With the internal power dynamics firmly reset, Han Ji-young turned her attention to the war itself. She convened a formal debriefing in the command center, not on the comfortable sofas, but around the main conference table. She sat at its head, a queen holding court. Oh Min-ji and Kang sat opposite her, looking tense and uncertain, still reeling from the sudden, seismic shift in leadership.
Ji-young listened with an unnerving, focused stillness as they laid out the entire saga. Min-ji, speaking with her usual data-driven precision, recounted Ryu's escalating attacks: the initial scandal, the concert hijacking, the subway gambit, and the final, devastating revelation in the penthouse. Kang supplemented her report with details of the physical operations: the surveillance, the interrogation of Jo Min-su, the failed infiltration.
Ji-young absorbed it all, her expression unreadable. She didn't interrupt with questions about the emotional drama or the personal toll. Her focus was entirely on strategy, on the moves and counter-moves, the successes and the failures. She was a general studying a map of a disastrous campaign, looking for the single, critical error that led to defeat.
When they were finished, she was silent for a long moment, her fingers steepled before her.
"Your brother's methods were brilliant," she said finally, her voice analytical, not complimentary. "But they had a fatal flaw. They were entirely reactive."
She looked directly at Min-ji. "Your digital defenses are a perfect example. You build a firewall; Ryu finds a way around it. You set a honeypot; he uses it to map your network. You wait for him to make a move, and then you try to trace it. You are always one step behind. From this moment on, we go on the offensive."
"Offensive how?" Min-ji asked, intrigued despite her wariness. "We don't know where he is. We can't launch a direct digital assault on an enemy we can't find."
"Then we stop trying to find him," Ji-young stated, a cold, sharp light in her eyes. "We make it impossible for him to operate. We create chaos. I want you to start a strategic disinformation campaign. Use your skills not just to defend, but to attack the very concept of information. I want you to leak false leads to the police about Ryu's supposed whereabouts. Feed bad intel to hungry reporters. Create fake online sightings of him in Busan, then in Jeju. I want you to flood the digital space with so much noise, so many conflicting narratives, that Ryu himself won't know what is real and what is part of our trap. We will make him as blind as he has made my brother."
The idea was audacious. It was a form of information warfare Min-ji had never considered. It was proactive, aggressive, and deeply manipulative.
Ji-young then turned her gaze to Kang. "And you," she said, her tone equally firm. "Your teams are skilled at force and surveillance. But they are too visible, too conventional. You tried to hunt Ryu in the streets. You failed. Ryu's true weakness isn't a physical confrontation. It's his infrastructure. The web of shell companies and offshore accounts that allows him to exist as a ghost. We will not hunt the man. We will hunt his money."
Her eyes gleamed with the predatory instinct of a corporate raider. "I need a different kind of investigation. A financial one."
Before Kang could respond, she picked up her own secure satellite phone and dialed a number from memory. After a brief pause, she began speaking in fluent, rapid-fire English, her accent perfectly clipped and British.
"Marcus, darling, it's Ji-young," she said, her voice taking on a warm, familiar tone that was completely at odds with her cold demeanor from moments before. "Yes, it's been too long. Listen, I need a favor, a rather significant one… I need a full, deep-dive workup from your forensic accounting team. I'm sending you an encrypted file with a list of shell corporations and associated cryptocurrency wallets. I need to know who owns them, where the money comes from, and, most importantly, where it goes. Every transaction, every investor, every hidden partner."
She paused, listening. "Yes, I'm aware of the price for that kind of work. It's not an issue… And yes, it is extremely urgent. And Marcus… this needs to be completely off the books. A ghost project. For old times' sake."
She ended the call and looked back at her stunned team. She had just, in the space of a two-minute phone call, activated a team of world-class, London-based financial investigators, the kind of people who hunted oligarchs and dismantled narco-empires for a living. It was a kind of warfare Yoo-jin, with all his supernatural insight, had never even considered. He looked for talent; she looked for leverage. He saw the person; she saw the system behind them.
With her new strategies in motion, she addressed her final front. She went to find Ahn Da-eun.
She found her in the main recording studio, strumming aimlessly on an acoustic guitar, her face a mask of weary anger. Da-eun looked up as Ji-young entered, her posture immediately becoming defensive, wary.
"What do you want?" Da-eun asked, her voice flat.
Ji-young didn't try to placate her or offer false sympathies. She met her head-on, with a respect for her power. "I know you're angry with my brother," she began, her voice even. "You have every right to be. He became so focused on fighting the monsters in this industry that he forgot how to be a person. He made mistakes. Huge ones."
"And you?" Da-eun shot back, her eyes narrowing. "Are you any different?"
"Yes," Ji-young replied without hesitation. "I am very different. My brother, even with his… abilities… saw you as a priceless artistic asset to be protected. An S-Rank talent that needed to be shielded from the world. I don't see that. I see our most powerful weapon."
Da-eun's fingers stilled on the guitar strings.
"Ryu attacked you to create fear," Ji-young continued, her voice intense, compelling. "He wanted to silence you, to make you hide. My brother's instinct was to put you in a bunker. My instinct is to put you on an even bigger stage. I want to use you to create a trap."
She laid out her idea, a gambit as audacious as any of Yoo-jin's. "You're going to announce a new project. A surprise EP. We'll call it The Ghost & The Roar. It will be a direct, public, artistic challenge to Ryu. Every song will be a message, a response to his terror. The lyrics, the videos, the promotion—everything will be designed to provoke him, to appeal to his massive artistic ego. We will taunt him, telling the world that this ghost who thought he could silence you has instead become your muse."
Ji-young leaned forward, her eyes locked on Da-eun's. "My brother tried to hide you from the storm. I am asking you to become the storm. We will make him so angry, so obsessed with your defiance, that he will make a mistake. We will draw him back into the game, but this time, it will be on our terms, on our stage."