The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

The surreal scene unfolding in front of them cut the kids' crying off as if it had never happened.

In place of the cold smell of iron, fresh grass tickled my nose, and the gray walls had turned into dazzling sunlight and blue sky.

The kids, as if they might be dreaming, stared around wide-eyed.

The first to react was, of course, curious little Hayun.

"Whoa..."

Without meaning to, she let out a short gasp, gazing blankly up at the huge cherry tree that had appeared in front of her.

"I told you. A new playground."

I looked straight into the kids' eyes as I said it — especially at Cha Yul and Lee Sea-ah, whose eyes were still full of distrust.

"I'm promising you now — from here on, nothing in this place is going to hurt you."

Even at that firm declaration, the kids didn't budge.

The distrust carved in by past trauma didn't wipe away that easily.

...If words won't do it—!

"And in this new playground..."

I slowly raised my hand toward the kids.

"You don't need collars."

The moment I closed my fist, a clear snap! rang out from the suppression collars around the kids' necks.

Those cold pieces of metal — the symbols of their suppression — clattered to the ground.

"Guaaaghhh! D-Director! Y-you told us we'd unlock those later!"

Lee Jinwoo let out a scream of pure horror.

"The one and only way to stop them if they ever attack us—!"

I pretended I hadn't heard him and, with the toe of my shoe, gave one of the metal fragments on the ground a light kick.

"Ah~ that feels good. Ugly things like that hanging around my dolls' necks... you have any idea how much that was bugging me?"

Those horrible collars, tying down the kids' freedom, their very lives.

Before anything else, that was what I'd wanted to free them from.

I jerked my chin at the kids, still standing there dazed.

"From now on, play as much as you want. Use your abilities, break stuff — whatever. Do whatever you like."

"Eek!"

Lee Jinwoo yelped and scrambled behind Kang Taemin's huge back.

"Th-they're going to attack us!"

But contrary to Lee Jinwoo's prediction, the kids were quiet.

Cha Yul in particular was frozen in place, one hand at the now-empty skin of his neck.

The cold metal that hadn't left him for a single moment from the first day he'd been dragged into this hell two years ago.

The symbol of suffocating control and humiliation.

It was gone.

He slowly lifted his head to look at me — the one who had done all of this.

His red eyes were shaking with more complexity than I had ever seen in them.

"You just going to stand there and watch? I even took off the collars. Really... if my dolls don't know how to move, I'll just have to make them move myself, won't I."

The moment I clapped my hands crack! again—

The world shifted once more.

The warm sunlight and green garden broke into pixels and scattered in an instant, and in their place, a snowfield stretched out under thick, tumbling white snow.

"Wooow... snow...!"

The little ones let out cries of amazement, reaching their small hands into the air as if they were seeing snow for the first time.

But Cha Yul and Sea-ah were different.

The two of them stood frozen in place, saying nothing, just looking up at the snowflakes pouring out of the air above them.

Those dazed faces sparked my mischievous streak.

The virtual reality snow, cranked up to maximum fidelity, was cold and soft — no different from real snow.

It packed satisfyingly firm in the hand.

The snowball I packed from it...

I aimed at the back of Cha Yul's head — still blankly staring up at the sky.

And nailed him, dead-on.

With a thwack, a white burst of snow bloomed on the back of his head.

I snickered and taunted him.

"Ha! How's the snow taste?"

At that childish provocation, Cha Yul's face went blank with disbelief.

The little ones, watching it, burst into peals of laughter as if they'd never seen anything so funny, and started packing their own snowballs.

Cha Yul's eyes flicked between the little ones' laughter and my shameless grin — and finally, a faint spark of competitiveness lit in them.

Without a word, he took the snow at his feet... and packed it hard.

Then threw it, with pinpoint accuracy, at my face.

That was the signal shot.

"Whoa, you little punk?!"

By the time I got my bearings, the snowball fight on the snowfield had already escalated into all-out war between "Team Adult" and "Team Kid."

