In a sleek, minimalist office high above the streets of Cheongdam-dong, Nam Gyu-ri, The Viper, watched a clip of Ahn Da-eun's M Countdown performance on a large, wall-mounted screen. Her expression was one of cold, professional analysis. There was no anger, only a grudging respect for a variable she had momentarily underestimated. She was watching a surgeon study a rival's brilliant, unexpected new technique. The raw emotion, the stark staging, the powerful audience reaction—she cataloged it all. Her initial plan, the subtle whisper campaign about Han Yoo-jin's character, had been a sound one. It should have worked. But it had been rendered impotent, completely overwhelmed by the emotional tidal wave of the debut stage.
A video call icon blinked on her screen. She answered it with a tap of her finger. The furious, blotchy face of Director Kang Min-hyuk appeared.
"Your whisper campaign was a complete and utter failure!" he shouted, his voice tinny and distorted through the speakers. He was pacing his own office, a caged tiger spitting with rage. "They're the talk of the town! They're being hailed as heroes! Now I hear they're going to be on Yoo Hee-yeol's Sketchbook! What in the hell am I paying you for?"
The Viper remained perfectly still, utterly unbothered by his tirade. She took a slow sip of her perfectly brewed tea. "Calm yourself, Min-hyuk," she said, her voice a placid, chilling counterpoint to his fury. "Your hysterics are unprofessional. My initial approach was sound, but it was overwhelmed by their unexpectedly powerful performance. It happens. The girl's narrative—the rejected trainee who triumphs with authentic art—is currently bulletproof. The more you attack her personally, the more you make her a martyr. So, we stop shooting at her."
"What are you talking about? She's the entire company!" Kang demanded.
"She is the face of the company," Nam Gyu-ri corrected him coolly. "But she is not its foundation. The foundation, the one thing that gives them their perceived legitimacy, is the art itself. The song." A cruel, intelligent smile began to form on her lips. "We need to attack something more fundamental than a person. We need to attack the song itself. We are going to accuse them of plagiarism."
Kang stopped pacing, momentarily stunned by the audacity of the idea. "Plagiarism? But the song is original. Our sources confirmed that producer, the one called Ghost, wrote it himself."
"It doesn't matter if it's true," The Viper said, her voice dripping with condescending patience, as if explaining a simple concept to a child. "Truth is irrelevant in the court of public opinion. Plagiarism is the one accusation in this industry that doesn't require proof, only suspicion. It's a nuclear option. The moment the accusation is made, the damage is done. Their artistic integrity will be permanently tarnished. The public will be divided. The media will descend into a frenzy. They will be forced to waste precious time, money, and momentum defending themselves instead of building on their success. The conversation will no longer be about their triumph; it will be about their theft."
"But who did they steal it from?" Kang asked, now intrigued. "We need an original artist to make the claim."
"That's the beauty of it," The Viper said, her eyes gleaming with a dark, creative fire. "There isn't one. So, we'll create one."
She leaned forward, outlining her elegant, venomous plan. "My team is already working on it. First, we find a ghost. We've identified an obscure, unknown, American indie musician. A guitarist from Austin, Texas who posts his lo-fi demos on Bandcamp and has about twelve monthly listeners. A digital nobody. Perfect."
"Second," she continued, "we create the 'evidence.' I have a team of session musicians and a producer on retainer. They are currently creating a new song, a simple instrumental demo. It will contain a short chord progression and melodic phrase that is strikingly similar to the main verse of 'My Room.' It doesn't have to be identical, just close enough to sound suspicious to a layperson."
"Third, and this is the clever part, we backdate it. Using a contact who is an expert in digital forensics and server manipulation, we will upload this new 'demo' to the artist's old, forgotten Bandcamp account. We will manipulate the metadata and server logs to make it appear as if the track was uploaded two years ago. An unshakeable digital alibi."
"Finally," she concluded, "we 'discover' the link. My people, posing as outraged music fans, will anonymously leak this 'discovery' to a dozen different online forums and social media influencers. We will create a viral, grassroots movement of fans who believe they've uncovered a great injustice—a giant K-Pop company stealing from a poor, unknown indie artist. We will be the ones who light the match, but the public will be the ones who burn them down."
Back at the Aura Management office, the team was on a high, excitedly planning their wardrobe and song arrangement for their upcoming Sketchbook appearance. Kang Ji-won was in a rare, demonstrably good mood, passionately arguing that they should perform an even more stripped-down, acoustic version of the song to showcase Da-eun's raw vocals.
Suddenly, his phone buzzed with an alert from a private music production forum he had frequented for years. It was a community of serious audio engineers and producers, a place for technical talk, not idol gossip. He glanced at it, and the rare smile on his face vanished, replaced by a look of confusion, then horror.
"What is it?" Yoo-jin asked, noticing the abrupt change in his demeanor.
"It's… it's nonsense," Ji-won said, but his voice was shaken. He turned his monitor around for the others to see. The forum thread was titled, in English: "Did Korean Rookie Ahn Da-eun Plagiarize an Obscure American Indie Artist?"
The post was written by a user Ji-won had never seen before. It said, "Was listening to some old stuff on Bandcamp and came across this. The verse melody from 0:22 sounds INSANELY similar to that new viral K-Pop song 'My Room.' The original was uploaded two years ago. What do you guys think?"
The post contained a link to a Bandcamp page for an artist called "Fading Echoes." The track was titled "My Empty Space." Yoo-jin clicked the link. A muffled, lo-fi instrumental track began to play. It was mostly atmospheric guitar noise, except for one section. The chord progression in the verse was undeniably, strikingly similar to the progression in "My Room." The simple melody played on top was too close to be a coincidence. And there, under the track title, was the damning evidence: upload date: November 14, 2020.
The team listened, a cold dread washing over them, silencing their celebration.
"But… how?" Min-young whispered, her face pale. "That's… it sounds like our song. A little bit."
Ji-won was white as a sheet. "It's similar," he admitted, his professional mind dissecting it. "The chord progression itself is fairly standard, a I-V-vi-IV, but the melody he's laid on top… it's too close to be an accident. But I swear on my life, I wrote every single note of that song in my basement over the past month. I have the project files. I have the voice memos."
Yoo-jin stared at the screen, his mind racing. It didn't make sense. It was too perfect, too convenient. He focused his ability on the web page itself, on the digital object of the audio file. The system panel flashed a brilliant, furious red.
[OBJECT: Digital Audio File - "My Empty Space.wav"] -> [ANALYSIS: File integrity compromised. Metadata has been illegally manipulated. Embedded timestamp is fraudulent. True original upload date is less than 48 hours ago. Source of server-side manipulation traces back to a high-level server farm in Eastern Europe known for providing 'black hat' PR and data warfare services.]
Yoo-jin's blood ran cold. He understood instantly. This wasn't a coincidence. This wasn't a discovery. This was a fabrication. A brilliant, insidious, and almost impossible-to-prove fabrication. The enemy hadn't just fired another shot. They had planted a time bomb at the very heart of their company, and the timer had just hit zero. The plagiarism accusation was live, and their artistic integrity—the very foundation of their brand—was about to be blown apart in front of the entire world.