The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

The next morning.

Same as always, I was in the village head's tangerine grove pulling weeds.

And same as always, Sihyeok was sitting in the shade of a tree, cooling himself with a handheld fan.

That was when Ari appeared, off in the distance.

She glanced over at Sihyeok — and then, unlike usual, walked straight over to me.

At the sight, Sihyeok, under the shade of the tree, flinched and stiffened.

He seemed on guard, as if he thought she was about to throw something at me again like last time.

Ari came to a firm halt in front of me.

The child hesitated for a moment, then — as if she'd made up her mind — thrust out a small yellow wildflower.

"Mister. About last time, when I threw pinecones at you."

She paused to catch her breath.

"To be honest, back then I thought you were a bad person. I thought you were bothering my grandma."

"..."

"But after watching you for a few days, I think I got it wrong. So I came to say sorry."

Ari kept her hand held out with the wildflower and bowed her head.

"I'm sorry for throwing pinecones at you that time. I was in the wrong."

At the grown-up little apology, I unfolded from my crouch and rose.

And instead of answering, I just slid my eyes over to Sihyeok, standing off at a distance.

He was staring off at the distant mountains, but from the sidelong glances to his perked-up ears, it was plain his whole attention was fixed over here.

"Hmmmm—."

I put on a sour face and dragged it out, pretending to think it over, and Ari's eyes darted anxiously.

Cute as the squirming was, I didn't want to leave those little hands trembling any longer than they already were.

Enough teasing.

"Ahem."

I let out a deliberately stern little cough, then, pretending to give in, plucked the small yellow wildflower out of her hand.

"Hmph! Well. Everyone slips up sometimes. In light of the effort you've made — I'll make a special exception this once and forgive you."

At my answer, she broke into a beaming smile and turned and ran straight over to Sihyeok in the shade of the tree.

"I'm sorry to you too. For bothering someone precious to you."

At her words, without meaning to, I let out a small kuh-hem of a cough.

Precious... isn't quite where I'd put it.

That was the exact moment.

Without a word, Sihyeok patted the spot on the mat next to him with his small hand — pat, pat.

Wordless permission that she could sit here.

At that tiny gesture, Yeon Ari's face lit up bright as sunshine.

She let out a "hehe" of a laugh and plopped right down, plastered against his side.

Then, as if letting out a breath she'd been holding, she began to chatter away.

I watched the two children with a satisfied smile.

Then a single thought hit me out of the blue.

Even that little girl...

Even that eight-year-old, on the strength of one single desire — to make a friend — had steeled herself for rejection, picked a flower with her own hands, and sincerely apologized to a grown-up she didn't even like.

She had done every last thing she could to win her friend's heart.

And me?

What had I done, since Ms. Kim Sunja rejected me?

I felt a rush of shame at the picture of myself — using rejection as an excuse to do nothing, just waiting for whatever news Lee Jinwoo would bring.

All right. I need to give this my everything, too.

Until Lee Jinwoo brought me the information, I had to keep pushing at this my own way, too.

From that day, I launched into a proper Kim Sunja campaign.

My tactics were simple and brute-force.

Namely — a gift offensive.

Nobody in the world hates presents!

Luckily, I now had a very adorable inside collaborator, which made the operation smooth.

Whenever Ari whispered, "Grandma likes sweet yakgwa," I called the Seoul yakgwa master on the spot.

"Send everything you've got. By courier."

And when Ari muttered, "I think Grandma's back is bothering her," I picked up the terminal again immediately.

"Whichever massage chair you carry is the most expensive — same-day delivery."

But every last one of those gifts got flung out the front gate along with Kim Sunja's booming, "I don't need any of this junk!"

That said, it wasn't as though the gifts were being thrown away or wasted.

Because at some point, the village elders had started cheerfully putting every one of them to use.

The village head sat in the top-of-the-line massage chair now installed in the senior center and gave a warm ha, ha.

