The Scandal-Proof Producer

The puzzle of Oh Min-ji consumed Yoo-jin's thoughts long into the night. He sat in his office, the city lights painting strokes of neon and shadow across the room, trying to devise a strategy for a problem he had never encountered before. How do you produce an artist who doesn't want to be an artist? It was a paradox wrapped in a corporate favor.

He was sketching out a potential development plan—one that involved logic puzzles and coding bootcamps instead of vocal scales and dance practice—when his secure laptop chimed. A new message.

He felt a jolt of adrenaline. The channel was dead silent unless it was critical. He maximized the window. The username made his breath catch.

Mockingbird.

Jin had returned. Yoo-jin's first instinct was relief, quickly followed by a wave of anxiety. He had no idea what state of mind his volatile, high-stakes informant was in. Their last communication had been a desperate, protocol-breaking phone call that had left Yoo-jin feeling the phantom weight of another man's guilt.

He opened the message, bracing himself. It was different from before. The tone was professional, clipped, but carried the faint, unspoken undercurrent of their last conversation.

Mockingbird: I am back. The internal audit has officially concluded. A scapegoat was found. The immediate danger has passed, but The Viper's suspicion remains high. She knows the one they caught wasn't the real source. I apologize for my breach of protocol during our last contact. It will not happen again.

The message was an apology, a status update, and a promise of renewed focus all in one. Yoo-jin thought of the overwhelming guilt he had felt through the sync, the sheer human misery of Jin's position. His own calculated, cold response from their last exchange now felt inadequate, almost cruel. He needed to recalibrate their alliance, to acknowledge the man behind the asset.

Producer: Welcome back, Mockingbird. Casualties are regrettable, but they were not your fault. They were his. We proceed. Report.

The grace note was small, but essential. A moment later, a new message appeared. Jin was wasting no time. The information that scrolled onto the screen was so unexpected, so explosive, that Yoo-jin straightened in his chair, his focus sharpening to a razor's edge.

Mockingbird: New intelligence on 'The Director' (Sofia Kang). Her involvement is deeper than the festival. She is not just a producer. Top Tier has engaged her private consulting firm for a larger, undisclosed corporate project. The contract is massive. The project has a code name: 'Project Nightingale.'

Project Nightingale. The name sounded benign, almost poetic. Yoo-jin knew it was anything but.

Mockingbird: I was present for a high-level briefing. I was serving tea, a ghost in the room. Project Nightingale's objective is to develop a proprietary AI system. The AI is designed to analyze market trends, streaming data, social media sentiment, and even biometric audience response to generate commercially successful pop songs.

Yoo-jin's blood ran cold. He read the line again.

Mockingbird: The stated goal is to create 'perfect,' algorithmically-generated hits, removing the 'unreliable human element'—that's a direct quote—from the music production process. The Chairman's ultimate endgame is to replace artists with algorithms.

This was it. The final, terrifying vision of Chairman Choi's worldview. A world without artists. A world without messy, unpredictable human souls. A world with only product. It wasn't just about co-opting authenticity anymore; it was about rendering it completely obsolete.

The next message connected the dots with horrifying clarity.

Mockingbird: The Starlight Festival is her first large-scale data harvesting opportunity. She has placed biometric sensors on a randomized sample of VIP seats to measure heart rate, pupil dilation, and galvanic skin response. She is monitoring social media chatter with a sentiment analysis algorithm in real time. The entire festival is a massive A/B test for the AI. Her suggestions for 'brand synergy' and 'collaborations' are not just about marketing. She is testing how audiences respond to predictable versus unpredictable musical stimuli. Your 'Indie Stage' is not a sideshow to her. It is her control group. You are the 'unpredictable human element.'

Yoo-jin finally understood. Sofia's aggression, her power plays, the scheduling conflict—it was all in service to her experiment. She needed to control the variables, and his stubborn, authentic artists were a variable she couldn't predict. The entire festival was a laboratory, and they were all her lab rats.

And then, Jin delivered the weapon.

Mockingbird: I got a glimpse of a technical report. I saw a chart of the AI's processing failures. It has a flaw. 'Nightingale' has been trained on a massive dataset of every K-pop and Western pop hit from the last twenty years. It is a master at creating familiar, catchy hooks and predictable chord progressions. However, the report noted a critical processing error. The AI cannot parse or replicate music with highly complex, non-standard time signatures or atonal, dissonant harmonic structures. It flags them as 'data corruption' and the processing fails. The AI literally cannot understand music that breaks the conventional rules.

Yoo-jin stared at the screen, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face. It was the key. The key to breaking her entire experiment. A fatal flaw in the heart of the machine.

The final exchange between them cemented their new, more honest alliance. It was no longer just a handler and an asset. It was two soldiers sharing a map to the enemy's ammunition depot.

Producer: This is not just information, Mockingbird. This is a weapon. You have given me the sword. Thank you. Stay safe.

A moment passed, then the reply.

Mockingbird: I will. Make it count.

The connection went dead. Yoo-jin leaned back, his mind racing. His war with Sofia Kang had just changed. He was no longer on the defensive, reacting to her moves. He now knew her ultimate goal, her methods, and her greatest weakness.

He had been planning to fight her power play with another power play. But now, he had a much better idea. He wouldn't just win the battle for the schedule. He would publicly discredit her entire philosophy. He would sabotage her secret experiment in front of the whole world. And he knew exactly how he was going to do it.