That evening, Yoo-jin gathered the members of Aura Chimera in the main lounge. He told them they were taking the night off from album production. The announcement was met not with the relief he expected, but with a palpable sense of anxiety. They looked like soldiers who had just been told to stand down in the middle of a battlefield, their bodies still humming with a fight-or-flight energy they didn't know how to release.
"A night off to do what?" Jin asked, his voice laced with suspicion, his 'Target Anxiety' immediately interpreting the break as a potential vulnerability. "Shouldn't we be working?"
"We are," Yoo-jin replied cryptically. He grabbed three plain, unbranded baseball caps from a bag and handed one to each of them. "Put these on. We're going out."
An hour later, they were standing on a bustling, vibrant street in the heart of the Hongdae district. The air was alive with the chatter of university students, the sizzle of street food vendors, and, most importantly, the sound of music. Every few hundred feet, a different street performer, a busker, was playing to a small, appreciative crowd. It was the living, breathing heart of Seoul's independent music scene.
His artists looked deeply uncomfortable, pulling their caps down low, unused to being in a crowd without the buffer of security or the structure of a schedule.
"Tonight, you are not Aura Chimera, the soldiers in a corporate war," Yoo-jin told them, his voice low but firm amidst the noise of the city. "You are not superstars or targets. Tonight, you are just three musicians with a guitar."
He revealed the single acoustic guitar case he had been carrying. He opened it. Inside was a simple, slightly beat-up instrument. His plan was simple, terrifying, and completely outside their frame of reference: they were going to perform an impromptu, anonymous busking session. No grand production, no bodyguards—though he and Min-young would be watching from the discreet distance of a nearby cafe—and absolutely no expectations. Just music for its own sake.
The three of them stared at him as if he had just asked them to juggle fire.
"Here? Now?" Jin asked, his voice a panicked whisper. His eyes were scanning the crowd, seeing not potential fans, but potential threats. "What if someone recognizes us? What if Nam Gyu-ri has people watching us? This is reckless."
"What if we're not good enough?" Da-eun added, her own anxiety manifesting as a sudden bout of perfectionism. "Without the full band, without the production… what if we sound terrible?"
Yoo-jin saw their debuffs flaring in his vision like warning lights on a dashboard. He knew he had to manage their fears right now, or this entire exercise would be a failure. He used his Eye, not as a commander, but as a quiet therapist.
He focused on Jin. [Target Anxiety LV 8. Root cause: Self-focus. Counter-measure: Refocus attention on 'Shared Experience' and 'Protective Role.']
"This isn't about you, Jin," Yoo-jin said quietly, drawing the idol's attention. "Look at them." He gestured subtly toward Da-eun and Chae-rin. "They're scared too. You're the veteran here. You've performed on a hundred stages bigger than this one. Right now, they need you. Be their anchor. Let them borrow your strength." He had reframed the situation from one of personal risk to one of shared responsibility, a language Jin understood.
Next, he focused on Da-eun. [Secondary Stress manifesting as 'Perfectionism.' Root cause: Fear of group failure. Counter-measure: Lower the stakes to absolute zero.]
"Da-eun," he said, catching her eye. "I'm giving you one goal for tonight. Just one. I want you to make one single person in this crowd smile. That's it. I don't care if you hit a wrong note. I don't care if your voice cracks. Your mission is not to be a perfect star. It's to make one person happy with your music. Can you do that?" The ridiculously low stakes of the task seemed to confuse and disarm her, short-circuiting her anxiety.
Chae-rin, he noted, was quiet but watching the other buskers with a curious, analytical eye. Her empathetic nature was already drawing her out of her own head.
Hesitantly, nervously, the three of them found an empty spot on the sidewalk. Jin took the guitar, his fingers finding their way around the unfamiliar frets. Da-eun and Chae-rin stood on either side of him, looking like they wanted the ground to swallow them whole.
They began with a simple, stripped-down cover of a popular English pop song—something neutral, something that didn't carry the emotional weight of their own material. Their first few bars were shaky, their voices tight with nerves. A few passersby slowed, their curiosity piqued by the raw talent that was evident even through the anxiety. A small crowd of five or six people gathered.
Yoo-jin watched from the cafe window, his Eye active. He saw the subtle shifts as they played. Chae-rin was the first to relax. He saw the Empathetic Overload debuff on her status flicker as she started to draw on the simple, positive emotions of the small audience—curiosity, mild enjoyment, a shared moment of street-side entertainment. Her calm, like a steadying harmony, began to spread to the others.
They finished the first song to a smattering of polite applause. Then, Da-eun took a deep breath. She leaned in and whispered something to Jin. He nodded, and began to play the gentle, familiar chords of one of her own old solo songs from before she joined Aura.
As her voice, now more confident, filled the night air, she spotted a young couple in the small crowd. The girl had her head on the boy's shoulder, and they were both smiling, softly singing along with the chorus.
Da-eun saw them. And everything changed.
The tension visibly melted from her shoulders. A genuine, unforced smile bloomed on her face. She was no longer a soldier in a war, or a rock star under pressure. She was just a musician, sharing a song with someone who loved it. Yoo-jin watched the Secondary Stress debuff on his display flicker and then vanish completely.
Jin, feeding off her newfound joy and seeing that the world hadn't ended, that no shadowy figures were emerging from the crowd to attack him, began to relax too. The rigid line of his jaw softened. A real smile, the first one Yoo-jin had seen in weeks that wasn't tinged with irony or bitterness, touched his lips as he played. The Target Anxiety status bar in Yoo-jin's vision began to recede, the bright red turning to a less alarming orange.
They finished the song, and the applause was warmer this time. They launched into another, their voices now weaving together not because of a producer's command in a sterile studio, but because of a shared, rediscovered joy in a crowded, noisy street. They were harmonizing. For real.
Yoo-jin leaned back in his chair, a rare, genuine smile on his own face. The album, the war, Nam Gyu-ri—all of it faded into the background for a moment. He had taken his soldiers out of the bunker and reminded them what the sun felt like. He had given them the most powerful armor of all: a reminder of what it feels like to be loved, not for the fight they were in, but simply for their music.