The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

That one heartfelt line.

Only then did Suho feel the wall that had risen between him and his hyung melting away.

Tears welled up in Suho's big eyes, threatening to spill.

"Huk... Hyunngg..."

Suho spread his two small arms and ran to Cha Yul, throwing himself into a hug.

"I'm sorwyy... I... I did evwyth-thing wrong... hu-uhng..."

Cha Yul froze for a moment, then slowly raised an arm and patted his little brother's small back in silence.

"...I'm sorry too. For hitting you.... I did it because... I was worried about you. Because I didn't know what to do... I just got angry like an idiot, and I'm really sorry."

"I'm... I'm sorry too... for saying awful things to you, hyung... for hurting you... I'm sorry..."

"It's okay. I don't even remember," Cha Yul answered, and pulled his little brother in tighter.

Watching them, Han Soeun's eyes went misty too, and Lee Jinwoo quietly took off his glasses and wiped at his own.

"Ahem, ahem."

Han Soeun made a deliberate throat-clearing to break up the awkward mood.

"All right, all right~! Let's wrap up the moving apology there. Shall we get down to business?"

Only then did Cha Yul, a little embarrassed now, try to peel Suho off him — but Suho stayed glued to his side.

She picked up the [Heart of the Void] and held it out to Park Suho.

"Here, Suho. First, try putting this on."

"Okay."

"The plan is simple."

Han Soeun looked at Suho as he slipped the necklace over his head.

"With the necklace on, you pull a wound over like you normally do. If our hypothesis is right, that toxin will flow into this necklace instead of into your body, and stay there."

Finally, she looked at Cha Yul.

"And then — you, Yul — take that toxic energy piled up in the necklace, absorb it with your ability, and release it."

"!"

"To start, so it doesn't strain his life-force, let's begin with the virtual wound data at the lowest reading."

At Han Soeun's words, Park Suho gripped the [Heart of the Void] hanging at his throat once, hard.

"Okay, starting now."

Han Soeun gave the signal, and a virtual person with a small scrape appeared in the middle of the lab.

Suho brought his trembling hand up over the dummy's wound, and the familiar cold sensation came.

But today, something was different.

That cold something — he could feel it getting pulled toward the necklace at his throat, not into his body.

At the same time, the golden gem at the necklace's center gave off a faint glow, and something like a very small trickle of golden liquid began seeping into it.

Because the wound was small, the golden light gathering in the necklace was faint — but it was, without question, a change.

"Suho! How is it? You okay? Nothing hurts?!"

Suho, looking puzzled, checked over his own body.

The unpleasant, chest-crushing heaviness and dizziness he'd always felt when he used his ability — none of it was there.

"...Yes... I'm okay... really... I feel completely fine...!"

"It worked!!!"

Lee Jinwoo, who had been watching Suho's biometric data on his terminal, whooped in celebration.

"Suho's biometric energy is holding steady! Not even 1% has dropped!"

"Whoooa!!"

A cheer that shook the lab burst out.

Han Soeun and Lee Jinwoo forgot all decorum and threw their arms around each other, bouncing up and down.

At last, they had cleanly solved that vicious, impossible homework problem the Director had left them!

But amid their cheers, one person — Kang Taemin — kept his composure.

"It's not over yet."

At his low voice, the cheering stopped.

"The necklace only holds it. If we don't process that energy, it'll cause an even bigger side effect."

"Khkh...!"

Lee Jinwoo cleared his throat and hurriedly pulled his glasses and expression back into order.

He turned to Cha Yul, eyes serious.

"Yul. That golden energy in the necklace... you think you can absorb it?"

Cha Yul nodded, face tight with nerves.

He walked over to Suho, who was still wearing the necklace, and brought a trembling hand up over the golden gem.

But the golden energy, pulled by his mana, seemed to waver for a moment — and then slipped, shwip, right back into the necklace.

"...Huh?"

Thrown, Cha Yul tried again.

This time, he concentrated more mana into it.

The golden energy seemed to come out a little more than before, but the result was the same.

"What is this... why isn't it working?"

Unease crept back over Han Soeun's face.

"Strange... with Yul's ability, he should be able to absorb any kind of energy."

Cha Yul didn't give up, and tried again and again.

But every attempt ended in failure.

"So... pulling static energy out of a necklace might be a whole different problem? Yul's usually good at absorbing kinetic energy — attacks flying at him, that sort of thing."

"Or it could be the structure of the necklace itself. If it's an artifact specialized in containment, it might be actively resisting any outside attempt to pull the energy back out."

While the two Chief Researchers put their heads together drawing up hypotheses, Cha Yul's face was slowly hardening.

Failure. Another failure.

Not being able to help was wounding the child's pride.

Just then, Park Suho gave his sleeve a small tug.

"Hyung, it's okay. Just this much... I'm already so... so happy."

Just being able to use his ability had the child looking like he owned the whole world.

But Suho's pure comfort only lit a fire in Cha Yul's heart.

His red eyes burned with a resolve past anything they'd shown before.

"Let me try a little more."

From that moment on, Cha Yul stayed with the necklace for hours.

Soaked through with sweat, gasping for breath, he still didn't give up.

For the one wish of setting his little brother completely free.

Late in the evening, after everyone else had gone home, Cha Yul was still in the training room.

He'd been wrestling with the [Heart of the Void] for hours now.

