The minutes that followed the phone call stretched into an eternity. The Aura war room, once a hub of frantic activity, was now locked in a state of suspended animation. The team was held captive by a single, silent screen on Min-ji's laptop. It displayed a satellite map of Seoul, a quiet, sprawling grid of streets and buildings, currently empty of any data points. It was a digital vigil, and the tension was a physical presence in the room, thick and suffocating. Every tick of the clock was a drumbeat counting down to a revelation that could change everything.
Da-eun paced back and forth at the far end of the room, too agitated to sit still. "How long does it usually take?" she asked, her voice tight. "For someone to open an email?"
"It depends on the target's habits," Min-ji answered without looking up from her screen, her own posture a study in coiled stillness. "Director Yoon is old-school. He might not check his personal email on his work computer immediately. He might wait until he gets home. Or he might forward it to someone else first."
"The mole," Yoo-jin finished her thought, his voice grim. He was forcing himself to remain calm, seated at the head of the table, but his fingers were drumming a restless, silent rhythm on the polished wood.
"What if the mole is too smart for this?" Da-eun pressed, stopping her pacing to voice the fear they were all feeling. "What if they suspect a trap? They could open it on a burner laptop in a public cafe, using a VPN. What then?"
"The hardware ID is still unique to the device," Min-ji explained, her tone reassuringly clinical. "Even through a VPN, the canary's song will contain the machine's specific digital fingerprint. It won't give us a name directly, but it will give us a device. A device we can then track. But my hypothesis is that a senior executive, feeling secure in their position, is more likely to be careless. They'll open it on their company-issued laptop at home, thinking they're safe. Arrogance is the greatest exploit of all."
Her words hung in the air, a chilling echo of Yoo-jin's own assessment of Nam Gyu-ri. They waited. The silence was broken only by the soft hum of the servers and their own shallow breaths. An hour passed. Then another. The initial adrenaline began to fade, replaced by a weary, gnawing doubt. Maybe it had been too obvious. Maybe Yoon had seen through the act. Maybe the mole was lying low after the showcase fiasco.
Yoo-jin was just about to call it a night, to concede that the trap had failed, when a loud, clear PING suddenly echoed from Min-ji's laptop speakers.
The sound was electric, jolting everyone to high alert. On the map of Seoul, a single, bright red dot appeared, pulsing like a malevolent heartbeat.
"We have contact," Min-ji announced, her voice sharp and focused. Her fingers became a blur across her keyboard, decoding the stream of data that was now pouring into her system.
The team rushed to her station, crowding around the screen. The red dot wasn't located in a corporate district like Gangnam or a bustling public area. It was pulsing over a quiet, affluent residential neighborhood in Seocho-gu, an area known for its luxury apartments and old money.
"Got it," Min-ji whispered, her eyes wide with concentration. "IP address confirmed. It's a private, high-speed residential network. Not a public hotspot. The file was opened on a machine connected to this network. And… yes. Hardware ID is a match for a Stellar Entertainment-issued device. It's a company laptop, being used offsite."
This was it. The moment of truth. The mole wasn't just a source; they were a high-level employee, trusted with a company machine they could take home.
"I'm cross-referencing the hardware ID with Stellar's employee asset database now," Min-ji said, her voice dropping. "This is it. I'll have a name in seconds."
The team held a collective breath. The air was so thick with anticipation it felt hard to breathe. Who was it? A bitter rival from Yoo-jin's past? A disgruntled finance executive? A production manager passed over for a promotion?
"Okay," Min-ji said, her voice suddenly strange, hesitant. "I have a name. The laptop is registered to a senior manager in Stellar's A&R department."
"Who is it?" Yoo-jin demanded, his voice rough. He leaned closer to the screen, trying to read the name himself, his heart pounding against his ribs.
Min-ji didn't answer immediately. She looked up from her screen, her gaze finding Yoo-jin's. Her usual confident, analytical expression was gone, replaced by a look of profound shock and something that looked unnervingly like pity.
"I… I don't understand," she said quietly, her brow furrowed in confusion. "This has to be a mistake."
"Min-ji, the name," Yoo-jin pressed, his patience gone.
Min-ji swallowed hard, her eyes still locked on his. "The employee's name is Han Ji-young."
Yoo-jin stared at her, the name failing to register. It was a common enough name. He searched his memory, trying to place the face of a senior A&R manager from his time at Stellar. Nothing came. It was a blank.
"I don't know anyone by that name at Stellar," he said, a wave of confusion washing over him. "There was no Han Ji-young in a senior position when I was there. Are you sure?"
Min-ji's expression was pained. "I'm sure, CEO-nim." She hesitated, then continued, her voice soft. "I'm digging deeper into her personnel file… there are employment dates, performance reviews. She's been with the company for fifteen years." She paused, reading from her screen. "According to her emergency contact information… her listed next of kin… is Han Yoo-jin."
The words seemed to bend the very air in the room. Da-eun gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.
Yoo-jin felt as if the floor had dropped out from under him. The name, the connection, it all slammed into him with the force of a physical blow. Han Ji-young. His sister. The mole, the traitor who had been feeding information to his nemesis, the source of the attacks on his company and his artists, was his own estranged older sister. A person so far removed from his current life that he hadn't even recognized her name.
The war had just become deeply, impossibly, horrifyingly personal.