The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

From that day on, the virtual reality training room became the kids' real playground.

I gave each of them their own individual training space so they could stretch their abilities and play all they wanted.

Of course, I didn't just turn them loose.

"Director, here's the play curriculum tailored to each child's personality and ability!"

Lee Jinwoo and his intake mates — solidly on my side by now — had set up the best possible playground for each child, tuned to how they were each growing.

Cha Yul's training room was a huge game of catch.

Slow, soft energy spheres came at him from every direction, and he was learning to play by catching them in both hands to absorb them, or throwing them right back out.

Next door, Lee Sea-ah's training room was a dodgeball court.

Her task was to defend a large teddy bear placed in the middle of the room from the soft balls flying at it from every side.

She'd throw up a barrier precisely where a ball was coming from, deflect it, and was starting to discover the joy of protecting something.

The last one, the twins' training room, was a colorful obstacle course.

Holding hands tight, the two of them would flick the padded blocks blocking the path aside with a wave of a hand, slow down the swinging bridges, and race for the finish line.

The researchers watching all of this from the control room couldn't hold back their admiration.

"My god... this is the level of control they have after only a week without the suppression collars?"

Han Soeun's voice came out almost a shriek.

Her fingers jabbed frantically at one monitor after another.

"Cha Yul is calculating the kinetic value of every incoming sphere in an instant and absorbing it! Sea-ah is spinning up barriers at maximum efficiency on the minimum possible mana! And don't even get me started on the twins' coordination! They're moving like one single brain!"

Watching them, Lee Jinwoo murmured, almost in a daze.

"Monsters... not just plain geniuses. These... these are monsters."

I leaned back in my chair and, yawning as if their fuss was annoying, said:

"What's the big deal. They're my dolls. That much is a given."

Of course, on the inside... I was biting my lip hard, barely keeping the laughter from bursting out of me.

Insane, our kids are actually geniuses, right?!

Did you just see Yul use his ability? Wow, that was legit... world class. World class.

Look at how Sea-ah adjusts the angles of her barriers. Practically a human protractor.

And the twins' movement! Cute enough to kill me, honestly!

But even as the others took to their abilities as play and grew happily, there were kids who couldn't quite fall in with that.

Park Suho and Kim Sihyeok.

With Suho, the moment I learned that his ability ran on his own life force as its price, I flat-out forbade him from using it.

But maybe that had turned into poison for him instead.

While his friends were thriving, Suho was wilting alone in a corner of the training room.

I walked over to the boy, curled in on himself as though a weight were pressing down on him. Even at the sound of me approaching, he didn't lift his head.

"Director... I'm... no help, am I... If I can't use my power... I'm just trash that can't even earn my keep."

The breath caught in my throat.

This... this came out of the mouth of a six-year-old?

Six years old.

The age when your entire idea of a "problem" should be bursting into world-ending tears because a friend took your toy, or clinging to your parents throwing a tantrum about not wanting to go to daycare.

And yet this little boy, who should be doing nothing but throwing tantrums, was here calculating whether he was earning his keep and worrying about being disposed of.

I knew it in my gut. This wasn't just Suho's thought.

Every child in this place... has to be thinking the same way.

If you have no power, you have no worth. If you have no use, you get thrown away.

The horrible lesson the institute had drilled into them was ruling the kids' souls.

Cut it out with that ridiculous garbage!

I wanted to shout it out and deny it right there, but the words wouldn't come.

I was tongue-tied.

For a child already steeped in anxiety, a hasty stab at logical comfort clearly wasn't going to reach him.

Damn it — what am I supposed to do?

In that moment, a line from a general-ed child psychology class I'd only half-listened to years ago flashed through my head like lightning.

[What a child trembling in anxiety needs isn't rational "understanding." It's an absolute sense of belonging to anchor their existence, and unconditional, no-strings-attached acceptance.]

Unconditional acceptance... unconditional acceptance, huh...

But there was no way a six-year-old was going to grasp something that abstract.

I needed a concrete, visceral example he could grasp immediately.

