The Scandal-Proof Producer

The psychiatric clinic was a world of hushed tones and deliberate calm. Its location was discreet, its interior designed with soothing, minimalist aesthetics to put its high-profile clientele at ease. It felt less like a medical facility and more like a luxury spa for wounded souls. But as Han Yoo-jin walked down the quiet, carpeted hallway, he felt a profound sense of dread. He was not here as a patient. He was here as a potential cure, or perhaps, as the source of the disease itself.

He had arranged this meeting through the psychiatrist, Dr. Ahn, a woman whose discretion was legendary. He had simply stated that a former colleague was a danger to himself and that a familiar face might be the only way to break through his isolation. Dr. Ahn had agreed, under the condition that the meeting be held in a controlled environment, with her observing from behind a one-way mirror.

Yoo-jin entered the private consultation room. It was a sterile, comfortable space with two plush armchairs facing each other. Kang Min-hyuk was already there, slumped in one of the chairs. The man was almost unrecognizable. The arrogant, powerful 'Demon Producer' of Stellar Entertainment was gone, replaced by a hollowed-out shell. He was gaunt, his expensive suit hanging off his frame. A rough, patchy beard covered his jaw, and his eyes, usually sharp and predatory, were dull and empty, staring at a fixed point on the beige wall.

He looked up as Yoo-jin entered, and a flicker of something registered in their depths. It wasn't anger. It wasn't hatred. It was a dead, empty fear, the fear of a man who has already accepted his own damnation.

"You came," Kang whispered, his voice a dry, rasping sound. "I knew you would. The devil always comes to collect his due."

He seemed completely broken, convinced that Yoo-jin's presence was the final act of his humiliation. That he was here to deliver a final threat, to demand some last piece of flesh, to gloat over his total and complete destruction.

Yoo-jin sat in the chair opposite him, the silence between them thick with the ghosts of their shared history. He couldn't begin to help this man, to fulfill his promise to his wife, until he understood the true nature of the abyss Kang was staring into. He needed to diagnose the wound before he could even think about treating it.

He took a quiet breath and initiated a controlled, targeted Synchronization, focusing his ability not on Kang's anger or his fear, but on the very root of his suicidal despair.

[Synchronization Mode: TARGETED (Source of Despair)]

[Establishing Connection... Sync Rate: 30%]

The feeling that flooded him was not what he expected. It wasn't the crushing guilt of a man caught in his crimes. Kang Min-hyuk felt no remorse for the people he had cheated or the laws he had broken. The sync revealed a complete and utter absence of guilt.

What Yoo-jin felt instead was a profound, ego-shattering agony. It was the pain of a king being stripped of his crown, his robes, his kingdom, and being cast out into the wilderness to be mocked by his former subjects. It was the terror of becoming irrelevant. More than prison, more than the public shame, more than the loss of his fortune, Kang Min-hyuk was terrified of being forgotten. His entire identity, his very sense of self, had been built on the foundation of his power and his status. Without it, he felt like he no longer existed. He wasn't a man contemplating suicide to escape punishment; he was a god contemplating oblivion because his worshippers had abandoned him.

Yoo-jin severed the link, the phantom feeling of narcissistic injury leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. He knew, with absolute certainty, that he couldn't reason with this man. He couldn't offer him hope for the future or absolution for the past. Kindness would be seen as pity, and pity was an insult. He had to appeal to the only part of the old Kang Min-hyuk that was still alive, buried under the rubble of his despair: his vanity, his pride, and his bottomless capacity for hatred.

He had to give him a reason to live, even if it was a dark one.

"I didn't come here to collect anything, Director," Yoo-jin said, his voice cold and sharp, completely devoid of sympathy. "I came here to tell you to stop being so pathetic."

Kang stared at him, his dull eyes widening slightly in shock. This was not the interaction he had anticipated.

"You think this is the end?" Yoo-jin pressed, leaning forward in his chair. "You think you get to just check out and let it be over? To just fade away? You are Kang Min-hyuk. The 'Demon Producer.' The man who clawed his way to the top of the most cutthroat industry in the world by stepping on the necks of anyone who got in his way. And you're going to let them—let me—win this easily? You're going to let Chairman Choi wipe his hands of you, erase your name from the history books, and forget you ever existed?"

He saw a flicker of something in Kang's eyes. A spark in the ashes. He pushed harder, deciding in that moment to give Kang a new target for his rage, to shift the man's focus away from self-destruction and towards retribution.

"You think I'm the one who destroyed you?" Yoo-jin scoffed. "I was just the catalyst. The real architect of your downfall is sitting in his penthouse, drinking expensive tea. Chairman Choi was never your friend. He used you for your connections at Stellar, and the moment you became a liability, he was more than happy to watch you burn."

He lowered his voice to a low, intense whisper, a co-conspirator planting a seed of rebellion. "But you were his ally for years. You were in the room. You know things. The deals he made, the promises he broke, the bodies he buried to get to where he is. Are you going to take that knowledge to the grave with you like a coward? Or are you going to use it?"

He stood up, looking down at the broken man. "They say a man with nothing left to lose is the most dangerous man in the world. The only question, Director, is are you still a man? Or have you already let them turn you into a ghost?"

He was offering Kang a new project. A new reason to get up in the morning: revenge. A reason to fight the charges, to stay out of prison, to survive. He was attempting to reignite the man's will to live by reminding him how to hate.

And it worked. He saw it clearly. A flicker of the old, predatory fire returned to Kang Min-hyuk's dead eyes. The cogs of his shrewd, vindictive mind were beginning to turn again.

Yoo-jin turned and left the room without another word, closing the door softly behind him. He walked down the hallway feeling emotionally drained and morally ambiguous. He had just saved a man's life, he was almost certain of it. But he had done so by appealing to the very worst parts of his nature. He was becoming frighteningly adept at manipulating not just strategies and schedules, but the fractured souls of his enemies. And with every victory, he felt a small piece of his own chipping away.