The Scandal-Proof Producer

The final master of "Echo & Roar" was a triumph. The song was a living, breathing entity, a perfect storm of their collective talent, rage, and hope. As the last note faded in the control room, a rare, spontaneous cheer erupted from the exhausted team. But Yoo-jin couldn't share in their elation. The flashing red warning in his vision had poisoned his victory, leaving a bitter, coppery taste of dread in his mouth.

The next day, after the release schedule had been finalized and the initial promotional materials sent out, he asked Go Min-young to stay behind after the team meeting.

"Can I speak with you for a moment?" he asked, his tone carefully neutral.

"Of course, CEO-nim," she replied with her usual polite smile, though her perceptive eyes registered the subtle tension in his posture.

They sat in his office, the door closed. The space felt formal, charged with an awkwardness that had never existed between them before. Yoo-jin, a man who could strategize a war against a global conglomerate and direct a complex recording session with ease, found himself completely at a loss for words. He couldn't just say it. My superpower says your family is a ticking time bomb. The absurdity and cruelty of it were paralyzing.

He decided to approach from an angle, using the truth as a shield for his secret knowledge.

"Min-young," he began, his voice softer than he intended. "With the song's release coming up, we're all going to be under a much bigger microscope. The media, the public, even our enemies… they'll be looking for any crack they can find. As a precaution, I just wanted to check in with everyone, personally. To make sure we're all on solid ground." He paused, looking at her directly. "Is everything okay? At home? With your family?"

He phrased it as a responsible, concerned boss, not an omniscient psychic. Her smile tightened almost imperceptibly at the mention of her family.

"Everything is fine, CEO-nim," she said, her voice a little too bright. "My parents are very proud of all the success. And my brother is… well, he's my brother. Everything is good."

The answer was a deflection, a polite wall. The 15% anxiety he had seen in his Eye flared to life in her expression for a brief moment before being suppressed. The wall had a crack in it.

He needed a different key. Not his power. Her work. He leaned forward, adopting a more contemplative, artistic air.

"I was re-reading some of your old lyric notebooks last night," he said. It was a partial truth; he hadn't looked at them last night, but he had studied them intently when he first hired her. "The very early ones. From before you joined Aura. I was struck by how brilliant they were, even then. But there was a darkness in some of them I hadn't appreciated before. A recurring theme of… debt. Of a heavy, suffocating family obligation. Especially in that one section you'd labeled 'For Him'."

He hadn't invaded her mind. He had simply paid attention to the art she had willingly shared with him. He had read the liner notes of her soul.

That was the key that worked. Go Min-young's carefully constructed composure didn't just crack; it shattered. Her face crumpled, and the polite smile was washed away by a sudden, overwhelming wave of shame and exhaustion. She tried to speak, but a sob caught in her throat.

Yoo-jin waited patiently, his heart aching for her. He pushed a box of tissues across his desk.

When she could finally speak, the story spilled out in a torrent of whispered, painful words. "My older brother…" she began, her voice trembling. "He's a good person, CEO-nim. He has a good heart. But he has… a sickness. A gambling addiction."

For years, her life had been a secret, parallel struggle. Her brother, trapped in a cycle of hope and despair, had been accumulating massive debts with dangerous people. Vicious, predatory loan sharks who didn't operate through courts but through threats and violence. Her entire salary from her previous, high-paying job at Stellar Entertainment, and a significant portion of her current one, had gone directly to paying off his debts, to keeping the sharks away from her parents, to protecting her brother from his own worst impulses. She had been living a secret life of quiet financial terror, all while writing some of the most beautiful and hopeful lyrics in K-pop.

The 'Latent' scandal was about to become horrifyingly active.

"He relapsed," she whispered, tears streaming down her face now. "A few weeks ago. He was doing so well, but… he lost a lot. He took out another loan from a new crew, one even worse than the others. I've been trying to pay it down, but it's too much."

The due date for the full, exorbitant payment was next week. And this time, the threats were different.

"They know about Aura," she choked out, the shame palpable. "They've seen the articles about the Starlight Festival, about our success. They told me that if I can't pay the full amount, they're not coming for my brother. They're coming for me. They said they'll go to every reporter, every online forum. They'll expose me as the sister of a 'degenerate gambler.' They want to ruin the reputation of the wholesome, authentic indie label I work for… to use our fame as leverage to get you… to get the company… to pay an even bigger sum."

This was it. The time bomb. A classic, ugly industry scandal, weaponized to perfection. They would use her family's private pain to blackmail her public family.

Yoo-jin listened to the entire, heartbreaking story, his earlier anxiety solidifying into a cold, hard resolve. The path of least resistance, the one most CEOs would take, was to simply write a check. Pay the sharks, make the problem disappear, and give Min-young a stern warning. It would be clean, efficient.

But he looked at his most loyal, most trusted employee, her face streaked with tears, her shoulders shaking with the weight of a burden she had carried alone for years. He knew that just paying them off would only be a temporary fix. It would treat the symptom, but it wouldn't cure the disease. It wouldn't help her brother, and it wouldn't free her from the cycle of fear.

He made a choice. He wasn't just going to manage this scandal. He wasn't just going to make it go away. He was going to solve it.

He leaned across the desk, his voice calm and filled with a protective certainty that cut through her despair. "Min-young. Listen to me."

She looked up, her eyes red and fearful.

"We are not just going to pay them," he said, his voice imbued with an authority that left no room for doubt. "Paying them is what they want. It's what they expect. It would make us victims. We are going to handle this. All of it. The loan sharks, your brother's debt, and helping him get the treatment he actually needs. You are the heart of this company, Go Min-young. You have carried this burden alone for too long."

He stood up, a general who had just identified the enemy's true point of attack. "This company protects its own. Your fight is now our fight."

He was finally, fully stepping into the role that he was meant for. Not just a producer who saw threats, but a leader who protected his people from them, body and soul.