The name hung in the air of the conference room, a ghost suddenly given form and motive. Nam Gyu-ri. The name was no longer just a symbol of a corporate rival; it was a consequence, a living testament to a past Yoo-jin had thought long buried. In the stunned silence following his revelation, he was no longer Han Yoo-jin, the brilliant, unflappable CEO of Aura Management. He was just a man, haunted by the ghosts of his own ambition. He slumped into his chair at the head of the table, the weight of a decade of unacknowledged guilt pressing down on him, making him look smaller, older, and more defeated than anyone had ever seen him.
He took a slow, ragged breath and began to speak, his voice stripped of its usual authority, raw and vulnerable. This was not a strategic debriefing; it was a confession.
"My sister… Ji-young was always the responsible one, the one who followed the rules," he began, his gaze distant, fixed on a past only he could see. "I was the wild card, the one who broke the rules to get what I wanted. When I joined Stellar, she had already been there for years, quietly paying her dues. But I didn't want to pay my dues. I wanted to win."
He laid out the whole story, not sparing himself, not making excuses. He described the intense, pressure-cooker environment of the debut competition, the way Chairman Choi had pitted them against each other like animals in a ring. He detailed the final presentation, recalling with painful clarity the arguments he had made, the brutal, clinical way he had dissected his own sister's team.
"Her team had soul," he said, his voice thick with regret. "Their lead trainee, Gyu-ri, she was a force of nature. She wrote her own music, she had this… fire. But I knew Chairman Choi didn't care about soul. He cared about profit margins and risk mitigation. So I gave him what he wanted."
He recounted his own pitch, the words tasting like ash in his mouth even now. "I called her concepts 'unmarketable.' I called her trainee's passion 'a lack of discipline.' I painted my own polished, manufactured group as the safer bet, the path of least resistance to a quick profit. I knew exactly which buttons to press. And I pressed them all, one by one."
He finally looked up, his eyes meeting the gazes of his stunned team. "And it worked. I won. My group debuted. My career took off. And I never looked back. I never once stopped to think about the wreckage I left behind me. I sacrificed them both—my sister's career and Gyu-ri's dream—to fuel my own ambition. Everything that's happening now… every attack, every lie… it's a debt coming due. I built this company to fight the injustices of the industry, but the bitter truth is, my own career began with an act of profound injustice."
He finished, his confession laid bare. The room was silent, the team processing the fall of their leader from a brilliant strategist to a flawed man reckoning with the sins of his past. This was the ultimate test of their newfound bond.
It was Da-eun who broke the silence, her voice firm and unwavering. She stood up and walked to his side, looking down at him not with pity, but with a fierce, protective loyalty. "So you made a mistake," she said, her tone leaving no room for argument. "A big one. Ten years ago. You were a different person then, a kid trying to survive in a corrupt system. The man who built this company, the one who pulled me out of a basement bar and gave me a voice, the one who saved Chae-rin from obscurity, the one who is fighting for Jin right now… that is not the same person from your story."
She placed a hand on his shoulder. "This doesn't change anything for us. It just tells us where the battle lines are really drawn. This isn't about OmniCorp. It's about her. And we're with you."
Go Min-young, her eyes glistening with unshed tears, offered not a strategic defense, but a quiet, powerful dose of compassion. "Everyone has a past, CEO-nim," she said softly. "Everyone has things they regret. Nam Gyu-ri chose to let her past turn into poison, into a weapon to hurt others. You chose to build something good, something that helps people. That is the difference. The past doesn't define you. What you do now does."
Across the room, Jin and Chae-rin exchanged a look of quiet, profound understanding. They had just gone through their own crucibles of guilt and self-doubt. They saw in Yoo-jin's confession a mirror of their own struggles. His fallibility didn't push them away; it brought him closer, making him one of them in a way his perfect victories never could. Their bond with him, they realized, was not based on his infallibility, but on their shared humanity.
Yoo-jin looked around at the faces of his team, at their unwavering support, and felt a wave of gratitude so immense it almost brought him to his knees. He had shown them his ugliest self, and they had not flinched.
The moment of emotional reckoning passed, giving way to the cold, hard reality of their situation. "We can't use this information," he said, his voice regaining a sliver of its strategic edge. "The mole is my sister. I can't expose her. I can't have her arrested or fired."
This created a new, deeply personal stalemate. They had identified the source of the leak, but the source was untouchable. Min-ji confirmed the grim logic. "He's right," she said quietly. "Any move we make against Han Ji-young—trying to fire her, feeding her false information—she would report it directly to Nam Gyu-ri. It would tip our hand completely. They would know that we know. We'd lose our only advantage: the element of surprise."
They were hamstrung. They knew the identity of the enemy's most valuable asset, but they were powerless to act on it without revealing their own intelligence coup.
"Then what do we do?" Da-eun asked, the frustration evident in her voice.
Yoo-jin was silent for a long time, staring at the whiteboard, at the name of his sister that was not written there but was screaming in his mind. He was a man who solved problems with strategy, with brilliant gambles and calculated risks. But this was not a problem strategy could solve. This was a wound that needed to be addressed, not outmaneuvered.
He stood up, his expression resolute. He had made a decision that went against every strategic instinct he possessed.
"I have to talk to her," he said, his voice quiet but firm. "I have to go see my sister."
The team immediately erupted in protest. "CEO-nim, no!" Min-young pleaded. "It's too dangerous!"
"She's the enemy, Yoo-jin," Da-eun argued. "She's working with Gyu-ri. Walking in there alone is suicide."
He held up a hand, silencing them. "This isn't a strategic move," he explained, his gaze steady. "This isn't about gathering intelligence or setting a trap. This is… personal. It's a debt I have to face myself. I started this fire ten years ago. I have to be the one to walk into the flames."