His whole body was drenched in sweat and his breathing was rough, but his red eyes stayed fixed on the necklace alone.

Behind him, in a dark corner of the lab, Kang Taemin was leaning against the wall, motionless, watching.

He was mechanically logging each of Cha Yul's attempts into a small data recorder in his hand.

"...Attempt 578. Failure."

Failure. Another failure.

The golden energy still refused Cha Yul's touch.

"Damn it...! Why isn't it working?!"

He kicked off the floor, sprang up, and started firing off the last of his red mana at the training room wall, wildly.

After wasting energy that way for a good while, he finally seemed to hit empty — and dropped flat on his back on the floor.

"Haa..."

That was when Kang Taemin, who had been watching him in silence, spoke quietly.

"At the evaluation."

At the out-of-nowhere word, Cha Yul lifted his head and looked at Kang Taemin.

"Kim Sihyeok... overloaded."

At something he already knew, Cha Yul nodded without a word.

"The Director isn't Awakened. How do you think he stopped Kim Sihyeok's overload?"

Not knowing where the question was going, Cha Yul only gave him a blank look.

"From what I heard, the Director jumped into the overloaded Kim Sihyeok's shadow... himself."

"...What?"

Cha Yul's eyes went wide with shock.

"You mean he walked right into the middle of that overload, unarmored?!"

"That's right. Normally, the manual is that a stronger Awakened than the one overloading pins them down with force. But that's not what the Director did."

He looked Cha Yul dead in the red eyes.

"Meet force with force, and it pushes back even harder."

He balled one fist and made a show of blocking it with his other palm.

"The harder you try to break through a shield, the harder the shield gets."

This time, he lowered the blocking hand and, with his other palm, softly wrapped it around his own clenched fist.

"You have to read the flow, and move with it — that's how you get control."

Kang Taemin gestured toward the necklace with his chin.

"Same goes for that."

Receive it, huh... Building on Kang Taemin's explanation, Cha Yul pictured the scene of the evaluation day in his head.

Overloading shadows.

Researchers screaming. And walking into the middle of that chaos without hesitation — the non-Awakened Director.

Instead of meeting the force with force, he tried to receive that dangerous energy itself?

Tried to become one with Sihyeok, the source of that power?

Just picturing it, it was a crazy act — nothing short of suicide.

But strangely, Cha Yul could picture it easily.

...If it's that man.

That strange, unpredictable, and — at times — impossibly kind man.

...He really might have.

This energy inside the necklace, too.... It wasn't an enemy. It was his own pain, and his little brother's sacrifice.

Cha Yul closed his eyes and reached for the necklace one more time.

This time, not with the will to absorb the energy — but with the intent to understand it, and to take it back as part of himself.

In that instant, the golden energy inside the necklace no longer resisted.

As if it had found its way home, it flowed of its own accord into Cha Yul's palm, and gently on into his body.

Cha Yul opened his eyes.

He looked down at the golden energy rippling across his palm — an energy he'd never seen before.

And instinctively, he sent that power flying toward the training room wall.

Kwaang—!

The specially reinforced wall — designed to hold up even against an A-rank monster's attacks — dented, small but distinct.

It was a purified, condensed power on an entirely different level from the red energy he usually used.

"...Got it!"

At last, a bright smile broke across Cha Yul's face.

"I did it! I did it!"

Without meaning to, he snapped a hand up and looked at Kang Taemin, as if going in for a high-five.

But the moment he caught Kang Taemin's flat, unimpressed look, Cha Yul finally registered what he'd just done.

An awkward — no, mortifying — silence hung between the two of them.

"...Ahem. So, then... Suho's going to be okay, right?"

Instead of answering, Kang Taemin nodded once.

There was still the limitation of having to go through the artifact, but the possibility had been proven.

After that night, Cha Yul and Suho's training entered a completely new phase.

The training was simple.

Park Suho would put on the necklace and shift virtual wound data into it, and Cha Yul would take in the golden energy piling up in the necklace and convert it into his own.

At first they were clumsy, but the two kids fell into sync at an astonishing pace.

Not many days later, they had moved past simply releasing the energy and reached the level of storing the converted golden energy inside Cha Yul's body.

The pain Park Suho took in became Cha Yul's new power — a perfect cycle.

At last, their own combo technique was complete.

"We did it!"

They went straight to Suho.

"Suho. From now on, it's okay for you to use your ability."

"Really?"

Suho's eyes went round.

"Yeah. But there's one condition. You have to be wearing this necklace when you use it. Got it?"

"Yes! I got it!"

Suho broke into a bright smile.

"Whoa... then I can use it during virtual training now too!"

At that innocent line, the researchers' faces darkened in an instant.

The problem was that Suho still, ironclad, believed in Hwang Dushik.

For the past several days, Han Soeun and Lee Jinwoo had hinted, over and over, "That man might actually be a bad person," "You need to be careful" — but it was no use.

For some reason, the child felt an enormous fondness for Hwang Dushik.

If we leave things like this, he'll get used by that bastard again eventually.

To break that blind trust, a hundred words wouldn't do it — there was no way except showing him one solid piece of proof with his own eyes.

That was when Kang Taemin, still leaning against the wall, spoke up.

"If Hwang Dushik is a spy, who'd be behind him?"

"Well... it'd be Deputy Director Park Wonjin."

Lee Jinwoo answered.

"In that case... how about we disguise ourselves as Deputy Director Park Wonjin?"

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