The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

Chiiiiik—.

A huge hologram screen was projected into the air.

[Aigo, Junhyeok! So you're finally in!]

Filling the screen was the face of Chae Ganghyeon, Chief of the Korean Awakened Management Bureau.

"...That guy's the Bureau Chief?"

"He looks... way friendlier than I thought?"

The kids blinked, wide-eyed.

The Director's father, and the man standing at the very top of Korea's Hunter world.

This was the first time the kids had ever laid eyes on the real Chae Ganghyeon.

The rumors that had drifted, hushed, past the cold laboratory walls.

They'd heard those stories until their ears were sore.

But the scene in front of them right now was nothing like the rumors.

[Where in the world have you been that we couldn't even reach you! Today was the second evaluation and you weren't here — do you have any idea how worried this father was?]

Even at that worried tone, the Director didn't so much as blink — he let out a wide yawn.

"Ah, the evaluation? Sorry, sorry. Totally slipped my mind."

He shifted his weight onto one hip and answered, careless.

"Was out playing, lost track of the days. Dad handled it just fine, right?"

[...Well, sure, you go out and play and things slip your mind. So tell me, then. Where on earth have you been for a whole week, doing what?]

The kids had, of course, expected him to tell his father about his injury and be met with warm consolation.

That was what a family looked like, in every storybook they'd ever read.

But the Director's reaction was nothing like what the kids had expected.

"Ah, come on! Why are you grilling me about that?"

The Director's face crumpled instantly.

"Am I a kid or something? A guy can go out and play — why are you always keeping tabs on me? It's suffocating!"

[Keeping tabs?! The government's been up to something odd lately... I only asked in case something had happened!]

"Oh my god..."

Ari clapped a hand over her mouth, appalled.

"Isn't that... isn't that just too much? He's asking because he's worried like that... and he's yelling at him..."

"..."

The kids couldn't bring themselves to speak ill of the Director, so they just watched each other's expressions and held their tongues.

The back-and-forth on the screen went on for a while.

Chae Junhyeok snapped like a sulky teenager, and Chae Ganghyeon sighed, pained, and made a show of backing down each time.

Anyone watching would have read it as a wayward son and his patient, doting father.

Then—

[Junhyeok.]

Chae Ganghyeon's voice on the screen softened, subtle.

[Come to think of it, I hear you've been taking the children out fairly often lately. Sounds like you've gotten quite close.]

An easy tone, as if he were just letting it pass through.

[How about you bring the kids by the Bureau sometime soon? I'd like to buy them a meal.]

"...!"

At that proposal, the kids hiding in the shadow went wide-eyed.

Can we — can we get to see the outside?

He said he'd buy us food! He must be a good person!

Right as their hopes were swelling.

"...Ha! A meal, my ass."

The Director combed a hand through his hair, exasperated and irritated.

"You forget? Those brats are test subjects. I'm dead busy training them into something strong — no time for leisurely field trips. Every minute counts if I'm going to see results."

The Director rough-handled his own right shoulder and growled.

"Stop trying to lay a hand on them. They're my tools and my toys."

"...!"

The eyes of the kids hiding in the shadow shimmered, wounded.

[This kid... all right. Then let's set a new date for the evaluation. Take good care of your toys, and look after yourself.]

Click.

The call cut off and the hologram vanished.

Heavy silence settled over the room again.

"Haah......"

The Director dropped the device onto the desk like he was throwing it and let out a sigh deep enough to sink the earth.

For a moment he braced himself against the desk, dizzy, then flung the door open — as if something were chasing him — and stalked out of the office.

Bang.

The footsteps faded past the closed door. What remained was cold silence.

Wuuung—.

The shadow-space Sihyeok had been holding hit its limit.

Mana-drained, it was forced open, and in the middle of the empty office the seven children were flung out of the shadow.

But no one could open their mouth.

"..."

The strength drained out of Suho's hand.

Splat.

The fresh-cream cake he'd begged a researcher to specially source dropped to the floor and mashed flat.