Looking around, my eyes landed on the stuffed animals Suho was holding tight against his chest.

"Why do you cart those stuffed animals around with you? They cleaning your room for you? Going out and fighting instead of you?"

"Th-that's..."

"Useless for anything, aren't they? Why not just throw them out? They're only in the way."

Suho hurried to hug the stuffed animals tighter to his chest and shook his head as though horrified.

"Y-you can't! They're my friends... they're precious to me..."

"Yeah. Exactly."

I bent my knee to meet him at eye level and said, firmly:

"Think about it. What did I tell you we were going to do when I first came in?"

Suho rolled his eyes around and answered in a shrinking voice.

"Th-that we're playing house..."

"Right. We're in the middle of playing house."

Ruffling his hair, I drove the nail in.

"And you're my doll. Just like those stuffed animals you're holding."

"...!"

"You ever seen a doll go out and work to earn its keep? All you have to do is stay by your owner's side when he tells you to, eat the good stuff he gives you, and just sit there and be fussed over when he wants to fuss over you. That's it. That's plenty."

Suho's eyes went wide, as though he couldn't believe it.

His gaze bounced back and forth between the stuffed animals in his arms and me, over and over.

"R-really...? Even if I don't use my power... even if I don't do anything... I still won't get thrown away...?"

"Obviously. Why would I throw out my own doll?"

Suho's face still didn't look fully convinced, but even so, it had brightened a little compared to before.

He's not going to accept it all at once. That's fine. Slowly, one thing at a time, we'll change it.

Expecting a single line from me to wash away every wound piled up on a child who'd been denied his whole life — that would be greedy.

I ruffled his hair roughly one more time and got back up.

Suho could breathe a little easier now, but the real problem was somewhere else.

I turned my head. My eyes landed on the deep shadow inside the tent.

Sihyeok was curled up inside, the broken collar still dangling around his neck.

"..."

Time until the evaluation: barely two weeks left.

I dragged a dry hand down my face and swallowed a deep sigh.

In the end... I've got no other move, huh...

That night, I secretly called Cha Yul and Sea-ah — just those two — out to an empty training room.

The two kids had softened up a lot compared to before, but their eyes were still full of a sharp wariness as they looked at me.

"You two seem like the ones most likely to actually hear me out, so I called you."

I got straight to the point, no preamble.

"From now on, we have to do something called a public evaluation once every quarter."

At those words, both their faces froze cold.

"...You're telling us there are going to be experiments again?"

"No."

I shook my head firmly.

"Exact opposite. This is what we do so we don't get experimented on. Think of it as a results report to keep the house-playing going. If we can't produce results... this game ends too."

I hammered it home.

"And the subject of next month's evaluation is... Kim Sihyeok. Two weeks. That's all the time we have."

"!"

"You two know how Sihyeok is right now. So here's the thing... help me out."

At my words, Cha Yul let out a cold snort.

"Why should we?"

At the response I'd expected, I looked him straight in the eye.

"Don't you want to protect your younger siblings?"

I said it coldly, looking at both of them.

"Honestly, if this game of house ends, I've got nothing to lose. But you? Without me, this playground is going right back to the hell it was before. You really okay with that?"

At my cold words, neither of them could answer.

Watching the clear fear rise back into their eyes, I found myself biting my lip without meaning to.

...This isn't how I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to walk you through it, step by step — that all of this is to protect you.

Impatience and guilt rose all the way to my throat.

In the end, I let a very small bit of honesty slip in.

"And... I don't want to see it. My dolls falling apart."

At that, the eyes of the two kids shook, ever so slightly. A heavy silence stretched. It was Cha Yul who broke it.

"...What do you want us to do?"

The next day, I gathered all the kids into one training room.

"Today's a rest day! Play as much as you want!"

The moment I clapped my hands, the bleak training room scenery turned into a beach flooded with dazzling sunlight.

The little ones let out a "Waaah!" and ran for the water, but the three older kids just paced around the sand.

I glanced at Kim Sihyeok, standing furthest of all of them in the corner.

Our plan was simple.

