Ahn Da-eun was moved to a secure, windowless interior office, a plush but sterile room that now felt like a five-star prison cell. A guard was posted outside her door. The rest of the team regrouped in the war room, the initial, frantic panic hardening into a desperate need for a counter-attack. The photo of Da-eun still loomed on the main screen, a constant, silent reminder of their enemy's reach.
Han Yoo-jin stood before it, forcing himself to breathe, to push past the primal fear and engage the strategic part of his mind. He had to be cold. He had to be analytical. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, the blue haze of the Producer's Eye overlaid his vision. He focused his ability not on a problem to be solved, but on the man who had become the problem itself.
[Analyzing Threat Profile: Ryu]
[Primary Trait: Patient Predator (LV 10)]
[Description: Subject exhibits extreme patience and meticulous planning. Derives gratification from the process of stalking and dismantling a target, not just the final outcome.]
[Secondary Trait: Analytical Sadism (LV 9)]
[Description: Subject possesses a deep understanding of systems (corporate, digital, psychological) and enjoys using that knowledge to inflict maximum emotional and mental distress. Violence is a tool, but psychological terror is the goal.]
[Scandal Factor: N/A]
[Analysis: Subject operates outside conventional systems of reputation and finance. Public exposure is not a deterrent; it may even be an objective. Traditional leverage is ineffective.]
[SYSTEM WARNING: Subject's core motivations are not profit, market share, or rational power acquisition. Motivations are rooted in personal vendetta and psychological gratification. Standard predictive models for corporate conflict are unreliable and potentially hazardous.]
The Eye confirmed his deepest fears in cold, clinical text. He wasn't fighting a corporation or a rival producer. He was fighting a Tier-10 psychopath, an enemy whose victory conditions were Yoo-jin's fear and his artists' suffering. This was a battle that could not be won on a balance sheet or in a press release.
"He's playing with us," Yoo-jin said, his voice low and grim. "This isn't about destroying Aura. This is about enjoying our terror."
Oh Min-ji, who had been furiously typing since Da-eun was taken from the room, looked up from her laptop. Her face was pale, but her eyes burned with a fierce, defiant fire. "He's a ghost, but he's an arrogant ghost," she said, her voice sharp. "That's his weakness. His ego. He sent that text because he wants to watch us suffer. He wants a front-row seat to our panic."
"And how do we use that?" Director Oh asked, her pragmatism a grounding force in the room.
"We set a trap," Min-ji explained, her confidence growing as she outlined her strategy. "We build a stage for him, and when he comes to watch the show, we drop the cage on him. We'll create a digital honeypot."
She began to type, bringing up a network architecture diagram on a side screen. "We'll create a series of false documents and place them on a secure, isolated server that only a few of us can access. A fake psychiatrist's report detailing Da-eun's supposed mental breakdown from the stress. A fabricated schedule to move her to a decoy 'safe house' in the countryside. The files will be irresistible bait for a sadist like him."
"If he takes it," she continued, her fingers a blur, "if his system so much as pings that server to access the files, it will have to connect with us for a single nanosecond. That's all I need. That one handshake will let me initiate a trace on his location. He thinks he's invisible, but we'll use his own voyeurism to make him show himself." It was a classic counter-intelligence strategy, a digital breadcrumb trail leading to a hidden snare.
While Min-ji began constructing the elaborate trap, Yoo-jin gave her a second, concurrent mission. His mind was clearing, the strategic gears beginning to turn again.
"That photo," he said, gesturing to the main screen. "Ryu didn't take it himself. He's a ghost; he wouldn't risk being seen in public, even at a distance. He outsourced it. He hired someone."
"You want me to find the photographer," Min-ji stated, already understanding.
"Exactly. If we can find the person who took the picture, we can find out who paid them and how. It's another trail, an analog one."
This meant Min-ji had to dive into one of the grimiest, most repellent corners of the Korean entertainment industry: the sasaeng information market. These weren't fans; they were professional stalkers who monetized their obsessions. Min-ji pulled on a digital mask, adopting a new persona as she accessed encrypted forums and private chat groups where the personal lives of celebrities were dissected and sold piece by piece.
The screen showed a sickening marketplace of privacy. Schedules for private vacations. Flight numbers and seat assignments. Candid photos of idols leaving their private homes. Some even offered to obtain personal items—a used coffee cup, a discarded tissue—for a price. It was a thriving ecosystem built on obsession and delusion, and Yoo-jin knew Ryu would have no moral qualms about using it.
Min-ji, posing as a wealthy, obsessive fan from Japan, put out a simple bounty, posting it to three of the most notorious forums.
[USER: 'CherryBlossom77']
[POST: WTB INFO. Seeking original photographer of candid Ahn Da-eun photo taken in Apgujeong café, approx. 2 PM today. Proof of work required. 10 million won for identity of photographer and method of payment from client. Confidentiality guaranteed. DM for escrow details.]
It was a lure cast into a sewer, but it was a necessary one. They were now fighting on two fronts: one digital, one intensely human.
Hours crawled by. The atmosphere in the war room was thick with tension. Every passing minute felt like an eternity. Go Min-young brought in coffee that no one drank. Yoo-jin paced back and forth like a caged wolf.
Then, a sharp, singular chirp cut through the silence. It came from Min-ji's console. An alarm.
"Connection!" she yelled, her voice a mixture of triumph and adrenaline. She lunged for her keyboard. "The bait is taken! Someone is trying to access the fake psychiatrist report!"
Yoo-jin and Director Oh rushed to stand behind her, their eyes glued to her screen. Min-ji's face was a mask of intense concentration. "He's in. Initiating trace protocol now."
A world map appeared on her monitor, lines of light crisscrossing the globe as the trace program began to follow the signal's path. It bounced from a server in Seoul, to Frankfurt, to a proxy in Brazil, then to another in Eastern Europe. Standard evasion techniques.
"He's good," Min-ji muttered, her fingers flying as she countered his relays, peeling back the layers of his anonymity one by one. "But I'm better."
But then, something strange happened. The trace signal, which had been leaping across continents, suddenly stopped bouncing outward. It reversed course. The line of light shot back from Europe, back across Asia, heading directly back towards Seoul.
Min-ji froze, her triumphant expression melting into one of dawning, absolute horror.
"No…" she whispered, her voice shaking. "Oh, no. That's not possible."
"What is it?" Yoo-jin demanded, his gut twisting into a cold knot.
"It's a trap," she said, her voice cracking as the signal's endpoint resolved on the map. It wasn't some hidden basement or anonymous internet café. It was a blinking red dot right in the center of Gangnam. Right on top of their own building. "He didn't access our decoy server. He anticipated our move. He spoofed the connection and used our own trace signal as a probe… as a goddamn mapping tool."
She looked up at Yoo-jin, her face pale with utter defeat. "He just mapped our entire internal network firewall. He wasn't hunting our bait. He was hunting the hunter."
The trap hadn't just failed. It had backfired catastrophically. They hadn't found Ryu. They had just opened the front door, handed him the floor plans, and invited him inside.