The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

Right. This is what the final villain Chae Ganghyeon should be like.

Chae Ganghyeon acting like he actually cared about Chae Junhyeok had been throwing me off, so honestly, this was the better version.

Because now, for the first time, it was crystal clear what kind of person I was dealing with.

"So what's Park Wonjin been up to?"

"He's been quiet as a mouse lately — probably conscious of the rumors. Word is he's barely stepping outside the Deputy Director's office."

"Hmm."

At least that part worked out.

I slowly pieced together the fragments of information scattered around in my head.

Park Wonjin has a weakness the Bureau Chief is holding over him.

The Bureau Chief is playing the good father.

And I realized something.

Right now was as perfect a moment as any to make a demand.

"Lee Jinwoo. Get me a video call with the Bureau Chief. Right now."

"What?!"

Lee Jinwoo stepped in front of me, alarmed.

"Tomorrow — no, wait until you've fully recovered — even then it won't be too late! Right now you need rest!"

I cut him off flat.

"No. It has to be right now."

Maybe he read something else in my expression.

Lee Jinwoo hesitated for a moment, then quietly nodded. "...Understood."

A short while later, the hologram display was set up.

Bathed in the cold light the equipment gave off, I paused to steady my breathing.

To take on that monster of a Bureau Chief, I ran quickly through the lines I'd need and the demands I absolutely had to walk away with, double-checking each one.

Preparation was done. I lifted the terminal and punched in the Bureau Chief's direct line.

Kzzt— — with a small burst of static, Chae Ganghyeon's face filled the screen.

"Junhyeok, my boy!"

His voice, calling my name, was full of anguish.

"You're finally awake! Have you any idea how desperately your father has been waiting these past ten days for you to open your eyes?!"

His bloodshot eyes were red enough to spill over any second.

...Wow.

I was, sincerely, impressed.

Because to anyone watching, that was the face of a father who adored his one and only son and was sick with worry over him.

He pounded his own chest, as though genuinely grief-stricken.

"If your mother in heaven were seeing this, she wouldn't have been able to close her eyes in peace!"

Giving him a standing ovation inside for that skin-crawling performance, I stepped into my own act — the delinquent son.

"Ha! Don't make me laugh."

I made a point of breathing shallow and hard as I snapped at him.

"You just sat there and watched a monster attacking me, Dad!"

At the accusation, the Bureau Chief poured out his own words, as if he'd been waiting for the cue.

"It's a misunderstanding, Junhyeok! I thought it was part of the evaluation! If your father had known you were in real danger, I would have gone in and saved you myself, right then and there!"

"Really?"

I didn't miss a beat, snapping right back:

"Then why, after you found out it was an accident, did you handle it like that?! Is my life worth one lousy researcher to you?! You should've dropped the hammer on that Park Wonjin bastard too!"

"...Junhyeok. In my heart, this father wanted to sack that man on the spot too."

He let out a deep sigh.

"But if I fire him right now, who takes responsibility for the dozens of projects he's been running? You've only just started to focus on what's yours — you can't be tied down by petty administrative work like that."

His voice was exactly that of a warm father worrying about his son's future.

"Focus only on your experiments. The tedious, ugly work — leave it to your father to handle."

Chae Ganghyeon's grave expression on the other side of the screen. Those unwavering eyes.

Watching that flawless performance, I felt goosebumps run over my whole body.

If I hadn't known the original story.

And if I hadn't heard that voice of his — ice-cold — at the evaluation.

I might have fallen for that perfect doting-father act completely.

Right. You keep on giving me that loving-father performance. It's a lot easier to squeeze things out of you that way.

Deliberately pretending not to understand his plausible excuse, I flopped down on the floor and started throwing an even bigger tantrum.^※TL On the floor??

"I don't care! I don't care! None of that matters! I'm not doing this filthy institute anymore! You just watched while I nearly died, Dad! I almost died!"

I sprawled flat on my back, kicking at the floor — thud, thud — throwing a full-blown fit.

The instant that childish tantrum registered on the other side of the screen —

Chae Ganghyeon's eyes shifted.

The briefest annoyance, like he was looking at an insect. A faint contempt.

But that chill didn't last a full second.

Chae Ganghyeon snapped back into the desperate-father face as if nothing had happened and waved his hands.

"Aigoo, my son! Please, calm down! Your father was wrong, all of it! Yes? So calm your temper. My boy — is there anything you want? Your father will get you anything, anything at all!"

A single line of cold sweat ran down my back.

That look that had flickered across his face.

That, without question, was who he really was.

...If I back down here, I'm done for.

Pointedly pretending I hadn't seen that murderous truth, I raised my voice even more triumphantly.

"A wish! Grant me a wish!"

And I stuck three fingers wide open in his face.

"One won't cut it. Three. Three wishes, or nothing will make me feel any better!"

Chae Ganghyeon gave a slightly troubled laugh at the audacity of the demand.

"All right, all right! I'll grant them. So say what you want."

The moment he gave in, I shot upright — as if I'd never been throwing a tantrum in the first place.

"Good! Then my first wish is..."

The NEST Institute was, in a word, in an uproar.

The whole thing had kicked off with a handful of rumors that had started circulating like urban legends the moment the public evaluation wrapped up.

One. That a B-rank test subject had put out A-rank power.

Two. That during the process, the test subject had gone into overload.

And three. That the Director had subdued the overload with his bare body.

The first and second rumors were at least in the territory of "possible."

Awakened being pushed to their limits and going into overload was rare, but it happened steadily.

But the third rumor was on a different plane entirely.

That Chae Junhyeok subdued an overload?

