Yoo-jin's heart was a block of ice in his chest, but his voice was steady. "Deal."
Director Park's smile widened. He had what he wanted: a high-risk, high-reward show where he couldn't possibly lose. If they succeeded, he'd look like a genius. If they failed, he had a scapegoat ready for slaughter.
"Excellent," Park said, clapping his hands together once. "Hana, the PR team will draft a formal apology for you to post. You're suspended from group evaluations for one month. Don't cause any more trouble."
He dismissed them all with a wave of his hand. It was a slap on the wrist, not a punishment. A strategic move to appease the public.
The elevator ride down from the 20th floor was suffocatingly silent. Hana stood in the corner, her arms crossed, shooting daggers at both Yoo-jin and Mina. Her expression was one of pure, undiluted hatred. This wasn't over. It had just gone nuclear.
The moment the elevator doors opened on the trainee floor, Hana and her manager swept out without a word.
Yoo-jin and Mina were finally alone. He could see the toll the meeting had taken on her. She was trembling, leaning against the elevator wall as if her legs could no longer support her. But it was different this time. He checked her stats.
[Anxiety: 90%]
[New Status: Sense of Responsibility (Growing)]
The public support that had been her shield was now turning into a crushing weight. Before, she only had to prove herself to the company. Now, she had to live up to the expectations of millions of strangers who had rushed to her defense. She had to be the magical, perfect voice they imagined. It was a whole new kind of pressure.
They went back to their small, dusty practice room. It felt different now. Less like a safe hideout and more like a pressure cooker. Two weeks. Fourteen days to prepare a trainee with crippling stage fright for a live, national broadcast. It was impossible.
Yoo-jin went straight to the whiteboard on the wall, his mind a frantic storm of logistics. They needed a song. They needed simple, effective choreography. They needed styling, a concept, a stage plan…
He stopped, the marker hovering over the board. None of that mattered if he couldn't solve the core problem.
He closed his eyes and pulled up Mina's stats again in his mind, focusing on her greatest weapon.
[Talent: Vocal (S+)]
[Unique Skill: Emotional Resonance (S++) - The ability to directly transmit genuine emotion to the listener through vocalization.]
He finally understood. It wasn't just that she had a pretty voice. Her talent was a kind of superpower. Her voice was a direct conduit to the listener's heart. It made people feel what she was feeling.
That's why her recorded practice was so heartbreakingly beautiful. Alone in that room, she had felt a lonely, sad sort of peace, and her voice had transmitted that exact emotion. It was why her street performance had been so captivating. She had felt a fragile, blossoming hope, and the crowd had felt it with her.
But it was a terrifying, double-edged sword.
If she stood on that stage and felt crippling, paralyzing anxiety… that's all the audience would feel. They wouldn't hear a beautiful voice. They would only feel her terror, transmitted directly into their own hearts. The weapon was also the wound.
The whiteboard, covered in his frantic scrawls of circles, arrows, and questions, looked ridiculous. He was trying to use strategy to solve a problem of the soul.
He looked over at Mina. She was sitting on the floor, staring blankly at the wall, completely lost in her own fear. All his plans were useless if she wasn't with him.
With a sigh, he picked up the eraser and wiped the entire whiteboard clean.
He turned to her and asked a question, simple and direct.
"Forget the broadcast," he said, his voice soft. "Forget Director Park. Forget the millions of people. Forget all of it."
He waited until her eyes met his.
"When you sing, just for yourself, with no one else listening… what does it feel like?"
The question surprised her. She had been expecting him to start drilling her, to shout at her to be stronger. She thought for a long, silent moment.
"It feels… safe," she finally whispered, the word barely audible. "Like I'm building a little room around myself. A place where no one can judge me. Where no one can hurt me."
That was it. That was the key.
His mind lit up. The performance couldn't be a performance. She couldn't go on that stage trying to impress anyone. She had to go on stage, close her eyes, and build her safe room. And her voice, her special talent, would invite millions of people inside it with her. They didn't need a flashy pop song. They needed a song that felt like a secret. A song that felt like a diary entry. Raw, honest, and vulnerable.
They needed that song. Now.
But who would give a masterpiece to a disgraced assistant manager and a D-list trainee on the verge of being fired? The company's top producers were all working on Lee Hana's future debut album. They wouldn't give them the time of day.
Yoo-jin had an idea. A long shot. He opened his laptop and pulled up the company's internal employee database. He started scanning, not for trainees, but for the forgotten cogs in the machine just like he used to be. Composers, lyricists, archivists…
His eyes scanned name after name, their D-Rank and C-Rank potentials flashing before him. Then he stopped. One file glowed with a quiet, overlooked light.
[Name: Go Eun-bi]
[Occupation: Junior Composer / Music Archivist]
[Potential: A-Rank (Lyricist/Composer)]
[Status: Demotivated. Masterpiece ballad 'Echo' rejected 17 times by the A&R department for being 'too depressing for the idol market.']
Rejected 17 times. 'Too depressing'. It sounded perfect.
Yoo-jin found her in the company basement. The music archive was a vast, tomb-like room, filled with floor-to-ceiling shelves of old master tapes and dusty records. It smelled of old paper and forgotten music.
A pale, quiet woman in her late twenties with headphones around her neck was meticulously cataloging old records. She was practically invisible, a ghost in a museum of ghosts.
Yoo-jin walked up to her, his heart pounding with the thrill of a new, crucial gamble.
"Excuse me, Go Eun-bi-ssi," he said, getting straight to the point. "I heard you have a song that no one in this company is brave enough to sing."
She looked up, startled, her eyes wide with suspicion.
He leaned in, his voice a low, urgent whisper. "Can I hear it?"