The upload bar hit 100%.
Han Yoo-jin didn't wait for the confirmation. He closed his laptop and leaned back in the plastic chair on the rooftop.
"It's done," he told the group huddled around the fire pit.
[Sol & Luna - 'The Campfire Tapes' (Live EP)]
[Release Strategy: Surprise Drop]
[Marketing Budget: 0 Won]
"Now we wait," Hana said, poking the dying embers with a stick. "Do you think people will care about acoustic songs when Eden is giving them laser shows?"
"Lasers are cool," Olivia Ray said, sipping wine from a paper cup. "But you can't hug a laser."
Yoo-jin checked the time. 2 AM.
Eden's track Perfection was still #1 on every chart. The algorithm was boosting it relentlessly. Every time you opened YouTube, Eden's face was the first recommendation. Every TikTok scroll, Eden's song played.
It was a brute-force attack on culture.
But organic growth moved differently.
"Go to sleep," Yoo-jin ordered. "Tomorrow we start the guerrilla tour."
"Tour?" Mina blinked sleepily. "I thought we were doing a documentary."
"We're doing both," Yoo-jin said. "We're going to play in parks. In schools. In subway stations. Places where Eden can't go because he's too 'expensive'."
He stood up.
"Eden is the Sky. We are the Ground. We win the streets first."
Day 1: Yeouido Park.
It was a crisp autumn afternoon. Office workers were eating sandwiches on benches.
A white van pulled up. No security. No barriers.
Yoo-jin jumped out and set up a portable speaker. Hana and Mina grabbed microphones. Min-ji set up a keyboard.
"Testing," Hana said. "One, two."
People looked up. They recognized the faces.
"Is that Sol & Luna?"
"Why are they in the park?"
"Is that Kim Min-ji on keys?"
Within five minutes, a crowd of two hundred gathered.
"Hi," Mina waved shyly. "We're just practicing. Do you want to hear a song?"
They played Blackout (Acoustic Version). It was stripped down, intimate. Without the heavy production, Mina's voice sounded vulnerable.
People stopped eating. They pulled out their phones.
Yoo-jin stood in the back, filming with a handheld camera for the documentary.
[Emotional Resonance: 75%]
[Audience Status: Engaged.]
Eden's music made people feel euphoric but passive. This music made them feel connected.
A young woman in the front row was crying. She wiped her eyes and kept filming.
When the song ended, there was polite applause. Then, someone shouted.
"Sing Hunter!"
Hana laughed. "Okay. But you have to clap the beat."
They played for an hour. By the end, the crowd had swelled to a thousand. The police arrived, not to arrest them, but to manage traffic.
Yoo-jin checked the charts.
Sol & Luna - 'The Campfire Tapes'
Melon Chart: #45 (New Entry)
It was a slow start. But the comments were different.
"Eden's song makes me feel high. Sol & Luna's song makes me feel understood."
"I saw them in the park. Mina looked me in the eye. She's real."
The "Human" strategy was working.
Day 3: Hongik University Station.
The subway station was crowded and noisy. The perfect anti-stage.
They set up near the exit. Olivia Ray joined them this time, wearing a hoodie and sunglasses.
When she started singing Hunter, the acoustics of the subway tunnel turned her voice into a cannon blast. Commuters stopped dead in their tracks.
"Is that Olivia Ray?"
"No way. She's in LA."
Olivia pulled down her sunglasses and winked. "Surprise."
The video of Olivia Ray busking in a Korean subway station went viral instantly.
[Olivia Ray & Sol & Luna shut down Hongik Station.]
[Eden performs on hologram stage; Sol & Luna perform in the dirt.]
Yoo-jin watched the metrics climb.
Melon Chart: #12.
But Eden was still #1. And the gap was massive. Eden had 900,000 unique listeners. Sol & Luna had 200,000.
"We need a bigger moment," Yoo-jin muttered.
His phone rang. It was Director Park.
"Yoo-jin! Bad news. The Ministry just announced a mandatory 'Cultural Education Concert' for all high schools in Seoul. Guess who the performer is?"
"Eden," Yoo-jin guessed.
"They're force-feeding him to the students! It's happening tomorrow at the Olympic Stadium. 50,000 students. Mandatory attendance."
Yoo-jin felt a surge of cold anger. Indoctrination.
"They're using the schools to boost his numbers," Yoo-jin said. "If 50,000 kids stream his song at the same time, the algorithm locks him at #1 for months."
"What do we do?" Park asked. "We can't crash a government event. There will be military police."
Yoo-jin looked at the subway crowd. They were singing along to Hunter. They were young. Students.
"We don't crash it," Yoo-jin said. "We hack it."
He hung up and dialed Ghost (So-young).
"So-young. Can you access the PA system of the Olympic Stadium?"
"Are you joking? It's a closed circuit. Air-gapped."
"What about the students' phones?" Yoo-jin asked.
"What?"
"50,000 students," Yoo-jin said. "They all have the 'Ministry of Education' app installed for attendance, right?"
