The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

The next day.

I was sunk deep into the chair in the Director's office, shaking off the damp exhaustion I'd hauled back from Jeju.

"How's your body doing, Director?"

Lee Jinwoo set down a teacup with steam curling off it and asked, careful.

"Ah, it's a bit stiff, but I'll live."

"That's a relief."

Relieved, but still watching my face, he pressed on.

"But... didn't you go to bring back an outside teacher? Why did you come back... alone?"

At the question, the teacup on its way to my mouth stopped in midair.

The last conversation I'd had with Kim Sunja right before leaving Jeju flashed through my head.

"What you did for me — I'm truly grateful. That debt... I'll pay it back one way or another before I die."

Kim Sunja stopped for a moment.

"But...."

She looked me square in the eye and shook her head.

"I... can't go with you."

Her flat refusal hit me harder inside than I'd have thought.

Why?

She clearly wanted revenge for her daughter and son-in-law.

Now that she knew the truth of eight years ago, I'd fully expected her to head straight up to Seoul, on rage alone, and take those bastards' heads.

And she was refusing.

"Do you have any idea how many assassins came for our house after my daughter and son-in-law died?"

"Assassins...?"

"That's right. All for one broken-down old woman and a baby not even a year old."

She let out a dry, disbelieving "heh" of a laugh.

"At the time, I didn't understand it. Just why they were so bent on killing one powerless old woman."

Would've been Cheonun Group, or the Bureau.

Or maybe both.

Kim Sunja's eyes went cold and low.

"But... looking at that truth of yours that you brought me, at last I get it. Why they were so desperate."

At how much lower and crueler those bastards' work had been than I'd imagined, my fist clenched without me meaning it to.

"Of course... even now, just thinking about them, I want to march up there and rip them limb from limb..."

Her deep gaze went to one corner of the yard.

Over there, Ari was playing freeze-tag with Sihyeok.

The sound of Ari's giggle carried all the way to the porch as she stood locked in place calling "Freeze!"

"All those two threw their lives away and left behind... is that one baby."

She kept going, her voice flat but bitter.

"Just to ease this festering thing inside me... I can't put that little one on a gambling table too, can I. When I still have something to protect, I can't afford to be greedy."

She tapped the pipe against the ashtray and, half-mocking herself, muttered:

"Really... spent my whole life not knowing what fear was. And now, at this age... I'm afraid of losing something."

Hearing that lonely confession, the riddle I'd put to the kids at the institute before I left came back to me.

["There was a blacksmith who made swords. But when the finest sword he'd ever made snapped, he threw down his hammer and went deep into the mountains. Why?"]

While the other researchers and children answered burnout syndrome or because he was sick—

Sihyeok was the only one who knew the answer.

["...Because he was afraid."]

["He was afraid... that if he swung the hammer again... even the shard that was left of the broken sword... would shatter for good... so he ran."]

The shard left of the broken sword.

For Kim Sunja, that was Ari — her granddaughter, playing right in front of her eyes.

...

Before coming here, when I'd been guessing at why she had dropped out of sight for eight years, I'd put that riddle to the children.

Only now did I really understand.

It wasn't a story from the past. It was still going on, right now.

To throw herself into the flames of revenge — the last shard she had to protect was too small, too fragile.

Once I'd understood that, I couldn't bring myself to say "even so, come with me" one more time.

Just remembering it pulled a sigh out of me on its own.

"There were circumstances."

"Ah..."

"Never mind, forget it. I'll figure out another teacher to bring in myself later on."

I set the teacup down and shifted the mood.

"More importantly — report. What in the world happened while I was gone? What with Hwang Dushik yesterday and all... it's been quite the variety show."

"I'll report, sir. First and biggest — Cha Yul and Park Suho have completed their combo technique."

He got worked up as he went on.

The process of using Hwang Dushik's own scheme to uncover that Suho's ability was transference, not healing; the mechanism of using [Heart of the Void] as a medium so that the wounds Suho absorbed could be converted into Yul's energy; and, on top of that, the overwhelming power on display in yesterday's mock training.

"Also, Miss Lee Sea-ah and the twins showed astonishing growth as well. Sea-ah is developing the makings of a commander who can read a battlefield, and her combo play with the twins is already past the level of established Hunter teams."

The whole time I was listening to Lee Jinwoo's report, I couldn't hold back my inward astonishment.

Really... incredible.

It was reassuring.

And at the same time... a strange sense of relief washed over me.

If the Chiefs are this competent, and the kids can grow on their own like this...

Maybe it's about time I could start easing back on my own share.

One day, the kids would stand on their own two feet and walk cleanly out of this institute.

And then, little by little, I could start getting ready to quietly slip off the stage myself.

"Excellent. Everyone's worked hard."

At my praise, satisfaction spread across Lee Jinwoo's face, and Han Soeun's beside him.

Then a thought hit me out of nowhere.

"Ah, come to think of it... Sihyeok manifested a new ability too."

"Sir?"

Han Soeun's eyes lit up.

"A new ability?"

"Yeah. Turns out he can slip into other people's shadows too."

"Sir?!"

Han Soeun and Lee Jinwoo were floored in unison.

"He did it in Jeju, and again when we grabbed Hwang Dushik yesterday. Definitely popped out of a shadow he'd been hiding in. I thought he could only hide in his own shadow."

"N-no way... interfering with someone else's shadow... that's a high-tier ability, even within the shadow line...!"

Han Soeun muttered, worked up.