At first everyone was just packing snow bare-handed and throwing, but once competitive fire caught, the kids started reaching for the powers they'd left dormant.

"Ah, cold!"

Han Soeun screamed after taking one of Hayun's snowballs to the face.

The instant she moved to counterattack, the twins were already holding hands.

Giggling wildly, the two of them freely bent the trajectories of the flying snowballs — even turning incoming snowballs around and sending them straight back.

"You...! That's cheating! Are we allowed to use powers?!"

At Han Soeun's shout, the twins clutched their stomachs and yelled back through their laughter:

"Heeeh! If you don't like it, just awakeeen tooo~!"

Beside them, even Suho joined in, giggling.

"The Director said we could use our powers or do anything we wanted!"

"Hey — you brats — get back here!"

Han Soeun was tearing after the little ones, a snowball to the head and steam practically coming out of her ears.

Right beside her, Kang Taemin was packing and throwing snowballs like a machine, every one at the exact same speed and angle.

The snowballs leaving his hand flew almost dead-straight instead of in arcs, dropping onto the kids with pinpoint accuracy.

But every one of those attacks was blocked by the barrier blooming from Sea-ah's fingertips and shattered harmlessly.

While shielding the little ones flawlessly, she cunningly angled her barrier just so, redirecting the shattered snow dust straight into the back of Lee Jinwoo's head.

"Argh! Why me again?!"

At Lee Jinwoo's scream, a faint, mischievous smile curved at the corner of Sea-ah's mouth.

Meanwhile, a taut front line no one else could break into had formed between me and Cha Yul.

"Heh."

I brought out my secret weapon.

The E-rank artifact I'd impulse-bought off the auction site not long ago — the Snowball Maker.

I gripped it like a machine gun and unloaded snowballs at him without pause.

"Ha! This is what an adult's fight looks like!"

But Cha Yul, as if he found it laughable, dodged every last one of them, light on his feet.

Not one hit landed on him; he glared at me, eyes flashing.

Those eyes were blazing with competitive fire.

"...You. Better brace yourself."

He slammed his palm down against the piled snow at his feet with a crack.

In that instant, every bit of snow under my feet blew up, like a mine going off.

"Huh...?"

By the time a stupid sound leaked out of my mouth, it was already too late.

It wasn't just a blizzard.

What was sweeping across my whole field of vision was a tidal wave of white.

"Gwuaaaghhh?!"

I let out a single strangled scream and got swept up in the overwhelming snowstorm and buried, cleanly.

The researchers, sprawled spread-eagle with snow caked over their whole bodies, and me, buried under a snowdrift.

A flawless victory for Team Kid — no room for excuses.

The kids let out victory whoops, piled on top of us, and burst into giggles.

And at the center of it all, Cha Yul stood watching me, buried in the snow, and started to snicker.

"You... are really... an idiot."

What had started as awkward snickering couldn't seem to hold itself in, and soon his laughter burst out and echoed across the whole empty snowfield.

Watching Cha Yul laugh, the other kids stared at him like they were witnessing something rare and amazing.

"Wow... oppa's laughing!"

"He really is! It's my first time seeing hyung laugh!"

At Suho and the twins' cheering — like a starting shot — the whole of Team Kid let out a victory whoop and started rolling around in the snow.

I watched that peaceful scene and, for a moment, forgot everything and smiled.

But the smile didn't last long.

My gaze had drifted to the deepest corner of the training room — where the kids' laughter didn't reach.

That was where Kim Sihyeok was.

He hadn't joined in this noisy little festival... he was curled up, silent as a mouse, as if trying to erase himself from the whole world.

And there I saw something I could barely believe.

The ugly collar I'd broken and thrown to the floor earlier.

It was hanging precariously around that child's slender neck again.

The already-broken locking mechanism kept sliding loose, and with hands gone white, he was desperately pressing the piece of metal against himself.

