The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

After that, I kept relentlessly burning the centipede down and grinding it into ash.

And really, as if the limit was closing in, I could feel the world's resets and rebuilds slowing down, unmistakably.

Sea-ah's eyes on me, meanwhile, kept warping into something stranger.

Confusion, shock — and a look like she was remembering something.

But I kept my focus locked on wiping out the centipede in front of me.

Then, at some point, an eerie change started showing in Sea-ah's siblings.

"Let me go! Let me gooooo!!"

"Nooo! Get off me!!"

The children, who up till then had repeated their scripted actions down to the letter, started fighting back harder with every cycle.

"Unnieee! Help me!!!"

They shook my hands off and dug in — and even once I'd shoved them up onto the stairs by force, they thrashed and fought to come back down.

But four- and five-year-olds had no chance against a grown man's strength.

I locked them tight against me, hauled them up the emergency stairs, and once again turned the centipede into a spit-roast.

By the thirty-fifth time I'd ground the centipede to ash…

By now, a single loop was taking a good twenty minutes.

…there really isn't much left.

But I wasn't the only one who felt the end coming.

The siblings stopped struggling in a heartbeat and snapped their heads up to stare hard at Sea-ah.

Then came a voice — strangely cool and clear, nothing you'd believe out of four- and five-year-olds.

"Noona, you're going to leave here with just this man, right?"

"Unnie, you're going to abandon us again, aren't you?"

At the spine-crawling words, Sea-ah froze in place.

Meanwhile more blatant accusations came pouring in.

"You're going to leave us alone in this dark, scary place and go live happily outside by yourself, right?"

"You couldn't even protect your little siblings — and now you're going to run away again? Don't go outside. Stay here with us forever, okay?"

"When we were choking to death in that cold water… you were sleeping warm and eating your fill out there!"

"It's all your fault, unnie! We died because of you! Don't you dare leave us behind and go on living like it's nothing! Don't leave! Don't gooooo!"

I couldn't stand listening to the resentment escalating.

I was about to snap "Enough!" at the two of them — and that was the moment.

Sea-ah quietly raised a hand and stopped me.

"It's all right, Director."

"!"

At a word seven-year-old Sea-ah could not possibly have said, I stood frozen where I was.

"Sea-ah… you… how…!"

"How could I miss it? You practically shouted 'Director' with every move you made."

Sea-ah stared straight at my face and gave a faint smile.

Sea-ah's remembered me…

Don't tell me the illusion weakening had reached Sea-ah too?

In that instant, a sharp realization struck through my head like lightning.

Sea-ah had just said who I was out loud, and yet the vicious dizziness and forced reset that always came with it hadn't happened at all.

Only then did I know it for certain.

That the Fox's mana had finally hit rock bottom.

"Sea-ah! Let's go back! We can leave now! The illusion is falling apart!"

I called out to her, flushed with joy, urgent.

But unlike me, Sea-ah's face was frighteningly calm and settled.

She slowly turned her head and looked down, quiet, at the siblings clinging to her — gripping her pants tight enough to tear them.

They were still pouring out that curse-laced rage — "Don't leave! Don't leave!"

"…"

In the face of the endless resentment, the child's eyes no longer wavered.

"I'm… not going to leave now."

"…what?"

At the impossibly calm voice, the joy dropped out of me in an instant.

"S-Sea-ah. What do you… why…?"

Instead of answering, Sea-ah bent down and pulled her thrashing siblings hard into her arms.

"…my family is here."

That was when.

Plip.

A single clear drop rolled down Sea-ah's cheek.

"…!"

I'd never once seen this.

Through every cruelty, even fighting an A-rank monster, even facing down dozens of laser cannons alone at the evaluation, she'd held on fiercely without so much as a whimper.

That iron-hard child was holding those fake siblings — the ones spitting vicious curses at her — tight enough to break them, tears rolling down without a sound.

"I know. That all of this is fake…"

Sea-ah's voice trembled and crumbled, brittle as a dry leaf.

"That Mom, Dad, Se-eun, Se-min — all of them — are illusions. That they all died in the cold water so long, so long ago. How could I forget any of it?"

"…"

"But… still… I don't want to leave."

She swallowed her ragged breaths, her small shoulders trembling pitifully.

"Once I leave here… my family won't be anywhere in the whole world. There'll be just me…"

"Sea-ah…"

"Director… honestly, I was so scared."

Sea-ah carefully stroked the heads of the siblings still tearing at her clothes.

"As time went on, my family's faces kept getting blurry. The way the little ones laughed, the warm voice Mom and Dad called me with — I was forgetting all of it… but here I can touch them, and I can hear their voices, and like this — I can even hold them like this."

Through her tear-soaked face, Sea-ah smiled up at me.

A smile so sad and so happy it looked like it might crumble at any second.

"I know it can't last long anyway."

She didn't even try to wipe the tears rolling off her chin, and her voice shook thin as she pleaded.

"So just a little… please, even a little bit… until it all breaks apart, let me stay with my family. I know you must want to get out of here too, Director… I'm so, so sorry for asking something this selfish…"

Something jammed shut in my chest.

Selfish?

No — if anything, she was pigheadedly, foolishly kind.

Just seven years old.

At that tiny age, she'd taken every unbearable misery head-on, and even so, she was worrying about the very adult who had abused her, tortured her horribly.

How could anyone dare call a child like that selfish?

I walked slowly over, dropped to one knee in front of Sea-ah, and met her at eye level.

"…I made it very clear when I first met all of you."

The voice I forced out came out cracked and ragged.

"That you're my dolls, and I'm your owner."

"…"

"If you want to stay here another hundred days, do it. A thousand days, too — I don't care. If you want to live here until this fake world runs out, I'll gladly make it happen."