"Aigoo, that feels good on the back! Thanks to that mainland fellow, this old man's living in luxury."

The grandma next door chewed on a piece of royal yakgwa and said:

"Hey, young fellow. Next time bring one of them — macaroons, whatever they're called. I've been wanting to try one."

By around the tenth failed round of my gift offensive—

I was crouched down picking up a red ginseng gift set that had, as always, ended up out on the ground, when the kids at the institute suddenly came to mind.

Here I am throwing money around out here, and I haven't gotten a single thing for my actual dolls.

I pulled the terminal from my pocket and shot Lee Jinwoo a text.

[My card. Whatever the kids want to eat, want to have. Don't worry about a limit. Just buy them all of it.]

Right as the message went through—

Ari came over.

She looked from me to the red ginseng set rolling around on the ground with the expression of someone watching a hopeless case.

"Mister, are you dumb? She won't even take them — why do you keep sending them?"

I gave a bitter little laugh at that and let out a long sigh.

"They say there's no tree that won't fall after ten swings of the axe."

At which Ari flung my line straight back at me.

"That's when it's a tree, mister. My grandma isn't a tree, she's a rock. Swing your axe a hundred days, a thousand days. All that's gonna happen is the axe breaks."

Ari topped it off with one final "Silly mister!" of a jab and hopped off toward home.

I could only stand there staring after her small retreating back.

...A rock, huh...

The sharp little answer kept turning over in my head.

The honest approach was a dead end. There wasn't a crack in sight.

What on earth was I supposed to do here.

That evening.

I'd come out of washing up, still with the same tangled thoughts, when—

Bzzt—.

The terminal in my pocket vibrated low, cutting the quiet.

The caller was Lee Jinwoo.

Kim Sunja sat on the porch and lit her long-stemmed pipe.

Whoosh—. Pale gray smoke drifted out from between her thin lips into the air.

Everything happening these days was as troubled as that smoke.

A month ago, that Chae boy's son had appeared and torn up the quiet of this mountain village — and now, on top of that, her own granddaughter was going around with some unknown boy he'd brought with him.

I told her, over and over, not to play with him.

Kim Sunja gave her pipe an irritated draw — puk.

The bitter smoke scraped at her throat.

The tomboy of a granddaughter who went off looking for the little boy the second anyone took their eyes off her — an old woman's nagging clearly wasn't so much as reaching her ears.

Who on earth did she get that stubbornness from.

The thought led, naturally, to her daughter, who had left this world eight years ago.

"Mom! I'm heading out!"

"Mother, we'll be back!"

The bright faces of her daughter and son-in-law, laughing as they went out the door that morning, were still vivid before her eyes.

I shouldn't have let them go. Or better — I should have gone myself.

A too-late regret.

Faintly, her eyes reddened.

But that grief soon turned to cold rage, freezing her heart all over again.

Which is exactly why I can never forgive those damned Chaes.

Eight years ago, on the far side of a Gate, her daughter and son-in-law had vanished — and not even their bodies had come back.

That horrible accident — she still remembered every bit of it.

The then-Bureau Chief, Chae Ganghyeon, sliding hypocritical smiles at her as she begged, at the funeral where there were no bodies, for a proper investigation, insisting it was just a routine Gate accident.

And beside him, the then-Guild Master of Bawi Guild, Oh Manseok, working himself frantic just to keep her quiet.

Just calling their disgusting faces back to mind twisted her guts.

Even if it kills me. That Chae boy's son... his request. That is one thing I will never grant.

Just as she was setting her heart on it — that was when it happened.

"Grandma! I'm back!"

It was Ari.

And behind her stood the gray-haired little boy her granddaughter had been dragging around lately, stuck to her like a shadow.

Kim Sunja frowned before she could help it.

"I thought I told you not to hang around with that boy!"

Before her booming could even finish, Ari let out a "hmph!" of a snort and flung something over toward her.

"Never mind that! Mister said give this to Grandma!"

And then Ari grabbed Sihyeok by the wrist and skittered off into her room.

