The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

Ignoring the sounds coming from behind him, Park Wonjin bowed low at the Bureau Chief's retreating back.

"Bureau Chief! I— I'll clean this up somehow! Project R — give me the chance this time! I'll get it done, and get it done for certain!"

But Chae Ganghyeon only walked down the corridor in silence, without a word.

As the suffocating stillness dragged on—

Stopped in front of the elevator, the Bureau Chief opened his mouth, low, without so much as turning around.

"The method... I didn't care for it."

"Sir...?"

Chae Ganghyeon turned his head slightly and looked down at Park Wonjin out of the corner of his eye.

Inorganic eyes, stripped clean of feeling.

"But this time you played the virus well enough."

"...!!"

Park Wonjin's pupils shrank.

He knows... he knows everything!

No long-winded interrogation was needed. That one low sentence was enough.

Enough for Park Wonjin to grasp that the Bureau Chief had seen through his scheme, start to finish, like reading it off the palm of his hand.

Like a frog before a snake, his lips went bone-dry — he couldn't manage an excuse, couldn't even manage a groan.

The Bureau Chief looked down at Park Wonjin, frozen stiff as a plaster statue, and added, offhand, as if talking about the weather.

"Well, that Junhyeok did need taking down a peg lately. Planting the right amount of fear in him was good work. Looks like it knocked some sense into him."

But then his gaze sank cold, down below freezing.

"That said, laying hands on the subject directly went too far. It's a problem if the subject breaks."

"B-Bureau Chief... that was..."

"See that you clean up the mess neatly yourself."

Chae Ganghyeon straightened his tie and stepped onto the elevator.

"I'll grant you the authority to do it soon enough."

Ding—

The elevator doors closed and the Bureau Chief was gone.

But even after the doors shut, Park Wonjin couldn't move for a long while, nailed to the spot.

His back was damp, soaked through with cold sweat.

After that day, the air in the institute sank as heavy as lead.

On the surface things seemed to run along peacefully, but underneath, ugly rumors were spreading in secret like a virus.

"Hey, you hear? That subject... word is she won't last the night."

The researcher who'd pulled a coffee from the vending machine lowered his voice.

"Really? I heard they got her treated right away. Still that bad?"

"Don't even. They're pouring potion into her by IV drip and she's in a healing tank, and her vitals are still swinging up and down. It's a miracle she's alive."

"Wow... this is a total disaster..."

The blame turned, naturally, toward Director Chae Junhyeok.

"They're saying this evaluation basically got wrecked by the Director's ego, huh?"

"Don't even. I heard it straight from a researcher who was inside — the design was only ever built to cap at Stage 10. The system threw up a warning too, and he ignored all of it."

"Is he out of his mind? Why go and push the stages up like that for no reason?"

"Isn't it obvious? He wanted to show off a little in front of his dad. That attention-seeking streak of his doesn't just go away."

"Wow... he really is the worst. Shoving a kid into a death trap just to preen?"

Just then one of the new researchers cut in, cautious.

"But... it wasn't on purpose, was it? The Director and the kids have looked like they're on good terms lately..."

At that, a senior researcher scoffed.

"Oh, bless your naive heart. Hey, that's all just for show."

"Right. Just because we feed the lab rats and coo over them, doesn't mean we don't dissect them. In the end they're treated as consumables."

The rumors climbed higher the more time passed.

"Hey, you hear? The Bureau Chief and the Director had a huge fight. They're saying the evaluation's getting held again?"

"Huh? What I heard's a bit different. Word is he's just getting booted from the Director's chair."

"Seriously? Well, no wonder. Think how much money the Bureau Chief poured into this project. His own son goes and blows it all in one shot showing off — of course he'd hit the roof."

"The Director's really in danger this time. Getting thrown out might not be just an empty rumor."

Before, it would have been unthinkable, but now was different.

Toppled authority bred suspicion, and suspicion began gnawing away even at his past glory.

"Honestly... is the Director really a genius for real? The Project R researchers hyped him up so much I just figured he was, but after this business I'm not so sure."

"Still, last evaluation was a smash hit. You've got to give him that."

The other man scoffed and waved him off.

"Hey, you think that came out of the Director's head? The researchers under him set the whole table and he just laid a spoon on it. Obvious."

"True — a good-for-nothing who did nothing but throw tantrums getting worshipped as a genius overnight was pretty weird, huh? Always smelled a little fishy, too."

The rumors swelled fast, as if someone had set out to douse them in oil.

The malicious framing — Chae Junhyeok is a talentless fraud — swallowed the institute up in a flash.

Through all of it, the Director's office door stayed firmly shut.

Watching him vanish right after the evaluation, people sneered as if it settled the matter.

"Look at that. He's got a guilty conscience, so he's hiding."

And in the middle of all this, a decisive notice came down — not just oil poured onto the blazing rumors, but the nail driven home.

Beep—!

Every researcher's personal terminal and the big display board in the lobby blinked red all at once.

The [URGENT] tag stamped at the very top flashed ominously.

[ Personnel Order: Removal from Post and Disciplinary Action, Project R Lead ]

The contents were shockingly brief and cruelly clear.

Subject of Discipline: Nest Research Institute Director, Chae Junhyeok

Grounds for Discipline:

During the Second Public Evaluation, forced an unsafe experiment and violated safety regulations, inflicting serious physical harm on Test Subject (No. 02).

Disposition:

As of 14:00 today, all access privileges and command authority related to Project R held by Director Chae Junhyeok are revoked indefinitely.

Full authority over the project is hereby reassigned to Deputy Director Park Wonjin.

