The Scandal-Proof Producer

The cafe at the National Museum was a carefully chosen battlefield. Sunlight streamed through vast, floor-to-ceiling windows, illuminating the minimalist space in a soft, forgiving glow. The air smelled of expensive coffee and old paper from the nearby museum bookshop. It was a place designed for quiet contemplation and intellectual discourse—a setting perfectly calibrated to Dr. Elias Thorne's persona.

Park Chae-rin walked in, feeling the cool weight of the silver locket against her skin. She had tapped the four-beat sequence on her clean phone before she left the car, the recorder now silently capturing every ambient sound. On the surface, she was the image of the fragile artist: dressed in a simple, oversized sweater, her movements hesitant, her eyes wide and scanning the room with a shy nervousness. Inside, her heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs, a stark contrast to the calm she was projecting.

He was already there, at a secluded corner table, and stood up as she approached. Dr. Thorne was even more handsome and effortlessly charming than she remembered. His smile was warm, his eyes crinkled with what appeared to be genuine pleasure at seeing her.

"Chae-rin-ssi," he said, his voice smooth as velvet. "Thank you so much for agreeing to meet. I was afraid my message might have been too forward."

"Not at all, Doctor," she murmured, sliding into the chair he held out for her. "I was… intrigued." She was playing her part. The part of the fascinated, slightly intimidated artist.

He started with a masterful stroke of flattery, designed to disarm and build rapport. "I must say again how impressed I was the other night. It takes a unique kind of courage for an artist of your sensibility to immerse themselves in such a… chaotic environment. It speaks to a deep intellectual and emotional curiosity."

"I'm just trying to understand other artists," she replied, her voice soft. This was her first volley. The conversation began, a chess match disguised as a pleasant chat.

"A noble goal," he said, leaning forward slightly. "That contrast must be fascinating for you. Your own quiet, introspective world versus the loud, externalized world of rock music. How do you process that kind of conflict?"

Here it was. The opening. She took a sip of water, giving herself a beat to compose her thoughts. "It's overwhelming sometimes," she answered, allowing a genuine flicker of her past anxiety to surface. It made the performance more believable. "It feels like listening to two completely different songs at the same time, and my brain isn't sure which one to focus on." She looked at him, her expression a carefully crafted mask of intellectual curiosity. "But you're the expert. As a sociologist who studies these things, you must see that kind of conflict all the time. How do you analyze such dissonant cultural signals?"

Chorus. And what do you think, Doctor?

A pleased, professorial smile touched Thorne's lips. As Yoo-jin had predicted, he was delighted to be positioned as the authority. He launched into a smooth, eloquent mini-lecture.

"An excellent question. What you're describing is a classic case of cognitive dissonance, but on an artistic and cultural level. The brain is a pattern-recognition machine. It seeks harmony. When it's presented with two competing, high-amplitude data streams—your introspective art versus Da-eun-ssi's aggressive rock—it struggles to create a unified narrative. The resulting stress is what you feel as being 'overwhelmed'."

The words data streams and pattern-recognition machine snagged in Chae-rin's mind. They were the vocabulary of a technician, not an artist. The recorder in her pocket was capturing every syllable.

"Our work at the foundation," he continued, seamlessly transitioning into his pitch, "is centered on understanding these pathways. We believe that by mapping an artist's unique emotional processing, we can help them optimize their response to dissonant stimuli, reducing the cognitive load and preventing creative burnout."

He was so smooth, so convincing. If she hadn't been prepared, she would have been completely captivated. She discreetly touched the locket at her throat with her thumb. It remained still and cold against her skin. The room was clean. She felt a small, sharp surge of confidence. She was in control.

She let the conversation flow for another twenty minutes, a slow, careful dance. She would offer a small, honest piece of her own artistic experience, and then immediately pivot, asking him to analyze it through his academic lens. He, in turn, eagerly explained his theories on neuro-aesthetics, emotional transference, and the "bio-signature" of creativity. He was so caught up in showcasing his own brilliance that he failed to notice that he was doing all the talking, revealing the entire philosophical framework of OmniCorp's mission.

The time was right. She had built the rapport. Now, it was time to lay the bait.

She looked down at her hands, her posture slumping slightly, projecting a wave of anxiety and discouragement. "Doctor…" she began, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "There's something I'm struggling with right now. Something I probably shouldn't even be talking about."

Thorne leaned forward, his expression shifting to one of intense, clinical interest. "Please, Chae-rin-ssi. You can trust me. That's why we're here."

"It's this duet," she said, letting her voice tremble slightly. "My producer, he wants me to do a duet with Ahn Da-eun. But her voice… it's so powerful. It's a roar. And mine is just… an echo. When we sing together, I feel like I just disappear. I don't know how to compete with her."

She used the word "compete" deliberately, a seed of conflict planted in the fertile ground of his analytical mind. This was the moment of truth. Would he be a mentor, or a manipulator?

Dr. Thorne's eyes gleamed. He didn't offer encouragement. He didn't suggest she find harmony with Da-eun. He saw a fascinating new problem to be solved, a new data set to analyze.

"Compete?" he repeated, savoring the word. "You shouldn't be thinking of it as an artistic competition, Chae-rin. You should reframe it. Think of it as a problem of signal integrity."

The phrase hung in the air, cold and technical.

"Ahn Da-eun's 'roar' is simply a dominant, low-frequency vocal signal," he explained, his voice losing its warmth and taking on the precision of a surgeon. "It's designed to occupy a wide band of the audio spectrum, which is why it's muddying your higher-frequency one. It's not an insurmountable artistic problem. It's an engineering one."

He smiled then, a predator who believed his prey had just walked willingly into the trap.

"My foundation has been developing proprietary software… entirely non-invasive, of course… that can analyze vocal waveforms with incredible precision. It can suggest microscopic adjustments to pitch, timbre, and harmonics to allow a weaker, or rather, a more refined signal to 'cut through' a dominant one without simply increasing the volume."

He leaned in closer, his voice dropping as if sharing a revolutionary secret. "We could analyze a recording of your voice. Then, if you could procure a clean recording of Ms. Ahn's—a solo vocal track from one of your sessions, perhaps—we could feed both into the system. The software would model a solution. It would give you a precise roadmap of the resonant frequencies you need to emphasize to carve out your own space. We could, in essence, give your echo the power to silence her roar."

He said it as if he were offering her the greatest gift in the world. The power to win. But Chae-rin heard the truth with perfect, chilling clarity. He wasn't offering to help her find harmony. He was offering her a weapon. He wanted to engineer a conflict, to turn their studio into his laboratory, to analyze the data from the fallout.

She looked at his smiling, intelligent face, and for the first time, she wasn't afraid. She just felt a profound, icy calm. The ghost had seen the monster's true face.