The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

Right then, with a shhhwsh the containment-room door slid open.

Behind a sweat-drenched Lee Jinwoo, two robots came in wheeling a pair of heavy carts.

One cart was piled with steaming soup and freshly baked bread; the other, with clean, fluffy new bedding so plush it looked like it had been dried in the sun.

Nice timing!

Inwardly relieved, I stepped over to Lee Jinwoo.

"Under thirty minutes? Excellent. Very well done."

"Yes? Ah, yes, sir! Thank you! I'll work even harder from now on!"

The robots cleared away the old trays and set the steaming soup down in their place.

I stood there at a lazy slouch and gestured at the food.

"There. Mealtime."

I ran my eyes over the children.

"Watching my do— my dolls eat that revolting slop was killing me, so I had it swapped out. From here on, top-shelf only."

The children said nothing — just looked back and forth between the soup and me.

Right. Obviously, they wouldn't touch it while I was standing there.

"Don't leave a scrap. Chew slowly and finish everything. Newbie, let's go."

I said only that and walked out of the containment room without looking back.

After the Director left, a suffocating silence settled over the containment room.

The children stood there in a daze, unable to process the storm of events that had just swept through.

Up until yesterday, that man had enjoyed their suffering.

If he was in a bad mood, he starved them; if he was in a good mood, he called it "playtime" and made them use their abilities until they passed out.

What he enjoyed most of all was coaxing a flicker of hope onto the children's faces and then, in the very next instant, twisting that hope into despair and grinding it out.

He'd hand them a toy with a gentle "no more experiments" and then tear it apart right in front of them, or set out a delicious meal only to dump the whole thing, claiming it was "past its expiration date."

Since the children's despair was his entertainment, Sea-ah figured the sudden kindness he'd shown today had to be part of the same old scheme.

House? Don't make me laugh. Not for a second. Whatever this is, there's something in it.

She steeled herself.

She could not, would not let herself go soft over that man's warm soup or fluffy blankets.

The long silence was finally broken by the younger of the silver-haired twins, Seo Hajun.

"Noona... Hajunie's hungry..."

Hajun tugged at his sister Hayun's sleeve, on the verge of tears.

But Sea-ah stopped him in a firm voice.

"Hajun, don't eat it. There might be something in it."

Hajun didn't give up. This time he whined at Park Suho beside him.

"S-Suho... hyung... Hajunie's hungry... if we eat and it hurts, can't you fix it, hyung...?"

Flustered, Suho fidgeted, unsure what to say.

Just then, from his corner, the ash-haired Kim Sihyeok got to his feet.

Without a word, he walked over to the food cart and picked up a piece of bread.

"Sihyeok, no!"

Sea-ah called out urgently, but Kim Sihyeok didn't so much as answer.

He bit off a big chunk of the bread without hesitating, chewed a few times, and swallowed.

Every child's eyes locked onto him. Ten seconds, twenty seconds... nothing happened.

Only then did Kim Sihyeok tip his chin at the others.

That was the signal.

The twins launched themselves at the food.

Sea-ah let out a sigh of relief and started looking after the younger ones' meal.

She took the frozen Park Suho by the hand and sat him down in front of a tray; to the twins gulping down soup, she rubbed their backs and told them to slow down.

Only once she'd seen to all of them did she quietly pick up her own spoon.

Warmth slid down her throat and filled her empty stomach.

So they didn't tamper with the food this time? Still — stay on guard.

She hardened her heart, which had been threatening to soften under the warm food.

Until Yul wakes up, I'm the one looking after the little ones. Don't let your guard down, Sea-ah.

Forehead pressed to the cold reinforced glass, I watched the children eat in silence.

On the other side of the glass, the little ones packed their cheeks full like it was the most delicious meal in the world.

Watching them, my eyes began to sting.

Seeing how happy they were over a single bowl of warm soup, I couldn't even begin to imagine what those small children had been through all this time.

