The Scandal-Proof Producer

The interrogation rooms at Top Tier Media were not in the basement. That was a cliché for spy films. They were on the 47th floor, nestled between Legal and Human Resources, clinical white spaces with excellent soundproofing and a pleasant view of the city. It made the terror feel more civilized.

Nam Gyu-ri sat at a simple steel table, a tablet displaying personnel files her only prop. Across from her, a young A&R manager named Lee Jin-woo was sweating profusely, his tie feeling like a noose. Gyu-ri's internal audit, her "witch hunt," had been tearing through the company for days, creating an atmosphere of pure, suffocating paranoia. She had found what she was looking for on Lee Jin-woo's work computer.

She was a master interrogator. She didn't need to yell or threaten. Her primary weapon was a calm, surgical disappointment. She projected an aura of knowing everything, making her target desperate to confess to something, anything, to appease her.

"These messages, Mr. Lee," she said, her voice soft as silk as she turned the tablet to face him. "Sent from your encrypted work chat to a… 'friend'… at a smaller agency. A junior producer at Starship Entertainment, I believe."

On the screen was a transcript of a conversation. It was foolish, but hardly treasonous. Lee Jin-woo had been boasting, sharing low-level gossip about the marketing budget for Eclipse's next tour, trying to make himself seem more important than he was.

"This looks like a leak, wouldn't you agree?" Gyu-ri asked, her question hanging in the sterile air. "The unauthorized dissemination of confidential corporate strategy."

"No! I swear, it wasn't like that!" Lee Jin-woo stammered, his face pale. "It was just… shop talk! We were just gossiping, I was showing off. It meant nothing, I promise!"

Nam Gyu-ri knew he was telling the truth. The information he had leaked was trivial, nothing more than rumors and budget estimates that would change a dozen times before the tour launched. This boy was not their traitor. He was just a fool.

But Gyu-ri was under immense pressure from the Chairman. He wanted a head on a pike. He wanted the witch hunt to be over so he could refocus his energies on the real threat. And Lee Jin-woo was a viable scapegoat. He was ambitious, slightly resentful of his superiors, and, most importantly, he had been careless. He was a false positive, but he was a believable one. Convicting him would satisfy the Chairman's bloodlust and allow the company to return to a semblance of normalcy. It was a calculated, necessary sacrifice.

"Your intentions are irrelevant, Mr. Lee," she said, her voice turning cold. "Only your actions matter. And your actions have compromised this company."

From across the sprawling Top Tier campus, in the luxurious, self-contained building that served as Eclipse's dormitory, Jin watched the aftermath on an internal company message board. A single, terse notification had been posted by HR an hour ago: "Lee Jin-woo of A&R Team 3 has been terminated due to a severe breach of company policy. We remind all employees of their obligations under their non-disclosure agreements."

Jin stared at the message, a wave of nausea rolling through him. He knew Lee Jin-woo. A bright, eager kid who had once brought him a coffee, his hands shaking with nerves. A kid whose only real crime was wanting to feel important. And he had just been fed to the wolves because of Jin's silence.

Jin, the real traitor, was safe. His decision to go dark, to destroy his burner phone and cut off contact with Yoo-jin, had been the smart move for his own survival. But it had created an information vacuum. A silence that demanded a sacrifice. And Lee Jin-woo had been thrown into the void.

He felt a profound, suffocating guilt. This was the first, real, human cost of his alliance. He had rationalized his actions as a high-level game of corporate chess, a necessary evil to fight a greater one. But now, it wasn't a game. An innocent person's career and reputation had just been incinerated to provide cover for him. His silence had a price, and someone else had just paid it in full.

Nam Gyu-ri stood in her office, looking at the signed termination papers for Lee Jin-woo. She felt no satisfaction. No sense of victory. She had presented her findings to Chairman Choi, who had accepted them with a grunt of approval. The company-wide audit was officially concluded. The witch was burned.

But she knew. Deep down, she knew she hadn't found the real leak.

Lee Jin-woo's petty gossip could not explain how Han Yoo-jin had known about her secret, off-the-books recruitment meeting with Kang Ji-won. It couldn't explain how he knew about the Chairman's shell corporations. It didn't fit. The scale of the intelligence was wrong.

She had merely plugged a hole in the dam with her thumb, while the real crack, somewhere deep beneath the surface, was growing wider. She had sacrificed a pawn, but the enemy's queen was still on the board, moving with an unnerving freedom she couldn't explain.

Her suspicion, which had briefly been assuaged by the convenient scapegoat, now returned with a vengeance. And with the lower ranks of the company cleared, her analytical gaze began to drift upwards, towards the only other place a leak of that magnitude could originate. The circle around the Chairman himself. The vice presidents. The executive assistants. The other members of the Choi family who held positions in the company.

The hunt was not over. It had simply moved into the palace's inner chambers, a far more dangerous and politically treacherous territory.

The episode ended with Jin, alone in his pristine, silent dorm room. The news of Lee Jin-woo's termination had spread like wildfire. The initial message board post had been followed by a string of anonymous, frightened comments. Rumors were flying that Lee Jin-woo was not just fired, but was facing a lawsuit from the company and would be permanently blacklisted from the entire entertainment industry. His life was effectively over.

Jin felt the crushing, unbearable weight of his decision. He had chosen to protect himself. He had stayed silent. And this was the result.

He walked over to his bookshelf and pulled out a different book this time. Tucked inside was a new burner phone, still in its plastic wrapper. He had purchased it as a replacement, a contingency for his contingency. He had told himself he wouldn't use it for weeks, that he would wait until the danger had passed.

But the ghost of Lee Jin-woo's career was sitting in the room with him.

He tore open the plastic. He inserted the new SIM card. He powered on the device.

He had a choice. Stay silent, stay safe, and let the injustice stand, letting the guilt eat him alive. Or risk everything. Risk re-establishing contact with Han Yoo-jin to tell him the witch hunt had claimed its first victim. An act that would achieve nothing, tactically. An act that would only serve to assuage his own conscience, while potentially exposing them both.

The moral cost of his war, of his alliance, was no longer an abstract concept. It was real, and it was devastating. He stared at the blank screen of the burner phone, his thumb hovering over the messaging app, caught in an impossible, silent scream.