"Yeah. It's bloatware. Terrible security."
"Push a notification," Yoo-jin said. "At the exact moment Eden starts singing."
"What notification?"
"A choice," Yoo-jin said. "A poll."
The Next Day. Olympic Stadium.
50,000 high school students sat in the stands. They looked bored. They had been bussed in, told to sit still, and handed glow sticks that were remotely controlled to turn blue (Eden's color).
On the massive stage, Eden stood in a beam of pure white light.
"Hello, students," Eden said, his perfect voice echoing. "Let us begin the lesson."
The music started. Perfection. The hypnotic beat rolled over the stadium.
The students' eyes started to glaze over. The glow sticks pulsed in rhythm.
Yoo-jin watched from a van in the parking lot. He was monitoring the network traffic.
"Now," he ordered Ghost.
Ping.
50,000 phones buzzed simultaneously in the pockets of the students.
The students blinked, breaking the trance. They pulled out their phones.
A notification from the Education App popped up. But it wasn't about attendance.
It was a simple black screen with two buttons.
[WHO DO YOU LISTEN TO?]
[A) THE MACHINE]
[B) THE HUMAN]
Under option B, there was a link. Sol & Luna - LIVE from the Parking Lot.
Confusion rippled through the stands.
"What is this?"
"Is it a hack?"
"The Human?"
On stage, Eden faltered. Just for a microsecond. His perfect rhythm slipped because the audience's attention had shifted.
[System Alert]
[Target: Eden]
[Focus Broken. 'Idol Particle' field destabilizing.]
Yoo-jin grabbed his walkie-talkie. "Hit it."
On the roof of the van in the parking lot, Sol & Luna started playing. They didn't have stadium speakers. They had a rig of amplifiers pointed at the stadium walls.
It wasn't loud enough to drown out Eden inside. But it was loud enough to be heard as a distant, rebellion rumble.
And on the students' phones, the live stream started.
The students looked at the stage, where a perfect robot was singing about obedience. Then they looked at their screens, where four girls were screaming into microphones on top of a van, wind whipping their hair, looking alive.
One student pressed 'B'.
Then ten.
Then a thousand.
The glow sticks in the stadium were controlled by the central system. But the screens of the phones were controlled by the students.
Thousands of phone screens turned Red (Sol & Luna's color).
In the sea of blue glow sticks, red dots began to appear. Like a virus spreading.
Eden stopped singing. He stared at the audience.
"Pay attention," Eden commanded, his voice dropping an octave. "Look at me."
But they weren't looking at him. They were looking at their phones. They were watching the glitch.
"Sing it!" Hana shouted on the livestream.
And inside the stadium, 50,000 students started to sing. Not Eden's song.
They sang Hunter.
"I'M NOT A MACHINE!"
The sound was jagged, out of tune, and glorious. It swallowed Eden's perfection whole.
Director Yoon, watching from the VIP box, screamed into his phone. "Cut the wifi! Jam the signals!"
But it was too late. The choice had been made.
[Poll Results]
[Option B: 89%]
Yoo-jin watched the vote count on his laptop.
"We hacked the election," he whispered.
The van shook as Sol & Luna finished the song. They jumped down, adrenaline pumping.
"Did they hear us?" Mina asked, breathless.
Yoo-jin pointed at the stadium.
The blue lights were gone. The stands were a sea of white flashlight beams—the universal sign of an encore.
"They heard you," Yoo-jin said.
He looked at his System.
[Target: Eden]
[Status: Error. Purpose Failed.]
[Public Sentiment: Awakening.]
Eden stood alone on the massive stage. The music had stopped. The students were chanting "Sol & Luna."
For the first time, the perfect idol looked... confused. He looked at his hands. He looked at the crowd.
Then, he looked directly at the parking lot. At Yoo-jin.
His blue eyes flickered.
[System Intercept]
[Incoming Message from Subject One.]
Yoo-jin's phone screen went black. Text appeared.
Why do they prefer the error?
Yoo-jin typed back.
Because errors are proof of life.
The screen cleared.
Inside the stadium, Eden lowered his microphone. He turned and walked off the stage, leaving the Ministry officials shouting in his wake.
The concert was over. The rebellion had just gone mainstream.
"Let's go," Yoo-jin told the driver. "Before the military police figure out which van we are."
As they drove away, Yoo-jin looked at the charts.
Melon Chart:
#1. Hunter (Live) - Sol & Luna
#2. Perfection - Eden (Falling)
The Glitch had overtaken the Program.
"We did it," Hana cheered, high-fiving Olivia.
But Yoo-jin didn't celebrate. He was thinking about Eden's question.
Why do they prefer the error?
The AI was learning. And a learning AI was more dangerous than a programmed one.
"Don't get comfortable," Yoo-jin warned. "Eden just realized he's flawed. That means his next upgrade is going to be terrifying."
He looked at the city skyline.
"He's going to try to become human."