The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

Inside Bawi Guild's infirmary, warm sunlight was pouring in.

On the bed sat Choi Juran, her color much improved, and beside her, Kang San — face dead serious — was peeling an apple.

"Here, aaah! Noona! Cut into little rabbits, just for you!"

"Haha! Must be all the care that went into it — apple tastes wonderful. Thanks, Kang San."

Choi Juran laughed and took a big bite out of the crooked apple Kang San held up to her.

At that, Kang San's face crumpled on the spot.

"Nnk...! Noona! To see you crunching down on an apple this healthy again... you have any idea how relieved I am!"

Not even noticing his headphones sliding off, he sniffled and wiped at his eyes.

Seeing her breathing easy and whole in front of him again — the woman who, after her core had been destroyed, had essentially been handed a terminal diagnosis — seemed to have his emotions running over.

"Ha! Built like a mountain, cries like a baby."

Choi Juran laughed, hearty, and patted Kang San's broad back — rough but fond — the way you would to soothe a crying child.

Over by the window, Cheon Sarang was counting the clouds outside with an unfocused gaze.

Into that peaceful scene, Seo Jihyeok walked in carrying a stack of papers.

"Reporting in."

He pushed his glasses up and addressed Han Jewoon.

"The A-rank Gate on the Honam Plain has vanished without a trace. The Bureau picked up the strange mana pulse late and came charging in, but..."

"But?"

"The door was already closed by then, and the whole thing had been logged as an 'official clear' by Bawi Guild. No evidence, no leverage. They seemed a bit suspicious, but in the end they packed up and left."

"Heh! Of course!"

Kang San cut in, waving the paring knife around in the air.

"How fast did we close it up! No way they even caught the scent!"

Han Jewoon nodded, satisfied, and leaned against the windowsill.

"Good. That's a relief."

He was quiet for a moment, then jerked his chin toward the room next to the infirmary and asked, easy.

"So — how's the Director doing?"

At the question, Seo Jihyeok's expression darkened, visibly.

"For now, we've got him in the healing tank in the ICU, but..."

"But?"

"He isn't waking up. Vitals are normal, but consciousness won't come back. Seems the mental shock was severe."

Seo Jihyeok pressed his temples like he had a headache.

"And... the kids over there haven't stopped calling either. Asking when on earth the Director's going to wake up, whether something's gone wrong..."

Bzzt — bzzt—.

He'd barely finished when the device inside his coat started buzzing hard.

Seo Jihyeok checked the screen and let out a sigh deep enough to sink the floor.

"Haah... we talked thirty minutes ago..."

He picked up the buzzing phone and slipped out of the infirmary.

Tak. The moment the door shut, a heavy silence dropped over the bustling infirmary.

That was when Cheon Sarang, who'd been staring out the window, opened her mouth in a low, ghostly voice.

"Maybe... his brain is refusing to wake up right now."

"...What?"

"He wasn't just hurt. He saw it with his own eyes, clear as anything... his own arm coming off his body — just like that."

She wrapped her hands around her own perfectly intact right arm, gaze dreamy, and shivered — as if she were feeling that pain in his place.

"If he opens his eyes... that horrific memory, and the pain of the severed spot burning like it's on fire — that's what's waiting. So..."

Cheon Sarang stared into empty air and whispered.

"He doesn't want to come back to reality. He's run away into a dream where nothing hurts."

At her quiet murmur, the air in the infirmary settled, heavy as lead.

"Haah..."

Choi Juran set the piece of apple she'd been eating back down on the plate and let out a deep sigh.

"However I look at it, this was too much to take from him."

She stroked her now-mended chest with a bitter look.

"My heart's just heavy, honestly... I owe that man such a huge debt..."

At those self-reproaching words, Han Jewoon closed his eyes for a moment and rewound the past few days in his head.

["I know a way to save Hunter Choi Juran."]

Only days ago, the confident, arrogant face that had been briefing the operation without a shred of doubt.

But that memory was, in the next moment, painted over in a brutal red.

The instant the monster's forepaw had come down, the stupid, reckless sight of him from behind — pulling the child in and giving up his arm in the child's place without a moment's hesitation.

The face gone pale as a sheet from too much blood loss. The bloodless, colorless lips trembling faintly.

And above everything, the kids clinging to him as he was carried out drenched in blood, wailing like the world had ended.

...

Han Jewoon crossed his arms and opened his mouth, face hard.

"That part... the guild will make sure he's properly compensated."

He made the declaration, firm.

"Contract or not, there's no denying he took a fatal wound helping us. Medical costs, compensation, whatever the guy wants — I intend to give it to him."

"Man... but honestly, isn't it a miracle in itself that a non-Awakened held his own in that hellhole of a dungeon?"

Kang San shook his head, tongue clicking in disbelief.

"That thing at the end... force-fed mana until it was practically an S-rank monster. Just the killing intent alone should have had a normal person foaming at the mouth or going into cardiac arrest. And he took it bare."

Kang San was genuinely awed.

Standing his ground to protect the kids, not even blinking, inside a killing intent vicious enough to buckle an Awakened's knees. That kind of nerve couldn't be explained as guts alone.

Tak.

"And on top of that..."

Seo Jihyeok, back from his call, picked up in a heavy, low voice.

"At the time we were too caught up to think about it, but... the more I turn it over, the stranger it gets."

