?
Obviously, it was going to get impossibly noisy and exhausting.
So Sea-ah gladly chose to be an ordinary child.
At school, she laughed and chatted brightly, playing dumb like everyone else.
When tests came around, even if answers rose into her head as easily as breathing, she'd calculate the class average and deliberately mix in wrong ones.
Grades solid enough not to stand out, not enough to make anyone worry.
The perfect 'middle,' where her parents could look at the report card and stroke her head fondly.
That was the perfect, and heartbreakingly thorough, disguise seven-year-old Sea-ah had chosen to protect her small world and her family's peace.
And that day too was a perfectly ordinary, quiet morning like any other.
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