The Scandal-Proof Producer

The Aura Management conference room was a chamber of simmering resentment and confusion. The insidious questions from Nam Gyu-ri's article hung in the air, a poisonous miasma that had resurrected the very insecurities Yoo-jin had worked so hard to quell. He looked at the faces of his artists—Da-eun's simmering anger, Chae-rin's shadowed retreat, Jin's hollowed-out despair—and knew that a simple press release or a defiant social media post would be like throwing a cup of water on a forest fire.

He walked to the whiteboard, the poisonous article still projected onto it, and with a single, decisive swipe of his hand, he erased it. The screen went blank, a clean slate.

"She wants to ask questions in the dark," Yoo-jin said, his voice cutting through the tense silence, sharp and clear. "Our response will be to give answers in the brightest light imaginable."

He turned to face them, his eyes burning with an audacious, almost manic energy. "We are shelving the traditional debut plan for Aura Chimera. The music video, the scheduled interviews, the teasers—all of it is on hold. We are doing something else. Something she will never see coming. We are producing our own documentary."

The word hung in the air, unexpected and strange.

"A documentary?" Kang Ji-won asked from his corner, his skepticism palpable. "About what? The making of the song?"

"No," Yoo-jin said. "About the making of the artists."

He began to pace, the blueprint of his radical new strategy forming in his mind as he spoke. "We will create a thirty-minute documentary. We will release it for free, on our own YouTube channel, with no warning. We'll call it: 'The Ghosts' Testimony.'"

He painted a picture for them. "The concept is absolute simplicity. It will be raw, unscripted, and unflinching. It will feature each of you," he looked at his three singers, "one by one. Sitting in a single, simple chair against a stark black background. A single light. Speaking directly to the camera. No dramatic music, no fancy editing, no cuts to hide behind. Just you and your truth."

He stopped pacing and addressed Jin first, his voice softening with empathy but firm with purpose. "Jin. You will go first. You will be the one to tell the world the story of 'Kai.' You will play your original, raw demo of 'Hollow' for the camera. And then you will describe, in your own words, what it felt like to hear your artistic soul, your most private creation, stolen, sanitized, and worn by a corporate machine. You will not be the victim of the story. You will be the first ghost to testify."

Jin looked up, a flicker of something—fear, but also a dangerous hope—igniting in his empty eyes.

Yoo-jin then turned to Chae-rin. "Chae-rin, you will go next. You will tell the story of your seven years in the Stellar Entertainment dungeon. The story of being a ghost in a girl group, a voice without a face. You will talk about what it means to be told to remain silent, to be invisible. You will give a voice to the thousands of trainees who are suffering in silence, just like you did."

Chae-rin, who would have once recoiled from such a prospect, met his gaze. Her hands were trembling, but she didn't look away.

Finally, he looked at Da-eun. "And Da-eun, you will tell your story. Not the one the public knows. You will talk about your crippling performance anxiety. About every executive who told you that you were 'too much,' 'too loud,' 'too difficult.' You will talk about your roar not as an act of aggression, but as armor against a world that tried to make you quiet and small. You will show them the fear behind the fire."

The proposal was breathtaking in its audacity. He was asking them to do the one thing every public figure is trained not to do: to publicly, willingly expose their deepest wounds, their most painful scars.

Da-eun, ever the pragmatist when it came to a fight, voiced the obvious objection. "Are you crazy, CEO-nim?" she asked, her voice a mixture of disbelief and grudging respect. "You want us to just… hand our trauma to the world on a platter? Nam Gyu-ri will have a field day with this. She won't have to whisper questions anymore; she'll have our confessions. She'll call it emotional exhibitionism, a desperate plea for attention."

"Let her," Yoo-jin countered, his voice ringing with conviction. "Her power comes from hinting at secrets, from whispering about hidden shame. We will rob her of that power by having no secrets left."

He stepped closer to the center of the room, his passion infectious. "Don't you see? Her article asks, 'Is their pain real? Is it just a gimmick?' We will answer that question so definitively that it can never be asked again. We will show the world the pain. We will show them the scars. And then," he said, his voice rising, "we will show them the breathtaking, magnificent art that was born from it."

"This isn't just about testifying to your past. It's about connecting it, inextricably, to your present. After you each tell your story, we will cut to footage of you in the studio, together. We will show you arguing, laughing, struggling, and finally creating 'Hollow.' We will show the world that your pain is not a product you are selling. It is the fuel you are burning to create light. We will prove that the ghost, the roar, and the stolen soul are not your weaknesses. They are the source of your goddamn superpower."

The sheer, unassailable logic of it was a thing of beauty. He was taking Nam Gyu-ri's attack vector and turning it into their primary engine. He was going to prove their authenticity by showing the ugly, painful, and beautiful process of turning trauma into art.

This was the most demanding, the most dangerous act of artist management he had ever attempted. He was asking for a level of trust that bordered on absolute faith. He was asking them to hand him their most vulnerable selves, promising he could turn them into shields.

He looked at each of them, his expression serious. "But this only works if we are all in. One hundred percent. If even one of you has a doubt, we don't do it. The choice is yours."

The room was silent for a long, heavy moment. The three artists looked at each other, a silent conversation passing between them. They had all been victims of the industry in different ways. They had all been told to hide their truths. Yoo-jin was offering them the chance to do the opposite, to reclaim their own narratives with a defiant roar.

It was Jin, the man who had the most to lose and the most to reclaim, who broke the silence. He looked at Yoo-jin, his eyes no longer hollow, but filled with a cold, clear fire.

"I'll do it," he said, his voice steady.

His courage was the spark. Chae-rin looked at him, then at Da-eun, and gave a firm, determined nod. Da-eun let out a sharp, humorless laugh. "Hell," she said, a reckless grin spreading across her face. "Let's give the Viper something to really talk about."

The new blueprint was approved. The counter-attack was on.