The chocolate lettering — [Happy Birthday] — shattered horrifically, past all recognition.

Next to it sat the treasure box the kids had spent all night agonizing over.

Sparkling jewels, a grubby teddy bear, a ribbon-tied dumbbell.

The kids' fluttering, heartfelt gifts had, in an instant, become cold trash.

"He... he saw us..."

Hayun's lips quivered.

"Like... like that?"

"Tools... he said. Just toys..."

The hand that had ruffled their hair with such warmth. The care with which he'd wrapped them in expensive artifacts, telling them not to get hurt. And even the sacrifice, when he'd taken the wound in their place.

Had all of it just been maintenance — keeping a set of expensive toys from breaking?

"Hnk... waaaah!"

The twins finally collapsed to the floor and broke into wretched sobs.

"Liar... bad person... waah!"

Suho just stared, blank, down at the mashed cake, and Sihyeok kept his head bowed, fists shaking.

"..."

Lee Sea-ah bit down on her lip hard enough to draw blood.

She'd trusted him. No — she'd wanted to trust him. She'd fooled herself into thinking he was the first adult in her life she could open her heart to.

That she'd fallen for an act like that and planted false hope in her younger siblings made her sick with self-loathing.

"Ha..."

Cha Yul let out a hollow laugh.

Betrayal and rage had his whole body shaking like a leaf.

"I knew it."

Cha Yul grit his teeth and spat the words out.

"They're all the same trash... that guy too. He was just another piece of garbage trying to use us."

The fireworks and balloons they'd prepared for the celebration lay pathetic and scattered at the kids' feet.

"Fuck."

Rough profanity I never usually let past my lips came out on its own.

The Chae Ganghyeon of the original novel had come after Cha Yul once he was grown — but during the kid's time in the institute, he hadn't paid him much attention.

The moment that man asked after the kids, my heart dropped straight through the floor.

The thought that, because of me, he might turn his attention on them.

"Ngh!"

The instant I let the tension go, pain hit my right shoulder like a lightning strike.

I staggered and leaned back against the cold wall.

Cold sweat poured down like rain.

Cheon Sarang's languid voice looped in my ears like tinnitus.

[The mana lodged deep in the wound... is a very stubborn little thing...]

She had stroked my shoulder with unfocused eyes and murmured.

[When you're stressed, or when your body is weak... it won't forget to come pay you a visit...]

Nailed it, that woman.

It hurt like hell.

Clutching my throbbing shoulder, I staggered out into the garden.

I dropped onto a bench and looked up at the night sky. The cold air stabbed at my lungs.

I have to keep my distance.

The more I loved the kids, the more danger they'd be in.

Nowhere in the original novel was there a scene explicitly showing Chae Ganghyeon getting blood on his own hands.

But if you looked closely at the incidents he was almost certainly behind, it was obvious.

He was a monster who'd chew human decency up and swallow it if it bought him efficiency.

To him, Awakened weren't people. Just resources, just parts.

"And that incident, on top of everything else..."

The single worst catastrophe in the original — the one that had blown the comment section to pieces.

[Author, are you serious? What kind of plot direction is—]

[Wow... Chae Ganghyeon's a real demon of a bastard. No blood, no tears in that guy?]

[I'm done. Too disgusting to keep reading.]

Thousands of comments dripping with rage, star ratings plummeting into the abyss — that horrific incident.

The tragedy that had shoved Cha Yul into a pit of despair he couldn't crawl out of, and became the trigger for his Second Awakening — the memory of it flashed through my head.

Never... never let it happen.

If a man who could pull off something that horrific without so much as blinking figured out that I held any particular affection for these kids?

My vision went dizzy for a moment, and a wave of light-headedness hit.

Just picturing the smallest scratch on those tiny bodies made my heart drop and I couldn't even breathe.

...Better the kids hate me.

Even if they came to despise me — if it meant getting them out of Chae Ganghyeon's line of sight, I could gladly become the worst man in the world.

