The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

"To be precise — after I give you the order 'Never attack me,' just try to work up the intent to attack me."

"Not possible, sir. I cannot bring myself to hold killing intent toward you, Director."

Kang Taemin, face set like stone, drew a hard line.

"You're tied up anyway — you can't actually hit me. Just put the intent into it, is what I'm saying."

I tried to reason with him, again and again, but Number Three kept his mouth clamped shut and shook his head, adamant.

In the end, only after I dropped a heavy warning that this was an order did he finally, with a grim look, nod.

I looked Number Three straight in the eye and declared,

"Kang Taemin. [Never attack me.]"

In that instant, Kang Taemin's gaze locked onto me, thick with killing intent.

Immediately, red mana circuits bulged up on Kang Taemin's thick throat like burst capillaries.

The eerie circuits soon wove themselves into a vivid shackle pattern that closed tight around his airway, glowing an intense red.

The contract's compulsion had kicked in, and hard.

"Director. If I push any harder, the contract will fully activate. Shall I continue?"

Panting roughly as if his air had been cut off, he kept himself upright and waited for my next order.

I hurriedly raised a hand to stop him.

"No — stop. That's enough."

Ssssss.

The moment he pulled back the killing intent he'd forced up, the red shackle pattern strangling him faded away without a trace, as if it had never been there.

Hmm… as I thought.

Watching what had just unfolded, I was finally able to resolve the question I'd been carrying.

So this is why it didn't trigger when he attacked Sea-ah…

The Deceiver's Contract wasn't defective.

The clauses — "Execute my orders above all else; do no harm to the children" — were flawless too.

In the end, the key was "self-awareness."

When Kang Taemin had attacked Sea-ah a few days ago, brainwashing had stripped him of his sense of self entirely.

His own will hadn't been involved, so from the contract's point of view he hadn't broken it.

In other words, this fussy artifact judged violations not by the result of an action, but by whether the signer's "free will" had been behind it.

"Haaah……. So there's a blind spot like that."

This was going to make things significantly harder.

If the contract worked this way, it meant if he was brainwashed again, he could attack the children at any time.

"All right — I get the picture."

I said, my face heavy,

"By your account, all we have to do is stop you from drinking that drug… but I can't keep you close by knowing that kind of risk is still hanging over us."

Kang Taemin gave a placid nod at my words.

"That said — you've put in a lot of work, so if there's somewhere you'd like to go, I'll personally make sure you get placed there. Bawi Guild, some major guild with good terms……"

"No, sir."

"…what?"

"Please, sir — anything but that. I'd rather stay in this basement until I die."

"What? Why on earth? I already told you — anywhere else, the pay and benefits will be way better than what you get here."

"Absolutely not, sir."

At the end of a tense back-and-forth, the one who ended up waving the white flag was me.

"……If leaving here is really that unbearable, then you'll have to stay locked up down here until I figure out a solution. You're really okay with that?"

To my question — closer to a threat than an offer — Kang Taemin, as if he'd been waiting for exactly that, nodded without a hair of hesitation.

Huh…. Is this institute really that good?

Thinking it over, the salary was industry-topping.

Plus, with the room-and-board included and every kind of hazard pay thrown in, the benefits were solid enough to hold up against anywhere else out there.

But no matter how good the terms are, isn't working under Chae Junhyeok kind of… awful?

Or maybe he was staying because he liked colleagues like Number One and Number Two.

I racked my brain for some plausible reason on his behalf, but the man was so tight-lipped by nature there was no way to know.

Out of things to say, I finally turned to go.

"For now…… I'll try to find some way to shore up the artifact. Just sit tight."

Nod.

"Um…… Number One and Number Two will bring your meals on time, so don't skip any."

Nod.

"……All right. Take care, then?"

Nod, nod.

"…"

Clank, jingle.

Chained up in his restraints, rattling the shackles, he saw me off with — genuine fondness (?).

As I made my way out of the dark basement, I could feel that blindly earnest, damp gaze pinned to my back.

……why do I keep getting a dog vibe off him today?

Not as an insult — I actually mean it.

