The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

"...Huh?"

Park Wonjin's pupils shook violently, like the ground had quaked.

A mere test subject, and she knew the institute's administrative structure and who was in charge of the project?

Back then it hadn't been like now, where she could talk freely with the other researchers.

It had been a time when she was thoroughly isolated and subjected to nothing but experiments — so how in the world could she have known?

At the insight of a child sharper than he'd expected, Park Wonjin felt a chill race up his spine.

"Th-that's right, you're not wrong. On paper, I was the one in charge. But... even then, the real power was in the Director's hands. Every order was pulled from behind the scenes by him. I was nothing but a puppet."

He spat out the clumsy excuse and stole a glance at Sea-ah's reaction.

Sea-ah stared at the floor for a moment, then murmured quietly, her expression unreadable.

"...The Director gave the orders, huh..."

Park Wonjin read that mutter as wavering. Now was the time. The moment to drive the wedge in.

"That's right... it's no wonder you doubt me. What I've shown you all this time has been nowhere near enough to earn your trust... hnk."

Feigning a swell of emotion, he wiped at the tip of his nose and slowly slid a hand into his coat.

"You'll find it hard to believe right now... but if you see this, you'll understand how I really feel."

What Park Wonjin drew out was the trump card he'd prepared.

He'd made Lee Sea-ah his number-one target from the start not simply because she'd fallen out with the Director.

It was a can't-lose play, made possible precisely because this thing was in his hands.

"This is..."

What he held out was a single very old photograph, its corners worn and its colors faded.

The setting in the photo was the institute of years past.

Several young researchers, laughing brightly.

Among them stood a youthful-faced Park Wonjin, and beside him was Chae Ganghyeon, grinning wide with an arm wrapped around his wife's shoulder.

And then another young couple, standing side by side next to them, caught Sea-ah's eye.

"These... these people are...!"

Sea-ah recognized those faces, far younger than in her memory, and her eyes shook violently.

Park Wonjin didn't miss that split second of agitation.

That's right... a face you know, isn't it?

He barely managed to keep the corner of his mouth from twitching up.

Sea-ah had been dragged into this institute at around eight years old.

Not some newborn babe in arms — old enough that she couldn't help but remember her parents' faces clearly.

"Mom... Dad — how are they here...!"

The child, colder-headed than any adult, let confusion show for the first time and stumbled over her words. This was the moment.

"Uuhk...!"

Park Wonjin buried his face in both hands, as if trying to pass off the laugh bubbling up as tears.

"Sea-ah. The truth is, you're the daughter of a precious colleague of mine."

"...!"

"Your parents... were researchers at this very institute."

Sea-ah's face went pale.

"At this institute... researchers? My mom and dad...?"

She'd vaguely known her parents had been researchers.

But of all places, that it had been here.

This horrific hell that had locked her up and experimented on her had been her parents' workplace?

Park Wonjin didn't miss the opening as Sea-ah's eyes churned violently with confusion.

"I... I only learned the truth much later myself! The moment I found out, you have no idea how hard I ran, every which way, trying to get you out somehow. But...!"

As if he couldn't go on, he pounded his chest with a fist and choked out a sob.

"Full control over the experiments had already passed into the Director's grip by then. Because I had no power... I couldn't stop those horrific experiments. I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."

But Park Wonjin's odious wailing never reached Sea-ah's ears.

As if every sound in the world had been shut out.

Sea-ah's eyes were nailed, in anguish, not to Park Wonjin but to the single old photograph he'd set down.

"Ah..."

A stifled moan slipped out from between her lips.

The faces she'd traced in her mind hundreds of times, night after night, terrified of forgetting them.

That gentle smile she'd longed to be held by, even just once, even in a dream, was trapped inside a small square frame.

That single frozen photograph began to burst the dam of memory she'd forced shut.

[Sea-ah~ time to get up!]

The gentlest call in all the world.

But that warm phantom sound flipped in an instant into a horrific scream that tore at her eardrums.

[Sea-ah! Run!!]

Her parents' brightly smiling faces twisted with terror.