I bit down on my lip and swallowed the metallic tang of blood.

The moment I made that vow, the pain in my shoulder bared its teeth again, as if mocking me.

As if to remind me exactly how bitter my resolve was.

The next morning.

The moment I opened my eyes, the sharp buzz of the intercom was hammering at my eardrums.

"Director! It's the security team! We need you at the front gate right away!"

I got there to find the front gate walled off by a fortress of delivery boxes. Vehicles couldn't get in.

"What... is all this?"

"Um... D-Director."

The security team leader shuffled up, gauging my mood.

Cold sweat was pouring off his forehead like rain.

"Um... Happy birthday, sir...!"

"...What?"

I blinked at the out-of-nowhere greeting.

Birthday? Chae Junhyeok's?

That was completely off the map.

Well, of course — no way the original novel would bother mentioning some layabout villain's birthday.

When I didn't say anything, the team leader mistook my silence for anger and went ashen.

"These are all... birthday gifts addressed to you, sir, but..."

"And?"

"Uh... institute intake regulations require checks for explosives or listening devices... so unfortunately..."

The security team leader squeezed his eyes shut and confessed.

"We opened every single one to inspect the contents... I-I'm sorry! I deserve to die!"

His shoulders were hunched, braced for me to erupt at any second.

Fair enough — they'd torn the wrapping off every expensive gift under the pretext of checking contents. The original Chae Junhyeok would have grabbed the leader by the collar on the spot.

But right now I didn't have the energy to keep the act up.

Between chewing over Chae Ganghyeon and the original novel all night, I hadn't slept a wink. My body felt like a waterlogged sponge and my head was splitting.

"Doesn't matter. You were following procedure."

"...What?"

"Move it all to my office."

"O-Of course!"

The security team leader blanked out at my unexpected leniency, then bowed his head, moved.

A little later.

"Whew..."

The staff hauled it all over, and my office was packed to the point you couldn't set a foot down.

I picked my way through the already-opened boxes and checked the contents.

Every one of them was some object giving off odd mana.

I'd been buying up artifacts at auction lately, no questions asked — clearly the word had gotten around.

"How is there this much..."

Eight out of ten gifts were artifacts.

But no matter how deep their pockets, no one was going to burn tens of millions of won on Chae Junhyeok — Chae Ganghyeon he was not — so most of them were middling C-ranks or D-ranks that were basically decorative.

And tucked in among that pile of junk were letters absolutely dripping with sycophancy.

[We heard the Director has developed quite the connoisseur's eye for artifacts of late, and went to great lengths to procure this piece.]

[And should you find a moment, do please extend my humble regards to the esteemed Chief Chae Ganghyeon...]

Every single one of them running the exact same routine, not a syllable off.

I skimmed through the soulless flattery and flicked the letters aside.

Then, my fingertips caught on one box that felt different from the rest.

I tore the wrapping open, and a fistful of hair, red as fresh blood, tumbled out.

"...The hell is this?"

The enclosed letter was even worse.

[Benefactor, I heard word that some crazy dog of a bastard had the nerve to bite you.

My skill's still lacking, so this time all I could manage was to bring you his hair...

But next time I'll cut you his throat, pretty as anything.

Until we meet again, please stay well.]

What kind of unhinged nonsense was this.

Crazy dog? Red hair?

Red hair, huh...

Something about it tugged at me, but no particular face came to mind.

"Sent to the wrong address, I guess."

Skin crawling, I shoved the box off into a corner.

The next thing I picked up was an envelope stamped with the Bawi Guild seal.

Unlike the other gifts, there was no hefty box — just a single letter.

[Happy birthday.

Present's at the guild. Come pick it up.

I sent you an invitation and everything — don't tell me you're not coming?]

Just reading the handwriting, I could practically see Han Jewoon's smug face swimming in front of me.

Guess I'll have to swing by Bawi Guild too.

I tossed the letter onto the desk and got to my feet.

Time to go see the kids.

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