Watching him, I'd learned that Sihyeok, no matter how he acted on the outside, cared about his siblings more than anyone.

When I'd first shown up carrying Cha Yul, he'd been the one to run in first. And when the starving little ones had been offered bread that might have been poisoned, Sihyeok was the one who'd tested it first.

If I use that side of him...!

The night before, I'd let Cha Yul and Sea-ah know in advance.

Fake a fight in front of Sihyeok. Sell it a little.

If the older kids fought and the younger ones got scared... he'd end up having to use his power to protect them.

For a while, peaceful time passed.

And finally, when I sent the signal with my eyes, the two kids started their act.

The trigger was Cha Yul starting to splash water at the little ones.

Suho, trying to dodge, tangled his feet and toppled onto the sand with a soft thud.

He wasn't hurt, but that was enough.

Sea-ah, according to plan, snapped sharply at Cha Yul.

"Oppa! What are you doing?! Suho almost got hurt!"

Cha Yul scoffed and shot back.

"He should learn to dodge this much. He can't hide behind your barrier forever. These kids need to get stronger too."

"So your way is just attacking out of nowhere and telling us to dodge? Then what makes you any different from the people who experimented on us?!"

"This isn't an experiment, it's training. We can't just play house forever."

"Training? You look at a six-year-old and see training? This is just scaring him!"

As their voices rose, Suho ran over anxious and tugged at both their sleeves.

"Hyung, noona... don't fight..."

Even the twins, playing at the water's edge, picked up on the icy mood and edged over, watching cautiously.

I could even feel Sihyeok, off in his distant corner, glancing this way.

Good! You're doing great! Just a little more!

I inwardly cheered the two kids' acting on.

But their fight started to drift in a direction I hadn't intended.

"You're the one who's always hiding behind your barrier! You call that protecting?"

"Because it's safer! A hundred times better than putting the little ones in danger like you do!"

At first I thought it was still all acting.

But the sharp thorns in the kids' voices weren't sounding like acting anymore.

Their eyes weren't glinting with play — they were glinting with real anger.

Wait...?

An ominous feeling crept in: something was going wrong.

I jumped up from where I was sitting and hurried over to stop them.

"Hey, hey. That's enough. Cut it—"

But before my words could land, Sea-ah, her face wounded, threw the worst possible line at Cha Yul.

"You're always saying we have to get stronger, but when it actually mattered, you couldn't protect a single person!"

"...What?"

The moment it was out, Sea-ah herself clapped a hand over her mouth in horror — but it was already too late.

The playfulness drained from Cha Yul's red eyes, and only a chilling anger was left in their place.

He didn't say anything.

Instead, the sand under his feet began to tremble finely.

An Awakened's mana was leaking out, uncontrolled, unable to hold his rage in.

...Damn it.

I sensed things going sideways.

I sprang up and ran to him.

"Cha Yul! Calm down! Release the power!"

But my shout didn't reach through his anger.

That was the moment.

Kraaaaash—!

An explosive shockwave burst out of Cha Yul's body and rocked every last thing on the beach.

As if the virtual reality ocean itself were responding to his rage, a huge wave — enough to swallow the sky — reared up and started surging toward the shore.

[Everyone get out of the training room! Now!]

Lee Jinwoo's horrified voice from the control room rang out across the whole training area.

I reflexively scooped up Hajun — the closest to me — and hoisted him onto my back.

I was about to run for the exit when—

I spotted Sea-ah, standing frozen to the spot as though she'd sprouted roots.

She was staring up at the enormous wall of water, her face gone bone-white like she was about to faint.

"Hnhh, hnhh...!"

Then, right there, she dropped to her knees and crumpled to the ground.

An instant later, a blue barrier bloomed explosively outward from that small body.

"What the—!"

While I was still reeling from her sudden reaction, Han Soeun's scream came booming out of the control room.

[Lee Sea-ah — reverse flow of awakening energy! She's approaching the overload threshold!]

Before that desperate shout was even finished, the barrier was growing larger, starting to swallow everything around it.

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