A pitiful, loyal big-breed dog on a leash, pining after his owner.

I shook the ridiculous, un-matching image out of my head and hurried out of the basement, half fleeing.

A few days later.

I gave the order through Number One and Number Two to remove the chains binding Kang Taemin's hands, and thankfully the report came back that he was living quietly in the basement.

That strangely uncomfortable big-dog (?) look in his eyes — I decided to shelve that in a corner of my mind for now.

Because a mountain of urgent, headache-inducing problems was already piled up in front of me.

For starters, even after we'd released an official press statement flatly denying Sea-ah's second awakening, public opinion was split.

Those who snorted "knew it" — and those who were sure "they're definitely hiding something."

Thanks to that, dogged reporters kept making constant sneak attempts on the institute — and I was getting a fresh headache every single day.

On top of that, restructuring the institute into a proper guild was no picnic either.

Number One and Number Two were fighting the good fight, but transforming researchers who'd spent their entire lives holed up in labs into combat-ready guild members overnight was hardly easy.

We had to hire administrative staff to run day-to-day operations, and rip up and rebuild the shambles of a system from the ground up.

The biggest issue of all, though, was the building.

We couldn't just keep sitting defenseless at an address the press had already blasted all over the news.

And when I remembered the "Fox"'s attack the other day, my urgency only doubled.

The thought that the lunatic might come storming in after the kids had me on a bed of nails every day.

I'd loudly promised the children and the senior staff "just trust me" so my worry wouldn't rub off on them — but honestly, I was completely at sea.

Funding was more than plentiful, but finding a fortress that perfectly satisfied every one of those fussy conditions — security, training facilities, scale, accessibility — was no easy task.

You can't exactly walk into a corner store and pick up a building like a stick of gum.

Do I actually need to go kidnap some competent secretary from somewhere……?

But the guild relocation and administrative issues were peanuts, honestly.

The truly terrifying problem I was facing was something else entirely.

Bring-bring-bring—

A ringtone that made my heart plunge through the floor.

I reached out slowly and checked the screen.

[Dad]

"Haaah……."

Five times a day, right on schedule.

Grinding my teeth, I flipped the phone face down.

Ordinarily, a man like that would have barged in himself long ago; the fact that he was only bombarding me with calls made it clear he was watching for the wall of reporters packed around the guild.

If nothing else, I was grateful the press had that man's feet nailed to the floor.

It was obvious enough — he was hammering the phone this hard because he wanted me to crawl out to him.

But if I went out quietly, he'd have Sea-ah hauled off to the Bureau for a full workup the second he laid eyes on us. Guaranteed.

I couldn't let the child's second awakening get caught out, so for now I had no choice but to keep dodging and holding out.

"Ugh… here it goes again."

Maybe it was the extreme stress on top of days of paperwork labor. The familiar throbbing pain in my right arm was coming back.

I still couldn't afford to rest.

Just as, rubbing the aching arm, I was reaching to pick up the paperwork again —

Kwang—!

The office door flew open with a crash.

"Hahaha! We've come to kidnap you, Chae Junhyeok!"

"S-surrender qui-quietly!"

"……?"

Through the settling dust in the doorway, what appeared wasn't a terrifying gang of seven intruders… but a bunch of kids in crooked paper masks, wielding colorful toy guns.

Three little intruders and two mid-sized ones stood dead-center in the office, radiating triumph.

Meanwhile, the two comparatively taller ones behind them were half-hiding their faces behind the doorframe, cringing awkwardly as if the whole situation was mortifying.

"Hahaha! We are the world's mightiest villains — the Scissor Gang! Come along quietly!"

The Scissor Gang…? Some villain out of a cartoon the kids watch…?

The small silver-haired intruder who'd made that spirited proclamation — obviously Hayun — thrust a plastic gun the size of her whole body forward menacingly.

"If you don' come along quiet-wy…… um, um……"

Hayun trailed off, apparently forgetting her line, and the pigtailed little intruder next to her — obviously Ari — hurriedly whispered a prompt into her ear.

"Hayun, the delivery boxes! The delivery boxes!"

