The Scandal-Proof Producer

The attack from Sofia Kang came not as a whisper or a rumor, but as a sleek, professionally formatted PDF, delivered via email to all festival participants under the subject line: URGENT: Starlight Festival Technical Production Update. It was a masterful piece of corporate sabotage, dressed up in the bland, unimpeachable language of logistical necessity.

A frantic Go Min-young rushed into Yoo-jin's office, her face pale with panic, a tablet clutched in her hand. "You need to see this," she said, her voice tight with anxiety. "Sofia Kang just made her move."

On the screen was the email. It was a dense, multi-page document filled with technical jargon, citing new municipal safety ordinances, updated broadcast requirements from the network, and the "unique staging needs" of several performing artists. The result of these "unavoidable last-minute adjustments," buried on page three, was that the official changeover window for the 'Indie & Rising Stars' stage, the time allotted for the previous act to clear out and for Aura's crew to set up, had been officially reduced from forty-five minutes to fifteen.

It was an impossible timeframe. A death sentence. It would take them ten minutes just to get their backline equipment into position. A fifteen-minute changeover guaranteed a late start, a rushed, sloppy soundcheck, and a performance that would sound terrible both in the venue and on the live broadcast. It was a perfect, deniable attack.

"What are we going to do?" Min-young asked, her voice trembling slightly. "We can't possibly be ready in fifteen minutes. She's cornered us. If we complain, we'll look like amateurs who can't handle pressure."

The rest of the Aura team, drawn by the commotion, gathered at the door, their faces grim. They were in a panic. But Yoo-jin was calm. He had been expecting this.

"Min-young, call Oh Min-ji," he said quietly. "Tell her I need her in the conference room. Now."

A few minutes later, Min-ji shuffled into the room, her usual sullen, apathetic aura firmly in place. She looked from the anxious faces of the staff to Yoo-jin, who was sitting calmly at the head of the conference table.

Yoo-jin gestured to the main monitor, where the damning technical update was displayed in all its bureaucratic glory. He didn't tell her what to do. He didn't ask for her opinion. He simply presented the problem.

"This is Director Sofia Kang's attack," he stated, his voice even. "Your prediction was accurate. This is her move. Now, I need a counter-measure." He looked directly at her, empowering her with a trust no one had ever shown her before. "Analyze this document. Find the flaw in her logic. Find me a loophole. Find me the lie."

A switch flipped behind Oh Min-ji's eyes. The sullen teenager vanished, replaced by the S-Rank analyst. She was no longer being asked to sing, to dance, to emote. She was being asked to solve a puzzle. She was being asked to do the one thing in the world she was truly brilliant at.

She walked up to the large screen, her focus absolute. To everyone else in the room, the document was an impenetrable wall of technical gibberish—wattage requirements, sound channel allocations, pyrotechnic safety codes, lighting rig weight limits. To Min-ji, it was a system of logic waiting to be stress-tested and broken.

Her eyes scanned the document, not reading the words but absorbing the data, cross-referencing information between sections with an astonishing speed. She was silent for several minutes, her finger occasionally tracing a line of text on the screen. The Aura staff watched, bewildered, wondering what this quiet, gloomy girl could possibly contribute.

Then, she stopped. Her finger rested on a single paragraph on page two.

"Here," she said, her voice flat but certain. "It's a lie."

She turned to face them. "She claims the extended soundcheck for the heavy metal band on Stage B is due to their 'unique pyrotechnic and amplification needs,' and she specifically cites city safety ordinance 11-B, which mandates redundant power sources for any pyrotechnics over a certain explosive yield." She then scrolled to a different section of the document, a technical appendix detailing the festival's power grid allocation.

"But here," she said, tapping a row of numbers, "is the power grid allocation she has assigned to Stage B for that time block. It's insufficient. According to the festival's own engineering specifications, which she attached on page seven, trying to run that specific pyrotechnic setup on this power grid would create an overload. It would trip the main circuit breaker for the entire western block of the venue."

She looked at Yoo-jin. "She's padded the report with impressive-sounding but fundamentally contradictory technical data. She built her justification on a foundation of lies, assuming no one would be crazy enough, or meticulous enough, to actually read and cross-reference the entire seventy-page document."

A stunned silence filled the room, followed by a slow, collective grin spreading across the faces of the Aura staff. The girl was a genius. She had found the fatal flaw.

Yoo-jin felt a surge of pride. His gamble on her had paid off spectacularly. He now had the perfect, irrefutable weapon to dismantle Sofia's attack.

He sat down at his laptop and began to draft an email. It was polite, professional, and absolutely devastating. He addressed it to Director Yoon Ji-seok and the entire festival production committee, making sure to cc Sofia Kang.

Subject: Urgent Safety Concern Regarding Technical Production Update

Dear Director Yoon and the Starlight Festival Production Committee,

In reviewing the recent Technical Production Update, our team at Aura has identified a potential critical safety issue that we feel obligated to bring to your immediate attention.

As per our analysis of the document, the power grid allocation assigned to Stage B during the 19:00-19:30 time block (see Appendix C, section 4) appears to be insufficient to safely support the pyrotechnic equipment cited in the justification for the extended sound check (see Main Document, page 2, paragraph 3).

Based on the festival's own engineering specifications, attempting to operate the stated pyrotechnics on that power grid could pose a significant risk of a cascading power failure, potentially endangering public safety and causing a major outage for the entire event.

We strongly recommend an immediate review of these specifications. We at Aura are, of course, happy to maintain the original production schedule to alleviate any potential strain on the power grid and ensure the safety of all attendees and staff.

Sincerely,

Han Yoo-jin

CEO, Aura Management

He hit send. The email was a checkmate. He had used Min-ji's brilliant analysis to frame Sofia's act of sabotage not as a power play, but as an act of gross professional incompetence that endangered the entire festival. She would have no choice but to publicly retract the schedule change to save her own reputation.

He hadn't just defused her attack. He had turned it into a weapon that made her look like a reckless amateur in front of her powerful employers.

He looked over at Oh Min-ji, who was watching him with a quiet, satisfied look in her eyes. The unwilling protégé, the girl who hated music, had just won her first battle in the K-pop industry. And she had done it without singing a single note.