The silence in the small office was heavier and more suffocating than any angry outburst could have been. It was the sound of hope dying. The half-eaten boxes of celebratory pizza on the corner of the table now seemed like relics from a more naive era, a testament to a victory that had been declared far too soon. Go Min-young stared blankly at the wall, her notebook lying closed on her lap for the first time in days. Ahn Da-eun was scrolling numbly through her phone, her thumb flicking across the screen with a mechanical rhythm, her expression a careful, practiced void. Kang Ji-won had retreated back into his cynical shell, tinkering with a piece of equipment as if the conversation was already over.
Han Yoo-jin sat in the center of it all, the architect of their failure. The words of his former colleagues and the chilling finality of Director Kang's influence echoed in his mind. He had tried to play the game by the old rules, using his old contacts, and had been resoundingly defeated. The frustration was a physical thing, a tight knot in his chest.
But underneath the frustration, something else was beginning to stir. A familiar, cold anger. The same anger he'd felt when Lee Seo-yeon's dream was butchered on the altar of commercialism. The same anger that had driven him to leak the information about Lee Hyun-jae. It was the anger of the underdog, the fury of the underestimated. And it was a powerful fuel.
He realized his entire approach was wrong. He had been trying to fight a conventional war against an opponent who owned the entire battlefield, who controlled every road and every gate. You couldn't win a war like that. You didn't break down the front door of the castle when the king was waiting on the other side with an army. You found a forgotten sewer grate. You climbed the crumbling back wall in the dead of night.
"The established route is closed," he announced, his voice sharp and clear, cutting through the gloomy silence.
Three pairs of eyes looked up at him, startled.
"That's fine," he continued, a new energy crackling in his voice. He leaned forward, placing his hands flat on the table. "We were never going to be an established company anyway. This isn't a setback. This is a blessing."
Da-eun raised a skeptical eyebrow, her armor firmly in place. "How is being blacklisted by every powerful person in Seoul a blessing, exactly?" she asked, her tone dripping with sarcasm.
"Because it frees us," Yoo-jin explained, his eyes moving between them, willing them to catch his spark. "The system, the gatekeepers at the radio stations and the TV shows, they are built to promote safe, manufactured, trend-following music. Our song is none of those things. Let's be honest. Even if we weren't blacklisted, the PDs would have heard 'My Room' and called it 'too dark' or 'too experimental' for their audience. They would have asked us to brighten the lyrics or add a catchier chorus. They would have tried to sand down all the sharp edges that make it brilliant. The blockade saves us from that compromise."
He stood up and started pacing the small room, his mind racing. "If we can't get our music to the masses through the front door, we'll get it to them through the back. We need to create our own wave. We need to find a tastemaker. Someone who operates completely outside the established K-Pop system. Someone who can't be bought, bribed, or threatened by a man like Director Kang."
He spun around to face his laptop, a new sense of purpose driving him. "We need to find someone whose opinion is their only currency."
He sat down and began his new hunt. His search history, once filled with the names of corporate PDs and mainstream producers, now began to fill with different terms: 'independent music critic,' 'underground music blog,' 'international music reaction channel.' He was no longer looking for gatekeepers. He was looking for key masters.
He opened dozens of tabs, his eyes scanning names and faces, letting his Producer's Eye do the work, cutting through the noise.
He clicked on a popular YouTube channel, "K-Pop Vicky." A young, bubbly American woman with brightly colored hair. He focused on her face in a thumbnail. [Potential: C+], [Key Strength: Over-the-top reactions], [Critical Weakness: Easily influenced by popular opinion and agency hype]. Useless. She followed the pack; she didn't lead it.
Next, a well-known blog called "Idol Insider." The system panel flared with a warning. [Potential: B-], [Scandal Factor: 70% -> Details: Secretly accepts under-the-table payments from mid-tier agencies for positive album reviews and media play.] Corrupt. He closed the tab in disgust.
He scanned a dozen more. All of them were the same—either too niche to have an impact, too shallow to understand their song's depth, or too compromised by the very system they were supposed to be critiquing. Despair began to creep back in. Maybe there was no back door.