I carefully wiped her wet cheek.

"So don't hold back, don't second-guess yourself. Do whatever you want — all of it. Everything."

"…"

"Your owner will bear all of it — gladly."

The moment I'd finished speaking, Sea-ah threw herself at me.

How much longing had she swallowed on her own, all this time?

I wrapped my arms tight around the child sobbing into my clothes, holding her without a gap.

"It's okay. It's all right. Everything's all right."

Right at the heart of those cold, curse-spitting illusions.

I patted the small shoulders of the child weeping herself breathless, and patted them, and patted them again.

Snap—

When I opened my eyes again, everything around us had reset to the very beginning — the fifteenth floor.

"We are—!"

"The bestest siblings in the universe!"

"Won't be picky about food today—!"

"Won't fight wif fwiends today—!"

"No cwying!"

At the familiar chant hitting my ears, I knew on instinct that Sea-ah was preparing for the end.

Every waking moment, she held her siblings tight and whispered gentle old stories, without a break.

"When you two were first born, you were, like, this tiny — you know? I was so scared to even touch you back then…"

"Se-eun, you said once that you liked my hairclip, remember? I should have just given it to you then. Next time we meet, unnie'll get you an even better one."

"Se-min, are you okay with lightning now? You used to cry every time it thundered at night."

Under the dining table as the tsunami came in, in the blood-drenched corner of the rooftop — Sea-ah's stories never stopped.

Even when the iron rooftop door blew open with a kwang and her parents came through, it was the same.

"Mom, Dad. Even with how busy you were, I know how much you loved me. I'm so sorry I couldn't protect the little ones to the end. But… for the rest of my life, I'll live bravely — for all of us."

While Sea-ah spent her last moments with her family, smiling through her tears, I silently tore through and burned down every wave of monsters that came.

Until she'd finished everything she wanted to do.

By now, the gears grinding time back by force had hit their limit and were creaking.

The ringing that had shredded eardrums at every reset, and the horrible dizziness — both had been gone a while.

And on top of that, the world itself was rattling unsteadily every so often, as if a huge earthquake had gone off.

Whatever was going on outside, one thing was certain: the end of this illusion was close.

How many times had we run it, I wonder.

Sea-ah came over to me as I stood on a heap of monster corpses.

"Director… I've done all of it now."

Her voice still had a wet edge, but it was clearer — unburdened.

"…are you really okay? If you want, you can stay longer."

At my careful question, Sea-ah shook her head quietly.

"It's enough. I said everything I wanted to say, and I've… I've held onto every one of my family's faces."

At her composed answer, I forced the bitterness off my expression and nodded.

"All right. Then just hang on a little longer. It really isn't much—"

"No — I can leave right now."

While I made a puzzled face at Sea-ah's firm reply —

She slowly turned and faced her siblings, standing dead-still in a corner of the rooftop.

"Kids — unnie's really going now."

Unlike in the previous cycles when they'd fought like they were possessed, the siblings only stood there frozen, like broken dolls.

Clearly, there wasn't even enough mana left to run the characters' behavior anymore.

"You know our chant, that we did every day. Don't fight with friends, be brave, don't cry…"

Sea-ah's voice thickened.

"Unnie'll keep those, out there too. Promise. So watch me from up there every day and make sure I'm keeping them, okay?"

She swallowed hard on the sobs climbing up her throat and, like a vow, added,

"I'm not leaving because I forgot you and I want to go live for just myself. It's… I have new people who are precious to me now."

Sea-ah's eyes rested on me for just a moment, then went back to her siblings.

"After unnie protects those people to the end, I'll come to you later, standing tall. All right?"

Sea-ah smiled — wet — at the phantoms of her siblings, and slowly closed her eyes.

That was the moment.

Toong—!

From Sea-ah's small body, an enormous pulse that shook the heart burst outward.

Then the dazzling golden mana that had poured out of her at her first awakening exploded up again, whipping wildly.

But the shape had changed completely.

The hard, round sphere of a barrier that had bound Sea-ah in, sealing her off from the outside.

That solid shell — which had existed only for "defense" — melted away like spring snow, and began to take the shape of a huge, rippling, translucent liquid.

"Sea-ah, don't tell me you—!"

Before my shock had even finished coming out —

The huge tide swirling under Sea-ah's feet turned into a fierce wave and shot up, unstoppable, toward the murky gray sky.

Whoooosh—!!

Drawing a beautiful, overwhelming arc, the column of water pierced through the blood-soaked world without mercy.

Through the whipping spray, Sea-ah looked up at the brilliant droplets scattering out into the air and smiled, open and bright.

"Just… at some point I could do it."

She looked back at me and asked,

"Isn't it pretty?"

Wherever the shimmering drops pouring down from the sky like the Milky Way touched — miracles.

The blood-pooled rooftop, the hideous monster carcasses, even the wreckage of trauma pressing down.

Every nightmare was washed clean and white, as if under a clear tide.

Crack, crick-crack—!

Then — from the center of the sky where the great water column had struck — cobweb-thin cracks began to spread.

Craaaack—!!

At last, along with an ear-splitting roar, that brutal, cruel fake world shattered like a huge pane of glass and came pouring down, dazzling.

Inside the brilliant waterfall pouring out of the shattering nightmare, holding on to my fading consciousness, I quietly lifted the corner of my mouth.

"Yeah. It really is."

With that answer to a child I was proud of, thick, distant darkness swallowed my vision completely.

"Waaah, wuh-wuh… Diirectorrr…!"

"Wake up, please, please wake uuup…!"

How much time had passed?

At the heartbroken crying pounding at my ears, my eyes snapped open.

The first things to come into focus were the twins, sprawled over me, streaming fat tears — and Suho's face, a wreck, one hand outstretched as he worked his ability.

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