The idea of a non-Awakened subduing an Awakened's overload was absurd.

But even more absurd than that was the fact that the person in question was the delinquent Chae Junhyeok.

A man who would foam at the mouth if his coffee was one degree off.

That delinquent — who wouldn't tolerate so much as a scratch on his own hand — had risked his life diving into an overload to save one test subject?

It was more realistic to believe the long-running rumors: the institute had a hidden team, or an AI, not a human being, was really running the place.

But when the entire institute started boiling again, it was because the testimonies of researchers who had personally observed the evaluation began leaking out.

"The rumors going around right now — every last one of them is true."

That one line whipped the institute into something close to a panic.

Every ominous rumor that had been passed around in whispers for days became a single truth and swept through the whole institute.

In labs, in break rooms, even in the corridors of secure areas, researchers were murmuring in disbelief.

And in the middle of that atmosphere, at the most remote table of the cafeteria, four researchers had their heads together.

Intake mates who had survived their brutal rookie days side by side.

They had a nickname that was more famous than their own names... the so-called "walking shared folder."

There was even a saying that eighty percent of the rumors floating around the institute started from their mouths.

The reason it was possible was simple.

Monster Research Team, Artifact Analysis Team, Data Management Team, Energy Engineering Team.

One of them was placed — impossibly conveniently — in each of the institute's four major research divisions outside of Project R, and all four of them had lips lighter than feathers.

And they were fairly proud of their nickname.

Case in point: their group chat name was [M.A.D.E.] — the first letter of each of their teams.

They spun rumors so well you had to wonder if the pun on "made" was intentional.

Maybe that was why they even called each other by those letters instead of their actual names.

"M" of the Monster Research Team gave "E" of the Energy Engineering Team a nudge and asked mischievously:

"Hey, E. I hear your team's a complete disaster right now? Some crazy data came out of the last evaluation, apparently."

At that, "D" of the Data Research Team pushed up her glasses and asked, carefully:

"...I heard theories your team spent years building have all been shattered, and everyone's in panic mode... you okay?"

At that, E laughed brightly.

"Ha ha! I'm fine! Panic, my foot! If anything, my whole team is in tears over witnessing a new truth!"

But "A" of the Artifact Analysis Team just looked at him with a cynical face.

"Tears of what, joy? From where I'm sitting, it looks a lot more like tears of we're screwed. Sure you're not the only one who thinks otherwise?"

"Ha ha!"

Even at A's venom, E just laughed brightly and shook his head.

"I'm telling you, it's real! One of my seniors even ran off yelling, 'Wow — this is so exciting! Another all-nighter!'"

At that bright-eyed interpretation, the other three colleagues shook their heads in perfect unison.

Ugh, this guy's positivity circuit is fried.

Ignoring E's nonsense, M dropped his voice and brought up a more secretive topic.

"More importantly — did you all hear? Researcher Shin from Monster Analysis. Fired as of yesterday."

D nodded slightly with a worried look on her face.

"Mm... officially fired for operator error due to overwork, right?"

Missing the gravity of her tone entirely, E laughed brightly. "Ha ha ha!"

"The delinquent almost died — being fired is nothing! He should be grateful he didn't get disappeared by the Bureau Chief!"

M shot E a look of are you serious right now, then continued.

"Yeah. But that's not all of it."

His voice was low, secretive enough that no other table could catch it.

"Before he got kicked out, that senior grabbed some of our team, crying. Said he was being framed. Said the settings he'd checked last were absolutely, definitely different from the actual settings during the evaluation."

"What?"

The other three faces went stiff.

M paused for a moment, as though savoring their reactions.

"You know what's more chilling? On the night before the evaluation, there was exactly one person with access rights to the physical-force settings."

"Who?"

M lifted the corners of his mouth and spat out the name.

"Deputy Director Park Wonjin. The Viper."

At that one line, all the air at the table froze.

"S-so those rumors going around the institute — they were all real?"

D swallowed a small breath.

At the reaction, A shot back at once, as if he couldn't believe it.

"No way. However well the delinquent's doing lately, real authority is still with the Viper. And on top of that, the target's the Bureau Chief's son. If he'd failed, it'd be over — you're telling me he pulled something that reckless?"

"Which is proof of how desperate he was."

M clicked his tongue.

"There've been rumors going around even before the evaluation that Project R was up to something serious, right? If this evaluation proved that true — what happens then? He was trying to take care of it before that, one way or another."

At M's analysis, A let out a small huff of a laugh.

"The Viper, pulling something that dumb. Life really is unpredictable. It was the Viper's kingdom in this institute barely a few months ago. And now it's the delinquent's world."

M shook his head slowly, too.

"I don't even think calling him 'the delinquent' fits anymore. Turns out he had one hell of a weapon up his sleeve, huh?"

"That's for sure! Who would've guessed he actually knew how to subdue an overload? If word of this gets out, governments and guilds around the world will be lining up to court him!"

At E's remark, the other three researchers nodded in unison as if on cue.

But A still had a face that said I'm not buying it.

"...But how, exactly? For decades, PhDs around the world have been researching overload control and they've all given up on it. It's the domain of the uncontrollable."

At that, M snickered.

"Dude, if we knew that, would we still be researchers here? We'd already have been headhunted by some guild and be sitting on a mountain of cash."

He added:

"Our Director is lucky, though. Thanks to the Viper, he got to show off that little ace up his sleeve to the entire institute at exactly the right moment. And on the perfect stage, no less."

"Is that so... was it really luck, though?"

That was the exact moment.

An unfamiliar voice cut into their conversation.

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