With Chae-rin's solo track finally captured in all its fragile, haunting beauty, the last major piece of the Aura Chimera album clicked into place. The final week of production became a whirlwind of focused, exhilarating work. The team was a well-oiled machine, running on fumes and adrenaline, but unified by a shared sense of purpose. They were in the final mixing sessions, painstakingly balancing every track, polishing every harmony. They were exhausted, but they were going to make their deadline. The feeling in the control room was one of triumphant, weary relief.
The fragile peace was shattered when Min-ji burst into the room, her usual calm demeanor replaced by a grim urgency. She didn't say a word, simply pointed toward the main wall monitor as she plugged her laptop into the system. Her expression told them everything they needed to know. The enemy had made a move.
"They just dropped it," she said, her voice tight. "OmniCorp's official channels, all at once. The first official teaser for Kai's debut."
The team immediately abandoned their work, gathering around the console. A knot of dread formed in Yoo-jin's stomach. He had been expecting this, but the timing, coming so close to their own finish line, felt like a deliberate, psychological blow. They had been so focused on their own creation that they had forgotten the monster lurking outside their gates.
"Play it," Yoo-jin commanded.
The team braced themselves, expecting a slick, 30-second music video clip—a snippet of the song, a taste of the AI's voice, the standard industry teaser.
What appeared on the screen was far more insidious.
The video was a sleek, impeccably produced 60-second clip, shot and edited like a high-end tech documentary. It opened with ethereal, ambient music over stunningly rendered CGI of neural networks and glowing lines of code. The title appeared in clean, minimalist font: The Birth of Kai: An Artist for a New Generation.
A smooth, reassuring female voice, the kind you'd hear in a luxury car commercial, began to speak.
"What is a soul?" the voiceover asked, its tone thoughtful and profound. "Is it a ghost in the machine? A fleeting, unpredictable flicker of emotion? Or is it a pattern? A code that can be understood, refined… and even perfected?"
The visuals shifted to what looked like archival footage from inside a laboratory. Faceless technicians in pristine clean-room suits moved with quiet purpose. The voiceover continued. "Project Nightingale sought to answer that question. Our journey began not with a blank slate, but with a baseline of raw human talent. We studied the very essence of a gifted, but ultimately flawed, human artist…"
As the narrator spoke those words, the screen showed a blurred, shadowy silhouette of a young man in a recording booth. He was gesturing passionately as he sang, his form indistinct but his energy palpable. Despite the blur, the shape was unmistakable. It was a younger Jin from his Eclipse days.
Jin, standing in the control room, went rigid, his knuckles turning white where he gripped the back of a chair.
"We took that raw, chaotic talent," the voiceover purred, its tone now one of supreme confidence. "And we refined it. We filtered it. We removed the inconsistencies, the emotional volatility, the human error. We took the ghost from the machine and gave it a perfect new home. We built a new soul. A better soul. Perfect, eternal, and ready to share its voice with the world."
The music swelled, and the final image appeared. A hyper-realistic, computer-generated shot of the AI idol, Kai, opening his eyes for the first time. His face was a hauntingly perfect, beautifully sterile, and slightly uncanny version of Jin's. The video ended with the single word 'KAI' and the release date.
The video ended, plunging the control room into a stunned, furious silence.
Jin stared at the screen, his face ashen, his breathing shallow. He looked as if he had just watched a video of his own autopsy. "She's telling the world I'm obsolete," he whispered, his voice hollow. "That I was just… raw material. A rough draft for something better."
"That manipulative snake!" Da-eun exploded, her fists clenched. "She's not even hiding it! She's bragging about it! How can they just admit to stealing your identity and call it an improvement?"
Chae-rin was equally furious, her usual calm shattered. "It's a desecration," she said, her voice trembling with anger. "She's trying to invalidate his entire history, his entire life as an artist."
But Yoo-jin was silent. He was watching the video again in his mind, his expression cold and frighteningly analytical. He ignored Jin's pain, Da-eun's anger, Chae-rin's horror. He was a general analyzing a new enemy weapon. He activated his Producer's Eye, focusing not on his team's reaction, but on the propaganda video itself, treating it as a hostile agent whose programming he needed to deconstruct.
The data scrolled through his vision, fast and sharp.
[Analyzing Hostile Asset: 'The Birth of Kai' Teaser]
[Asset Type: Psychological/Narrative Warfare]
[Primary Objective: Public Marketing & Hype Generation (Success Probability: 85%)]
[Secondary Objective: Direct Psychological Attack (Target: Kim Jin-hyuk). Probability of inducing 'Target Anxiety' debuff relapse: 95%]
This was all expected. But then, a third, deeper layer of intent revealed itself.
[Hidden Objective Detected: Pre-emptive Narrative Framing]
[Analysis: The teaser is strategically designed to pre-emptively frame the inevitable 'Man vs. Machine' debate. By openly admitting to using a 'flawed human artist' as a baseline, the enemy is owning the narrative from the outset. They are not hiding the act of theft; they are celebrating it as an act of 'refinement' and 'perfection.' This action will make any future claims of 'theft' or 'plagiarism' from Aura Management sound like sour grapes or the jealousy of an obsolete artist, rather than a legitimate grievance.]
Yoo-jin's blood ran cold. He finally understood the true, diabolical brilliance of the move. Nam Gyu-ri wasn't just trying to scare Jin. She was inoculating the public against Aura's most powerful argument. She had taken her greatest crime—the theft of a man's artistic soul—and had masterfully spun it into a triumphant selling point. It was a move of breathtaking audacity. She wasn't running from the truth; she was rewriting it in broad daylight.