The victory in the prosecutor's office was a cold, hollow thing. It had been a brilliant tactical maneuver, but as the day wore on, Yoo-jin began to feel the profound human cost of his choices.
Late in the afternoon, Kwon Ji-hyuk was released on bail, his status officially changed from primary suspect to key witness. He was not taken home or to his own apartment, which was still besieged by reporters. He was brought directly to a secure, anonymous safe house that Aura kept for emergencies—a high-end apartment in a quiet, residential building, scrubbed of all personality.
Yoo-jin was there waiting for him. He had expected a sense of relief, perhaps even gratitude, from the young man he had just pulled from the legal abyss. Instead, the atmosphere in the room was thick with an awkward, impenetrable strain.
Ji-hyuk was no longer the terrified, broken boy from the prison cell. The raw fear had been replaced by a quiet, withdrawn emptiness. He walked into the apartment, his eyes scanning the new, luxurious space without interest, and sat on the edge of the sofa, his shoulders slumped. Yoo-jin's "cure"—the poison of vengeance—had worked, but the side effects were chilling. He had replaced the young man's terror with a cold, hard nihilism.
"You did well today, Ji-hyuk," Yoo-jin began, his voice sounding hollow even to his own ears. "You were brave."
Ji-hyuk didn't look at him. He stared at a spot on the floor, his hands clasped tightly in his lap. "Was I?" he asked, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. "Or did I just trade one master for another?"
He finally looked up, and the emptiness in his gaze struck Yoo-jin to the core. The passion, the artistic fire, the earnest desire to succeed—it was all gone, extinguished.
"When this is over," Ji-hyuk said, his voice a near-whisper, "I'm done. I don't want to see a camera or a microphone ever again. Not acting, not music. Not any of it. I just want… to disappear. To go somewhere no one knows my name."
Yoo-jin stood there, speechless. He had won the battle. He had saved Ji-hyuk's freedom, protected the company, and turned the tables on his enemy. But in doing so, he had completely lost the artist. He had killed the very soul he had once been so proud of discovering.
Leaving the safe house with that heavy realization settling in his gut, he went looking for another ghost. He found Ahn Da-eun in her recording studio. It was the first time he had sought her out since their confrontation after the concert. The lights were dim. She was not writing music or singing. She was sitting quietly on a sofa with Go Min-young, the two of them speaking in low, hushed tones. The easy, familial warmth that had once defined Aura's inner circle was gone, replaced by a strained, sad formality. The found family was broken.
They both fell silent the moment he entered. Min-young looked down at her hands, unable to meet his gaze. Da-eun looked up at him, her expression calm, resolute, and completely unreadable.
He had to try. He had to bridge the chasm that had opened between them. "Da-eun," he began, his voice softer than he intended. "I did what I had to do. To protect you, to protect all of us."
She held up a hand, cutting him off before he could launch into a justification. Her voice, when she spoke, was not angry or accusatory. It was quiet, clear, and filled with a profound, unshakable finality.
"I know what you did, Yoo-jin," she said. "You won. I watched the news. Congratulations." The word was delivered without a trace of irony, which made it hurt even more. "But don't pretend it didn't come at a cost. Don't pretend you're still the same man who stood up to my father for me all those years ago."
She stood up, her movements fluid and graceful, and faced him directly. "The man I trusted, the man I chose to follow, wouldn't have hired thugs to drag a man out of a back alley. He wouldn't have used my father's dirty connections, the very power structure he taught me to despise. And he certainly wouldn't have gone into a prison cell and manipulated a traumatized young man with twisted promises of revenge."
She looked at him, and for the first time, he felt truly seen by her, and he was ashamed of what she saw.
"I will fulfill my contract with Aura," she continued, her voice formal, like a CEO delivering a press statement. "I will record the albums, I will perform the concerts. I will always be grateful for the opportunity you gave me. But the friendship, the trust we had… the idea that we were in this together, fighting for something better… that's over. From now on, we are what we are: a producer and his artist. It's cleaner that way. Less complicated."
She gave him a small, sad, and final nod, and then walked out of the studio, Go Min-young following silently in her wake. She left Yoo-jin standing alone in the quiet, cavernous room, surrounded by the gold records and accolades that now felt like relics from a different lifetime. He had saved his company, but in the process, he had lost his two most important relationships, the twin pillars upon which his entire empire had been built. He was a king on a throne of ash.
He returned to the stark, anonymous command center, feeling hollowed out and utterly alone. He was surrounded by his new, monstrous ally, whose cynical face watched him from a monitor, and his brilliant, disapproving employee, who hadn't spoken a word to him directly in hours. This was his new reality. A war room of functional, broken alliances.
He sank into a chair, rubbing his tired eyes, ready for the long, fruitless night of searching ahead.
But then, Min-ji, who had been working silently and relentlessly this whole time, suddenly gasped. She sat bolt upright, her eyes wide, staring at her main screen.
"I have him," she whispered, her voice a mixture of shock and triumph.
All of Yoo-jin's fatigue vanished. He and Gyu-ri, from his monitor, both snapped their attention to her. "What? Where?"
"The profile," Min-ji said, her voice quickening as she pointed at her screen. "The profile Gyu-ri gave us. A high-tech new building, but with older or outsourced physical security. I found a luxury officetel building in the Digital Media City. It's called 'The Zenith.' It fits the profile perfectly. State-of-the-art gigabit fiber network, but their on-site security is a third-party contractor with notoriously lazy employees."
She pulled up a new window. "A new tenant moved into the penthouse suite two months ago. A six-month lease, paid entirely upfront in cash, routed through a Cayman Islands shell company. The name on the lease is a ghost, doesn't exist anywhere else."
Her fingers flew, pulling up yet another screen. "I couldn't get into the building's internal network; it's too new, too secure. But I was able to gain access to a traffic camera on the street outside. And five minutes ago…"
The footage played. It showed a generic black delivery van pulling up to the building's private entrance. A man got out, wearing a baseball cap and a mask, and began unloading a series of heavy, black equipment cases. His build and his movements were unmistakable. It was the same decoy operative they had chased through the subway. He was delivering the backpack.
Min-ji zoomed in, enhancing the image as much as she could. She pointed to the highest floor of the gleaming glass tower. The penthouse. For a split second, a figure was visible in the window, a dark silhouette looking down at the street below. The image was blurry, indistinct, a ghost in the glass. But it was there.
Nam Gyu-ri leaned into his camera, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face, his eyes gleaming with a terrible light.
"Hello, Ryu," he whispered to the screen. "We see you."
The hunt was over. The serpent had found his hole. And now, the final, bloody confrontation was about to begin.