The accusation spread through the internet with the terrifying speed of a digital wildfire. What started as a single post on an obscure music forum was now an inferno. The Viper's anonymous agents had done their work with chilling efficiency, seeding the "discovery" across Twitter, fan cafes, and YouTube comment sections. Within hours, #AhnDaEun_Plagiarism was a trending topic in Korea. Their social media accounts, which had been a haven of international praise just that morning, were now flooded with a tidal wave of hate, doubt, and betrayal.
"I knew it was too good to be true. All K-Pop companies are thieves."
"Stealing from a poor indie artist? Disgusting. I'm unstanning."
"Can't believe I defended her. She's just another fraud."
The joyous, chaotic energy of the Aura Management office had curdled into a grim, paranoid silence. The phone rang. Yoo-jin looked at the caller ID. It was the PD from Yoo Hee-yeol's Sketchbook. He already knew what was coming.
"CEO Han," the producer's voice was strained, full of a pity that felt worse than anger. "I'm sure you're aware of the situation online. It's… it's a difficult situation. Our show values artistic integrity above all else. Until this matter is officially resolved, we're going to have to… postpone Ahn Da-eun's appearance indefinitely. I'm very sorry."
The line went dead. The biggest opportunity of their career had vanished. The door that had just cracked open was now slammed shut, bolted, and barred.
Da-eun, who had been watching him with a haunted expression, let out a small, broken sound. "They believe it," she whispered, her voice hollow. "Just like that. Without any proof, they believe we're thieves." The attack had bypassed her anger and struck directly at her deepest fear: that no matter how hard she tried, the world would always find a way to declare her unworthy.
"This isn't a PR battle we can win with a statement," Yoo-jin said, his voice cold and hard as granite. The time for panic was over. This was a time for war. "If we deny it, we sound defensive. If we present our project files, they'll say we're faking them. They have created a narrative that is impossible to disprove with words. The only way to win is to expose the lie itself. We need to prove the evidence was fabricated."
He looked at his team. Their faces were a mixture of fear, anger, and helpless despair. They were looking to him for a miracle.
"We need to find the artist," he declared. "We need to find 'Fading Echoes.'"
He turned to his laptop, his mind a whirlwind of focused intensity. His Producer's Eye had given him the crucial knowledge that the file was a fake, but that was a supernatural insight he couldn't present in a press conference. He needed real, tangible proof. He needed a confession.
He began a frantic, deep dive into the digital ghost known as "Fading Echoes." The online presence was minimal, almost surgically clean. A sparse Bandcamp page, a few old, generic social media posts from years ago, a defunct blog with one post about a favorite guitar pedal. It was a digital ghost town, recently re-inhabited. But there were traces of life. A single, old photo on a Myspace page he managed to unearth showed a young man with sad eyes holding a guitar. Yoo-jin focused his ability on the grainy image, pushing it for every ounce of data it could yield. The system responded.
[Name: Kevin Riley]
[Age: 26]
[Location: Austin, Texas, USA]
[Current Status: Unemployed, Part-Time Barista, Struggling Musician]
[Key Weakness: Crushing Student Loan Debt, Desperate for Money, Prone to Depression and Anxiety]
[Recent Financial Activity: Received a single, anonymous wire transfer of $20,000 USD from an offshore account in the Cayman Islands. Date of transfer: two days ago.]
Yoo-jin felt a surge of adrenaline so potent it was like a physical jolt. This was it. The smoking gun. The Viper's organization hadn't just stumbled upon an old demo; they had bought and paid for a pawn. Kevin Riley wasn't the villain of this story; he was another victim, a desperate artist exploited by the same ruthless machine, just on a different continent.
"I've got him," Yoo-jin announced, his voice tight with a cold fury. The team looked at him, startled. "The artist. His real name is Kevin Riley. He lives in Austin, Texas. And he was just paid twenty thousand dollars to be the ghost in our machine."
The revelation hung in the air. It was proof. They had been framed.
"So what do we do?" Min-young asked, her mind immediately jumping to a solution. "We expose him, right? We hire an American lawyer, we present the evidence of the wire transfer, we tell the world he took money to fake a plagiarism claim! We can clear our name!"
Yoo-jin considered it for a moment. It was the logical, direct path. The clean kill. But as he thought it through, a sour taste filled his mouth. "No," he said slowly, shaking his head. "Think about what happens if we do that. We go to the press. We destroy this kid, Kevin Riley. His name is dragged through the mud. He'll be blacklisted by whatever small music community he's a part of. He'll be labeled a fraud and an extortionist for the rest of his life."
He looked at the faces of his team. "And Nam Gyu-ri's organization? They'll cut him loose in a heartbeat. They'll release an anonymous statement saying they were the ones who uncovered his fraud, that he was trying to extort a rookie K-Pop agency, and that Aura Management is the real victim here. They'll pivot, paint themselves as heroes, and walk away completely clean. We'll be cleared of plagiarism, yes, but we will have destroyed a fellow struggling artist to do it. We'd be no better than them. We'd be using our power to crush someone weaker."
This was the true, insidious genius of The Viper's plan. She hadn't just created a lie; she had created an ethical trap. Any attempt to disprove the lie would force them to become the monsters she was painting them as.
Da-eun, who had been silent, spoke up, her voice surprisingly firm. "So we do nothing? We just let them win? We let them destroy us because we're worried about some guy in Texas who took their money?"
"No," Yoo-jin said, his eyes blazing with a wild, audacious light. "We don't do nothing. And we don't destroy him. We find a third option. This is a chess game. And you don't win by simply taking your opponent's pawn off the board." He looked at his team, his voice dropping as he unveiled the impossibly risky gambit that had just formed in his mind.
"There's only one way to win this properly," he announced, the sheer audacity of the plan making his own heart pound. "We can't just expose the pawn. We have to get the pawn to help us checkmate the queen."
He looked at his own passport, lying on a shelf with some business books.
"I need to go to Austin, Texas," he said, the words feeling both insane and perfectly logical. "I need to find Kevin Riley, face-to-face. And I need to convince him to help us expose the people who hired him. I'm going to turn their own hired gun right back at them."
The team stared at him, utterly stunned into silence. Their CEO, the man who had been a cautious, jaded office manager just a few short months ago, was proposing to fly halfway across the world, alone, to confront an unknown player in a high-stakes game of corporate espionage. He wasn't just a producer anymore. He wasn't just a CEO. He was going on the offensive, taking the fight directly to a hidden, powerful enemy on their own turf.