The Scandal-Proof Producer

The psychiatric clinic had become an unwelcome but necessary stop in Yoo-jin's new, complicated life. He was there for a follow-up session with Kang Min-hyuk, scheduled at the urgent request of the psychiatrist, Dr. Ahn. According to her brief, discreet call, the subject's condition had "stabilized, but shifted in a new, concerning direction."

Yoo-jin entered the same sterile, quiet consultation room. The man waiting for him was indeed different. The hollowed-out, suicidal ghost was gone. Kang Min-hyuk was clean-shaven now, his suit was pressed, and the dead, empty look in his eyes had been replaced by a familiar, sullen fire. Yoo-jin's unorthodox therapy had worked. He had successfully pulled Kang back from the abyss by giving him a new reason to live: pure, unadulterated revenge.

"You're looking better, Director," Yoo-jin said, taking the seat opposite him.

Kang let out a short, sharp, humorless laugh. "Don't patronize me. You came here to do a job, and you did it. I'm not going to jump off a bridge. Satisfied?" His voice was dripping with resentment, but it was the voice of a man who intended to keep breathing.

"You were right," Kang continued, leaning forward, his eyes gleaming with a new, venomous energy. "He threw me away like trash. Like I was nothing. After everything I did for him, for that company." He tapped his temple with a finger. "I've been making a list since our last talk. A list of every dirty deal, every backroom handshake, every secret promise, every whispered threat I ever witnessed. I'm going to burn him. I'm going to burn him to the ground."

Yoo-jin listened, his expression neutral. This was the outcome he had engineered. A bitter, vengeful Kang Min-hyuk was a far more useful tool than a dead one.

But Kang's initial fire quickly gave way to a deep, guttural frustration. He slumped back in his chair, running a hand through his hair. "It's useless," he spat. "It's all useless! The information I have… it's all anecdotal. It's my word against the word of one of the most powerful, most respected men in Korea. Who are they going to believe?"

He began to rant, the words spilling out in a torrent of impotent rage. "I know he used a series of shell companies registered in tax havens to funnel money into a political slush fund! I was there when he boasted about it! But I never saw the paperwork, he was too careful for that! I know for a fact he blackmailed Assemblyman Kim to get the broadcast license for his new cable channel, but I was only told about it after the fact, as a warning of what he was capable of! I have no recordings! No documents! I have nothing but memories, and memories aren't proof!"

Yoo-jin listened, a sense of disappointment settling in. Kang was right. These were bombshell accusations, but without hard evidence, they were just the bitter ramblings of a disgraced executive. It was a dead end.

He was about to dismiss it all as useless when a new thought occurred to him, a new possibility born from the recent evolution of his ability. He hadn't just learned to defend against his power; he'd learned to focus it. What if he could use it not just to feel what Kang felt, but to see what Kang saw? To re-examine the man's memories with his own superior, S-Rank analytical lens?

The idea was audacious, a new and untested application of his gift. He decided to try.

He closed his eyes, feigning a moment of deep thought to mask his intense concentration. He didn't sync with Kang's anger or his frustration. He pushed his ability in a new direction, targeting the man's perceptual memory, specifically the memory of the meeting where the politician was discussed.

[Synchronization Mode: TARGETED (Perceptual Memory)]

[Accessing Subject's Recollection: 'Executive Meeting, Chairman's Office, Summer 2022']

[Establishing Connection...]

The world dissolved. Yoo-jin was no longer in the quiet clinic. He was a silent ghost inside Kang Min-hyuk's memory, seeing through Kang's eyes, hearing through his ears. He was sitting at the massive obsidian desk in Chairman Choi's penthouse office. He could smell the Chairman's expensive cologne, see the smug, triumphant look on his face as he bragged about how Assemblyman Kim had suddenly become "very cooperative."

The memory was just as Kang had described it. It was a conversation between two powerful men. There was no hard proof. No documents were exchanged. It was a dead end.

But Yoo-jin's Producer's Eye was not Kang Min-hyuk's. Where Kang's arrogant, self-absorbed gaze had been focused solely on the Chairman, Yoo-jin's ability was scanning the entire periphery, analyzing every detail of the memory with a clarity Kang never possessed.

And then he saw it. An unheard note in the symphony of the past.

In the background of the memory, a junior executive assistant, a young woman in her early twenties, entered the room silently to serve tea. As she placed the cups on the desk, her gaze flickered for a fraction of a second to a document that was sitting near the Chairman's elbow—a document that hadn't been part of Kang's conscious memory at all. Yoo-jin's ability zoomed in, enhancing the detail. The document was a single-page asset transfer between one of the Chairman's known shell companies and a foundation run by the politician's wife.

For a split second, the young woman's eyes widened in shock and comprehension before she expertly schooled her features back into a neutral, deferential mask. She bowed and exited the room. Kang Min-hyuk, in his memory, had not even registered her presence. She was just a piece of furniture.

But Yoo-jin's ability flagged it instantly, a shining beacon in the fog of the past.

[New Data Point Identified. Unobserved Detail in Subject's Memory.]

[Potential Witness: 'Kim Soo-yeon' (Former Executive Assistant to Chairman Choi).]

[Analysis: High probability of having seen, and understood the significance of, incriminating financial documents. Note: Subject Kim Soo-yeon resigned from Top Tier Media three months after this event, citing 'personal reasons'.]

Yoo-jin severed the link, his own heart pounding with the thrill of discovery. He was back in the clinic, the memory fading, but the information it contained was now his.

The proof wasn't in Kang's memory of the conversation. The proof was in the memory of the powerless young assistant who had been invisible to the powerful men in the room.

He had found a new application for his power. He could act as a psychic forensic analyst, re-examining other people's memories to find the critical clues that they themselves had missed. He could hear the unheard notes.

He looked at the bitter, vengeful man sitting across from him, a man still lost in his own useless anger. Yoo-jin had come here today to save his enemy's life, a messy, complicated act of reluctant mercy.

He had walked away with the key to ending Chairman Choi's.