The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

"Kh... uk!"

Even as he coughed up dark red blood, Yeon Minjun threw both arms around the very tentacle skewering him and held on.

The Kraken thrashed the tentacle he was clinging to like a mad thing, and Yeon Minjun's body was flung high up into the air.

The thing had just finished its attack — its huge single eye was still fully exposed.

"...Now...!"

He poured every last drop of mana he had left into his shield.

Skewer!

The shield Yeon Minjun hurled drove in like a wedge into the seam of its eyelid, jamming the closing lid open.

"Kyeeeeeek—!!!"

The thing thrashed at the pain of a shield lodged in its eye and lashed out with dozens of tentacles.

Skewer! Skewer, skewer!

The razor tentacles tore through his body.

"No... no... no... please, no...! Minjun...! Aaaaaaaargh—!!!!"

Choi Jiyeon watched her husband being torn apart right in front of her, and screamed.

But she was a Hunter too.

She didn't miss the opening — she leapt up and drove her spear into the Kraken's yellow eye.

Skewer—!

"Kh... oh...!"

The monster's last roar never made it to a scream.

Whumph—!

Along with a sound that shook the ground itself, its massive body crashed down to the floor.

And with it, Yeon Minjun's body was flung down to the ground.

"Minjun!!!"

Choi Jiyeon dropped even her own spear and staggered to him at a run.

He was... horrific.

Huge holes gaped straight through his body, and half his face had been blown away past recognition.

Only the astonishing life-force of an A-rank Hunter was, barely, keeping him breathing.

"Ah... aah...."

Panic-stricken, she tried to press her shaking hands over her husband's wounds.

"Minjun... I'll... I'll save you...!"

"..."

"Potion... yes, potion! If we just had that potion that little shit brought earlier...! Cheon Sangcheol! Cheon Sangcheol, where are you!!!"

Right then.

Tuk.

A cold touch caught her arm.

"Ji... yeon..."

Red blood spilled out of his mouth in a heavy cough.

"...You did... so well... amazing... khuk, khuk..."

"No! No! Don't talk! Please! Don't talk!"

Choi Jiyeon screamed, and desperately tried to jam her hands over his gushing chest.

But it was no use.

Minjun rummaged through his combat gear with trembling hands and, with great effort, pulled something out.

It was... a crumpled, dampened baby's sock.

The one sock of Ari's he'd taken as his good-luck charm.

He gathered the last of his strength and pressed it into his wife's hand.

"This... this... is my present to you..."

"No! What are you talking about! Don't talk! You're bleeding...!"

"A... ri... our Ari... please... khuk... be happy... with... with you, Jiyeon..."

"Don't die! Don't you dare die! That's an order! That's an order!! Yeon Minjun!!! Please!!!"

Yeon Minjun looked back at her, in pain, but with love in his eyes.

Through the fading haze of consciousness, he gave a small smile and, one last time, spoke the confession from his memory.

"Team... Leader... I like you... please... go out with me..."

Tuk.

The hand holding the baby sock dropped, limp, to the ground.

"Stop... stop kidding around. Honey... wake up... hmm? ...We have to go home... Ari's waiting..."

Her voice slid from a dazed whisper into something more and more desperate.

"You said we'd go on a trip. With Mom... and Ari, the four of us... right?"

When he didn't answer, she grabbed his collar and started shaking him.

"For three years — for three years you were going to be by Ari, watch her walk, watch her talk! So why...! Why won't you open your eyes!"

Her voice broke into a scream.

"Get up! I said get up!"

But no answer came back.

"Ah."

A meaningless sound slipped out of Choi Jiyeon's mouth.

"Ah... aah..."

She couldn't understand it.

Why the man who had been guarding her back a minute ago was now lying on this cold floor.

Why he was never going to look at her and smile again.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh—!!!!!"

Mana burst out of every inch of her and tore through the cave like a storm.

The signs of overload.

Off in one corner of her vision, she caught sight of the man trembling in the corner of the cave.

I'm going to kill him.

I'll rip that bastard apart and then die here with Minjun...!

That was the exact moment.

Flutter—

Inside the storm of mana she'd raised, something small fluttered through the air.

Stained red with her husband's blood... a baby's sock.

"!"

Without thinking, on instinct, she stretched her hand toward it and caught the sock to her chest.

Ah....

If she died here, then Ari...

The future with Ari her husband had given his life to hand her — she couldn't just throw that away. Not for a bastard like that.

"Kh-uugh...!"

