The chilling realization that their trap had been turned against them hung in the air for less than a second before the consequences arrived. There was no time to process the failure, no moment to formulate a new strategy. Ryu's counter-attack was instantaneous, a digital blitzkrieg that proved he wasn't just a ghost in the machine; he was its new god.
It started with the main monitor in the war room. The complex network diagram on Min-ji's screen flickered, then vanished. It was replaced by the stalker photo of Ahn Da-eun, her peaceful smile now looking like a grotesque mockery. Then, the image shifted. It was no longer a static photo but a short, looping GIF.
In the GIF, Da-eun's image blinked slowly, once. As her eyes opened again, a single, brilliant red dot, the unmistakable signature of a sniper's laser sight, appeared on her forehead. It lingered for a second, then vanished. She blinked again. The dot reappeared. On her forehead. In the center of her chest. On her temple. A silent, endlessly repeating cycle of targeting and execution.
Go Min-young let out a small, strangled scream, her hand flying to her mouth.
Before anyone could react, the infection spread. The screen showing financial projections flickered and switched to the GIF. The one displaying news feeds followed suit. Within seconds, every monitor in the war room, from the massive wall displays to the small tablets on the conference table, was showing the same horrifying, silent loop. The room became a prison of mirrors, reflecting their failure and Ryu's power back at them from every angle.
The door to the war room burst open. A panicked employee from the marketing department stood there, his face ashen. "CEO-nim! Something's wrong! It's on every computer in the building! We can't get it off the screens!"
Yoo-jin bolted from the room, the others close behind. The open-plan office outside was in a state of controlled chaos. Dozens of employees were standing, staring in horror at their monitors, all of which displayed the same looping image of Da-eun being targeted. The quiet hum of productivity had been replaced by a rising tide of panicked whispers and frightened gasps.
He ran towards the main lobby. As he rounded the corner, he stopped dead. The centerpiece of the Aura headquarters was a massive, thirty-foot digital art installation, a video wall that usually displayed a mesmerizing, ever-changing collage of their artists' music videos and stunning graphic designs. It was the public face of Aura's creativity and success.
Now, it was a monolithic monument to their terror. The horrifying GIF of Ahn Da-eun played on a colossal loop, visible to anyone looking in from the street. Ryu hadn't just hacked their network for data. This wasn't espionage. It was a violation. A public branding of his victim and a spectacular demonstration of Han Yoo-jin's powerlessness to his entire staff, to the entire world. He was marking his territory, and his territory was their fear.
"Shut it down!" Yoo-jin roared at his head of IT, who was frantically typing at a terminal. "Cut the power to the main servers! Kill the whole network!"
"We're trying, sir!" the man yelled back, sweat beading on his forehead. "He's fighting us! He's locked us out of our own administrative controls! It's like he's everywhere at once!"
Chaos reigned. Employees were running, shouting. Security teams were trying to herd people away from the main lobby, to shield them from the monstrous display. Yoo-jin stood in the middle of it all, the brilliant, untouchable producer, completely and utterly helpless as his digital kingdom was hijacked and turned into an instrument of psychological torture.
In the midst of this technological siege, a jarring, analog sound pierced the digital chaos. It was the old-fashioned, multi-line telephone on Yoo-jin's personal assistant's desk. It rang with a shrill, piercing insistence, a relic from another age. Every head turned towards the sound. In the dead quiet that followed, Yoo-jin strode to the desk and snatched the receiver, his mind instantly assuming it was Ryu, calling to gloat.
"Who is this?" he snarled into the phone.
The voice on the other end was familiar, but it was strained, filled with a new and different kind of dread. "It's Park from Legal, CEO-nim."
Yoo-jin, his mind stretched to the breaking point, his focus entirely on the digital nightmare unfolding around him, barked into the phone. "What is it, Park? I'm busy!"
"Sir… it's about the package," the lawyer said, his voice dropping to a near whisper. "The package you had us send to Chairman Choi."
Yoo-jin froze, his hand tightening on the receiver. In the chaos of Ryu's attack, he had completely, utterly forgotten about the other front. The blackmail video. His 'brilliant' move against Stellar Entertainment.
"He has received it, sir," the lawyer continued, his voice trembling with the gravity of the message he was relaying. "And he is… displeased. Not with his executive. With us."
"What are you talking about?" Yoo-jin asked, a cold pit opening in his stomach. "He knows where it came from?"
"He knows, sir. He called my counterpart at Stellar's legal department directly. He knows the blackmail videos didn't come from the police or a reporter. He figured out they could have only come from us. He considers it a direct attack. A declaration of war."
Yoo-jin felt his knees go weak. He had miscalculated. He had assumed Choi would react with cold, corporate pragmatism, that he would choose the quietest path to contain the damage. He had forgotten that a wounded king is at his most dangerous, that pride can outweigh profit.
The lawyer took a shaky breath. "He's not burying the scandal, CEO-nim. He's escalating it. He's using it as a weapon against us. He has just used his political contacts to have Kwon Ji-hyuk officially charged. Not with negligence. With involuntary manslaughter."
The words hit Yoo-jin like a physical blow.
"A senior prosecutor from the Central District Office has just been assigned to the case," Park continued, his voice barely a whisper. "A man famous for his media grandstanding, for making examples of celebrities. They're calling a press conference. They're framing it as a 'symbolic crusade against the moral corruption of the entertainment industry.' An arrest warrant is being issued as we speak."
Yoo-jin stood frozen, the phone dead in his hand. His gaze drifted from the panicked faces of his employees to the monstrous, looping image on the giant screen in his lobby. A red dot appeared on Da-eun's forehead. Disappeared. Reappeared.
His brilliant gambit against Chairman Choi had backfired into a public declaration of all-out war. His technological fortress had been breached and turned into a gallery for his own humiliation. He was fighting a two-front battle against enemies he could not control and could not predict: a psychopathic stalker who was inside his walls, and a wounded corporate titan who was about to burn his artist at the stake on live television.
The mask of the infallible producer, the man who saw every angle, was gone. In its place was the stark, haunted, and utterly overwhelmed face of a man who was completely and utterly trapped.