The Scandal-Proof Producer

The Aura Management office was a world away from the silent, predatory luxury of the Chairman's dinner. Here, the tension was of a different sort—a frantic, creative energy mixed with a deep, corrosive anxiety. While Yoo-jin faced his interrogation, Kang Ji-won was enduring his own.

He sat in his studio, the sleek, black business card from Nam Gyu-ri lying on his desk like a dark promise. He had been staring at it for hours, the simple, elegant font seeming to mock him. Ghost Music. His own kingdom. His own empire. An escape from being the supporting character in someone else's drama. The offer was a poison dart aimed directly at the heart of his artistic pride, and it had hit its mark.

He was so lost in the swirling vortex of his thoughts—a tempest of resentment, ambition, and a sliver of guilty loyalty—that he didn't hear the soft knock on his door at first.

"Ji-won?"

It was Go Min-young. She stood tentatively in the doorway, wringing her hands, her expression a mixture of fear and determination. In the past, she would have never dared to intrude on his solitude, especially when he was in one of his moods. But she had seen the black car. She had seen the predatory confidence of the woman who had visited. And she had seen the profound, conflicted turmoil on Ji-won's face ever since.

"Are you okay?" she asked, her voice small but clear. "You've been… different… since that woman from Top Tier left."

Ji-won let out a short, bitter laugh. "Okay? I'm fantastic, Min-young. I've just been offered my own kingdom." He felt a perverse urge to shock her, to show her the scale of his dilemma. He gestured grandly at the business card. "Top Tier Media wants to give me my own label. An unlimited budget. Complete creative control. Everything." He expected her to be impressed, shocked, maybe even a little jealous.

But Min-young's reaction was not what he anticipated. She wasn't angry. She wasn't even visibly jealous. She just looked… sad.

"Wow," she said, her voice soft. "That's… a lot." She stepped fully into the room, her gaze drifting over his keyboards and monitors. She was quiet for a long moment, thinking. "It sounds amazing," she said finally. "But… the lyrics. At Ghost Music… would they be yours? Or would they be mine?"

Ji-won frowned, confused by the strange question. "What are you talking about?"

"Our songs," she explained, looking at him with an earnest clarity that was impossible to dismiss. "Your music and my lyrics… they work. People feel them. I think it's because we're both telling the same truth. We're telling Da-eun's story. And we're telling Seo-yeon's story. The music, the words, the voices… we're all pointing in the same direction. It's honest."

She took a small, brave step closer to his desk. "At Ghost Music, with your unlimited budget and your total freedom… who would you be pointing at? Would you have to go out and find broken people so you'd have something real to write songs about? Or…" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Or would you have to start inventing them?"

Her innocent, devastating question cut through all of his pride, all of his ambition, and struck at the very core of his identity as an artist. He wasn't just a composer. He was a genius at translating raw, authentic human emotion into sound. He was a conduit for truth. The Chairman's offer gave him unlimited resources, but Min-young was right—it didn't give him a subject. It didn't give him a truth to tell.

He would be a king with no kingdom. A storyteller with no story. He would be a ghost in the truest sense, a hollow shell of technical brilliance with no soul to animate it. He would become the very thing he despised: a manufacturer of beautiful, empty products.

He looked down at the black business card, then up at Go Min-young's earnest, worried face. He thought of Yoo-jin's desperate, clumsy attempt to "warn" him by staging that meeting with Director Choi. He'd seen it as a manipulation, but now he saw it for what it was—a panicked, flawed attempt to remind him of who he was. An attempt to keep him from selling his soul for a throne.

A wave of something akin to clarity washed over him, extinguishing the smoldering fires of his resentment. He knew what he had to do.

Without a word, he picked up the business card. He stood up, walked out of his studio and past a stunned Min-young. He crossed the main office to the small administrative area where the paper shredder sat. He held the card over the slot for a dramatic beat, then let it go.

The machine whirred to life, its gears grinding the sleek black card—and the kingdom it represented—into a thousand tiny, meaningless pieces.

He turned to a wide-eyed Min-young. "Tell Yoo-jin when he gets back…" he said, his voice rough with emotion but firm with conviction. "Tell him my music is not for sale."

His trust in Yoo-jin wasn't fully restored—the cracks were still there. But he had chosen his side. He had chosen the chaotic, underfunded, but honest truth of Aura Management over the sterile, gilded lie of Top Tier.

At that exact moment, miles away in the silent, opulent dining room, Nam Gyu-ri's phone, which was sitting face down on the table, gave a single, almost imperceptible vibration. She had been watching Yoo-jin squirm under her perfectly aimed question about the plagiarism, enjoying his discomfort. The vibration was a pre-arranged signal. A text from her assistant, containing one of two simple, coded messages. "He is on his way," or "He is not responding."

She glanced down at the screen. The message was concise. "No response. The meeting time has passed."

She understood immediately. Kang Ji-won had rejected the offer. He hadn't even called to negotiate. He had simply ignored them.

A flicker of genuine, unprofessional surprise crossed her face before she could suppress it. It was a micro-expression, lasting less than a heartbeat, but in the hyper-aware state Yoo-jin was in, it was as loud as a scream. Her carefully constructed psychological profile of him had been wrong. His artistic pride and his obvious resentment towards Yoo-jin should have been enough. He should have been an easy conquest. An 85% probability of acceptance, her report had stated.

Yoo-jin, who had been desperately trying to formulate an answer to her impossible question, saw that flicker of shock. It was an opening. A crack in her perfect facade. He instantly focused his ability on her, pushing past her formidable defenses.

[Subject: Nam Gyu-ri]

[Current Thoughts: He refused. Inconceivable. How? My profiling indicated an 85% chance of acceptance based on ego and internal friction. The Producer must have pre-empted the offer. He warned him. But how could he have possibly known it was coming? Does his ability include short-term precognition? That doesn't align with past data... It's too specific. Or... or... oh god... does he have a source? A leak? Does he have a spy inside Top Tier?]

The thought bloomed in her mind like a black flower, a new and terrifying possibility that was, in its own way, far more plausible than psychic powers. The "Miracle Five" incident could have been a source. The gambling actor, a well-placed source. The plagiarism plot, an incredibly lucky source.

But this? Knowing about her secret, off-the-books recruitment meeting with Kang Ji-won, a meeting known only to herself, the Chairman, and one trusted assistant? That wasn't precognition. That was high-level espionage.

Her entire theory of him shattered and reformed in an instant. Her hunt for a supernatural gift suddenly pivoted to a far more dangerous and conventional game: the hunt for a human traitor.

Her gaze, as it lifted from her phone back to Yoo-jin, had changed. The cool, analytical curiosity was gone. In its place was the flat, predatory focus of a hunter who has just realized the prey it was stalking might not be a rabbit, but another wolf in disguise. Her mind was no longer on the past. It was racing with a far more urgent and dangerous question: who in their house was the ghost?