Off in the distance, the portal — about to close — was flickering unstably.

Twenty seconds left, at most.

Her mind made up, she moved like the wind — grabbed Cheon Sangcheol, hurled him through the portal, and dove after him.

Just before the portal closed completely.

The last thing she saw, through vision blurred with tears —

Her husband's smiling face, and the cold, deep dark swallowing him forever.

"Kh, khuk, khuk...!"

On the cold dirt ground.

Cheon Sangcheol was gulping air down greedily.

"W-we lived, right...? We're alive now, right...?"

But his voice didn't reach Choi Jiyeon.

"———-!"

She was beating the ground and wailing like a child.

She couldn't form words.

Only a ripping scream and sobs tore through the cold air, savage and raw.

And in the next moment, something inside her snapped with an audible tuk.

The shock of losing her husband. The aftermath of a fight pushed far past her limit.

A body that had already been on the verge of overload.

She didn't have the strength to hold up any longer.

"Kkuk...!"

"H-hey, what — get it together! What's the matter with you!"

Cheon Sangcheol, flustered, shook her where she'd collapsed.

When he saw she was still, faintly, breathing, for a second he was relieved.

Hurry — call someone — she can still be saved—

But right at that moment.

His hand hitched in midair and stopped.

...If she lives and tells the whole truth?

That because of him, an A-rank Hunter had died and a C-rank Gate had turned into a slaughterhouse.

If she testified to any of that?

My — my father'll... kill me...!

Cheon Sangcheol's pupils shook as if an earthquake were going through him.

He looked around with trembling hands.

At the bottom of a cliff, a pitch-black river was yawning open like a mouth.

And—

Da-da-da-da—!

Clear it. I have to get rid of the evidence!

Half-mad, he staggered up and grabbed Choi Jiyeon by the collar.

Her blood-soaked body dragged along the ground like dead weight.

"This... this is all your fault for being useless!"

He screamed, spitting fury, and shoved her limp body hard off the edge of the cliff.

Splash—!

Along with a heavy spray of water, Choi Jiyeon's body was swallowed into the black river.

"Huff, huff... Yeah... it was an accident. A terrible... accident...."

Once he'd shoved her off, the rescue team that arrived shortly after found him and rushed him to the hospital.

Not long after, the Republic of Korea was thrown into an uproar.

Two A-rank Hunters, dead at the same time.

And inside a C-rank Gate, no less.

On top of that, Cheon Sangcheol — the only survivor — cited memory loss and kept his mouth shut about what had happened that day.

Not long after that, Cheonun Group, saying it was repaying the debt for their son's safety, delivered astronomical sums of "sponsorship" to both Bawi Guild and the Awakened Management Bureau.

Along with the stomach-turning justification of "for the safety and welfare of Hunters going forward."

And using that incident as its opening, Cheonun Group and the Bureau built the tightest cooperative relationship anywhere.

Only Kim Sunja sensed that there was something behind the incident.

Two A-rank Hunters, dying at the same time, inside a C-rank Gate?

To her, who knew exactly how strong her daughter and son-in-law were, that was an absurd lie.

She was ready to march straight up to Oh Manseok and grab him by the collar.

But he wasn't Guild Master of Bawi Guild anymore.

Whether it was as reward for having quietly buried the whole affair — she couldn't be sure.

He had already been promoted to a senior post in the Awakened Management Bureau, and, using the airtight excuse of "security," he cut off every one of her attempts to reach him.

But Kim Sunja didn't give up.

To bring the truth out into the light, she called on every connection she had spent her whole life building.

She reached out to Hunters she had once helped, and to high-ranking figures in politics.

But the Bureau and Cheonun Group did not sit still.

They began quietly bringing pressure to bear on every single person Kim Sunja got in contact with.

Not long after, the Hunters who had been indignant along with her stopped taking her calls, and the politicians who owed her acted like they had never met her.

Being cast off by the very people she had spent her whole life helping cut her deep.

In the end, after she'd even been the target of an assassination attempt, she realized she could no longer stay in Seoul.

To protect Ari — the only blood she had left — she had no choice but to flee, all but running, to Jeju, Minjun's hometown.

And so Choi Jiyeon and Yeon Minjun.

Two heroes who had shone so brightly were forgotten, far too conveniently, inside the schemes of powerful men.

"This... is the footage that holds the truth of that day."

I pulled a small data chip out of the sub-dimensional pouch on my chest.

