A week after the unnerving lesson in Hongdae, the small, spartan office of Aura Management had begun to feel less like an empty room and more like a creative sanctuary. The folding table was now the command center, littered with empty paper coffee cups, half-eaten snacks, and open notebooks filled with scribbled ideas. The three of them—Han Yoo-jin, Ahn Da-eun, and Go Min-young—sat around it, a strange and unlikely trinity. The awkwardness between them hadn't vanished entirely, but it had shifted. It was no longer the hostile silence of strangers, but the tense, expectant quiet before a thunderstorm.
Yoo-jin clapped his hands together, the sound sharp in the quiet room. "Okay," he began, his voice radiating a confidence he hoped was contagious. "We have our artist. We have our lyricist. We have our fledgling company. Now we need the most important thing of all. We need our song."
He looked at Da-eun, whose default expression was still a carefully cultivated mask of indifference. "A debut song is an artist's mission statement. It's the first sentence of the first chapter of your story. It defines everything that comes after. So, Da-eun, the question is simple, but it's not easy: what do you want to say?"
Da-eun, as expected, shrugged. She slumped back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest in a familiar defensive posture. "I don't know," she mumbled, her eyes cast downward. "I just sing whatever I'm told to sing."
Yoo-jin saw her thoughts flicker in his vision, a clear window into her guarded heart. [What do I want to say? No one has ever asked me that before. I don't even know where to begin. It's easier and safer to say nothing.]
He had anticipated this wall. "That was the old way," he said gently but firmly. "That was the Stellar Entertainment way. Here, at Aura Management, we don't start with a pre-packaged track and force the artist to fit. We start with the artist's message. We build the entire universe of the song around that truth."
He then turned his attention to Go Min-young, who immediately sat up straighter, clutching her precious notebook. "Min-young, what have you been thinking about?"
Min-young nervously cleared her throat, her cheeks flushing slightly as she became the center of attention. She opened her notebook to a dog-eared page. "Well… I've been listening to the old evaluation recordings of Da-eun's voice that you gave me," she began, her voice soft and timid. "It has a very unique quality. It's cool, almost aloof on the surface, but there's so much warmth and texture underneath it, like embers glowing under ash. I was thinking… maybe a song about pretending not to care, about acting cold, but secretly, desperately wanting someone to see the real you hiding underneath…"
Da-eun tensed up instantly, her defensive shields shooting back up. "I don't want to sing some pathetic, sappy love song," she snapped. "I'm not going to be one of those girls whining about a boy."
"It's not a love song!" Min-young clarified quickly, her eyes wide. "I promise. It's not about a boy. It's about a shield. About the armor we wear."
Yoo-jin saw his opening. The word "shield" was the key. He turned back to Da-eun, his expression serious. "Let's talk about that shield. Let's go back to your very first monthly evaluation at Stellar. You were sixteen years old. You sang 'A Letter to the Sky' by Gummy. Why did you pick that song?"
Da-eun looked at him, a flicker of surprise in her eyes. It was a detail from so long ago, a minor fact buried in a dead file. "I don't know," she said, her voice clipped. "It was just on the list of approved songs for the evaluation."
"Liar," Yoo-jin said. He didn't say it with malice, but as a simple statement of fact. His ability confirmed her defensiveness was a lie. "You picked it because that song has one of the most notoriously difficult bridge sections in modern ballads. It requires immense breath control and a three-octave jump. You were showing off. You chose the hardest technical piece you could find so you could prove, on paper, that you were better than everyone else. So you wouldn't have to show them anything real or emotional."
Da-eun's jaw tightened, but she remained silent. He knew he'd hit the mark.
"What did it feel like?" he pressed on, his voice softening slightly. "Standing in that room, in front of those directors?"
"I don't remember," she insisted, her voice tight.
"Try," Yoo-jin urged. "Close your eyes. What did the room feel like?"
Da-eun sighed, a long, frustrated sound, but she closed her eyes. After a moment, she spoke, her voice barely a whisper. "Cold. The room felt… cold. And the lights were too bright. It felt like… like I was an insect under a microscope. Pinned to a corkboard. They weren't looking at me. They were looking through me, just searching for flaws. A pitchy note, a bad breath, a crack in my voice. That's all they wanted to find."
As Da-eun spoke, Go Min-young, who had been listening with a deep, empathetic intensity, began to write. Her pen moved furiously across the page of her notebook, her expression one of profound concentration. She wasn't just transcribing the words; she was capturing the raw emotion behind them, the feeling of being judged, dissected, and dehumanized.
Yoo-jin watched Min-young for a second, then turned his focus back to Da-eun, who still had her eyes closed. He needed to dig one level deeper. "And what did you want to say to them in that moment? If you could have said anything, with no fear, no consequences. What was the secret thought in your head?"
A flash of the old fire he'd seen on the rooftop returned to Da-eun's face, even with her eyes closed. The memory was still raw, still painful. "I wanted to tell them to stop looking," she said, her voice gaining a bitter strength. "I wanted to tell them that I'm not some product for them to inspect and appraise. That the part of me that sings, the real part… it's not for sale. It's mine."
Min-young's pen flew across the page, a flurry of motion. The room fell into a heavy silence, broken only by the scratching of her pen. After a few minutes that felt like an eternity, she stopped. She looked up, her eyes bright with a combination of tears and creative energy.
"I think… I think I have it," she said, her voice trembling with a nervous excitement.
She took a deep breath, her hands shaking slightly as she held up her notebook. She began to read, her voice soft and melodic, but the words she spoke were sharp and powerful, filled with a defiant, beautiful pain.
"The spotlight is sterile, a clinical white," she read.
"Pins my shadow to the floorboard, holds me tight."
"You look right through me with your X-ray eyes,"
"Cataloging all my flaws, my compromises."
She paused, taking another breath. Da-eun's eyes were now wide open, fixed on her.
"You want a perfect product, polished, new,"
"A pretty doll that sings on your command, your cue."
"But there's a space behind my ribs, a hidden room,"
"Where the melody is mine, to chase the gloom."
"So go ahead and judge the shell you see,"
"This song was never for you… it was for me."
A profound silence descended upon the small office. Da-eun stared at Go Min-young, her mouth slightly agape, her usual mask of cynical indifference completely gone. The lyrics were a perfect mirror, reflecting her deepest, most guarded feelings, the secret rebellion she had carried in her heart for years, now distilled into breathtaking poetry.
The system panel next to Da-eun's head glowed with a new, softer light. [Current Thoughts: She heard me. She wasn't just listening to my words, she actually heard me. She understood. Completely.]
Yoo-jin leaned back in his chair, a slow, satisfied smile spreading across his face. He looked at the shaken singer and the brilliant lyricist. This was the magic he had been searching for. This was the core of Aura Management.
"That's it," he said, his voice filled with quiet conviction. "That's our song. That's the debut of Ahn Da-eun."