The Scandal-Proof Producer

Han Yoo-jin had thrown a grenade into the heart of the Starlight Festival, and he didn't have to wait long for the shrapnel to fly back at him. The summons came less than three hours after his press conference had concluded. It wasn't a polite request. It was a single, terse text message from Director Yoon Ji-seok.

The tea house. Now.

Yoo-jin knew he was walking into a storm. He had taken the partnership Yoon had offered him—a strategic, if cynical, gesture of goodwill—and promptly turned it into a weapon against his new benefactor. He had stood on a public stage and all but called Stellar Entertainment's prize headliner, the biggest boy group in their stable, a creatively bankrupt relic.

The private room at the tea house was the same, but the atmosphere had shifted from one of cautious negotiation to one of ice-cold fury. Director Yoon sat in the exact same spot, but his usual impassive, zen-like mask had been replaced by a look of profound, tightly controlled anger. His fingers were steepled before him, but his knuckles were white.

"You have declared war on my festival," Yoon said, his voice flat and quiet, which was somehow more intimidating than if he had been yelling. "You held a press conference without consulting us, your partners. You publicly denigrated our headline artist. Our primary sponsors, who have paid billions of won to have their brands associated with Celestial, are… displeased. The media is no longer reporting on an exciting musical event; they are reporting on a civil war within our own production. Explain yourself, CEO Han."

Yoo-jin took a slow, deliberate sip of the tea that had been placed before him, buying a moment to gather his thoughts. He needed to understand the true source of this anger. It felt deeper than just bad press. He focused on Yoon, deploying the targeted, surgical version of his ability he had been practicing.

[Synchronization Mode: TARGETED (Source of Anger)]

[Establishing Connection... Sync Rate: 20%]

A wave of cold, clean fury washed over him, but it wasn't what he expected. It wasn't about the sponsors or the headliner. It was the feeling of a master chess player watching a reckless amateur knock over the entire board. It was the anger of a man whose carefully laid, secret plans had just been dragged into the harsh, unforgiving light.

The intel hit him instantly. Yoon Ji-seok was not the architect of Project Nightingale. In fact, he was its chief opponent within Stellar. He saw it as a radical, reckless, and deeply insulting venture being championed by a rival faction on the board of directors—a faction that wanted to pivot Stellar away from artist development and towards tech. Sofia Kang was their hired gun, their foreign expert brought in to legitimize the project.

Yoo-jin's press conference hadn't just insulted an idol group. It had publicly exposed the existence of a divisive, secret internal conflict at Stellar Entertainment. It had given Yoon's rivals ammunition, while also making Yoon himself look like he couldn't control his own partners. He wasn't just angry about the insult; he was furious about the loss of control.

Armed with this critical knowledge, Yoo-jin knew an apology would be useless. It would be a sign of weakness. He had to reframe his actions, to press his advantage, to align himself with Yoon against their now-shared internal enemy.

"With all due respect, Director Yoon," Yoo-jin began, his voice calm and confident, "I wasn't attacking your festival. I was defending it from an internal threat you seem to have underestimated."

Yoon's eyes narrowed. "And what threat would that be?"

"Sofia Kang," Yoo-jin stated simply. "She is not just a producer. She is running a high-risk, unauthorized data-mining experiment using your company's resources, your festival's reputation, and your artists as her own personal lab rats."

He leaned forward, his voice dropping. "Let me ask you a question, Director. Did you approve of Project Nightingale? Did you sign off on a secret initiative to develop an algorithm that would make every single producer at your company—every scout, every songwriter, every A&R professional, including yourself—completely and utterly obsolete?"

He watched as a flicker of genuine shock—the first he'd ever witnessed—crossed Yoon Ji-seok's face. He hadn't known that Yoo-jin knew the project's code name. The boy's information sources were even deeper, even more terrifying than he had imagined.

Yoo-jin pressed on, positioning himself not as a reckless partner, but as a whistleblower, a protector of Stellar's true assets against a dangerous insurgency from within.

"I did what I had to do to protect my artists and my stage from being used as a control group in her reckless experiment," he said. "I don't believe in a future where music is written by machines. I imagine the man who discovered and produced legendary groups like The Sentinels and Blue Dahlia doesn't either. I was defending the very soul of the company you helped build."

He was appealing to Yoon's history, to his legacy as a true music man before he became a corporate fixer. He was framing their interests as one and the same.

Yoon Ji-seok was silent for a long, heavy minute. He stared at Yoo-jin, his sharp, analytical mind processing this new, paradigm-shifting information. This upstart CEO was more than just a nuisance. He was either an incredible intelligence operative or the luckiest man in Seoul. And in Yoon's world, luck was not a factor. Yoo-jin had inadvertently proven himself to be an invaluable, if wildly unpredictable, ally in his own internal power struggle against Sofia Kang and her faction.

The dynamic in the room shifted. It was no longer an angry boss reprimanding a subordinate. It was two co-conspirators staring at each other across a table, a new, unspoken understanding passing between them.

"You are playing a very dangerous game, Han Yoo-jin," Yoon said finally, his voice returning to its usual, flat monotone. It was a statement of fact, not a threat.

"I'm just producing my stage, Director," Yoo-jin replied, a thin smile on his lips. "It's not my fault if doing my job happens to expose the rot in someone else's department."

Yoon nodded slowly, a silent acknowledgment of the new terms of their arrangement. The meeting was over. Their partnership, which had begun as a simple, transactional business deal, had just been reforged in the fires of corporate espionage. It was now a covert alliance against a common enemy within Stellar's own walls.

Yoo-jin had survived the fallout from his own grenade. But in doing so, he had become entangled even more deeply in his old company's bloody civil war. He was no longer just a partner. He was a combatant.