The Director's Desperate Choice
"Huff… huff… I… I need to… contact someone…!"
The laboratory had been peaceful only minutes ago, but in that brief window someone had broken in and taken the researchers hostage.
The aging director, having lost a great deal of blood, turned deathly pale in an instant and gasped for air.
He could accept dying in such an emergency, but he had to save the young researchers and the two girls.
With that desperate resolve, he wrapped his bleeding arm with his sleeve to staunch the flow, staggered to his feet, and lifted his head toward the office beside the pharmacy.
"So you finally decided to touch them after all, Director."
"Y-you… you are…!"
Standing before the director with a wicked smile was a woman. She was the female villain who had introduced herself as Hong Seo-rin—the same Rui-lin in her "glamour mode," who had killed a researcher and stolen their clothes to disguise herself.
"Your memory isn't as bad as I thought. Even an old man like you who's lost his mind."
Rui-lin tossed aside the glasses and lab coat she had used for her disguise, then grabbed the director's uninjured arm as he tried to flee in agony.
"If you go that way, I'll blow up every researcher still inside. Are you still going to call for help… Director?"
If he let go of her arm and ran to the office for help, the researchers who hadn't been captured—including himself—might survive. But if he did, the twenty or so researchers she mentioned would all die.
"You look desperate, so I'll give you two special options."
"First, you run away alone and I blow up the rest of the researchers. Second, we all die together right here, but I spare the researchers whose hiding spots I don't know yet!"
"How about it? Pretty generous choices, right?"
"Huff… huff…!"
Would the other researchers hiding somewhere really be saved if he listened to her? Did he even have a choice to begin with?
The director's face grew paler by the second as he agonized over the decision.
"Choose quickly. I don't have much patience for waiting. I need to finish this fast so Master can reward me…♥"
"Just… just kill me… Kill only me and spare the researchers…! They still have… futures ahead of them…!"
A desperate plea to kill the director, the one in charge, and save everyone else.
"Oh, Director. That answer is so boring. Have you been watching too many old movies? I'm disappointed."
Hearing the clichéd, tedious reply, Rui-lin squeezed and shook the director's bleeding arm, clearly displeased.
"Graaah…!!!?"
- Fwoosh! -
"Aha! Look at all that blood gushing out. What now… If you don't choose soon, you'll die before you even get the chance."
"W-will you… really spare them…?!"
"Of course! I don't lie. If you run away alone, I'll let you live. But… everyone else here will go boom and die, right? Kyahahahaha!"
Rui-lin urged the director to choose with a mad laugh. Still trapped in his dilemma, he couldn't decide.
Having lost too much blood, his body was growing cold, his vision blurring, and he could barely think, let alone choose.
He wanted to live. He had to survive. He didn't want to die like this.
He was supposed to save the young researchers and the magical girls.
If he chose death here, would that villain really spare the researchers and the girls?
Should he survive alone and call for help instead?
- Crack! -
"Aaaagh…?!!!!!"
Annoyed by the delay, Rui-lin stomped on his bleeding arm. She grabbed his head with both hands and shoved her furious face close to his.
"Choose… now. Or I'll blow everyone up and end this."
"A-ah! I understand… I'll… choose!"
Unable to withstand the threat, the director blurted out that he would choose. Rui-lin released his hair and brightened at his words.
"Well then, which one did you pick? The first? Or the second?!"
The director stared quietly at the bound researchers gagged nearby, his expression that of a sorrowful sinner filled with guilt.
"I'm sorry… I… have to live."
"My, the director chose to abandon his subordinates and save himself. How shocking, isn't it? What do you think, Seraphina and Aquamarine?"
"Huh…?"
Standing casually before the director, who was crawling across the floor toward the office while bleeding, were Seraphina and Aquamarine—the same two girls who had been too exhausted to speak moments ago.
"I'm… truly disappointed."
"So that's the kind of person you were, mister…?"
