The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

"Stop…."

"What?"

"Stop it, right now."

I couldn't stand it anymore.

I lost all reason, kicked back from the table as I stood, and grabbed the owner by the collar, hard.

"Shut this down, now! How can you play with a human life —!! What if someone actually dies?! Stop it right now!"

At my furious, horrified shout, the owner — who'd been leisurely sipping champagne — opened his eyes wide, looking genuinely at a loss.

"What? What are you talking about, Junhyeok. Stop what all of a sudden? What do you mean 'what if they die' — this is a death match you set up. Of course one of them has to actually die before it ends."

"……what?"

Sheeeeeeee—!

For an instant, a sharp ringing pierced my ears and my vision flashed white.

Chae Junhyeok… made this himself? This horrific hell?

Just then, the MC's voice from below on the sand ripped sharply through my reeling thoughts.

["Now! Before we take in the beasts' slaughter, we ought to pay proper respect to His Imperial Majesty, who made tonight's glorious occasion possible, wouldn't we? Bow down before His Imperial Majesty at once! Slaves!"]

The MC, mic in hand, jabbed toward the terrace where I sat and barked.

But the two Awakened standing on the sand only held themselves ramrod-straight as stone, not stirring so much as a hair.

Nothing but a scalding hatred, ready to tear me apart, and a wretched, bone-deep misery bled off every inch of them.

When they refused to kneel to the last, the MC — thoroughly bent out of shape — yanked a black iron whip roughly from his belt.

Craaack—! Splat!

A skin-crawling burst of flesh giving way split the Colosseum.

"Aaaaaargh—!!"

With that agonized scream, a long, deep red gash was carved across the Fighter's back.

The Knight, too, had no time to dodge — struck across the thigh, he buckled and staggered.

["How dare you!! Standing before His Majesty and still keeping your heads held high?!"]

Crack! Whrraaack—!

The whipping went on without mercy.

In the end, blood-soaked and trembling, they prostrated themselves toward the terrace where I sat, like beasts.

A grotesque, savage tragedy — the perpetrator looking down in comfort from that high golden terrace, the victims crawling in their own blood, kneeling to the man who'd made them what they were.

In that instant, a sickening iron reek of blood — one that should have been impossible to catch this high up on the terrace — pricked at my nose.

"Guh…!"

A violent wave of nausea, as if my stomach were flipping over, surged up.

It was as if every cell and organ in my body were violently rejecting that stench of blood, seizing and wrenching.

I clamped both hands over my mouth and gasped raggedly for breath.

A ferocious urge to throw up everything I'd eaten crashed in like a wave.

How I got out of there is a blur.

I roughly shoved past people, bolted blindly out, and finally heaved up my guts in a dark corner of the corridor.

"Ugh, huurrrgh!"

Sour bile scraped up my throat and poured out.

Panting, I braced myself against the floor — and my own two trembling hands came into view.

Chae Junhyeok's fine, pale hands.

In that instant, the sight of the two men bowed down on the sand rose up in my mind, seared in.

Their bodies plastered over with every kind of scar.

Along with that horrific image, the reek of blood rushed at me again.

At that iron smell I felt another surge of violent nausea and slumped to the floor, dry-heaving.

"Ugh! Huurrrgh!!"

Just then, from behind, a hand reached out and settled on my shoulder.

"Don't touch me!!"

I screamed and threw the hand off like a wild animal.

My breath kept catching in my throat.

I have to get out. Now.

Out of this revolting place.

I can't stay in this space one second longer.

Not knowing where the exit was, I stumbled through the maze-like corridors with bloodshot eyes.

Tears and cold sweat blurred my sight, and everything looked grotesquely warped.

"Junhyeok!"

A sharp voice cut in as if from a hallucination, and a silver-haired woman's startled face flashed by, but I had no room to hold her in my sight.

My legs gave out; I was about to pitch forward onto the floor when —

Someone's massive arms wrapped around my waist and under my knees and swept me clean up.

With no strength left to resist, I let my head sag and panted, pleading.

"Me… get me… please, get me… outside……."

Then, with no say from me, the view began sliding past in dizzying blurs.

Feeling the dim lights and corridor walls flash by like afterimages, I half-slipped into unconsciousness.

How long had it been?

The sickening iron reek that had been pricking at my nose lifted at some point, cleanly, as if by magic.

In its place, cold night air, sharp enough to pierce the lungs, came rushing in.

Gasping raggedly, I forced my eyes to focus, and the first thing I saw was a pair of inorganic eyes looking down at me.

"Are you all right, sir."

It was Kang Taemin.

With his usual gruff expression, he stood beneath the night sky, holding me — collapsed as I was — firmly in his arms.

When I turned my head slightly, I saw Ma Dohee too — bone-white, watching my color, having followed us out somehow.

Only then did the fact that I'd fully cleared that hellish club actually sink in.

Relief that I didn't have to look at any more of it and an inescapable despair — that I was Chae Junhyeok — rushed in at once, and I squeezed my eyes shut.

"Ah… ah… I'm, I'm sorry. Such an ugly display from me……."

My lips trembled so badly I couldn't even shape the words properly.

I forced the corners of my mouth up in a smile, but my hands — caught at the edge of my sight — were shaking wildly, as if in seizure.

"Director, your hands are shaking so much. And you're so pale……."

Ma Dohee's worried voice, coming closer, reached me as muffled and distant as through waterlogged cotton.

"I'm — I'm fine. I can stand on my own."

I forced my head into a shake, and pushed against Kang Taemin's chest.

More than the awkwardness of being carried like this, I wanted to shake off this terrible helplessness however I could.

I staggered out of his hold and fought with everything I had to stand on my own two feet.

