The air in the conference room turned to lead. The news of the injunction landed with the brutal finality of a slammed door, sucking all the oxygen out of their recent triumph. The cleverness of their infiltration plan, the moral weight of their choices—it all seemed trivial now, a strategic exercise conducted in a sterile environment while a real, ugly street fight was happening just outside.
Da-eun stood frozen, her face a pale mask of fury and disbelief. This was no longer an abstract battle against a corporate philosophy; it was a direct, vicious assault on her family, on the father she adored, on the simple restaurant that represented their life's work.
Yoo-jin was already moving. He snatched his phone from the table and walked into the hallway, his voice a low, controlled staccato as he spoke to Aura's head of legal. The words were clipped, precise, and laced with a cold, murderous anger that was more terrifying than any shouting could ever be. "Unacceptable… On what grounds?… That's a procedural abuse… File the emergency appeal now. Not tomorrow, now. I want a team working on this around the clock. Spare no expense. I want every document they filed, I want the judge's history, I want to know who they had breakfast with this morning. Burn them to the ground."
He hung up and re-entered the room, his face carved from granite. He looked at Da-eun, his expression softening for a fraction of a second. "My team is on it. We will fight this."
"Fight it how?" Kang Ji-won interjected, his voice dripping with a newfound venom. He'd been personally targeted by their psychological warfare, but this was different. This was messier, crueler. "This isn't about music or ideas anymore. This is a back-alley mugging with expensive lawyers. They're trying to destroy a good man's life just to throw Da-eun off her game before our comeback." He looked around the room, his eyes alight with a grim fire. "We need to hit them. Not with a song, not with a press release. We need to hit them hard."
His words resonated with the team's raw anger. The showcase mission was no longer just a good idea; it felt like their only chance at immediate retaliation.
"This doesn't change the plan," Yoo-jin declared, his voice cutting through the rising tide of emotion and refocusing it like a lens. "It accelerates it. It proves the stakes. Our legal team will fight the injunction, but that's a slow-moving battle in a courtroom. That's their territory. We need leverage, and we need it now. The showcase is our only shot at getting something we can use against them before they do more damage."
His certainty was absolute, a magnetic pole that pulled all their scattered, angry energy into a single vector. He quickly opened his Producer's Eye, a reflex now in moments of crisis. He scanned his team, the familiar blue-tinted data windows popping into his vision.
[Ahn Da-eun: Emotional State: Acute Distress / Fury (LV 9). Status: Loyalty Unaffected. Motivation: Vengeance (Target: Nam Gyu-ri). Risk Factor: Prone to Reckless Action. MITIGATE.]
[Kang Ji-won: Emotional State: Focused Rage (LV 8). Status: Cohesion with Team Strategy at 99%. Motivation: Ideological Retaliation. Risk Factor: Minimal.]
[Park Chae-rin: Emotional State: Guilt / Anxiety (LV 7). Status: Mission Committed Despite Personal Conflict. Motivation: Protection (Target: Hana/Team). Risk Factor: High Stress, Potential for Hesitation.]
He saw their internal states, their loyalties, their anger. He saw no betrayal, no internal scandal, no wavering commitment to the mission. To his Eye, the team was solid. The path forward, while fraught with external danger, was clear of the internal traps that had plagued them before. His ability was designed to detect human-centered risk—scandals, betrayals, wavering loyalties. It could not, however, detect a trap made of code and concrete, a flaw he had yet to fully comprehend. His greatest weapon had a critical blind spot, and he was walking right into it.
As if on cue, Chae-rin's laptop pinged.
"It's from Hana," she announced, her voice quiet. The team gathered around her screen. It was a forwarded email from the OmniCorp recruiter, Min-hee. The tone was sickeningly cheerful.
"Hana-ssi! Of course! We would be absolutely delighted to host your producer. It shows great initiative! I have attached an updated QR code for 'Hana + Guest.' We are so looking forward to seeing you both at the showcase!"
There it was. Their key. Their way in. A grim sense of purpose settled over the room. They had a confirmed entry. They had a target. And now, they had a deeply personal reason to make sure their mission succeeded. They would not just gather intelligence; they would find a weapon to free Da-eun's family from this nightmare.
Yoo-jin was about to declare the meeting over, to send them off to prepare, when Chae-rin's personal phone, lying face down on the table, buzzed once. A single, unobtrusive vibration.
She glanced at it distractedly, about to dismiss it as spam. The screen was dark, showing only a notification from an encrypted messaging app she hadn't used in months. The sender was listed as 'Unknown Number.'
Curiosity, or perhaps a faint, chilling premonition, made her pick it up. She unlocked the phone and opened the message.
Her breath caught in her throat. Her blood went ice-cold. The phone almost slipped from her trembling fingers. She stared at the two short sentences on the screen, the simple black text seeming to radiate a palpable aura of danger. The world narrowed to those words, the conference room and her teammates fading into a blurry periphery.
She looked up, her eyes wide with a terror that was deeper and more immediate than anything she had felt before. It was the shock of seeing a ghost—a ghost she thought she had buried, a ghost who was supposed to be gone forever.
"CEO-nim…" she whispered, her voice so thin it barely carried across the table.
Everyone turned to her, their conversations cut short by the sheer panic on her face. Yoo-jin took a step toward her, his own expression hardening with alarm. "Chae-rin? What is it?"
Without a word, her hand shaking, she turned the phone around for him to see.
Yoo-jin's eyes focused on the screen. The message was from a ghost he, too, had relegated to the past, a dangerous but neutralized asset. It was from Ryu.
And the message read:
They know you have a recording. The showcase isn't a presentation; it's the trap.