The Shilla Hotel Grand Ballroom.
It was the most expensive venue in Seoul. Crystal chandeliers the size of small cars hung from the ceiling. Five hundred reporters sat in velvet chairs, their laptops glowing in the dim light.
On the stage, the entire roster of Titan Entertainment stood in rows.
Apex, the boy group kings, wore black suits. Aurora, the queens, wore black dresses. Behind them, forty trainees stood in somber grey.
It looked like a funeral. And in a way, it was.
Director Yoon Tae-min stood at the podium. He wasn't just a producer today; he was the high priest of K-Pop.
"Music," Yoon intoned, his voice echoing through the massive hall. "Is about memory. Today, we honor the legacy of a genius. We release his final breath."
He gestured to the massive screen behind him. The cover art for Silence appeared—a stark, black canvas with a single white tear.
Han Yoo-jin watched from the service corridor, hidden in the shadows. He was wearing a waiter's uniform he had bribed off a staff member for 50,000 won.
Next to him, Hana and Mina were huddled in oversized trench coats, looking like spies in a noir film.
"This is insane," Hana whispered, adjusting her sunglasses. "We are going to get arrested."
"We're going to get legendary," Yoo-jin corrected. He checked his earpiece. "Ghost, are you in?"
"I'm in the hotel's AV system," Kang So-young's voice crackled. "But Titan brought their own sound engineers. I can't hijack the main speakers without triggering an alarm."
"I don't need the main speakers," Yoo-jin said. "I just need the emergency override."
"The fire alarm PA?" So-young sounded gleeful. "That's dirty."
"It's loud," Yoo-jin said. "Wait for my signal."
On stage, the music began.
Silence was a masterpiece. Yoo-jin had to admit it.
It started with a string quartet—live musicians sitting in the orchestra pit. Then, the idols began to sing. A massive, choral harmony. No beat. No synths. just sixty voices blending into a wall of sound that felt religious.
The reporters were mesmerized. Some were crying.
It was beautiful. It was respectful. It was boring.
Yoo-jin felt the pull of the song. It was his song. The one he wrote while dying. It was heavy with regret.
"He's weaponizing my sadness," Yoo-jin whispered.
He looked at Mina. She was trembling, overwhelmed by the sheer power of the Titan choir.
"Do you hear that?" Yoo-jin asked her. "That's the sound of giving up. That's the sound of a dead man."
He grabbed her shoulders.
"Show them what a living one sounds like."
He tapped his earpiece. "Ghost. Drop the beat."
"Dropping in 3... 2... 1..."
SCREECH.
The feedback squeal from the hotel's emergency PA system was deafening. Every person in the ballroom covered their ears. The Titan choir faltered, their perfect harmony shattered by the ugly noise.
Then, the beat of Hunter kicked in.
It sounded terrible coming through the tinny ceiling speakers. Distorted. Lo-fi. Aggressive.
But it cut through the room like a chainsaw.
Yoo-jin shoved open the service doors.
"Go!"
Hana and Mina threw off their trench coats. Underneath, they wore red leather stage outfits. They sprinted down the center aisle of the ballroom, right through the sea of confused reporters.
Yoo-jin followed, ripping off his waiter's jacket to reveal his suit.
"What is this?" Director Yoon screamed from the stage. "Security! Get them out!"
But the security guards were confused. The fire alarm strobes were flashing (courtesy of Ghost), and two girls in red were jumping onto the stage like demons.
Hana grabbed a microphone from a stunned member of Aurora.
"Sorry, sunbae," she smirked. "You're singing a funeral dirge. We came to party."
She jumped onto the podium, kicking Director Yoon's speech notes into the air.
The beat dropped.
Hana started rapping. It wasn't polished. She was screaming over the alarm sirens and the distorted beat. It was chaotic. It was punk rock.
The reporters, waking from their trance, scrambled to lift their cameras. Flashbulbs erupted like a thunderstorm.
Director Yoon lunged for Hana. "Stop this!"
Yoo-jin intercepted him. He stepped onto the stage and blocked Yoon's path.
"Director," Yoo-jin said calmly, though his heart was hammering at 200 BPM. "Let the kids play."
Yoon's face was purple with rage. "You... you desecrated the tribute! This is blasphemy!"
"It's not a tribute," Yoo-jin said, his voice cold. "It's theft. You stole a dead man's diary and sold tickets to the reading."
On stage, Mina was facing off against the lead vocalist of Apex. The boy idol looked terrified as this tiny girl in red belted out high notes that cracked with raw emotion.
The Titan idols, trained to be perfect robots, didn't know what to do. They stood frozen. The contrast was brutal. Static perfection vs. kinetic chaos.
The audience loved it. They were standing on chairs, filming with their phones.
[System Notification]
[Viral Event: 'The Red Wedding of K-Pop']
[Impact: Catastrophic for Rival.]
[Reputation: 'The disruptor' (Legendary)]
The song ended. Hana and Mina stood panting in the center of the stage, surrounded by the stunned Titan army.