But against my will, the instant I forced my feet onto the ground, the strength drained out of my legs.

"Ngh —!"

I couldn't hold my own weight, and just as I was about to pitch forward again —

"Excuse me."

With a low, weighted voice, Kang Taemin's thick arms wrapped firmly around the backs of my knees and my shoulders again.

I was swept up into the air.

Having already failed once, I didn't have it in me to push him off again.

Every joint in my body might as well have melted; I couldn't move.

"I could do it too!"

I thought I heard Ma Dohee's urgent, aggrieved cry from behind, but even that sound only skirted my dazed ears and scattered.

"I'm really… sorry. I'll… reach out later……."

Whether I actually said the words aloud or only murmured them in my head, I couldn't say.

Vision foggy as if a mist had settled in, I let myself slip clean into unconsciousness.

"Waaah!!! Direektuh!!"

"What's wrong?! Director, why are you like this!!"

How long had it been?

Loud cries and murmuring pounding at my ears — I forced my heavy eyelids open.

As my vision slowly cleared, I saw the familiar ceiling, and the kids' faces — ashen, tearful — ringed all around me.

"Direektuh!!!"

"Can you see us?"

"Nngh……."

A cracked groan leaked between my lips.

Even the kids' voices — endlessly precious under normal circumstances — rang against my head like blunt-force blows, agonizing.

Kang Taemin caught my pained look with uncanny quickness and turned his massive frame at once, blocking the kids off.

"The Director requires absolute rest. Everyone, please step outside."

At Kang Taemin's firm control, the kids reluctantly peeled away.

"You too…."

"……."

"You go too."

A dry order to leave, edged with a rasp.

Kang Taemin looked down for a moment at my wrecked face, silent, then gave a short bow and turned without a word.

Click.

The last to leave the room, he shut the door quietly behind him.

As the heavy door closed, the raucous sounds from outside cut off completely.

A pitch-black silence began, slowly, to fill the empty room.

The Director's bedroom, hushed and still.

As always, Sihyeok was tucked away today too in the deep shadow beneath the bed.

Melded into the space where no one could catch him, Sihyeok could hear, vivid at his ear, the sounds of thrashing on the bed above and gasping groans pouring down.

"Huhhh… no…."

Unconscious, Chae Junhyeok was in the grip of a savage nightmare.

His hair, soaked with cold sweat, was plastered to his ashen forehead; his tightly clenched fists gripped the sheets on the verge of tearing them.

From between pale, bloodless lips, a desperate pleading spilled without pause.

"It wasn't… it wasn't me… I didn't do it… nnngh…! Stop, please…! Stop it…!"

As if pushing something away, he flailed both hands desperately at empty air, thrashing as if in a seizure.

"The smell of blood… I can smell blood…. Please, I can't… I can't breathe…. Get it off, please, get it off…!"

The room was quiet and pristine — not a speck of any blood-smell to be caught.

But he was trapped alone inside some invisible, horrifying hallucination, clawing at his own throat as if he were suffocating.

Then, as if some terrible pain had suddenly struck, he seized his uninjured right arm, hard, and curled his body in on itself.

"Hnnh…! Ah, aaargh…!"

With shaking hands, he gripped his own right arm tight enough to cut off the blood.

Inside the shadow, Sihyeok blinked and watched every one of those thrashings, quiet.

Soon Sihyeok's small body seeped into the floor's shadow like ink and slipped soundlessly through the crack of the door.

Whissssh—

In the corridor outside the room.

The instant Sihyeok pulled out of the shadow and took form again, the kids and head researchers who'd been holding their breath outside surged toward him in a wave.

"Sihyeok! How's the Director? Any better?"

At Sea-ah's urgent question, Sihyeok, face dark, slowly shook his head.

At that silent no, the kids' expressions crumpled toward tears in an instant.

Suho fidgeted with his little hands and choked out,

"Hnnh… what on earth is going on…. When he came in earlier, he looked so, so hurt…."

"Do you think he's sick somewhere? Keeping it from us and just gritting through it alone?"

Behind the kids, Lee Jinwoo and Han Soeun, dead white, looked at each other.

Lee Jinwoo, at the end of his patience, pressed Kang Taemin, standing rigid.

"What in the world happened out there? What did he see, for the Director to break down like this?!"

Han Soeun beside him bit down hard on her bloodless lip and pressed for an answer too.

"That's right, out with it! We need to know what's going on!"

With everyone's eyes fixed on him, Kang Taemin held his gaze for a moment on Chae Junhyeok's firmly shut door, and then, heavily, spoke.

"…It seems he took a serious shock from directly witnessing what he himself had done in the past."

"The past?"

At the unexpected answer, everyone's eyes went wide.

"You mean the stuff he pulled back in his delinquent days? But that was months ago — why now… and why be shocked now about something he did himself…?"

Han Soeun murmured it, unable to make sense of it.

Far from being an answer, Kang Taemin's reply only planted an even larger question mark in their heads.

Something the old Chae Junhyeok wouldn't have batted an eye at, breaking down the current Director this thoroughly — it didn't add up.

But bigger than all the questions chasing their own tails was the worry for the Director, suffering alone on the other side of that door.

"Haaah… all right, for now. Let's wait until the Director wakes."

In the end, not a single one of them could bring themselves to leave.

Sihyeok's small body slipped back into shadow and seeped soundlessly through the crack of the tightly closed door; the other kids clustered close in front of the door, holding each other's hands tight.

The researchers, too, leaned against the cold corridor wall and kept vigil through the night, wide-eyed.

Every time an intermittent groan leaked out from beyond the shut door, the people in the corridor pressed down on their burning hearts and prayed only for morning to come, safely.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!