The Scandal-Proof Producer

The following day, the Aura practice room felt less like a rehearsal space and more like an experimental theater workshop where the actors had been given roles they were fundamentally wrong for. The mood was thick with a mixture of dread, resentment, and a sliver of grudging curiosity.

Yoo-jin's assignment was underway.

Ahn Da-eun stood at the microphone, her usual confident, grounded stance replaced by a tense, awkward posture. She held a lyric sheet for Jin's ballad, "Hollow," her knuckles white. The powerful electric guitar that was usually strapped to her like a vital organ was leaning silently in a corner. It was just her, the microphone, and Kang Ji-won's sparse piano accompaniment.

She took a breath and began to sing. The voice that emerged was technically proficient, but emotionally fraudulent. Her powerful, open-throated vocal cords, designed for stadium-shaking roars, struggled to navigate the soft, breathy falsetto required by the melody. She was trying to make her voice smaller, more fragile, and the effort was palpable. It sounded like a lion being forced to whisper, the constrained power creating a strained, unnatural timbre. She wasn't conveying vulnerability; she was performing a clumsy imitation of it.

After she finished the first verse, she looked over at their designated judge. Chae-rin, who had been listening with her eyes closed, her expression one of intense concentration, hesitated for a moment before speaking. Her voice was soft, but carried the new weight of the authority Yoo-jin had given her.

"Unni," she said gently, "the notes are right. But… it sounds like you're making fun of the song. Like you're imitating what you think a sad person sounds like, not actually feeling what he felt when he wrote it. I don't believe you."

The criticism, though delivered kindly, landed like a stone. Da-eun's face flushed with frustration. She, the great Ahn Da-eun, was being told her performance was fake by the quietest girl in the company. But she couldn't argue, because she knew it was true. She had no idea how to access the emotion the song required.

Next, it was Jin's turn. He stood before the microphone, the lyric sheet for Da-eun's visceral rock anthem, "My Room," in his trembling hand. The song was a primal scream of defiance and rage, a story of being trapped and fighting back.

Ji-won switched from the piano to a heavy, distorted guitar track they had on file. The aggressive, pounding music filled the room. Jin took a breath and began to sing the furious lyrics.

"These four walls are my own design / This friendly cage is a battle line!"

The result was just as wrong as Da-eun's, but in the opposite direction. His polished, technically perfect idol training was a straitjacket he couldn't escape. He hit every note perfectly. His diction was flawless. But there was no fire, no grit. He was reciting poetry about anger, not channeling anger itself. He sang the line, "I'll scream until my throat is raw," with the clean, precise tone of a news anchor reading a teleprompter.

When he finished, all eyes again turned to Chae-rin. She took a deep breath before offering her verdict. "It's… it's very clean, sunbaenim," she said, using the respectful term for a senior artist. "Your technique is perfect. But I don't believe you. I don't believe you've ever wanted to scream like that. It sounds like you're describing a painting of a fire, not standing in the middle of it."

Jin's face fell. He had been stripped of his own voice by OmniCorp, and now he was being told he was incapable of borrowing someone else's. The session had reached a point of shared, humbling failure. The two "alpha" personalities, the two strongest voices in the room, had been proven to be masters of their own limited domains and utterly incompetent outside of them.

The shared frustration, however, did something unexpected. It broke down the walls between them.

"How do you even make your voice do that… that broken thing in the chorus?" Da-eun asked Jin, her frustration giving way to genuine, professional curiosity. "I try to sing it softly, but it just sounds weak. Yours sounds… fragile. Like glass about to shatter. How?"

Jin, surprised by the direct question, actually thought about it. "I don't think about making it soft," he said slowly, trying to articulate a feeling he'd never had to explain before. "I think about… letting all the air out. The feeling of being completely hollowed out. The note is just what's left over when everything else is gone."

Da-eun's eyes widened slightly in understanding.

Then, Jin looked at her. "But you," he said, a note of awe in his voice. "How do you make it sound like you're tearing down a wall with every word? When I try to sing your lyrics, it just feels like I'm yelling. It sounds childish. Yours sounds… righteous. It has weight."

"I'm not thinking about anger," Da-eun confessed, a rare moment of introspection for the fiery singer. "I'm thinking about filling a void. When I was younger, I felt so small, so unheard. The only way to prove I existed was to make a sound so big that it filled up the entire room, leaving no space for anything else. The roar isn't about being angry at someone. It's about fighting against emptiness."

Listening to their exchange, a sudden, brilliant flash of insight struck Chae-rin. The quiet observer, the one who understood both worlds, finally saw the bridge between them.

"Wait," she said, her voice cutting through their conversation. They both turned to look at her. "You're both singing about the same thing."

Da-eun and Jin looked at her, confused.

"Emptiness," Chae-rin explained, her voice gaining confidence. "Jin-sunbaenim, you sing about the feeling of being hollowed out. Unni, you sing about the feeling of being an empty space that needs to be filled. You are both starting from the exact same place. You just have completely different ways of fighting it."

The simple, profound truth of her statement hung in the air, a stunning revelation. It was the key. The Rosetta Stone that translated their two opposing artistic languages.

A new understanding dawned on their faces. They weren't fire and fog. They were two different kinds of emptiness, one imploding, one exploding.

"Let's try it again," Yoo-jin's voice said through the talkback, having heard the entire exchange. "From the top of 'Hollow.'"

This time, everything was different. Jin began to sing, his voice still fragile, but now imbued with a new sense of purpose. And Da-eun, instead of trying to add a competing melody, simply began to hum a low, resonant harmony note beneath his vocal. It was a single, sustained tone, a foundational roar that didn't overpower his echo, but instead gave it a floor to stand on, a wall to press against. It was the sound of her filling the void around him, protecting him.

Feeling that support, Jin's voice gained strength and clarity. He wasn't just a ghost anymore; he was a ghost with a tether to the living world.

And Chae-rin, seeing their newfound connection, instinctively found her own place. She began to weave a new, intricate, and complex harmony around them both, a delicate silver thread that tied the deep, foundational roar and the high, fragile echo together.

From the control room, Kang Ji-won listened, his eyes wide with inspiration. He started playing along on his keyboard, not just the simple chords of the demo, but a whole new arrangement. A slow-burn track that started with the fragile intimacy of Jin's piano but gradually built, incorporating the deep, resonant warmth of a cello to represent Da-eun's harmony, and shimmering, atmospheric synths to represent Chae-rin's.

The song was no longer a ballad. It was no longer a rock track. It was something else entirely. It was the sound of empathy. The sound of three broken artists using their scars to heal each other.