Then he stumbled upon a channel that was completely different. The thumbnails were stark and minimalist, usually just a high-resolution photo of an album cover. The channel name was simple, almost arrogant in its directness: "Audiophile." The host was a foreigner, a stern-looking man in his late thirties, maybe British or American. He wasn't handsome or trying to be an influencer. He was sharp, severe, and spoke in a calm, analytical tone, dissecting music theory, critiquing production quality, and championing obscure progressive rock bands from the 70s and experimental electronic artists from Germany. He rarely touched mainstream pop, and when he did, it was usually with a surgeon's scalpel to methodically dismantle it. He had a modest subscriber count compared to the big K-Pop channels, but the comment sections of his videos were filled with intense, intelligent debate. His audience didn't just watch him; they studied him.
Yoo-jin leaned closer to the screen, focusing on the man's face as he calmly explained the genius of a complex time signature in a King Crimson song. The blue panel materialized, and Yoo-jin felt a jolt of electricity.
[Name: Simon Vance]
[Overall Potential: A+ (Global Tastemaker)]
[Key Strengths: Absolute Pitch, Scorn for Manufactured Pop, Unshakeable Independence, High Credibility with Niche Music Lovers & Industry Creatives]
[Critical Weakness: Arrogant, Refuses all Sponsored Content/Submissions, Will Publicly Destroy Music He Dislikes]
[Scandal Factor: 2% - Ethically Incorruptible]
This was it. This was the ghost key. Simon Vance was completely immune to Director Kang's influence. He would probably laugh in Kang's face if he ever tried to threaten him. He was the ultimate independent voice. But he was also a loaded gun pointed right at them. The Critical Weakness was terrifying. If he hated their song, he wouldn't just dismiss it. He would eviscerate it in a calm, surgical, and utterly convincing way, using his deep knowledge of music theory to prove exactly why it was a failure. He could kill their credibility with the exact audience they needed to reach before they even got started. It was an all-or-nothing bet.
"I found him," Yoo-jin said aloud, his voice tense with excitement.
Da-eun and Min-young, drawn by the change in his tone, came over to look at his screen.
"This guy?" Da-eun asked, watching a clip of Simon Vance coldly dismissing a multi-platinum pop album as 'auditory pabulum'. "He looks… severe. And his most popular video only has two hundred thousand views. How is he going to help us?"
"Because the two hundred thousand people who watch him don't just listen to him. They trust him," Yoo-jin explained, his eyes gleaming. "His co-sign is more valuable than a million mindless views from teenage fans. The people who watch this channel are other critics, music bloggers, indie label scouts, playlist curators for streaming services. If he champions our song, it will create a groundswell of critical acclaim from the outside in. It will become a story that the Korean media will eventually find impossible to ignore. We won't be a failed K-Pop act. We'll be an international indie darling that the Korean system was too stupid to see."
"So, you'll email him the song?" Min-young asked, her hope tentatively returning.
Yoo-jin shook his head, pointing to the 'About' section on Simon's channel. The text was blunt. DO NOT send me your music. I am not your A&R service. All unsolicited submissions will be deleted without being heard. I discover music on my own.
"He's built a fortress around himself to maintain his credibility," Yoo-jin said. "We can't approach him directly. It would be a fatal mistake."
His mind raced. How do you get a man who refuses to be pitched to hear your song? He scanned the system panel again, focusing on Simon's data, pushing his ability, searching for a crack in the fortress wall. A new line of text flickered into existence, a piece of information so specific it felt like a cheat code.
[Behavioral Pattern: Frequents the 'Vinyl & Plastic' music library and listening bar in Itaewon. Almost exclusively on Tuesday afternoons. Spends hours in the vintage jazz and 70s progressive rock sections.]
A slow, audacious, and wildly risky plan began to form in Yoo-jin's mind.
"He won't let us bring the music to him," Yoo-jin said, a dangerous glint in his eye as he looked up from the screen. "So we have to make him 'discover' it himself."