The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

His flushed face was lit up with excitement and awe, like a man who'd just made the discovery of the century.

"You're going to keel over. Calm down and get to the point. What is it."

I hid my curiosity and answered curtly as he stood there panting.

"L-look at this data!"

I all but snatched the pad he was holding out.

The numbers on the screen were unbelievable.

Once again, I'd pulled an all-nighter.

Using the data Lee Jinwoo had brought me, I spent the night cross-checking it against what I remembered from the original and refining my plan.

By the time I'd finished drafting dozens of pages of reports and looked up, dawn was breaking outside the window.

I pulled one of these the night before my college entrance exam... never thought I'd be doing it again.

But this wasn't just an exam.

This was material that might decide the direction of the institute — no, the future of the children.

The Bureau Chief is going to show up here any day now.

No way Park Wonjin would let a juicy opportunity like my accident slip past him. He'd made his threat clear at our last meeting: if nothing meaningful came of it, he'd report to the Bureau Chief.

His face floated up in my mind.

No telling when he'll show up. Everything has to be airtight before he does.

I was about to run through the material one last time when my handset went off.

Lee Jinwoo.

"Something else to report—"

Before I could finish, a frantic voice burst out on the other end.

—S-s-sir! B-Bu... Bureau Chief! The Bureau Chief is here!

"...What?"

For a moment my brain shut down completely.

Bureau Chief — Chae Ganghyeon?

Chae Junhyeok's father — the final villain of the novel — and I were meeting already?

My heart plummeted to my feet.

Even Park Wonjin, a mere mid-boss, was a monster who killed people without blinking.

I remembered the red blood that had burst out at the sound of that gunshot — the horrific terror that had gripped my whole body then.

For days and nights after, the researcher's body had haunted my dreams, and I hadn't been able to sleep properly.

And now... the man even Park Wonjin trembled in front of.

The final boss of this novel... was here to see me?

The blood in my veins seemed to run cold.

Whatever Lee Jinwoo was shouting on the other end sounded muffled and distant, like I was hearing it underwater.

—He must have heard about yesterday...! He's, he's waiting in the Director's office right now!

Cold sweat trickled down my spine.

...Way too soon.

My mind went blank.

To keep myself from staggering, I threw out a hand and braced it against the desk.

Something cold and solid met my fingertips.

My eyes dropped automatically.

It was the pad with the children's data — the material I'd spent all night pulling together.

Cha Yul, Lee Sea-ah, Kim Sihyeok...

Strangely, the moment I took those names in, the cold terror clawing at my feet melted away.

In its place, the small faces of the children who'd been slowly starting to open up to me rose in front of me.

Hurt but stronger than anyone.

Abandoned by the world, and yet coming to see one another as family.

And... the one and only person who had both the power and the will to protect them.

...It's me. Nobody else.

Right. For those kids, I could do anything.

Final boss, his grandfather — it didn't matter who showed up.

This was no time to be shaking with fear.

I gripped the reports I'd prepared all night and walked out the door without hesitating.

At the door of the Director's office, I could faintly hear cheerful laughter.

Laughter? He's not alone?

Hiding my confusion, I knocked and slowly opened the door. The first thing to greet me was the deep aroma of coffee.

Two men were seated on the top-shelf sofa in the office.

One was Park Wonjin.

He was leaning deeply forward, listening intently to the man across from him.

Across from him, settled comfortably back into the sofa, sat a man whose back was all I could see.

Park Wonjin saw the door open and smiled at me as if he'd been waiting for it.

"Ah, Director. You're here."

At Park Wonjin's words, as though they were his cue, the man sitting across from him — the one I'd only seen from behind — sprang to his feet.

The moment he turned to face me, I stopped breathing.

He looked astonishingly like the Chae Junhyeok I saw in the mirror every day.

The graying hair, the lines the years had etched around his eyes — take those away, and I'd have believed you if you'd told me he was a middle-aged Chae Junhyeok.

But the aura coming off him was something else entirely.

He was a head taller than me, with solid shoulders. The sheer pressure radiating from that huge frame was suffocating.

...Don't flinch.

I fought desperately to keep from being crushed under the aura of the man in front of me.

Just as I was swallowing dryly, bracing for whatever he might say—

"Junhyeok!!!"

Arms flung wide, he strode straight at me.

The reaction was so unexpected I couldn't even move; I froze in place.

Chae Ganghyeon grabbed me by the shoulders and began fussing over every inch of me.

Then he clapped me hard on the back.

"You brat! I have to hear from other people that you've been hurt?!"

...What?

For a moment I doubted who this man in front of me was.

In the novel I'd read, Chae Ganghyeon had unquestionably been the final villain.

I'd only made it to the middle of the story, so I never actually saw him face off with Cha Yul directly — but as the mastermind behind countless events, his name came up constantly.

The origin of every tragedy. The apex of every evil.

Naturally, I'd assumed he'd be an ice-blooded monster without an ounce of tears or pity.

But... what on earth was this man in front of me, fussing over me like a mother hen?

Ignoring my confusion entirely, Chae Ganghyeon grabbed my shoulders, turned me one way and then the other, and unleashed a torrent of nagging.

"If your mother in heaven knew about this, she'd faint on the spot! I put you in a comfortable position so you could take it easy, and you go and dive headfirst into trouble?!"

His voice rang in my ears.

It took me insisting I was fine about ten times over before he finally settled down.

