The sleek, minimalist halls of Aura Management felt a universe away. This was a different world, one that smelled of rust, damp concrete, and old machinery. Yoo-jin stood in the center of a dusty, disused warehouse on the industrial waterfront of Incheon, a property owned by the private security firm Aura kept on retainer. It was a place for SWAT team training and armored vehicle storage, a place of hard edges and practical violence. It was midnight.
He stood with Kang, his stoic Head of Security, a man whose calm demeanor was a thin veneer over a core of military-grade lethality. Kang had assembled the "team" Yoo-jin had requested, and they were nothing like the polished, suit-wearing bodyguards who protected Aura's idols at airports.
There were three of them, standing in a loose, informal line under the harsh glare of a single bare bulb. They were older than Aura's usual security detail, harder. Their faces were topographical maps of rough lives, etched with scars and broken noses. They wore cheap, dark clothing that couldn't quite conceal their bulky frames. One had the distinctively flattened cauliflower ears of a retired underground fighter. Another had the faded, intricate tattoos of a man who had spent significant time in a place where such markings were a necessity for survival.
These were not employees. They were independent contractors. Men who existed in the gray spaces of the city, specializing in "retrievals," "persuasion," and making problems disappear. They were former detectives fired for excessive force, disgraced loan shark enforcers who knew how to collect, and bouncers from the city's most violent nightclubs. They were dogs of war, and Yoo-jin was about to unleash them.
"This is them, CEO-nim," Kang said, his voice a low, respectful murmur that didn't quite mask his concern. He had followed Yoo-jin's orders without question, but he felt the need to issue one final warning. "As requested. They are not our official employees. They are discreet, they are effective, and they operate with their own set of rules. Once they are engaged, their methods are their own. Are you certain this is the path you wish to take?"
Yoo-jin looked at the hard, impassive faces of the three men. He felt a profound sense of crossing a threshold. For years, his battles had been fought in boardrooms, on social media, and through stock prices. His weapons had been data, contracts, and public opinion. Now, his weapons were these men. He thought of Ryu's chilling threat, of Da-eun's terror, of Ji-hyuk's hollowed-out face. The old rules no longer applied.
"Ryu and Chairman Choi have left me no other path," Yoo-jin said, his voice firm, betraying none of his inner turmoil. He was the CEO. This was his decision. His sin. "I need information that cannot be obtained through legal means, and I need it now. We proceed."
Kang nodded once, a silent acknowledgment that a line had been crossed.
Yoo-jin stepped forward, taking command of the grim assembly. On a small folding table, he placed a tablet. On its screen was the file Min-ji had prepared: a list of the twelve most notorious illegal Baccarat dens in Seoul, from high-end, invitation-only suites in Gangnam hotels to grimy, smoke-filled backrooms in rundown neighborhoods. Next to the list was a single, grainy photograph of a man with a weak chin and desperate eyes—Jo Min-su, the man known as ShadowBroker. The photo had been pulled from a years-old, long-deleted social media profile. It was all they had.
"This is your target," Yoo-jin began, his tone cold and direct, speaking a language these men understood. "His name is Jo Min-su, but he may be using an alias. He is a gambler. A degenerate. Yesterday, he came into a significant amount of money—fifty million won. By now, most of it is likely gone. He will be playing recklessly. He will be desperate."
He looked each of the three men in the eye. "Your objective is simple: find him. I don't want him hurt, not yet. I want him located. I want to know where he is, what he's doing, and who he speaks to. He is our only link to a much bigger target. You will work in teams of two, with Kang's regular men providing backup and surveillance. The first team to get a positive, confirmed location on him gets a one hundred million won bonus."
The men's expressions, previously bored and impassive, sharpened. A flicker of predatory greed lit their eyes. They didn't ask why. They didn't care about the corporate intrigue or the terror campaign. They only cared about the what and the how much. They exchanged brief, knowing glances, split into teams, and without another word, melted into the shadows of the warehouse and the city night beyond.
Yoo-jin drove himself back into the heart of Seoul. He didn't return to the Aura building. It was still compromised in his mind, a place of failure. Instead, he went to a non-descript, anonymous office rental he had Min-ji secure an hour earlier. It was a sterile, temporary command center.
Min-ji was already there, a bank of laptops casting a blue glow on her focused face. She was monitoring police scanners, hacking into traffic cameras near the target locations, and coordinating the flow of information. She was the digital eye in the sky for the ground teams.
Go Min-young was there too. Yoo-jin had summoned her, and she stood by the door, her arms wrapped around herself, looking deeply uncomfortable and horrified by the new, grim direction the company was taking. The air was thick with her silent disapproval.
"CEO-nim… what are you doing?" she finally asked, her voice barely a whisper. "Who were those men? This isn't us. This isn't Aura."
Yoo-jin turned from the large map of Seoul on the wall, where Min-ji was marking off gambling dens as his teams cleared them. He looked at Min-young, the moral compass of his company, and felt a pang of something akin to grief. He was losing her, too.
"Aura is what I say it is," he replied, his voice heavy with a weariness that went bone-deep. "And right now, it is a company at war. Ryu has shown us that there are no rules. We can either adapt, or we can watch everything we've built burn to the ground. There is no moral high ground left to stand on, Min-young. There is only survival."
His words were a confession. A statement that the ideals upon which he had founded his empire were a luxury he could no longer afford. Min-young represented the soul of what Aura was supposed to be. Yoo-jin now represented what it had been forced to become to endure. The chasm between them had never been wider.