I hurriedly wiped the tears away with the back of my hand.

I was in the middle of playing the delinquent — I couldn't be seen crying.

"Newbie."

"Yes, sir!"

"From now on, you're in on my game of house too."

"...Game of house, sir?"

Lee Jinwoo asked back, wearing an expression that said he couldn't make heads or tails of it.

Instead of answering, I let my eyes travel over the wretched environment the children were living in.

If it were up to me, I'd have pulled every one of them out of this research institute right now... but for me, still knowing nothing, that was impossible.

...Start with what I can do, one thing at a time.

"First off. I can't stand watching my do— my dolls rolling around in that unsanit— that pigsty of theirs. Food, hygiene, bedding — get everything top of the line."

Trusting Lee Jinwoo's read on things, I tacked on one last line.

"Oh, and if you want to report to the Deputy Director, go ahead. Just do what I tell you properly while you're at it."

He wasn't fully on my side yet, so of course he'd report; I just wanted him to carry out my orders in the meantime.

I couldn't hold the emotions back any longer.

Without waiting to hear his reply, I all but fled the room.

Left alone, Lee Jinwoo's head was rattling like an earthquake had gone off inside it.

That low, tightly controlled voice.

That had unmistakably been anger.

At what, though...?

Lee Jinwoo — IQ of 150 — put his brain into overdrive.

Something's off about the Director today.

Doing incomprehensible things was pretty much his specialty, sure — but today was on another level.

The man who'd had a VIP seat built just to get a better view of the subjects suffering had suddenly screamed at them to stop the experiment and saved the boy.

When he'd walked out cradling the child, bleeding all over the place, the sheer force radiating off him had honestly almost made Jinwoo wet himself.

And on top of that — the man who normally couldn't even squeak in front of the Deputy Director had just stomped all over the Deputy's authority in front of everyone.

And that's not all.

He'd gathered information on the subjects he'd never shown any interest in before, and had personally taken over subject management — which had been the Deputy Director's exclusive purview.

But what nagged at Lee Jinwoo most was something else.

Today... why is he being so nice?

Considering Chae Junhyeok's usual manner, his behavior today was strange beyond belief.

No blowing up. No cursing.

No throwing things, no punching walls in a rage.

And on top of all that... that Director had actually praised him — told him he'd done well.

For a simple mood swing or tantrum, there was too much consistency to all of it.

Like a man who'd made up his mind about something.

From now on, you're in on my game of house too.

The Director's odd order, tossed at him just moments ago, kept circling in Jinwoo's head.

Should he go along with it?

It was a dangerous gamble, sure.

The Deputy Director's power in this institute was absolute — pick the wrong side, and you might literally lose your head.

But... from a corner of his heart, a voice was mocking reason's warnings.

This is a chance.

If everything the Director had done today was part of some larger plan, and today was the starting point — then this was the perfect moment to jump on board.

How much longer am I supposed to be the errand boy of this place?

He was sick of doing scut work under people dumber than he was.

Succeed and it's a revolution; fail and it's treason.

He recalled the line the winners of history had all muttered to themselves.

And even if this whole thing turned out to be nothing but a delinquent's whim, he could always shrug and say, "I was just following the Director's orders."

Either way, the bet cost him nothing.

Lee Jinwoo swallowed dryly.

He'd made up his mind.

He took off down the corridor to carry out the first task he'd been given.

The moment the robot showed me into the Director's office, I collapsed into the chair.

"Haaah..."

Left alone in the quiet, the reality I'd been holding back came flooding in like a tsunami.

What on earth is going on...

The whole day felt like a bad joke.

The last thing I remembered was throwing myself in front of the car for Minjun — and I'd opened my eyes as Chae Junhyeok, the villain from a novel.

Am I dead? Can I never go back?

Was Minjun all right? How frightened had the other kids been? The worries chained together, one after another.