Behind their backs, a colossal claw that looked ready to blot out the sky glinted, vicious, and then a pitch-black wave surged in, jaws wide, as if to swallow everything.

"Aaagh—!!"

As terror beyond bearing crashed over her mind, Sea-ah clutched her head and crumpled weakly to the floor.

"S-Sea-ah? What's wrong?"

Park Wonjin flinched and stumbled back at the violent fit he hadn't seen coming.

But he soon hid his flustered look and thrust out a hand in a hurry — as if to soothe the child, or perhaps to shut that grating scream up.

"There, there... calm down. It's all right."

Just as his hand was about to touch Sea-ah's trembling shoulder.

Wuung—!

A clear, solid film of light shot up around Sea-ah's body in an instant.

"Ugh?!"

Park Wonjin's hand was thrown back roughly by an invisible wall.

As if she would let no one near her, allow no comfort of any kind, Sea-ah had sealed herself inside a barrier.

"Hnh... hnh..."

That narrow, safe space, cut off completely from the outside.

Curled up inside it, Sea-ah clutched at her hammering heart and barely managed to drag in breath.

It felt like brackish water was rushing up into her nose.

"Haah... hah..."

Her breath wouldn't come, as if her lungs had shriveled up.

Sea-ah gripped her own forearm tight with trembling hands.

That was when it happened.

Through the sharp pain, a memory she'd forgotten flashed past like a bolt of light.

Last time, when the fake water rising on all sides of the training room had choked her and left her flailing.

The blunt voice that had been tossed her way as her mind went hazy with hyperventilation.

"Your feet aren't wet. Not a bit."

It had been Sihyeok.

The tone had been dry, offhand as ever, but the look in her little brother's eyes as he gazed down at her that day had been anything but.

Along with that voice, vivid afterimages rose one after another before her eyes.

Hayun stamping her feet and choking back tears, and the frightened, pleading eyes of Suho and Hajun.

And... in the middle of that chaos.

The Director, too, pounding like a madman on the transparent barrier that blocked him, calling her name in desperation with the veins standing out on his neck.

Those memories pushed back the cold wave and hauled Sea-ah's consciousness up into reality.

Right, this place... isn't underwater.

Sea-ah stretched a trembling hand down and gripped the top of her own foot tight. There was no slick, clinging feel of water.

Instead, only the soft, dry feel of a sock reached her fingertips, clear and distinct.

...Not wet.

That small but unmistakable dry sensation was what finally steadied her.

Sea-ah repeated it inwardly like an incantation and forced her breathing into rhythm with the wildly racing beat of her heart.

"Hoo... hoo..."

She swallowed the terror on the inhale and breathed the memory out on the exhale.

Before long the trembling stopped, and Sea-ah's eyes settled cold once more.

Slllide.

As the barrier vanished, Park Wonjin couldn't hide his flustered look and stammered.

"Th-there... feeling a bit calmer now? What a relief."

Park Wonjin wiped away his cold sweat and let out a sigh of relief.

Not because the child had calmed down, but out of relief that his plan hadn't fallen apart.

Scared me half to death. Thought she'd flipped out and gone into overload for a second there.

He steadied his rattled nerves and put on a worried face.

Sea-ah scrubbed roughly at her wet eyes with the back of her hand, then slowly raised her head and looked Park Wonjin dead in the eye.

It was a gaze far too calm and cool to believe it belonged to a child who'd been thrashing in a fit moments ago.

"So..."

A dry voice came from Sea-ah's mouth.

"You're saying you were my mom and dad's friend?"

"Yes! We were very close. Your parents and I were the best of—"

Thinking the child had finally let her guard down, Park Wonjin brightened and nodded with exaggerated eagerness.

"So what's the real reason you came to me?"

At the child's manner — cutting him off, pressing him — Park Wonjin's eyes narrowed.

"Don't you want... to take revenge on the Director?"

"..."

"The Director knew your parents were researchers too. No — he probably knew everything from the very start."

Park Wonjin didn't miss the faint stiffening of Sea-ah's expression, and drove the wedge home.