It was the video from the body cam that had been attached to Cheon Sangcheol eight years ago.

What Cheon Sangcheol had recorded, and what the Bureau had buried.

Her eyes were fixed on that small chip as if nailed there.

"As for how you tell Ari... I'll leave that to you, ma'am. When you've decided — give me a call then."

I opened the sliding door and stepped outside, and Ari came running at me.

"Mister! Are you done talking?"

The child Choi Jiyeon and Yeon Minjun had wanted, more than anything, to see, right up to the very end. The child they had loved.

Ever since I'd learned the truth of eight years ago, every time I looked at this girl, a corner of my heart ached.

"Can I go in now?"

Ari was chirping in an excited voice, just about to fling the closed door open — when I gently stepped in front of her.

"Ari. Wait."

"Why?"

"Your grandma got tired from talking with me, and she said she was going to take a nap. Until she wakes up, why don't we go out and play, just us? I'll get you something good to eat."

"Something good? Yeah!"

The girl broke into a bright smile and grabbed my hand in an instant.

With my other hand, I took Sihyeok — who had been standing there vacantly — by the hand, and hurried out, shutting the front gate tight behind us.

But I couldn't shut out the grief seeping through the crack.

"Hu-huk... aah.... Jiyeon...."

What the wind carried was the sound of an old woman who had held out like tempered steel her whole life, finally, breaking down.

For fear even a shred of that despair might reach the child's ears —

I only gripped the small hand in mine tighter, and hurried my step, without a word.

A few days later, Ari came running toward me with a bright, sunny face.

"Mister! My mom and dad were amazing heroes! They stopped a Gate breach and saved people and that's how they died!"

Kim Sunja had, it seemed, kept the ugliest part of the truth buried and told her granddaughter only the heroic parts.

I decided to respect that choice.

"And Grandma says to come! Quick!"

I made my way slowly to the blue-roofed house.

On the porch sat Kim Sunja, pipe in her mouth, her face set as if she'd fallen deep into thought.

I quietly went over to her and, saying nothing, sat down on the edge of the porch.

Beyond the white curls of pipe smoke, her profile looked far more at peace than it had a few days ago.

Like someone who had, at last, set down a huge stone that had pressed on her chest her whole life.

"...Thanks."

The unexpected acknowledgment stopped my breath for a second.

I was the son of her enemy.

Blood that had no business receiving thanks — that could be cursed and have nothing to say about it.

Which was exactly why that blunt little word — her unvarnished sincerity — hit my chest heavier.

Tap, tap. She tapped her pipe lightly against the ashtray and, in an even voice, went on.

"I know now, at last, how my daughter closed her eyes. Thanks to you, one old grief of mine is laid to rest. So it stands to reason I ought to pay for it."

She looked me square in the eye.

"Speak up, then. What is it you want."

I took a breath and pulled my scattered thoughts together.

"Don't you want revenge, ma'am. On Cheon Sangcheol, and on the Bureau — where Oh Manseok is."

"..."

"I'll help."

"A son. Helping to bring down his own father, is it."

There was an odd déjà vu to it.

The same act I'd put on in front of Han Jewoon.

But for someone in my position, who couldn't tell her the truth, this was the most effective card I had.

A wastrel son out to bring his father down.

Ambition, or the bluff of it.

"Of course. Because I... plan to become the next Bureau Chief of the Awakened Management Bureau."

"...!"

"Once I push my father out and become Bureau Chief myself, I'll bring every truth of eight years ago to light. I'm saying I'll complete your revenge for you."

Kim Sunja didn't answer. She only pulled, wordlessly, on her pipe.

Pale gray smoke rose to hide her face, then to bare it, then to hide it again.

"...And what do you want from me. In payment for that revenge."

I answered as if I'd been waiting for the question.

"There are very special children at my institute."

I briefly explained to her about the six children at the institute.

I added that each one had extraordinary gifts, and that they needed a true master to guide them.

"...To raise them into your soldiers, is it."

Kim Sunja's eyes sharpened.

"To use as a stepping stone to becoming Bureau Chief?"

At a question that cut straight to the heart of it on the smallest of hints, a chill went down my back — but I only made my smile more shameless.

"They're fated to live out their whole lives as test subjects in a research institute either way. So then — wouldn't it be better to be a powerful man's soldiers instead?"

"...That little gray-haired boy you brought — is he one of those soldiers too."

I nodded without a word.

"...Then. You mean to treat the other children the way you treat him too."

At her last question, I hitched, just a moment.

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