If I were the Chae Junhyeok from the original... I'd have been a brat to my father too.

Steeling myself, I made my voice deliberately more petulant.

"Ugh, I'm fine, I said."

I added curtly:

"You want me to go crying to Dad over a scratch like this? Embarrassing. I'm not a kid anymore."

At my snappish tone, he paused a moment and stared at me — then boomed back even louder.

"You brat! Doesn't matter how old you get, the fact that I made you doesn't change! In my eyes you're a kid — always will be!"

Phew... so he was a hot-tempered brat with his father too, huh.

I was just about to breathe out in relief when Chae Ganghyeon slowly turned his head toward Park Wonjin.

The genial smile he'd worn for his son thinned and, in an instant, was gone.

Not a trace of warmth left in his eyes — cold as they'd gone frozen.

The doting father was gone. In his place stood only the razor-sharp Bureau Chief.

"Deputy Director."

At the sudden drop in his voice, Park Wonjin went a shade paler.

"Care to walk me through exactly how my Junhyeok ended up hurt."

The pressure was overwhelming, but Park Wonjin smoothly composed his face into one of concern and answered.

"Well... the Director has recently expressed a wish to manage the subjects up close, personally. As I understand it, he was in the containment room with the subjects yesterday when the accident occurred."

Park Wonjin slipped in the point he'd been wanting to make.

"Come to think of it, the Director has also halted all of the experiments that had been scheduled. Which of course means we have no meaningful data to speak of."

At that, Chae Ganghyeon's frigid gaze shifted, very slowly, from Park Wonjin to me.

Under the sheer weight of it, my vision swam.

After a taut silence, what burst from his mouth was, astonishingly, a peal of cheerful laughter.

"Bwahahaha!"

Even Park Wonjin, never mind me, stared at him with a bewildered expression.

"My my. Deputy Park, you really don't know our Junhyeok at all."

He looked at me with eyes brimming with warmth.

"I know. Do you have any idea how I raised this boy? He'd never disobey me or bungle the job. If he stopped the experiments, it's because there's some other thinking behind it. Isn't that right?"

I nodded frantically, like a man who'd just survived a firing squad.

And I ran my mind at full speed, refusing to let the opportunity slip.

Last night's data — what Lee Jinwoo had brought me and I'd spent the night pulling together.

"Actually... there's something I wanted to tell you."

I pulled the pad out from inside my coat.

"The truth is, the reason I halted the experiments is that the Deputy Director's approach up till now is absurdly inefficient."

I pulled up last night's data and turned the screen toward the two of them.

"When I deliberately caused that accident yesterday, something interesting happened. The moment I was in danger, my dolls — my subjects, I mean — their energy exploded."

On the screen, a red graph spiked wildly, showing the children's awakening energy surging in the moment of yesterday's accident.

I paused for a beat, looked Chae Ganghyeon dead in the eye, and said in a low voice:

"The whole purpose of this project, at the end of the day..."

I laid down my last card, like a declaration.

"...is the subjects' Second Awakening."

Watching Chae Ganghyeon's warmly smiling eyes flash with a chilling glint, I knew I'd played the right card.

The true purpose of the experiments — the one Cha Yul had barely managed to uncover in the original novel.

I said it as calmly as if I'd known it all along.

"But the Deputy Director's approach has been nothing but trash — a method that only breaks the subjects. Data wrung out through pain is unstable. Useless."

At my cutting critique, a flicker of alarm and anger flashed through Park Wonjin's eyes.

"According to my hypothesis, the key to true awakening... isn't pain. It's bonds. And the data from yesterday's accident is the proof."

I pressed on.

"Going forward, I'm going to build a strong attachment between the subjects and myself, and run a new series of experiments on that basis."

I jabbed a thumb at my own chest and grinned confidently.

"So, Dad. Cut that guy out and hand the whole project over to me. The Second Awakening you've been waiting for — I'll show it to you, and I'll show it to you clearly."

The office went dead silent, as though a bucket of cold water had been thrown over it.

My heart was hammering hard enough to fill my ears.

Then I heard an odd sound.

A muffled, choked-back sort of noise — like someone barely holding back an emotion.

Cautiously, I lifted my head.

Chae Ganghyeon's face was contorted with overwhelming emotion.

"...When did you grow up so much..."

Eyes reddening, Chae Ganghyeon looked at me and spoke in a voice thick with feeling.

"It feels like yesterday you were nothing but a little thing bawling for your daddy... I believed in you. I believed you'd pull yourself together in time and take on your responsibilities. I never doubted it for a second."

He gazed off into the middle distance and murmured, as if remembering something dear.

"Your mother in heaven... she should have seen you like this. If she had, she'd be crying and saying, that's my boy."

"Ha, ha..."

A strained laugh escaped Park Wonjin. He forced his expression into shape and said to me:

"Truly the Director. Finding the flaw in the existing approach and discovering a new method to fix it... So even the kindness you've been showing the subjects was part of a much larger plan..."

I saw no reason to correct his misunderstanding.

Chae Ganghyeon strode over and pulled me into a hug tight enough to crack ribs.

Only when I could barely breathe did he release me, and, still radiating emotion, he turned back toward Park Wonjin.

His voice was warm, but the order inside it was absolute.

"Deputy Director. You heard him, didn't you?"

"...Yes, Bureau Chief."

"From here on, you'll give our Junhyeok your full and unconditional support. Any subjects he needs — I'll supply as many as it takes."

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