The legal fires and media maelstrom were Yoo-jin's battlefield. He thrived in the chaos of strategy rooms and high-stakes negotiations. But he knew that the abstract crisis unfolding on their screens had a human epicenter, a ground zero of grief that they couldn't afford to ignore. While he marshaled his corporate forces, he dispatched Go Min-young on a different kind of mission, one that required empathy, not aggression.
Her objective, officially, was to visit the apartment of the deceased, Park Eun-sol, accompanied by a junior lawyer from Aura's team. They were there to offer condolences on behalf of the company, a gesture of goodwill. They would offer to cover the funeral expenses, a quiet, respectful move designed to placate the family and show a human face to the tragedy. Unofficially, her mission was reconnaissance. Yoo-jin needed to understand the girl at the center of the storm.
The address led Min-young to a rundown part of Seoul she rarely visited, a maze of narrow, winding streets crowded with old brick buildings. Park Eun-sol's home was a tiny rooftop apartment, a small, box-like structure perched atop a five-story walk-up. The climb up the steep, dusty stairs left her breathless.
The moment the door opened, the squalor of the building fell away. The inside of the apartment was small, cramped, and meticulously neat. Everything was clean, everything had its place. But it was the neatness of a life lived on hold, a room that felt more like a waiting area than a home. It was achingly empty.
On one wall, a collection of faded posters of first- and second-generation K-pop idols were tacked up with perfect spacing. Below them, propped against the wall, was a large, cheap dance mirror, its surface warped and its corner cracked. Next to it, a pair of dance training shoes were placed neatly together, their soles worn completely smooth from countless hours of punishing practice. The entire room was a silent, heartbreaking shrine to a dream that had died long before the girl herself.
A small, stooped woman in her late fifties, her face a roadmap of grief, let them in. It was Park Eun-sol's mother, who had just arrived on the first train from Busan. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, and she clutched a damp handkerchief in her trembling hands.
"Thank you for coming," she whispered, bowing deeply to Min-young and the lawyer. "You are from that boy's company?"
"Yes, ma'am," Min-young said softly, her heart aching for the woman. "We are here to express our deepest sympathies. Kwon Ji-hyuk is devastated by what has happened. We would like to handle all the funeral arrangements, if you'll allow us. It's the least we can do."
The mother's composure crumbled. Tears streamed down her face as she sank onto the edge of the small mattress that served as a bed. "She told us… she told us she was doing so well," she sobbed, her voice thick with confusion and pain. "She said she was working at a fancy restaurant in Gangnam, saving up to open her own little shop one day. She sent us money every month. We were so proud… so proud of our girl."
She looked up at Min-young, her eyes pleading for an answer that no one could give her. "They're saying on the television… on the internet… such horrible things. They're saying she was a hostess… that she used those… those drugs. My Eun-sol wasn't like that. She could never… She was a good girl."
While the lawyer gently spoke with the mother, Min-young excused herself, pretending to look for the washroom. She scanned the tiny room, her gaze falling on a small, worn notebook peeking out from under the mattress. She glanced back at the grieving mother, felt a sharp pang of guilt, and then pulled it out. It was a diary.
She opened it. The early pages, from a year ago, were filled with a bubbly, hopeful script. It detailed the gruelling but exciting life of a trainee: dance practice until 2 a.m., brutal vocal lessons, the thrill of a positive evaluation from a producer. But as the pages turned, the tone darkened. There were entries about being weighed every single day, about being told her face wasn't 'ideal,' about the endless competition with younger, prettier girls.
Then came the entry from eight months ago, the day she was cut from the agency. The handwriting was jagged, angry. They said I lacked 'star quality.' After four years of giving them my entire life, that's all they said.
The entries that followed chronicled her descent. The struggle to find work, the mounting credit card bills, the shame of not being able to go home a failure. And then, a few months ago, a new name appeared. A 'friend' who introduced her to the world of hostess bars. He said it was easy money. Just pouring drinks for rich men. He said it wasn't what it looked like.
Min-young's hands trembled as she read the final, chilling entries from the past week. He said there was another way. A faster way. He said a very powerful man could make all my dreams come true if I was brave. He called it a 'last chance.' The very last entry, written just three days ago, was a single, terrified sentence. I'm meeting the dangerous man's client tonight. I'm so scared. But what choice do I have?
Min-young quietly slid the diary back under the mattress, her heart heavy with a profound and terrible sadness. Park Eun-sol wasn't a villain or a blackmailer. She was a casualty, another soldier lost in the brutal, unwinnable war for fame.
Back at Aura's headquarters, the atmosphere was one of controlled fury. Yoo-jin stood before his assembled legal and public relations teams, his earlier uncertainty replaced by the cold, hard resolve of a commander under siege. He was fighting a ghost, and the first step was to seize control of the battlefield: information.
"We are not hiding," he announced, his voice ringing with authority. "We are going on the offensive. The narrative out there is that we are guilty and silent. We will change that, now."
He pointed to his head of PR. "Draft a statement immediately. We acknowledge Kwon Ji-hyuk was present at the establishment. We state clearly that he is cooperating fully with the police investigation. We express our deepest, most sincere condolences to the victim's family. And then we state, unequivocally, that he is innocent of providing or consuming any illicit substances."
Aura's senior legal counsel, Mr. Park, raised an immediate objection. "CEO Han, that's incredibly risky. We have no confirmation of what the police will find. If they officially charge him, that statement will make us look like liars and fools. It could be seen as an attempt to obstruct their investigation."
"The court of public opinion moves faster than the legal system," Yoo-jin countered, his eyes like chips of ice. "We've already lost that court. This is how we begin to introduce doubt. This is how we take back a sliver of control. We project absolute, unwavering confidence in our artist."
He paused, then delivered his next command. "Furthermore, I want to leak a single piece of information. Anonymously. To a single, trusted journalist—the one from the Sports World paper, he owes us for the tip about OmniCorp. The leak is simple: the police are actively investigating a 'third party' who may have supplied the drugs to the victim. It's a whisper, not a shout."
It was a complete fabrication. The police were focused solely on Ji-hyuk. But it was a seed of doubt planted in the media landscape. It was a strategic lie designed to muddy the waters, to turn a simple, damning story into a more complex and confusing one. It was a move born of desperation, a step into the grey morality he usually despised. But his enemy had left him no choice. He had to fight fire with fire.