Watching the director crawl desperately to save only himself, the two girls who had always been bright and cheerful now looked at him with pure contempt.
"T-that's… not… that woman… threatened…!"
"All this time, how many young experimental subjects like us did you use?"
"Right. We thought you were our savior at first. Turns out you were just wasting people's lives for your own research."
"That's… not… it… I just…!"
It had been Rui-lin's threat to blow them up if he didn't choose quickly, but in the end he had chosen to flee alone. Now he had no chance to explain, nor any excuse left.
After all, he had considered surviving alone. It was far too late to claim otherwise.
"Please… listen to me…"
Moreover, the director had already lost too much blood over three minutes; he could barely move, let alone speak clearly.
"You're the one who turned us—completely ignorant girls—into bodies that can't survive without medicine. The root cause who pretended to be a kind man while turning us into weapons for the Alliance."
The two girls he had treated like cherished daughters and precious gems now looked at him with resentment and scorn.
The ability-enhancement experiments had been forced upon him by orders from the Alliance's upper ranks, and it was true that the director had encouraged the unaware girls to participate.
Yet while he felt guilt and regret over his choice, he knew the girls would have been abandoned otherwise.
So he treated them with the hope that they would be happy, urging them to become magical girls so they might retain some semblance of a girl's heart.
'Not once… did I ever use you for my own selfish desires. Of course, if my choice caused you pain, that is entirely my fault. But… it hurts that I will be remembered by you as such a person.'
The director found the thought of dying while being remembered that way by the two girls far more painful than the agony of bleeding to death from his shattered arm.
"You'll die right here. Disgusting old man."
"Goodbye, trash director."
Seraphina and Aquamarine turned their magic wands—usually aimed at villains—toward the director.
"I'm sorry…"
- Rrrrip!!!! - - Shhhhaaaash! -
The director, resigned to his fate, accepted death.
Seraphina's thorny vines tore his body to shreds, while Aquamarine's high-pressure water jet pierced his forehead, ending his life.
"Haa…♥ What a refreshing feeling. Like all the chains binding my body were released at once…♥"
"Yeah…♥ Now we've gained complete freedom. From now on, we just need to work toward building a world entirely for Master…♥"
It no longer mattered what feelings the director had held toward the girls over the years.
The fact remained that he had subjected them to years of painful experiments, and Si-yoon had merely nudged that resentment and hatred through his Perception Alteration.
"Whew… Not bad at all. Quite the impressive skill, my dear older brother…♥ Master will be… quite pleased, I think."
Rui-lin, who had come to assist the two girls on their first hunt, clapped and praised their first act of villainy.
"Aah…♥ If it makes Master happy…♥ I could do something even harder and crueler than this…♥"
"As long as Master gives us power and pleasure… we don't need anything else…♥"
The two corrupted girls grew excited imagining the pleasure of corruption Si-yoon would grant them, even after murdering the director. Meanwhile, Rui-lin stared blankly at the researchers beside the excited pair.
"By the way… what should we do with these guys?"
Dozens of researchers, excluding the director, trembled in terror, drenched in his blood.
Several who had witnessed the director's brutal death up close had already fainted from shock or were shaking and sobbing, unable to watch any longer.
"Well… Chae-ryeong's clone already destroyed all the CCTV inside the lab, so if we blow them all up, there won't be any evidence left."
The Alliance's secret laboratory was exactly that—completely hidden—and aside from the emergency communicator the director had tried to use, there were no means of contact.
Everything Rui-lin and the corrupted magical girls had done happened in barely five minutes, and Chae-ryeong's clone had already destroyed all recording devices.
Not a single person had entered the lab during that time.
That meant killing all the researchers would leave no evidence.
"Then… we just kill them all…♥"
"Good idea…♥"
The two magical girls raised their wands toward the innocent researchers.
""Die… all of you♥""
- Crackle-crackle-crackle!!!! - - Shhhhhhhhaaaash! -