Like a prisoner trying to fasten his own leash around his own neck.

The moment I saw that heartbreaking motion, a painful realization struck me.

He's... afraid of his own power.

That fact drove itself painfully into my chest.

I didn't know the exact reason he was afraid of his ability, but one thing was certain.

For that child's wound to heal, more than anything else, he needed time. A very long stretch of time.

But cruelly, reality wasn't going to wait for us.

Only three weeks left until next month's public evaluation.

In the face of that chilling reality, the kids' happy laughter had at some point been overwritten by the sound of an enormous clock — tick, tock — pressing me forward.

A conference room where darkness had settled.

Around a huge round table, four figures sat like shadows.

The first to move was a man in a black hood that left only his eyes exposed.

Without a word, he pulled out a single severed hand and dropped it thump on the table in front of the white-haired woman beside him.

At his action, the red lips of the white-haired woman — Ma Dohee — curved into a smile.

"Ah. This belonged to our failed leader."

She spoke with an enraptured expression, as though a severed hand were beneath her notice.

"Is this your way of apologizing? But no apology's necessary. If anything, I'm the one who should be thanking you. Thanks to that... I met my fate."

Her eyes went hazy and unfocused.

That blond man who had stood in her way, throwing himself in to save her.

Just picturing the back of him was enough to flush both her cheeks red like a bashful girl's.

But the pink fantasy didn't last long.

"Krkrkr...!"

Because the man in the sukajan jacket, sprawled sideways in his chair across from her, had let out a snickering laugh.

"So that's it. I was wondering why you — someone who could turn every worm in that room into a cripple — was just sitting there getting captured all quiet."

The man tipped his chair back with a regretful click of his tongue.

"Ahhh, damn, I should've gone too. The Sword Emperor Han Jewoon's arm would've made a decent souvenir."

He cackled at the ceiling for a while, then hardened his expression all at once and turned to the hooded man.

"But isn't the result kind of a mess, though? Ended up with everyone caught, dragged in one after another like fish on a stringer. And I hear they yapped about the great purpose, too? You should've kept a proper lid on their mouths in the first place."

At that, a narrow-eyed man who had been hiding his face behind a folding fan let out a low, indulgent laugh, like he was soothing a child.

"Heh heh. Calm down. That commotion is exactly the part of the theater we wanted."

Covering his mouth with the fan, he continued as if amused.

"In the end, the government official who kept interfering with His great work has been cleanly removed. What better outcome could there be than this."

The man in the sukajan snorted and clicked his tongue.

"Tch. Well, if the result's good, fine. Just don't forget the promise. The day we go to take Han Jewoon's head, put me at the front of the line. No exceptions."

Then, as if something suddenly nagged at him, he furrowed his brow and added:

"By the way... that Chae Junhyeok bastard. No matter how I look at it, something's off about him. I thought he was some brainless idiot with nothing going for him... and yet he sweet-talked the Han Jewoon?"

"Agreed."

The narrow-eyed man picked up the thread.

"I took him for a simple delinquent, but his handling of the banquet hall situation was... rather interesting. Perhaps... he has cards we don't know about. For the time being, we'll need to keep an eye on him."

Through his narrowed eyes, a strange gleam flickered.

"However, should he obstruct the great affair we have coming up... at that point, we'll have to see him permanently removed from this stage."

"No!"

Ma Dohee shot up from her seat, shouting.

"He! Is my fate! I still have to cherish him and love him more from now on... you can't kill him!"

Face flushed, she twisted her fingers together and, like the shyest girl in the world, added:

"But... cutting off an arm or a leg is fine. If he breaks, I can just stitch him back up nice and pretty later. Hehe."

At that horrifying yet innocent expression of affection, the sukajan man let out a krk of laughter, while the hooded man remained motionless as a statue.

Only the fan-wielding man laughed pleasantly from behind his fan and gave a satisfied nod.

The conference room fell silent.

There, another, larger, more twisted spiderweb was being woven.

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