Yoo-jin grabbed a mic.
"That was Hunter," he announced to the room. "Available now. Because some of us prefer to hunt than to be buried."
He dropped the mic.
"Run," he whispered to the girls.
They bolted. They jumped off the stage, sprinted back down the aisle, and burst through the ballroom doors before the security team could mobilize.
They ran through the hotel lobby, past shocked tourists, and out into the valet stand where their van was waiting with the engine running.
They piled in. The tires screeched as they peeled away.
Inside the van, there was silence for ten seconds.
Then, they started screaming.
"Did you see Yoon's face?" Hana howled, pounding the seat. "He looked like he swallowed a lemon!"
"I stole a mic!" Mina laughed hysterically, holding up the Titan-branded microphone. "I accidentally stole an Apex mic!"
Yoo-jin leaned back, closing his eyes. His hands were shaking uncontrollably now that the adrenaline was fading.
He checked the news.
[CHAOS at Titan Press Conference: Sol & Luna Crash the Stage!]
[Disrespectful or Genius? The Internet is Divided.]
[#Hunter vs #Silence trends Worldwide.]
He had done it. He had turned their solemn coronation into a circus. Silence would still chart, but no one would talk about the music. They would talk about the disruption.
His phone buzzed.
Unknown Number.
That was rude.
But effective.
You realize you just declared total war?
Yoo-jin typed back.
I thought we were already at war.
The reply came instantly.
We were playing chess. Now we're playing with knives.
Check the news in one hour.
Yoo-jin frowned. What could they do in one hour?
"Driver," Yoo-jin said. "Don't go to the agency. Go to the Han River park. We need to lay low for a bit."
An hour later, they were sitting on a bench by the river, eating convenience store ramen. The girls were still buzzing, but Yoo-jin watched the clock.
At exactly 2:00 PM, his phone exploded with notifications.
Kim Seo-yeon called. She was crying.
"PD-nim... you need to see this."
"What did they do?" Yoo-jin asked, standing up. "Did they sue us?"
"Worse."
Yoo-jin opened the news app.
The headline made his blood freeze.
[SCANDAL: Han Yoo-jin accused of plagiarism and corporate espionage.]
[Titan releases evidence: 'Hunter' uses stolen samples from Titan's Vault.]
He clicked the article.
Titan hadn't just accused him. They had receipts. They released a timestamped file from their server—a demo track dated 2013 that contained the exact melody line of Hunter.
But Yoo-jin wrote Hunter three days ago.
"How?" he whispered. "I just wrote it."
Then he realized.
He didn't write it. He remembered it.
The melody had come to him in the studio. He thought it was inspiration. But it was a memory. A fragment of a song he had written in his past life as Version 1.
Since Version 1 worked for Titan (or the company Titan absorbed), they owned the copyright to everything he created back then. Even the things he created in his head.
He had plagiarized himself. And legally, he had stolen from Titan.
"PD-nim?" Mina asked, seeing his face. "What's wrong?"
"We have to go back," Yoo-jin said, his voice hollow. "It's over."
The agency was surrounded by reporters. Not the friendly ones from yesterday. The sharks.
"Mr. Han! Did you steal the melody?"
"Is it true you used to work for Titan under a fake name?"
"Are Sol & Luna frauds?"
Yoo-jin pushed through the crowd, shielding the girls. Security dragged them inside.
Director Park was waiting in the lobby. He looked furious.
"Is it true?" Park demanded. "Titan sent a cease and desist. They are claiming ownership of Hunter. They want all royalties and an immediate takedown."
"I wrote it," Yoo-jin said. "It's my song."
"They have a timestamped file from 2013!" Park shouted. "Unless you have a time machine, you stole it!"
Yoo-jin couldn't explain. I am the time machine.
"I need access to the server room," Yoo-jin said.
"You need a lawyer," Park spat. "Go home, Han. You're suspended until this blows over."
"Suspended?" Hana stepped forward. "You can't suspend him. He's the producer."
"He's a liability!" Park yelled. "Our stock just dropped 20% in an hour! Investors are pulling out. Sol & Luna are tainted."
He pointed at the door.
"Get out. All of you. Go to the dorms and stay there. Don't post. Don't breathe."
Yoo-jin walked out the back exit alone.
He sat on the curb in the alleyway. It started to rain.
He had flown too close to the sun. The Doppelganger had set a trap ten years in the making. He knew Yoo-jin would rely on his "instincts," which were just buried memories of copyrighted material.
[System Notification]
[Mental Stability: Critical.]
[Reputation: 'The Thief' (Negative)]
His phone buzzed.
Unknown Number.
How does it feel to be sued by your own ghost?
Come meet me, Yoo-jin.
I'm at the place where it started.
Yoo-jin stared at the screen.
The place where it started.
He knew where that was.
He stood up. He didn't care about the rain. He didn't care about the suspension.
He hailed a taxi.
"Where to?" the driver asked.
"Namsan Tower," Yoo-jin said. "The old observation deck."
It was time to meet the man in the mirror.