Kim Sunja looked down silently at the fine box of yanggaeng that had landed on the floor.

Without picking it up, she lit her pipe again and drew a deep pull of smoke.

It wasn't that she didn't understand her granddaughter's heart.

Because of her, the child had grown up in this deep mountain village with only old people for company.

The first friend her own age to appear in the village — how thrilled must she have been.

But even so...

Not that child.

It wasn't just an emotional reason, that he was the boy the Chae child had brought.

It was because there was something ill-omened about the child himself.

Kim Sunja's S-rank ability, Root Sight.

It was the power to see through the flow of ki in a person.

And what she had seen in the gray-haired boy's flow, in a word, was awful.

As if he'd been under sustained abuse and suppression for a very long time, the flow of his ki was, in many places, blackened and dead, or dried up altogether.

But the real problem was in the core itself — the source of the ki.

At the very center of the child's core, there were traces of a huge crater.

Not from an outside strike — the unmistakable trace of an overload, where a body's own power had blown outward from within.

So the child already went into overload once.

But what came next was more astonishing still.

The core of an Awakened who had gone into overload could never return to its original form.

And yet the child's core — though the faint scar remained — had, for the most part, been repaired.

Kim Sunja had seen thousands, tens of thousands, of Awakened in her time — and the number of times she'd seen a core repaired after an overload, she could count on her fingers.

Each one was either a case where the overload had been suppressed before it fully progressed — or an unexplainable miracle.

One or the other.

Who on earth could have...

But her subconscious was, dimly, already pointing at the answer.

Once you'd seen that child's eyes, the absolute trust he directed at that brat — you couldn't miss it.

Don't tell me. That damned Chae boy is the one who mended those wounds.

It made no sense.

A brat who isn't even Awakened... by what possible means?

But there was one thing... that kept nagging at her.

The brat's own core.

The first time she had seen him, she had used Root Sight on Chae Junhyeok too.

But what she had seen in his eyes was not any of the usual things.

Only a perfect darkness, as if it swallowed everything.

No core. A non-Awakened, then.

She had judged it at the time and hadn't given it much thought.

But looking back on it now, it was strange.

A non-Awakened should feel like a blank — nothing there.

But that man wasn't nothing there.

Something vast and dark, as if it were covering his entire root over.

The instant the unease rose in her mind—

The unpleasant call she'd had three weeks ago with that Han Jewoon came back to her.

"You brat! You ungrateful little—! Selling out your teacher's location like this!"

But the voice that had come back through the other end wasn't cowed — if anything, it sounded delighted.

[Ha ha! So the man actually went all the way out there. That's got to be said for him — he moves.]

Han Jewoon kekekeke'

d.

[So. What did you make of him in person?]

At the smarmy question, Kim Sunja's blood pressure shot to the top of her skull.

This boy still hasn't come to his senses—!

[Hey, old woman.]

Han Jewoon's voice went on, lazy.

[It's not that I don't know what that business was, eight years ago. But aren't you taking your fury out on the wrong target?]

"..."

[Sure — that's the man's blood, so of course you'd hate him. Still — take a proper look at him at least once.]

Kim Sunja gave a "Hmph!" of a snort.

Nothing to look at. If he's a Chae's spawn, I don't need to. He won't last a few days — he'll bawl and slink home.

[Really. Will he, though?]

There was a nasty edge of laughter in Han Jewoon's voice.

[That guy... he's not just some empty-headed dabbler. You'll figure it out once you've dealt with him yourself.]

Kim Sunja pulled deeply on her pipe.

...Figure it out once I've dealt with him myself.

The truth was, she'd assumed the brat would wear himself out and be gone within a few days.

At night, bugs swarmed here, and forget the internet — even the TV barely worked in this mountain village.

A brat raised in luxury — how many days could he really last.

But contrary to her expectations, that damned Chae's brat had held out for over a month, stubbornly.

And what threw her even more was the villagers' reactions.

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