The Aura building was an island of silence, but it was not a sanctuary. It was a tomb. Yoo-jin stood alone in his vast, dark office, the panoramic window showing a city that was, at this very moment, dissecting his failure on news channels and social media. The silence in the room was a stark contrast to the screaming chaos in his head.
His team was fractured. Da-eun, the soul of his company, refused to speak to him, the trust between them shattered. Ji-hyuk, the young man whose stardom he had so carefully manufactured, was sitting in a cold holding cell, a pawn sacrificed in a game that had spiraled out of his control. The media, which he had once masterfully manipulated, was now united in crucifying him, painting him as a hypocrite and a failure. For a long, quiet moment, he let the full weight of his defeat settle over him. He was alone, surrounded by the wreckage of his own ambition.
He looked at his reflection in the dark glass of the window. He saw a tired man in an expensive suit, a man who had set out to build a cleaner, better empire and had ended up covered in the same mud as his enemies.
His Producer's Eye, his constant companion and weapon, flickered on, unsolicited. It was as if the system itself was running a diagnostic on its failing user.
[Analyzing Subject: Han Yoo-jin]
[Current Condition: Critical]
[Alert: Cognitive load exceeding safe parameters.]
[Active Debuff: 'Fractured Trust (LV 8)']
[Effect: Severely impacts leadership and negotiation abilities with core Aura artists. Charisma and Influence stats are temporarily but significantly reduced in all interactions with Ahn Da-eun.]
[Active Debuff: 'Two-Front War (LV 9)']
[Effect: Causes severe cognitive strain. Increases probability of strategic error by 45%. Reduces predictive accuracy for non-data-driven, emotional variables.]
The system was just confirming what he already felt in his bones: he was failing. His greatest strengths had been neutralized, and his judgment was compromised. He was losing.
His secure line, the direct connection to his new, unstable ally, rang with a jarring buzz. He picked it up, expecting more bad news, more complications. It was Nam Gyu-ri.
"Stop sulking in your glass tower, Yoo-jin," Gyu-ri's voice rasped through the speaker, laced with a strange, manic energy. "This is the fun part. The board has been wiped clean. Everyone is bleeding. Now we get to play in the chaos."
"We have nothing," Yoo-jin replied, his voice flat and weary. "Our only lead, ShadowBroker, has vanished. He's a digital ghost. We have no way to find him."
A dry chuckle came from the other end of the line. "You're still thinking like a producer, Yoo-jin. You're looking for data points, for digital footprints. You're trying to find a ghost. But I'm telling you to hunt the man."
"What are you talking about?"
"Digital ghosts are hard to find," Gyu-ri explained, the excitement in his voice building as he lectured his rival. "They can erase their tracks, use proxies, disappear into the noise of the internet. But human beings? Humans are messy. They're creatures of habit and vice. The kind of person who makes a living selling celebrity privacy for cash isn't doing it to pay for his mother's life-saving surgery. He's doing it for something sordid. He has a weakness. A tell. You just have to find out what it is."
The words cut through Yoo-jin's fog of despair. Gyu-ri was right. He had been so focused on the digital war that he had forgotten the grubby, physical realities of the world his enemies inhabited.
He patched Min-ji into the call. "Gyu-ri has a new lead. I need you to run it."
"Forget his known accounts," Gyu-ri commanded, his voice taking on the tone of a master directing a pupil. "Forget his online personas. That's all gone. I need you to trace the money. The fifty million won I had Yoo-jin pay him. Where did it go after he cashed it out?"
Min-ji, from her own terminal, was silent for a moment as her fingers flew across the keyboard. "The trail is cold. He converted it from crypto into cash through a network of illegal, no-ID exchanges. It's untraceable."
"The big payment, yes," Gyu-ri said, his voice dripping with condescending patience. "Ryu would have told him how to hide that. I'm talking about his older transactions. The smaller ones. Before he got his big payday. Look for a pattern. Look for the vice."
Min-ji fell silent again, her focus absolute. She delved deeper into the financial history of the ghost's now-deleted accounts, looking for recurring payments, for habits. After a long minute, she spoke, her voice tinged with discovery.
"I have something," she said. "It's not much. But before today, there were dozens of smaller transactions. Regular payments, two or three times a week, to a specific online portal."
"What kind of portal?" Yoo-jin pressed.
"A gambling site," Min-ji confirmed. "An illegal one, hosted overseas. It specializes in high-stakes, live-dealer Baccarat."
A slow, triumphant smile crept into Nam Gyu-ri's voice. "And there we have it," he purred. "Our ghost isn't a ghost at all. He's just a degenerate. A desperate gambler always, always returns to the table, especially when his pockets are full. He thinks he's invisible, but right now, he's probably sitting in some smoke-filled backroom, losing Ryu's money as fast as he can."
The fog in Yoo-jin's mind cleared, replaced by a cold, hard resolve. He had a target again. A physical target in the real world. This was a problem he could solve.
He ended the call with Gyu-ri and Min-ji and immediately dialed his head of security, Kang.
"Kang," Yoo-jin said, his voice now devoid of all weariness, sharp and clear as a blade. "I have a new mission for you. It's not bodyguard duty."
"Sir?"
"I have an alias—'ShadowBroker'—and a vice. High-stakes Baccarat. I need you to assemble a team. A different kind of team. Not our usual security personnel. I want men who are comfortable in dark rooms where the law doesn't apply. Men who know how to ask questions that get answers. I want every illegal Baccarat house, every underground gambling den in this city turned upside down until we find him."
He walked to the window and looked out at the sprawling city lights, no longer seeing a metropolis that was judging him, but a hunting ground. The rules of the game had been irrevocably changed. He was no longer trying to manage a PR crisis or protect an artist from afar. He was descending into the underworld. He was now hunting a man, using the same kind of ruthless, extra-legal methods as his enemies. He was about to get his hands very, very dirty.