Ghost's message glowed on the screen, a single lifeline in a sea of despair. You need to find her weakness.
Yoo-jin looked at Hana. The fire in her eyes had dimmed, replaced by the familiar, haunted look of someone who had been fighting a losing battle her entire life. Isabelle's "kindness" was a more effective weapon than any overt attack could ever be.
"What is it?" Hana asked, her voice flat, noticing the shift in his focus. "What does your spy have to say?"
"A new strategy," Yoo-jin replied, his mind already racing, processing the implications of Ghost's words. "Isabelle is perfect. Her image is flawless. Her skill is unbeatable. You can't attack perfection head-on."
He held up the burner phone. "But what if she's not as perfect as she seems?"
A new message from Ghost appeared, a single, secure file link. Her Achilles' heel. Handle with care. This could get messy.
Yoo-jin's thumb hovered over the link. This felt different. More dangerous. This wasn't just about marketing strategies anymore. This was espionage.
"We need to go somewhere more private," he said to Hana.
They retreated to his small office, the only place with a semblance of privacy. He closed the blinds, a symbolic act of shutting out the world. He opened the file.
It wasn't a document. It was a single, heavily encrypted audio file. The file name was just a string of numbers. 0416.
He pressed play.
At first, there was just static. Then, a voice cut through the noise, faint and distorted, but recognizable. It was the clear, bell-like voice of Isabelle Moon.
But she wasn't singing. She was speaking, her voice tight with an unfamiliar, strained emotion.
"The pressure... it's too much. The visions are getting stronger. Louder. I can't... I can't turn them off."
There was a second voice, deeper, calmer. A therapist? A doctor? "Isabelle, we've talked about this. The medication helps manage the... side effects. Have you been taking it as prescribed?"
"I hate it," Isabelle's voice shot back, a flicker of raw anger breaking through her perfect control. "It makes them blurry. It makes me feel... normal. I can't be normal. Titan needs the Oracle. The group needs me to see the path. If I'm normal, I'm nothing."
Yoo-jin and Hana listened, frozen in a state of shock. This was a recording of a private therapy session. A secret medical consultation. Ghost hadn't just found a weakness. She had found a soul laid bare.
The Oracle's foresight wasn't a gift. It was a curse. A chronic condition that she was medicating, a power that was slowly driving her mad. Her perfection was a cage, and she was rattling the bars.
"How..." Hana whispered, her face pale. "How did she get this?"
"She's a ghost in the machine," Yoo-jin murmured, his respect for Kang So-young's skill growing into a kind of professional terror. "She can go anywhere."
The recording continued.
"The 'Sol & Luna' vision," Isabelle said, her voice dropping to a near-whisper. "It was different. It wasn't clear, like the others. It was... loud. Chaotic. It gave me a migraine that lasted for hours. It felt... SSS-Rank. Like me. But wilder. Untamed. It frightens me."
Yoo-jin felt a chill. She wasn't just seeing his plans. She was feeling his potential. His chaotic, untamed power was a discordant noise that was literally hurting her.
"This is it," Yoo-jin said, his voice low and intense. "This is the weakness."
"You want to leak this?" Hana asked, her eyes wide with a mixture of horror and a dawning, terrible hope. "Expose her medical condition to the world? That's... monstrous."
"No," Yoo-jin said, shaking his head. "That would make us the villains. It would generate sympathy for her. We're not going to use the illness itself. We're going to use the cure."
He started pacing the small office, the pieces clicking into place. "She hates the medication because it makes her feel 'normal'. It dulls her skill. That's our weapon. We're not going to attack her. We're going to force her to take her medicine."
Hana stared at him, not quite understanding. "How?"
"Her power is her greatest strength, but it's also her greatest vulnerability," Yoo-jin explained, the strategy solidifying in his mind. "It's a delicate instrument. And right now, my very existence is throwing it out of tune. So we are going to become as loud and chaotic as possible. We are going to create so much unpredictable 'noise' that her visions become a constant, unbearable torment."
He looked at Hana, his eyes burning with a cold, ruthless fire. "We are going to give the Oracle a migraine."
The plan was diabolical. They would launch a dozen small, unpredictable guerrilla marketing campaigns. They would announce and cancel fake collaborations. They would have Mina and Hana record and "leak" demo songs in genres that made no sense. They would create a storm of unpredictable variables, of chaotic futures, all designed to overload Isabelle's precognitive senses.
The goal was simple: to make the future so chaotic, so painful for her to look at, that she would be forced to take the medication that dulled her powers. She would have to blind herself to stop the pain.
"We will force her to choose between her sanity and her power," Yoo-jin finished. "And the moment she chooses sanity, the Oracle goes blind. And Titan Entertainment is flying blind with her."
Hana was silent for a long time, her expression unreadable. She was looking at the man in front of her, the producer who had sabotaged her, allied with her, and was now proposing a plan of psychological warfare so twisted and personal it bordered on evil.
[Name: Lee Hana]
[Emotion: Awe, Fear, a flicker of... kinship.]
[She is recognizing you as a fellow monster.]
"My father," Hana said finally, her voice barely a whisper. "He always said Isabelle's gift was what made her a goddess. He pushed her, celebrated her power, even when he knew it was hurting her. He chose the Oracle over the person."
A single, crystalline tear traced a path down her cheek. It was the first time Yoo-jin had ever seen her show such raw, genuine vulnerability.
"He never did that for me," she continued, her voice thick with a lifetime of pain. "I was just the normal one. The A-Rank talent in the shadow of the SSS-Rank prophet."
She wiped the tear away with an angry, defiant gesture, her expression hardening back into a mask of regal fury. "Do it," she said, her voice cold as steel. "Give the goddess a migraine. Make her normal. Make her feel what it's like to be like me."
Her motivation was no longer just about success. It was about leveling the playing field. It was about a deep, personal, familial revenge.
The devil's bargain between them was now sealed in a shared, tragic darkness.
Yoo-jin gave a single, sharp nod. The decision was made. He picked up the burner phone.
To: Ghost
I have a plan. But I need assets. I need a list of every single project Titan has in the pipeline for the next six months. TV appearances, ad campaigns, comeback schedules. Everything.
The reply was swift.
That's their deepest core data. Getting it is next to impossible. It'll be expensive.
To: Yoo-jin
What's your price?
To: Ghost
Not money. I want a favor. A big one. To be called in at a later date, no questions asked.
It was a blank check. A deal with a ghost for the keys to the kingdom. He was tying his fate ever more tightly to this unpredictable, anarchist hacker.
But he was out of options. He was fighting a prophet, a vampire, and two different corporate empires. He needed every weapon he could get his hands on.
To: Yoo-jin
Deal.
To: Ghost
You'll have your data by morning. Have fun breaking the Oracle.