— Awakened Management Bureau Chief, Chae Ganghyeon —

At the bottom of the document, Bureau Chief Chae Ganghyeon's blood-red seal was stamped clear and sharp.

"...Wow."

The researchers gathered in front of the board gaped.

"Privileges revoked... isn't that basically a death sentence?"

With this one notice, every malicious rumor that had been going around hardened from suspicion into settled fact.

Chae Junhyeok was incompetent and arrogant, he'd shot himself in the foot, and in the end even his father had thrown him away.

The balance of power in the institute tilted toward Park Wonjin in an instant.

"Bwahaha!! Bwahahahaha!!"

From the Deputy Director's office — no, the room that was once again, in practice, the Director's office — Park Wonjin's mad laughter burst out.

He tipped his chair back and laughed hard enough to bring the ceiling down.

Zing— zing— zing—!

The terminal on the desk buzzed and flashed without pause.

The senders were, every one of them, researchers who had turned their backs on him when he'd become a man cut loose from his string.

[ Deputy Director... no, Director! I think I'd lost my mind for a moment. My loyalty is to you and you alone! ]

[ These past days must have been hard on you. I always believed. I knew R Team needed you, Deputy Director, after all! ]

[ Deputy Director, are you free this evening? I've gotten hold of some good liquor... ]

The messages on the screen were, every one, servile and repulsive.

But Park Wonjin savored that repulsiveness like a top-shelf wine.

"Sly little bats. Their noses work like a charm, I'll give them that."

He spun the terminal round and round like swirling a wine glass and rewound the past several days in his head.

Honestly... this is a miracle.

However he looked at it, the luck had been almost too good.

He'd been so pressed for time he hadn't even set the board up properly, yet every last cog had slotted into place, so perfectly it didn't seem real.

The idiot Director, who'd taken the bait of his childish provocation and dug his own grave.

The subject badly hurt because of it.

And the public mood and the ugly rumors that had blown in right on cue.

It was as if some invisible hand had laid the board out for him — every last thing had flowed Park Wonjin's way and no other.

"Heaven really is on my side."

Cold-blooded as Bureau Chief Chae Ganghyeon was, even he hadn't foreseen the man casting out his own flesh-and-blood son this harshly.

Behead your own son over one subject nearly breaking?

An ordinary person would have felt dread at that chilling ruthlessness, but Park Wonjin's warped mind twisted even that dread around into something in his own favor.

That's right, this isn't simply about punishing the son.

As if under a spell, he slowly ran his index finger over the Bureau Chief's red seal, stamped vivid on the terminal screen.

The Bureau Chief chose ability over blood. He's finally recognized my true worth — the worth of Park Wonjin.

Park Wonjin, clean forgetting the fact that the Bureau Chief had treated him as a virus, decided the man's intentions meant exactly that, all on his own.

"Hoo..."

He drew a deep breath in.

Even the air filling his lungs to the depths seemed to carry the sweet smell of power.

"This chance... there's no way I'm letting it slip."

He hadn't the faintest intention of ending up as some fill-in flunky, warming a seat while the Director laid low.

"Even if Chae Junhyeok comes crawling back, I'll take hold so completely, right down to the roots, that he won't dare so much as eye my chair."

Without hesitation, Park Wonjin worked the terminal and summoned the three Head Researchers at the heart of Project R.

They were no longer the Director's — they were game pieces set beneath his own feet now.

A moment later the door opened and the three walked in.

Lee Jinwoo came in first.

His face was dark and shadowed, as if he'd just come from a funeral house.

Han Soeun, following behind him, was different.

She was biting down on her lower lip hard enough to draw beads of blood any second, desperately holding back the fury threatening to break loose.

Kang Taemin came in last.

He kept his place in silence, his broad face as blank and immovable as a boulder, the same as always.

Park Wonjin put on the most good-natured smile in the world, as if their savage mood didn't concern him in the slightest.

"Come in, come in. Why are all your faces so stiff?"

"..."

"You've seen the notice, I take it? From here on, full authority over Project R rests with me. I'll be counting on you all."

"...Yes."

"Right, let's cut to the chase and get started. I need to see just what a mess this became while I was away. Brief me."

At his jab, Han Soeun bristled and made to step forward.

But Lee Jinwoo hurriedly blocked her path and shook his head.

"I'll... give the report."

Lee Jinwoo brought the past several months of data up on the screen.

"Director Chae Junhyeok... placed the subjects' emotional stability above all else. Rather than oppressive control, his approach was to grant them autonomy and draw out their potential naturally."

He swallowed hard and watched for Park Wonjin's reaction.

He pressed on desperately, as if this were the last defense that could protect the children.

"Meals went beyond simple nutrition and were tailored to each child's tastes, and four hours of formal daily education plus free time were strictly guaranteed."

The screen changed.

The bleak isolation cells that had been nothing but cold steel and iron bars were gone without a trace; photos of cozy rooms slid past — warm pastel wallpaper, plush beds, and toys set out.

"Sleep, too... the method of forcibly shutting them down with drugs was abolished entirely. Instead, we adjusted the lighting and provided comfort dolls and bedding to ease their minds, guiding the children to fall asleep on their own. And as a result..."

A pleading note bled into Lee Jinwoo's voice.

"The subjects' overload frequency dropped dramatically, and their mana control rose by over 200% from before. As this data proves, the Director's method was not wr—"

"Ha!"

But before Lee Jinwoo could even finish, Park Wonjin scoffed and cut him off.

"And that's exactly why this evaluation turned out the way it did. You stupid little bastard."

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