"And yet he brazenly hid it and used you as a test subject. Not only did he fail to take a researcher's child in, he put you on the operating table... doesn't that make you angry?"

"..."

When Sea-ah stayed silent, Park Wonjin thrust the photo he was holding at her again.

"That's right! Look at the photo here. The man beside your parents is Chae Ganghyeon — the current Bureau Chief. The Director's father. They couldn't possibly not have known."

"..."

After a moment, Sea-ah broke the silence and spoke.

"So... how exactly are you planning to get revenge?"

Hooked.

He leaned in toward Sea-ah and let a sinister smile slide out, the way a snake flicks its tongue.

"My plan is..."

He deliberately corrected himself, an utterly wicked glint flashing in his eyes.

"No — our plan, is..."

"Bwahahaha!"

Once he'd parted ways with Lee Sea-ah and gone back to being Deputy Director, Park Wonjin let the laughter he'd been holding in burst freely out.

"Winning over a bunch of brats really is a piece of cake."

Snickering, he wiped at the eyes that had been squeezing out tears just moments ago.

A single old photograph and some clumsy heartstring-tugging.

That alone had been enough to bring that stuck-up little girl over like a docile lamb.

"No matter how clever she acts, in the end she's just a brat still wet behind the ears. Talk about her parents a little and she goes to pieces."

Park Wonjin all but hummed a tune under his breath.

Now... just three days left until the evaluation.

Last time, with Kim Sihyeok, he'd come to grief over the Director's unforeseen intervention — but this time was different.

He'd made the most important card, the test subject itself, his own.

Get Lee Sea-ah in hand and wrecking this evaluation is a piece of cake.

But the picture Park Wonjin was painting wasn't merely a matter of wrecking the evaluation.

It was something far more horrific, reeking of blood.

A little dip in the numbers wasn't going to shake the Director's standing as it was now.

But...

"What if a test subject got badly hurt during the experiment? Or... died outright?"

Park Wonjin pulled a cigarette from his coat and jammed it roughly between his lips.

Click.

Along with a crisp scrape, the lighter's red flame flared up in the dark.

Park Wonjin's face, lit by that glow, was twisted like a demon's.

"The core test subject of a project the Bureau Chief took special care over from the very beginning turns up dead. This isn't the kind of thing that ends with a bad score."

Negligent oversight, reckless disregard for safety, and the blame for the project's failure.

Bureau Chief's son or not, there'd be no walking free of the blame for getting a test subject killed.

Park Wonjin blew a puff of smoke into the air and smiled a sinister smile, as if he'd already won.

Three days later.

Inside the institute, a taut tension hung in the air from early morning.

The staff moved briskly but held their breath, careful even with their footsteps.

Grrrm—

Along with a hefty engine sound, a long, jet-black limousine glided to a stop at the institute's front gate.

Soon the driver opened the rear door, and a man stepped out, well-polished shoes coming down onto the ground.

It was Chae Ganghyeon, Chief of the Republic of Korea's Awakened Management Bureau.

"...!"

He'd done nothing but step out of the car, and yet the air around them sank heavy in an instant.

An elderly gentleman, his graying hair neatly swept back.

His handsome face was the spitting image of the Director's, but the grain of it was plainly different.

If the son's defining note was flashy insolence, the father was a weighty mountain shaped by the years.

For all that they shared the same blood, the overwhelming pressure he gave off was on another level entirely.

Park Wonjin hastily bent at the waist to ninety degrees.

"You've arrived, Bureau Chief! Thank you for making the long trip!"

The Bureau Chief gave Park Wonjin a faint smile.

"Yes, Deputy Director. Everything all right around here?"

The voice was low and gentle, but Park Wonjin's heart dropped.

The dressing-down from their last call still rang sharp in his ears.

He couldn't tell whether that smile of the Bureau Chief's was real goodwill or the ease of a beast with its prey laid out before it.

The corners of Park Wonjin's mouth trembled, twitching as if in spasm.

He tried to smile, but his muscles had stiffened up on their own, and a grotesque grin was what came out.

"Ha, haha... yes! Of course. I've made every possible preparation to receive you, Bureau Chief."

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!