The Scandal-Proof Producer

Han Yoo-jin's office became a command bunker. He locked the door, drew the blinds, and silenced his phone. The man who had been celebrating with his team half an hour ago was gone, replaced by a colder, more focused version of himself. The warmth in his eyes had been extinguished, leaving behind the chillingly calm glint of polished steel. This was not about saving his company anymore. This was about retribution. The shift inside him was tectonic; he was no longer a producer managing risk, but a general planning a decapitation strike.

He sat before his laptop, the 'Insurance' folder open. It was a digital armory filled with career-ending weapons. His gaze fell on the file for Chairman Choi, the biggest weapon of all, containing the whispers of money laundering and political corruption. It was tempting to aim for the king immediately, to unleash the apocalypse.

But he resisted. A direct attack on the Chairman would be a suicide mission. The blowback would be immense, and the trail, no matter how carefully he covered it, would lead back to him. It was too soon. A king is best isolated before he is dethroned. He needed to send a message first, a crippling, untraceable strike that would demonstrate his power and sow chaos in the enemy ranks. He needed to take out a key lieutenant.

His decision was instant. His target was a man he knew intimately. A man whose every weakness and sin he had cataloged for years.

Director Kang Min-hyuk. His old boss at Stellar. The man who had humiliated him, who had tried to destroy Ahn Da-eun, and who was now a key, high-level ally of Chairman Choi.

Yoo-jin opened the file on Director Kang. The information he'd used to blackmail him before—the affair—was merely the top layer. His ability had allowed him to see much more, to connect invisible dots, to construct a web of corruption that was far more damning than simple infidelity. He had spent years under the man's thumb, observing, his power quietly gathering data.

[Target: Director Kang Min-hyuk]

[Affiliation: Stellar Entertainment (Executive Director); Top Tier Media (Informal Ally)]

[Primary Vulnerability: Embezzlement Scheme. Details: Siphoning ~₩2.3 billion from concert production and marketing budgets over three years through a shell company, 'JH Creative Solutions,' registered under the name of his brother-in-law, Park Jin-ho.]

[Secondary Vulnerability: Insider Trading. Details: Using advance knowledge of Stellar's planned acquisition of two smaller labels to make significant stock purchases through a proxy account held by a university friend. Estimated illegal profit: ~₩1.8 billion.]

[Tertiary Vulnerability: Blackmail. Details: Possesses compromising material on a rival board member, used to secure votes on key projects.]

This wasn't just personal dirty laundry. These were serious, white-collar felonies. Prison sentences. Company-destroying scandals. It was perfect.

Now came the delivery. Leaking it to a single reporter was the amateur's move. It was messy, traceable. Yoo-jin would orchestrate a sophisticated, multi-pronged attack designed to look like a perfect storm of regulatory justice, with himself nowhere in sight. He began to move, a spider spinning a web across the city from his single, dark room.

First, the government. He opened a TOR browser, routing his connection through a dizzying series of international nodes. His first target was the Financial Supervisory Service, the government body that policed the stock market. He composed a detailed, anonymous tip, written in the dry, formal language of a disgruntled accountant. He outlined the insider trading scheme with terrifying precision, listing the exact dates of the trades, the ticker symbols of the companies involved, and the name of the proxy account holder. He didn't need to show proof; he just needed to tell the bloodhounds exactly where to dig.

Next, the taxman. He sent a second anonymous tip, this time to the National Tax Service. He detailed the shell company, JH Creative Solutions, providing its business registration number. He listed the specific concert tours—Stellar's 'Starlight Festival' from last year being the most egregious—from which funds had been embezzled, and even included several specific, inflated invoice numbers that he had "deduced" by observing patterns in their annual reports. He presented it as a case of massive tax evasion.

He had now sicced two powerful, independent government agencies on Director Kang. The official investigations would begin within days, quietly at first, then with warrants and subpoenas. This official action would provide the perfect cover for the final, public stage of his attack.

Only then did he reach for the phone. He dialed a scrambled, encrypted number belonging to a man he knew only as "Pluto." Pluto was a veteran journalist, a cynical but brilliant investigative reporter with a deep-seated hatred for corporate corruption. Yoo-jin didn't give him the whole story. He didn't hand him a file. He knew a man like Pluto prided himself on his own discoveries. So, Yoo-jin merely gave him a breadcrumb, a tantalizing thread to pull.

"Pluto," Yoo-jin said, his voice altered by the scrambling software. "A whisper for you. Start looking into the production budget for Stellar Entertainment's 'Starlight Festival' from last year. Ask some questions about their primary vendor for lighting and stage design, a company called JH Creative Solutions. Then, do a little research on Director Kang Min-hyuk's extended family. Something smells rotten."

He hung up. He hadn't given Pluto the answer. He had given him a treasure map. When the story broke, it would be Pluto's story, a result of his own dogged investigation, its credibility bolstered by the official government inquiries that would, by then, be well underway. Han Yoo-jin's fingerprints would be nowhere near the murder weapon. He was no longer just a player in the game; he was becoming the architect of the entire board.

There was one last detail. One final, personal turn of the screw. This part was not for the public or the government. This was a message for his enemies.

He did a quick search and found a recent photo from a golf tournament hosted by a major bank. In the photo, Director Kang stood smiling, his arm slung chummily around another executive from Top Tier Media. It was a clear, public signal of his deep alliance with Chairman Choi's camp. Yoo-jin downloaded the photo.

He composed one last email from a new anonymous account. He sent the photo as an attachment to Director Kang's official Stellar Entertainment email address. The subject line contained a single word.

Loyalty.

The body of the email contained three.

It's expensive, isn't it?

The message was a masterpiece of psychological warfare. It would hit Director Kang's inbox right as his world was beginning to crumble. It would tell him that someone knew not only about his crimes, but about his shifting allegiances. It was designed to plant a seed of pure terror in his heart, the idea that perhaps his new friends at Top Tier Media, seeing him as a liability, were the ones who had sold him out to the authorities. It would sow discord, paranoia, and distrust within the enemy camp, forcing them to look inward for betrayal instead of outward at Aura.

Yoo-jin leaned back in his chair, the glow of the monitor illuminating his cold, resolute face. He had loaded the gun, aimed it, and fired. He felt no triumph, no glee. Only the icy calm of a man who had accepted the grim necessities of war. He had finally, truly, unsheathed his sword. And he knew, with absolute certainty, that he could never put it away again.