The Scandal-Proof Producer

The message from Cipher_07 burned on Han Yoo-jin's laptop screen, a glowing beacon of pure, uncut chaos in the quiet of his office. He had been staring at it for a full ten minutes, his mind a whirlwind of branching possibilities, each path leading to a different, more catastrophic form of disaster.

A trap. It had to be a trap. Nam Gyu-ri was too smart, too methodical to not try something like this. She knew he was a risk-taker. This was a perfectly baited hook, designed to lure him into a compromising meeting that would be photographed, recorded, and twisted into a career-ending scandal: "Aura's CEO Colluding With Rival Idol!"

But then there was the message itself. The simple, unadorned plea. "…someone who thinks we might be fighting the same monster." It lacked The Viper's usual venomous poetry. It felt… raw.

He couldn't use his ability. The Producer's Eye, for all its power, couldn't analyze a string of text sent from an anonymous source. It needed a live human target, a direct memory trace, a voiceprint—something with a soul attached. This was just data. And data could lie.

His instincts screamed at him from two opposing directions. His paranoia screamed 'trap,' while the part of him that recognized the scent of genuine desperation screamed 'opportunity.' He needed proof. He needed to treat this not as a potential alliance, but as a hostile intelligence operation.

He picked up his phone and called Go Min-young, who was still at her desk, fueled by coffee and nervous energy. "Min-young, lock the front door. I need you in my office. Now. And bring your laptop."

A minute later, she slipped into the room, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and curiosity. Yoo-jin turned his laptop so she could see the screen. She read the message, and her hand flew to her mouth.

"Is that… is that real?" she whispered.

"That's what we're going to find out," Yoo-jin said, his voice dropping into the cool, analytical tone he used when he was dissecting a problem. "I need you to trace the metadata on this username. I don't care if the app is encrypted. I want to know everything you can find. Point of origin, server pings, time stamps. I want to know if the IP address has been bounced through a dozen proxies or if it's coming from somewhere inside Seoul. Assume it's a trap set by The Viper. Assume she's watching everything we do."

Min-young's face hardened with determination. The shy, timid intern was gone, replaced by a focused cyber-analyst. "Okay," she said, her fingers already flying across her keyboard. "I'll try."

While she worked, Yoo-jin began pacing. He needed a test. A password. A question that only the real Jin could answer, but one so obscure that not even Nam Gyu-ri, with all of Chairman Choi's resources, could possibly dig it up in time. It couldn't be about his family, his birthday, or his favorite food—all things a dedicated fan or a corporate researcher would know. It had to be a forgotten moment, buried in the past, sealed by trauma and non-disclosure agreements.

He closed his eyes, forcing his mind back through the hundreds of hours of performance footage, reality shows, and behind-the-scenes clips he had analyzed when preparing for this war. He sifted through the data, looking for a forgotten emotional spike.

And then he found it.

A short-lived reality show from two years ago, following Eclipse's preparations for a comeback. There was a brief mention on a now-defunct fan blog about a rumored incident during a dance practice that had been completely edited out of the final broadcast. The blog post was vague, citing an anonymous staffer.

According to the rumor, the team had been practicing for fourteen hours straight under the watchful eye of the group's notoriously tyrannical performance director, a man known only as Director Park. The group's youngest member, Min-joon, a boy who was barely eighteen at the time, had collapsed from sheer exhaustion. Director Park, furious at the interruption, had begun to berate the boy as he lay on the floor.

And Jin, then still a rookie leader trying to find his footing, had done something unthinkable. He had stepped between the director and Min-joon, shielding the younger member with his own body. He'd taken the full force of the director's verbal abuse and then, his voice shaking but firm, had insisted the team be given a ten-minute break. It was a small, quiet act of rebellion, but in the rigid hierarchy of the industry, it was a lit match in a gas station. The moment was quickly squashed, buried, and never spoken of again. But it would have been seared into the memory of everyone in that room.

Yoo-jin opened his eyes. He had his question. He sat down at his laptop and crafted a cryptic reply to Cipher_07, a message designed not just to test knowledge, but to mislead any researcher who might intercept it.

"Monsters are everywhere. Some of them wear suits. Some of them hold stopwatches. If you're real, tell me what happened to Min-joon's left ankle in the summer of 2021."

The question was a brilliant piece of misdirection. The incident had absolutely nothing to do with an ankle injury. It was a test to see if the person on the other end would correct him, to see if they knew the context of that specific, grueling summer practice session.

He hit send. And then, they waited.

The silence in the office was deafening. The only sounds were the soft clicking of Min-young's keyboard and the hum of the server rack in the corner. Ten minutes stretched into thirty. Thirty stretched into an hour.

The door to Yoo-jin's office creaked open. Kang Ji-won stood in the doorway, his eyes narrowed, taking in the scene. The locked front door, the hushed, tense atmosphere, Yoo-jin and Min-young huddled together over a laptop like a pair of conspirators. His suspicion, already festering from The Viper's poisonous whispers, bloomed into full-blown conviction.

"More late-night strategy sessions?" he asked, his voice laced with a bitter, weary sarcasm. "Or are you two just deciding which of my songs to sacrifice next for the sake of a good story?"

The barb, aimed directly at Yoo-jin's recent 'double title track' decision, was sharp and deeply accusatory.

Yoo-jin, his mind completely consumed by the message and its implications, didn't have the energy for Ji-won's cynicism. He gave a cold, dismissive reply without even looking at him. "This doesn't concern you, Ji-won."

It was the worst possible thing he could have said. It wasn't just a dismissal; it was a confirmation of all of Ji-won's deepest fears. He wasn't part of the inner circle. He was just the hired help, the composer, excluded from the real decisions. The schism between them, which had started as a crack, widened into a chasm. Ji-won stared at the back of Yoo-jin's head for a long moment, his expression hardening into one of cold hostility, then turned and retreated back into his studio, the quiet click of the door feeling like a final verdict.

Just as Yoo-jin was beginning to regret his harsh words, a notification chimed on his laptop.

A new message from Cipher_07.

His heart hammered against his ribs. He opened it, Min-young leaning in so close he could feel the heat from her shoulder.

"It wasn't his ankle. It was dehydration. He passed out on the practice room floor. Director Park was going to end him. I told Park to yell at me instead. The ten-minute break I demanded was the most terrifying ten minutes of my entire life. I thought I was going to be kicked out of the group. How could you possibly know that?"

Yoo-jin read the words, and a cold certainty washed over him. The correction. The emotional detail—"the most terrifying ten minutes of my entire life"—that was the key. It was a sliver of genuine, remembered trauma. A researcher could never find that. A manipulator could never fake it with such precision.

It was him. He was talking to the real Jin.

Min-young looked at him, her eyes wide. "So it's not a trap?"

"No," Yoo-jin said softly, staring at the screen. "It's not a trap."

He closed the laptop. The authentication was complete. Now the real problem began. The most famous idol in Korea, the star asset of his mortal enemy, wanted a secret meeting. And he had absolutely no idea what he was going to do about it.