The gleam in her eyes was the researcher's curiosity catching fire.

"Looks like the info on the profile isn't the whole story. Same with Suho, same with Sihyeok."

At my words, Lee Jinwoo and Han Soeun traded a subtle look, along with the sort of smile that said we already knew.

Hm? What's that about?

I put a mental question mark on their odd reaction, but didn't press it.

"The kids' ability testing... run all of it from scratch, comprehensively, again."

For your average Awakened, the moment they awaken, they instinctively realize what their ability is.

Like a bird that grew wings knows how to fly without being taught, they acquire a vague but definite sense — "I can burn something," or "I can block something."

But that sense is only raw material.

That's why, once they've awakened, Awakened are required to go under the Bureau's wing or into a guild, where they get systematic theoretical training and drills.

Only by going through that process — pinning down their fuzzy ability in concrete terms and learning to run it efficiently — do they grow into a proper Hunter.

But these kids were different.

From the beginning, all they'd been allowed was cold experimentation tables and cruel virtual combat.

Even in the original, they didn't get any real training until after they met Han Jewoon...

On top of that.

Suho and Sihyeok...

The moment my thoughts reached that, something heavy sank in my chest.

In the original novel, those two never even met Han Jewoon.

Suho, during the escape, saved Cha Yul and died a horrible death, and Sihyeok... didn't even make the roster of children who escaped in the original.

He'd probably vanished silently somewhere in the labs long before the escape ever started.

...

The original's tragic ending flashed through my head, and my mood kept sinking.

But I shook my head hard and pushed the gloomy imagining off.

No. This time, I'm absolutely not letting it play out that way.

I'd change it with my own hands.

Past just surviving — until nobody, nobody could ever lay a rough hand on these kids.

I'd bring them up precisely, perfectly, and with my own hands I would, without fail, get them out of this hell.

The days-long full re-examination finally wrapped up.

The final results report, analyzed by Lee Jinwoo and Han Soeun through all-nighters and cross-verified by Kang Taemin.

I picked up the freshly updated profile from the desk, still warm.

The first one I checked was Kim Sihyeok — the one I'd been curious about all the way back from Jeju.

[Kim Sihyeok]

Rank: B / Main Ability: [Shadow Manipulation] → [Shadow Interference]

"After the evaluation, he did suddenly say it felt like he could do something new..."

Reading the report, I tilted my head to myself.

Nowhere in the original novel was there a setting where an ability just appears new, apart from a second awakening.

It probably wasn't newly appearing.

The kid had been so afraid of his own power all this time that he'd only ever used it to hide — he'd had no idea it could be applied any other way.

The report laid out the new power in detail.

Where before he could only hide in his own shadow or change its shape, now he could directly interfere with other people's shadows as well.

I found myself thinking back to that night in Jeju.

The moment Kim Sunja had gone for my throat, life on the line — that small back that had shot out of my own shadow and blocked the attack.

"And on top of that... he can hide other people in shadows too, not just himself."

Just like he'd whisked me into the shadow during the evaluation.

"Still, there are limits."

On the back of the report, in red letters — [Constraints & Limits].

Light source required: cannot activate in places with no shadow.

Distance restriction: to interfere with another person's shadow, must be within a 100m radius of the target.

Contact and line of sight: must have made physical contact with the target at least once, or be able to clearly see them at present, for interference to be possible.

And the last, most crippling weakness.

Time limit.

"At his current mana capacity, ten minutes is the max, huh..."

Like a diver at the bottom of the sea with an oxygen tank of set capacity.

He could hide someone else, but only for as long as his mana held out.

"Meaning long stretches of stealth or travel are off the table."

It could've been a crippling weakness, but as I shut the report I actually let out a sigh of relief instead.

Honestly, it's for the best.

What if he could travel through any shadow, no distance restriction?

If he hid in someone else's shadow and got carried far away somewhere?

If Sihyeok slipped into someone else's shadow and got lost in there somewhere... honestly, a limit is better all round.

I let out a sigh of relief and flipped back to the first page of the report.

[Cha Yul]

Rank: A / Main Ability: [Energy Absorption and Conversion]

"Yul's not quite what I'd figured either, huh?"

I read down through the details in the report.

Yul's ability wasn't all-purpose.

Kinetic energy like a truck impact, or potential energy from a high-altitude drop, he absorbed at 100% and converted into red mana.

When it came to physical impacts, his efficiency was basically invincible.

On the other hand, elemental energy like heat or electricity — those he couldn't absorb.

In the face of energy with no physical form, he was as vulnerable as an ordinary Awakened.

The unusual case was Park Suho's wound energy.

When he tried to absorb it directly, it wouldn't take — but once it passed through [Heart of the Void], it absorbed cleanly, like magic.

"Hm..."

I set the report down and thought back to Cha Yul's fight scenes in the original.

Techniques where he'd leap from high up and convert the potential energy into an explosive area attack, or take an enemy's charge head-on and give the kinetic energy back twice as hard.

"Still — the limit's clear too."

At the bottom of the report, cautionary notes in red.

Capacity overload.

No matter how efficient the absorption, an overfull vessel breaks.

By the current numbers, absorbing three or more full-power blows from an A-rank monster risked his core failing to hold it and self-destructing.

Looks like... he needs training to get a feel for how much he's already absorbed.

Reaching that conclusion, I flipped to the next page to look through the other kids' profiles.

Right at that moment.

Bzzt—.

Breaking the quiet, the terminal in my pocket buzzed, short and heavy.

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