"Oh! Right! Yeah! If you don' come along quietly, you'll never see your precious delivery boxes ever again!"

"Right! Right!"

"You won't see 'em!"

At Hayun's ambitious threat, the little intruders in the back parroted along, backing her up.

Right on cue, the ash-haired intruder — obviously Sihyeok — snapped his fingers.

A shadow on the floor stirred up out of the ground and slyly lifted a delivery box from beside my desk into the air, giving it a taunting little wag.

They'd pieced together a properly sinister hostage-taking, in their way.

Having successfully secured a hostage, the youngest three whipped around to face the two intruders hanging back at a distance.

"Oppa! Unnie! Your lines!"

"Come on!"

Unable to hold out against the kids' expectant looks, the black-haired intruder — obviously Cha Yul — with his neck flushed bright red beneath the mask, reluctantly opened his mouth.

"Ngh……. Um, right. If you don't come with us, the delivery boxes will all, haaah……. we'll burn every last one of 'em……"

After Cha Yul's disastrous performance — struck to the marrow with self-consciousness — the navy-haired intruder standing next to him — obviously Sea-ah — stepped up.

Sea-ah looked a little bashful at first, but she quickly cleared her throat and pulled off a villain act incomparably smoother and more shameless than Cha Yul's.

"So no more talking back — come with us, right now!"

Wait — when did Sea-ah wake up, and why is she in on this…?

I hadn't gotten any report at all that Sea-ah had come around.

Which meant even the senior staff were in on this kidnapping plot.

The absurdity of it only lasted a moment; I couldn't keep the corners of my mouth from twitching upward.

Where else in the world could you find a hostage crisis this ramshackle and this lovable?

Biting down hard on a laugh trying to slip out, I raised both hands high in surrender.

"I surrender, I surrender. The world's mightiest villains, the Scissor Gang, have come for me — obviously I'll come along peacefully."

"Yesss!"

At my surrender, the little intruders whooped with delight, bouncing up and down.

But I put on a serious face and hedged, casual.

"Except — what do we do about this? There's paperwork here I absolutely have to sign off on right now. Could we do the kidnapping right after I finish just this one?"

"Ah……!"

At my polite request, the whole company of intruders froze in a moment of confusion.

At a loss over the unexpected turn, the kids soon scurried into a corner of the room, huddled their heads in tight in a circle, and started whispering an emergency meeting.

"Um, since he says he really has to do it, how about we wait a little?"

The brown-haired intruder — obviously Suho — offered his opinion carefully.

But the pigtailed intruder, Ari, sprang up in objection.

"No way, that's not a kidnapping! A kidnapping is when you don't ask, you don't listen, you just drag someone off!"

"Yeah, yeah! We're kidnappin' Director 'cuz he looked tired! No listening to what he says!"

The little intruder Hayun nodded her mask fiercely along.

But the silver-haired intruder identical to Hayun, Hajun, wavered and pushed back timidly.

"But… it might really be urgent……"

Beside him, ash-haired Sihyeok — quietly listening in — silently pulled up a shadow and drew a big "O" in the air, as if to say urgent things should be waited on.

With opinions split down the middle, the little ones tugged at Cha Yul's and Sea-ah's sleeves — the two who'd been hovering uncomfortably in the back — and dragged them into the meeting.

After a long stretch of murmuring, the navy-haired intruder, as the eldest, cut in and settled the matter.

"Then let's just have him finish that one and kidnap him after. We don't want to interfere with the Director's work, right?"

At that, the little ones nodded in unison, as if they'd never been arguing.

Their agreement reached, the Scissor Gang once again proclaimed, triumphant,

"So — we'll wait a little, but hurry it up!"

Negotiation settled, the Scissor Gang — belying that fearsome proclamation — plopped down on the floor in front of my desk in a snug little cluster.

Sihyeok, practiced as ever, pulled toys and sketchbooks out of his shadow and handed them out to the little ones — and in no time the world's mightiest villains were playing peacefully on the rug.

Looking down at those adorable little heads, I secretly swallowed a laugh.

To hurry through the paperwork and gladly let those adorable villains kidnap me, I gripped the pen tighter and got back to work.

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