The Scandal-Proof Producer

The bright, optimistic energy that had filled the Aura Management office was gone, replaced by a cold, clinical tension. The main conference room, once a space for creative brainstorming and celebrating small victories, had been converted into a legal war room. The whiteboard, which recently held notes for global music domination, was now covered in complex legal statutes and a timeline of Han Yoo-jin's career at Stellar Entertainment. The air smelled not of coffee and takeout, but of expensive paper and fear.

Yoo-jin had moved fast. He knew he couldn't face the prosecutor's office alone. He had cashed in on the goodwill and industry buzz from his recent successes to hire one of the best defense lawyers in Seoul.

Her name was Kang Hye-rin. She was a woman in her early forties with sharp, intelligent eyes, an impeccably tailored suit, and a reputation for being a shark in a world of minnows. She specialized in high-profile, white-collar criminal defense, and she entered the room with an aura of fierce, intimidating competence. Seated at the table with them was Oh Min-ji, her laptop open, present not as a trainee but as Yoo-jin's in-house analyst.

"Let's be blunt, CEO Han," Kang Hye-rin began, her voice crisp and devoid of pleasantries as she scanned the documents Yoo-jin's team had prepared. "Let's not waste time dancing around the issue. From the prosecution's point of view, the narrative is damningly simple. You were a talented producer whose career was stalled by your superior, Kang Min-hyuk. You leave the company under a cloud. You start a rival agency that he then actively tries to sabotage. And then, just as your company is beginning to take off, a series of detailed, accurate, and conveniently anonymous tips are sent to multiple government agencies, resulting in your rival's spectacular public disgrace. Your company benefits enormously from his downfall."

She looked up from the file, her gaze piercing. "They are going to assume you were the source. Any competent prosecutor would. Our job is not necessarily to prove you weren't. It is to make it so utterly impossible for them to prove you were that they dare not even try to bring a charge of perjury or obstruction against you."

She leaned forward, tapping a perfectly manicured finger on the table. "To do that, to build our defense, you need to tell me everything. Not the version you tell the press. The absolute truth. Every interaction you had with Kang Min-hyuk in the last year. Every piece of information you had on him. And most importantly—and this is the question your entire future will hinge on—how did you know what you knew? What was your source for the insider trading allegations? How did you know about his shell company? The prosecution will ask you this under oath. I need your answer now."

This was the moment Yoo-jin had been dreading. He was now being interrogated not by an enemy, but by his own lawyer. He was trapped. He couldn't tell her the truth—that a supernatural interface in his mind had presented him with a detailed list of Kang's felonies. She would think he was insane and walk out of the room. He had to produce a new story. A narrative so believable, so detailed, and so consistent that it could withstand the intense scrutiny of a federal prosecutor.

This was no longer about producing music. It was about producing reality.

"I didn't have a source," Yoo-jin began, his voice calm and steady, a stark contrast to the frantic pounding of his heart. "I had a theory. A theory built on years of observation and data analysis."

Kang Hye-rin's expression remained skeptical. "Explain."

"I've worked in this industry my entire adult life," Yoo-jin said, leaning into the story, weaving a fiction from the threads of truth. "And I've learned that powerful men are creatures of habit. Their greed creates patterns. Let's start with the insider trading." He glanced at Oh Min-ji.

"I had always been suspicious of the timing of certain stock movements around Stellar's acquisitions," he continued. "It felt too convenient. So I had my analyst, Ms. Oh, run a deep-dive analysis on all trading activity preceding Stellar's last five major corporate buyouts."

Oh Min-ji, picking up her cue perfectly, spoke for the first time, her voice flat and analytical. "The analysis revealed a statistical anomaly. In each of the five cases, a small, independent hedge fund made a significant, highly leveraged purchase of the target company's stock within the 48-hour window before the public announcement. The pattern was too consistent to be a coincidence."

"The fund was registered to a proxy, a man with no obvious connections to Stellar," Yoo-jin picked up the thread. "But Ms. Oh kept digging."

"I traced the secondary ownership of the fund's parent company," Min-ji said, not looking up from her screen. "It led to a university alumni association. Both the proxy who owned the fund and Director Kang Min-hyuk were executive members of that same association. It was not proof of a crime, but it was a strong correlation indicating a high probability of illicit information sharing. It was a pattern of suspicious behavior worthy of an anonymous tip to the proper authorities."

Kang Hye-rin was silent, her expression unreadable.

"And the embezzlement?" she asked.

"That was just good A&R work," Yoo-jin said with a slight, confident smile. "A producer's job is to manage budgets. I always felt Director Kang's concert production budgets were inflated by at least fifteen percent. The numbers never felt right. I noticed that for every major festival, the most expensive contracts for lighting and stage design were always awarded to the same vendor, a company called 'JH Creative,' even when their initial bids were uncompetitive." He shrugged. "I was curious. So I did a simple public records search on the company registry. JH Creative was a paper company, registered to an address that didn't exist. The owner was listed as Park Jin-ho. A quick social media search revealed that Park Jin-ho was Director Kang's brother-in-law."

He had laid it all out. A perfectly plausible, non-supernatural chain of discovery. It was a narrative that played directly into his established public persona: Han Yoo-jin, the obsessive, meticulous genius producer who sees the small details and hidden patterns that no one else does.

Kang Hye-rin was silent for a long time, her sharp eyes studying Yoo-jin's face, searching for any hint of deception. Finally, a slow, deeply impressed smile spread across her face.

"Alright, CEO Han," she said, the skepticism in her voice gone, replaced by a newfound respect. "Your 'hobby' of obsessive-compulsive data analysis is going to be the foundation of our entire defense. It's a good story. It's a great story. It's consistent, it's believable, and best of all, it makes you look like a brilliant savant instead of a criminal."

She leaned forward, her expression turning deadly serious. "Now, let's make sure you know that story backwards and forwards. The prosecution will try to pick it apart. They will attack every detail. We cannot let them find a single hole."

The lawyer was convinced. She had bought the narrative completely. As she began drilling him on the finer points of his fabricated investigation, Yoo-jin felt a profound sense of relief, immediately followed by a chilling, terrifying thought. He had successfully fooled his own lawyer. Now he had to fool the federal government. He had just constructed an elaborate, beautiful house of cards. His entire future now depended on it withstanding the hurricane that was coming for him.