The Scandal-Proof Producer

The deal with Stellar Entertainment left a strange, metallic taste in Yoo-jin's mouth. It was a strategic victory, a massive leap forward for Aura, but it felt like shaking hands with a ghost. He returned to the office, his mind calculating the immense logistical challenges and opportunities the Starlight Festival presented. He was so consumed with the future that he was utterly blindsided by a confrontation with his past.

"CEO Han," Go Min-young said, intercepting him as he walked through the door. Her expression was troubled. "There's… someone waiting for you in the lobby. She's been here for almost two hours. She says she'll only speak with you."

Yoo-jin frowned. "Did she give a name?"

"Park Chae-rin," Min-young replied. "She wouldn't say what it's about."

The name meant nothing to him. He sighed, bracing himself for another aspiring artist or a disgruntled industry acquaintance. He walked into the small lobby area and stopped dead.

The woman sitting on the couch was no longer the fresh-faced, bubbly idol he remembered from seven years ago, but he recognized her instantly. The fiery look in her eyes was the same, though now it was banked with a deep, weary pain. Her name might not have registered, but her face was seared into his memory.

It was the former main vocalist of Prism. The girl group whose spectacular downfall he had predicted, the centerpiece of his most infamous failure at Stellar.

She stood up as he approached, her hands clenched into tight fists at her sides. She looked tired, worn down by life, the vibrant energy of her youth replaced by a brittle, defensive shell.

"You're Han Yoo-jin," she said. It wasn't a question. It was an accusation. "You wrote the report. The dossier. The one that called us a lost cause before we ever even set foot on a stage." Her voice trembled, thick with years of carefully nursed resentment. "You ruined our lives."

Yoo-jin was speechless. This was a consequence of his dinner with Chairman Choi that he had never, in a million years, anticipated. The Chairman's casual mention of their meeting must have leaked, filtering down through the industry grapevine until it reached her.

"After the group disbanded," she continued, her voice gaining a bitter strength, "we were blacklisted. No one would touch us. Our dreams, our youth… it all just turned to dust. I heard from an old staffer at Stellar that you had dinner with Chairman Choi last week. That you two were 'discussing the Prism incident.' So what is it now? Are you digging up my bones for a case study? Using our tragedy to make a point in your new war?"

She looked at him with a raw, desperate anger, and Yoo-jin felt a profound and unexpected pang of guilt. He had always seen the Prism incident as a professional failure, a testament to his inability to make his superiors listen. He had never truly considered the human wreckage left in its wake. These were real people whose lives had been shattered, and he was the man who had written their obituary before they had even died.

He looked at this woman, this living ghost from his past, and knew he couldn't just defend himself. He needed to understand. He activated his ability, but this time, he did something new, something instinctual. He didn't just scan her. He reached out with the new, empathetic tendrils of his power, consciously trying to trigger the Synchronization. He needed to feel the truth of her pain.

The interface materialized, stark and immediate.

[Name: Park Chae-rin]

[Emotional State: Deep-seated Resentment (70%), Lingering Trauma (20%), Desperation (10%)]

[Synchronization Rate: Climbing... 15%... 25%... 35%...]

As the number climbed, the sterile data dissolved into a tidal wave of secondhand misery. Yoo-jin felt it wash over him, a dizzying, nauseating flood. It wasn't just her current anger he felt. It was the phantom echo of her past trauma. He felt the sickening lurch in her stomach when she first saw the tabloid photos of her secret boyfriend with another girl—photos planted by her own company to create a scandal. He felt the hot shame of being labeled a "traitor" by fans who had once adored her. He felt the crushing, hopeless weight of a thousand closed doors, the years spent working dead-end jobs, the music in her soul slowly suffocating under a blanket of failure and self-loathing.

It was almost too much. He felt an urge to physically recoil, to sever the connection. But through the haze of her pain, his ability, now intertwined with her emotional state, detected something else. A flicker of light in the darkness.

[Key Strength (Dormant): S-Rank Songwriting Potential (Genre: Melancholy Pop, Lyrical Ballad)]

[Critical Weakness: Crippling Self-Doubt. Believes she has no marketable talent beyond her singing voice, which she now considers ruined.]

[Current Thoughts: He's just like the rest of them. Look at him, just staring. He's going to use my story and throw me away like a piece of trash. I shouldn't have come. Why did I even hope he might be different? Why do I never learn?]

He saw it then. The truth. She hadn't come here just to accuse him. She had come here with a tiny, desperate, almost extinguished flicker of hope. Hope that the man who had seen her downfall so clearly might also be the only one capable of seeing a path to redemption.

Yoo-jin took a deep breath, fighting back the emotional vertigo from the Synchronization. He made a choice. He wouldn't defend himself with logic. He would respond to the pain he was feeling from her, a pain that now felt partially his own.

"I didn't ruin your life, Chae-rin-ssi," he said, his voice softer than he intended, imbued with an empathy that was now terrifyingly real. "Stellar's greed and the industry's casual cruelty ruined your life. I saw the storm coming, but back then, I was just a man with a weather report and no authority to evacuate the city. And for that… for not being able to stop it… I am truly sorry."

She stared at him, her aggressive posture faltering, confused by his sincerity.

He leaned forward, his gaze intense. "Your voice was always incredible. A gift. But it wasn't your greatest talent. The real gift, the one they never saw, is your ability to write. All this pain," he said, gesturing vaguely to encompass the last seven years of her life, "all this anger, all this heartbreak… that is the most powerful story in the world. And you have the soul of a poet who can tell it. You have songs inside you that only you can write."

He reached over to a nearby table, picked up a fresh legal pad and a pen, and pushed them across the coffee table towards her.

"Go home," he said, his voice gentle but firm. "Write a song about what it felt like. All of it. The betrayal, the humiliation, the anger. Write about the taste of ashes in your mouth when you realized your dream was dead. Don't hold back. Don't pretty it up. Give it all to me, raw and bleeding."

He looked her directly in the eye. "And when you're done, bring it back here. Let's show them what a 'lost cause' can really do."

Park Chae-rin stared at the notepad, then back at Yoo-jin, her mouth slightly agape. Her anger and resentment had dissolved, replaced by a stunned, disbelieving confusion. This man wasn't dismissing her. He was seeing a part of her she hadn't dared to look at in years, a part she thought was long dead.

Without a word, she picked up the notepad and the pen, gave him a shaky, uncertain bow, and walked out of the office.

Yoo-jin watched her go, then sank onto the couch, the emotional and physical hangover from the Synchronization hitting him full force. He felt drained, exhausted, as if he had just relived seven years of someone else's heartbreak in seven minutes. His gift had evolved. It was more powerful, more profound than ever. But he was beginning to understand its terrible, terrible price.