But at the end of all that worrying... the children I'd faced in the containment room came back to me.

The little ones trembling in fear.

Whether this is inside a novel or not — it doesn't matter.

There were children right in front of me who desperately needed help.

That was the only truth.

Right now, all that mattered was those kids.

I sank deeper into the chair and replayed the horrific day.

Playing "delinquent Chae Junhyeok" was... a lot harder than I'd expected.

Rampaging around the lab with a fire extinguisher had been rough, but I thought I'd done well.

I'd saved Cha Yul.

But those tacky, immature villain lines I'd thrown at the children... the more I turned them over, the more my face burned.

From now on, you're my dolls, I'm your master. You eat, drink, and wear whatever your master gives you.

Hearing my own voice replay in my head made my skin crawl.

"Uuuugh."

I twisted in my seat with sheer humiliation and let out a long sigh.

Do I have to... keep this up?

Today I'd managed by imitating the original Chae Junhyeok, but that was a one-day improvisation.

Tomorrow? The day after? A week from now?

If things followed the original, there were eight more years until the children escaped this place.

A heavy sigh came out on its own.

Or... should I just play the daddy card and flip the whole table?

Chae Ganghyeon — the original novel's villain and Chae Junhyeok's father.

He was head of the Awakened Management Bureau, which oversaw every Awakened in the country, and the second most powerful man in the nation.

He was the one who'd founded this research institute in the first place.

For a moment I felt the urge to use that enormous power to wipe out Park Wonjin and every researcher loyal to him.

But...

There's no way Chae Ganghyeon would move that easily...

Even in the original novel, that man had been obsessed with this place. There was no chance he'd let his delinquent son run it however he pleased.

He'd send someone else to fill the Deputy Director's chair. That much was certain.

He might send someone even crazier.

Better Park Wonjin, then.

At least he was someone whose thinking I knew a bit about from the original.

Playing Chae Junhyeok and changing the children's environment little by little was by far the safer, surer route.

And there was another thing. Even for the children's sake, I couldn't stop acting.

Their reactions today had said it all.

...Right. It's all for the children. What's a little acting.

Even so, eight years was too long.

How about the reformed-delinquent angle?

If I let him change ever so slightly, unnoticeably, over the course of eight years, wouldn't the children gradually start to open up to me?

And... if I got them out that way, maybe I wouldn't end up brutally killed like in the original.

That was the only hope I had, transmigrated into this world as "Chae Junhyeok."

All right. If I'm going to do this, I'm not going to half-ass it.

That night, I didn't sleep.

My entire acting career amounted to playing a tree in a kindergarten play.

And now here I was, having to play a delinquent villain whose performance might change the children's fates.

In the end, a rank amateur like me had only one thing to fall back on: hard work.

I dredged up every scrap of the original I could still remember.

Chae Junhyeok's snotty, arrogant way of speaking; his mean expressions; the little mannerisms peculiar to him.

Everything I remembered, I crammed into a notebook.

Even that wasn't enough. I organized the most memorable villains from various movies and dramas as reference material too.

After that, it was hands-on practice.

I practiced expressions in front of the mirror, muttered lines to myself, worked on shaping my voice.

Throwing my weight around was new to me, but if there was one thing I was good at, it was putting the hours in.

Coming out top of the class in college hadn't come for free.

Whenever the acting practice made me cringe so hard I couldn't stand it, I'd copy the core events of the original novel — the ones still faintly clinging to memory — into the notebook.

Unfortunately, SSS-Rank Hunter in the Ashes was a novel that had never been finished, so how it would end was anyone's guess.

But recording everything I could remember, as far as I could remember, was important.

After pressing down hard on the final word, I hid the notebook deep in the office safe, just in case.

When everything was done and I looked out the window, dawn was breaking in the distance.

Watching the morning sun rise, I muttered under my breath.

"All right. Let's give it a shot."

It was the beginning of my long, long delinquent act.

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