He pushed his glasses up and made a sharp point.

"A method for repairing a shattered core. How on earth did he know that?"

"...!"

"Repairing a core is something even the Bureau — which has every scrap of information in the country locked down — has concluded is impossible. And Korea's number-one guild, us, certainly didn't know either."

Seo Jihyeok stared, eyes complicated, at the door marked ICU.

"But he was certain. That it could be fixed by inducing a Gate breach."

Seo Jihyeok's head was tangling up with it.

Chae Junhyeok, the layabout — he'd been hearing about this man for years.

An incompetent silver-spoon son who trusted his father's name and threw his weight around.

But the man now was a completely different creature from the one in those old stories.

He's holding intel nobody else has, and he's raising kids with S-rank-tier potential as soldiers.

He'd been shocked once before, when Kim Sihyeok's overload had been suppressed at the institute — but this time it had settled into certainty.

That man was no longer the pathetic layabout he'd once known.

He was someone playing a board neither the Bureau nor Bawi Guild could see — a person to watch.

"Guild Master. We need to be wary of Director Chae Junhyeok."

Seo Jihyeok's eyes cooled.

"He may have helped us this time, but at the end of the day he's Chae Ganghyeon's son. By bone and blood he's the director of an institute under the Bureau. That blade could turn on us any day."

The air in the infirmary settled heavy again.

That was when—

"Well. Do we actually have to make him an enemy?"

Han Jewoon smirked, chin propped on his hand.

"What do you mean, Guild Master! Of course we need to prepare! He's holding intel from god knows where, and he's hiding a fighting force close to S-rank. If he ever turns on us or gets in our way—"

"So don't turn him into an enemy."

Han Jewoon cut him off, casual, and gave a flick of the fingers.

"We pull him onto our side, don't we? Airtight."

"But—"

Han Jewoon's eyes deepened.

He stared into empty air and turned the man he'd been observing these past few days — Chae Junhyeok — over in his head.

"That kid's obviously got a lot he's hiding. Talks a big game about ambition and all that, but..."

He let out a small snort of a laugh.

"I don't know... to me he looks less like a predator, more like a hedgehog with its spines up."

"A hedgehog?"

"Yeah. Something's got him scared out of his mind. So he's throwing the spines up harder and putting on the act. You force a shell like that open, they only crawl deeper in."

An S-rank Hunter's instincts.

They were sharp not only for monsters, but for reading the essence of a human being too.

Han Jewoon had already caught, on instinct, that behind the mask Chae Junhyeok wore of ambition, something more desperate and fragile was hidden.

"So don't go digging. Don't turn on him either. Watching from the side is enough."

"But Guild Master..."

"Whatever else you say, he handed us a miracle. That much is a fact, isn't it?"

Han Jewoon got up from his seat and clapped Seo Jihyeok's shoulder.

"That's all we need to remember. A benefactor gets treated properly. And an enemy—"

"Gets stomped into powder, extra-thoroughly! That right?"

"Bingo."

Han Jewoon chuckled and rubbed Kang San's head.

"You've learned well. That's Bawi's way."

"Haah... I don't know, Guild Master."

Seo Jihyeok pulled off his glasses to clean them, and sighed deep.

For someone who ran on logic and data, this kind of gut call from the Guild Master was always a headache.

"Yeah, yeah. Do it your way. Keep doubting, keep guarding. That's your job, isn't it?"

"..."

"But Jihyeok. You know it too, right? My gut."

He tapped his own chest.

"It hits pretty often. And this time too, I've got a feeling. He's not a bad guy."

"..."

At that, Seo Jihyeok closed his mouth.

He couldn't argue.

Before Han Jewoon had become Guild Master, Bawi Guild had been ranked third. Half the reason he'd hauled it up to first was that uncanny, beast-instinct read of his.

"All right, I'm off. Got a mountain of paperwork waiting for signatures."

Han Jewoon stretched and turned around.

"Sarang."

"Yes...?"

Cheon Sarang, who'd been vacantly counting clouds, turned her head, slow.

"The moment that Director opens his eyes, call me. Don't sit on it, first thing."

"Got it, Guild Master."

"Right. Thanks."

Han Jewoon flicked a hand, casual, and walked out of the infirmary.

Along his retreating back trailed both the quiet that comes after a storm and a strange sense of anticipation — the feeling of a new incident coming.

Meanwhile, the Nest Research Institute.

The place was, in a word, a war zone.

"Chief! Are we doing the second public evaluation? The Director isn't even here!"

"More importantly, why on earth did Guild Master Han Jewoon come here? Are we signing an agreement with them or something? What is the Director saying?"

"Where in the world has the Director gone! It's been a week now with no contact — shouldn't we be filing a missing person's report by this point!"

The corridor outside the head researcher's office was jammed with about thirty researchers.

"Aaaargh! Enough! Please! You're going to make my ears fall off!"

Lee Jinwoo clutched his head in both hands and shrieked. He was at his wit's end.

The Director had been gone a full week.

Suddenly announcing he had "important business," he'd disappeared at the crack of dawn — with all six kids in tow.

And the next day, the institute's front gate had turned upside down.

Because the person bringing the kids back wasn't the Director. It was Korea's number-one-ranked Sword Emperor, Han Jewoon.

["Hey, it's me. Open up. Dropping the kids off."]

That one line had leveled not just the guard post but the entire institute the moment the news spread.

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