The data Jin had so painfully excavated was transcribed into a complex musical and emotional map—a blueprint of Nam Gyu-ri's younger, more idealistic artistic soul. This map was then delivered to the one person at Aura Management capable of reading it: Kang Ji-won.
Yoo-jin found him hours later in his studio, a space that was less a room and more a living organism of wires, synthesizers, and glowing monitors. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and stale coffee. Ji-won was surrounded by crumpled sheets of manuscript paper, a clear sign of intense, frustrating creation. He looked like a mad scientist who was losing a battle with his own monster.
He had succeeded at the first part of his task. Based on Jin's map, he had composed a melody that was, even in its rough form, breathtakingly beautiful. It captured the exact shade of 'hopeful melancholy' Yoo-jin had asked for. It was a haunting, complex piece of music that soared with a desperate, tragic beauty. But he was stuck. Utterly and completely stuck at the ending.
Yoo-jin entered the studio, the silence of his approach broken by Ji-won letting out a frustrated growl and slamming a dissonant chord on his keyboard.
"I can't do it," Ji-won said, spinning around in his chair, his eyes wild with creative agitation. He ran a hand through his perpetually messy hair. "It's impossible. It's illogical."
"Let me hear it," Yoo-jin said calmly.
Ji-won sighed, then cued up the track. The music that filled the studio was a masterpiece in the making. It began with a simple, sad piano line reminiscent of Gyu-ri's signature style, then blossomed, with Chae-rin's ethereal voice in mind, into a soaring, orchestral piece. It was the sound of a ghost searching through a beautiful, empty palace. The journey was magnificent. But then, as it reached its crescendo, it resolved perfectly into a final, beautiful, satisfying chord that tied the entire piece together with a neat, elegant bow.
It was perfect. And it was completely wrong.
"The ending," Yoo-jin said, after the final note had faded.
"The ending is the problem," Ji-won confirmed, his frustration boiling over. "You want me to just… stop. To build this entire emotional journey, this complex harmonic structure, and then just leave it hanging? It feels like a betrayal of the music itself. Every instinct I have, every rule of music theory I've ever learned, demands resolution. The listener's ear expects it. My own brain expects it. It feels… amateurish. It feels wrong."
He gestured wildly at his computer screen, which was filled with the song's complex waveform. "Music is architecture, Yoo-jin. It's math. It's structure. You're asking me to build a magnificent cathedral and then remove the cornerstone just to watch it fall. It's vandalism."
Yoo-jin listened patiently. He activated his Producer's Eye, focusing on the brilliant, frustrated composer before him.
[Analyzing Subject: Kang Ji-won]
[Creative State: Logical Conflict (LV 9 - Critical)]
[Blockage Detected: Subject's core 'Architectural Composition' trait is fundamentally at odds with the required task. He perceives the absence of a resolution as a structural flaw, not a narrative choice.]
The Eye gave him the diagnosis in stark, clear terms. Ji-won was trapped by his own genius, by the very logic that made his compositions so brilliant. The system told Yoo-jin why Ji-won was stuck, but it offered no solution. An AI could not solve a problem of human artistry. That was up to him.
He realized he couldn't win an argument with Ji-won on the grounds of music theory or logic. He had to change the entire framework of the problem. He had to translate the data from his Eye into an artistic direction that Ji-won's unique mind could accept.
"You're thinking about it like an architect," Yoo-jin said, his voice quiet, drawing Ji-won's attention. "And you're right. From a purely structural perspective, what I'm asking for is a flaw. A violation. So, stop thinking about it as music."
Ji-won frowned. "What else is it?"
"It's a story," Yoo-jin said, walking over to stand beside him, pointing at the waveform on the screen. "You've already done the hard part. This section here," he said, indicating a soaring melodic line, "this is the ghost feeling a moment of hope, thinking it's found what it's looking for. This darker section here, with the discordant harmonies, is its despair when it realizes it was a false echo. You've built a perfect emotional narrative."
He looked Ji-won directly in the eye. "But the story doesn't end with a happy, resolved chord. This isn't a fairy tale. The story ends at the exact moment the ghost realizes the one thing it's searching for, its heartbeat, its soul, simply isn't there. It's the climax of the story."
Yoo-jin leaned closer, his voice dropping, delivering the key insight that would unlock the puzzle for Ji-won's logical mind. "The silence isn't the end of the song. The silence is the final note. It's a composed note of pure, absolute emptiness. It is the sound of the ghost's final, horrifying realization. You're not removing the resolution; you are composing the sound of a heart stopping. That silence, that void… that is the resolution. The story resolves into nothingness."
Ji-won stared at him, his mouth slightly agape. His eyes, which had been frantic with frustration, slowly cleared, a look of dawning comprehension spreading across his face. Yoo-jin had given him a new set of rules, a new architectural blueprint. The task was no longer musically illogical; it was now narratively profound.
Without a word, Ji-won turned back to his keyboard. His frustration was gone, replaced by a surge of new, focused inspiration. With a few deft clicks, he deleted the final, resolving chord from the arrangement. The end of the track now looked like a cliff edge on the screen.
He didn't stop there. He began to subtly adjust the phrasing of the preceding bars, reshaping the music. He tweaked the reverb on the final piano notes, making them echo just a little longer, a little more plaintively. He adjusted the crescendo of the strings, making their climb even more desperate, more hopeful. He was no longer building to a destination. He was now expertly, brilliantly, building to an abyss. He was shaping the music to lead not to a chord, but to a perfect, meaningful silence.
Yoo-jin watched him work, a quiet sense of victory settling over him. He had once again used his ability to diagnose a logical impasse and translate it into an emotional solution. He was the bridge between his artists' brilliant minds and their complex hearts, the ghost in their machine, guiding them toward an impossible creation.