Yoo-jin returned to the Aura Management office under a sky the color of a fresh bruise. The city lights were beginning to flicker on, but he felt as though a sun had been extinguished within him. He walked through the quiet office, his footsteps echoing in the empty space. The team was waiting for him in the war room, their anxious faces turning to him as he entered. They could see the answer before he even spoke. The rigid set of his shoulders, the hollowed-out look in his eyes—the meeting with his sister had been a disaster.
He stood in the center of the room, silent for a long moment, the scent of the teahouse still clinging to his clothes like a shroud.
"She chose her side," he said finally, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. It was the detached tone of a doctor confirming a terminal diagnosis. "She's with Gyu-ri. Completely. There's nothing left to salvage."
He recounted the conversation with a stark, brutal honesty, omitting none of his sister's bitter justifications or her chillingly casual confession. He told them about her feeling of 'balance,' her belief that his artists were no more innocent than her own disbanded trainees had been. He told them everything. The team listened, their last faint hopes for a peaceful, familial resolution being systematically dashed. They now had to accept the unthinkable: Han Ji-young was not a misguided relative who could be reasoned with. She was a confirmed, hostile agent, a willing accomplice in their enemy's campaign.
"She said something else," Yoo-jin said, his gaze drifting to the whiteboard, a new thought cutting through his personal grief. "Right before she left. She said, 'Nam Gyu-ri is just getting started.' It wasn't a threat. It wasn't a boast. It was a promise. A statement of intent from a meticulously detailed battle plan."
He picked up a marker, his movements slow and deliberate. He walked to the whiteboard and, with a decisive motion, erased the question that had been tormenting them for days: WHAT DO THEY REALLY WANT?
He finally had the answer. It was simple, elegant, and absolutely terrifying.
"We've been looking at her attacks as separate events," he said, his voice taking on a low, analytical tone as his strategist's mind began to reassert control over his emotional turmoil. "The lawsuit, the media plant, the mole… we saw them as individual skirmishes. We were wrong. They're not separate battles. They are chapters in a story. A story of revenge."
He began to write on the board, creating a list. Each item was a pillar of his life, a foundation of his success.
1. THE ARTIST (Ahn Da-eun)
"The first major attack wasn't on me directly," he explained, tapping the words. "It was on Da-eun's family. Why? Because Da-eun is more than just an artist to us. She is the foundational artist of Aura Management. She is the symbol of our musical identity, of our belief in authentic talent. By attacking her family, Nam Gyu-ri was attacking the very cornerstone of what we built."
He wrote the second item on the list.
2. THE REPUTATION (The Press)
"Next was the Prime Dispatch article," he continued, his voice grim. "The story about me being a predator who traps artists in slave contracts. That was a direct attack on my reputation, on Aura's public image as a force for good in a corrupt industry. She was trying to destroy my credibility, to turn our narrative of justice into a lie."
He added the third item, the one that still felt like a knife in his gut.
3. THE FAMILY (Han Ji-young)
"And today… she used my sister. An attack on my family, my blood, my past. She found the deepest crack in my personal life and drove a wedge into it, turning my own history against me."
He stepped back from the board, looking at the three points. A clear, horrifying pattern was emerging. "This isn't random," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "This isn't just business. She is systematically dismantling the pillars of my life, one by one. She is taking apart everything I've built, everything I care about, with a poet's sense of irony and a surgeon's precision."
A horrified silence fell over the room as the team absorbed the terrifyingly personal nature of Nam Gyu-ri's campaign. This was a vendetta of biblical proportions.
"What's next?" Min-young asked, her voice trembling. "What pillar is left?"
Yoo-jin stared at the list, his mind racing through the remaining structures of his life. His company was the overall target. His artists… but he had more than Da-eun. He had Chae-rin. He had Jin.
And then it hit him with the force of a physical blow. He thought about his own history, about the victory that had started it all. He thought about the group he had debuted at Stellar, the group whose success was built directly on the ashes of Nam Gyu-ri's dream. The foundation of his entire career.
His hand was shaking as he picked up the marker again. He turned back to the board and wrote the fourth item on the vengeance list.
4. THE LEGACY (Eclipse)
Da-eun looked at the board, confused. "Eclipse? But they disbanded years ago. What's left to attack?"
"Exactly," Yoo-jin said, his voice grim. "The group is gone. But its leader isn't."
He turned, his gaze landing directly on Jin. The room suddenly felt very cold.
"Nam Gyu-ri's revenge isn't just for herself," he explained, the horrifying final piece of the puzzle clicking into place. "It's for her entire team of trainees who were cast aside. Jin… you were the face of the group that replaced them. You were the living symbol of my first great victory at her expense. Your success was the proof that my 'safe bet' paid off."
He took a step closer to Jin, his eyes filled with a new, urgent fear. "Now you're here. The former leader of Eclipse, the symbol of my legacy, is the newest, most vulnerable member of my new family. To Nam Gyu-ri, you are the ultimate prize. Destroying you wouldn't just be a victory against Aura. It would be rewriting history. It would be the final, perfect act of her revenge, erasing my first success by destroying its living embodiment."
The team stared, the chilling logic undeniable. Jin was not just their new artist. He was Nam Gyu-ri's next target. And unlike the other attacks, this one wouldn't be about lawsuits or press releases. It would be about destroying a soul she already believed she owned a piece of. The war was about to become even more personal, aimed directly at the heart of the Aura family.