The air in the 28th-floor conference room of Stellar Entertainment was worth more per cubic foot than the luxury apartment Han Yoo-jin could barely afford. Sunlight, filtered through floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows, gleamed off the polished marble table, but it carried no warmth. Here, sunlight was just an accessory, a status symbol to illuminate the cold, hard business of manufacturing stars.
Yoo-jin kept his hands clasped tightly in his lap, the knuckles of his right hand white. Across the table, Director Kang Min-hyuk, the Head of the A&R Department, tapped a sleek stylus against the screen of his tablet. The soft click-click-click was the only sound in the room, a metronome counting down to an execution.
"That's enough," Director Kang said, his voice flat and bored. He gestured dismissively at the young boy who had just finished a frantic dance routine. The trainee, breathless and sweating, bowed so low his forehead nearly touched his knees before scurrying out of the room like a frightened mouse.
Director Kang didn't even watch him go. He made a swift gesture on his tablet. "Contract termination. He has no center charisma. His proportions are off. Next."
Yoo-jin's jaw tightened. That was the third trainee cut in the last hour. Cut, not with feedback or a development plan, but with the detached finality of a butcher discarding an unwanted piece of meat.
"Lee Seo-yeon," Director Kang called out, his eyes finally flicking toward Yoo-jin. "From Manager Han's development group. Let's see if this one is any less of a waste of our time."
A subtle wave of condescension rippled through the other three executives at the table—Ms. Choi from Strategic Planning, and Mr. Park and Mr. Kim, both senior directors who orbited Kang like pilot fish. Yoo-jin ignored them, turning to give a small, encouraging nod to the girl standing nervously by the door.
Lee Seo-yeon walked to the center of the room. She was eighteen, but her anxious expression made her seem younger. By the impossible standards of the K-Pop industry, she was plain. She had no double eyelids, her nose wasn't a perfect ski-slope, and her face was a little too round. She wore a simple black t-shirt and sweats, no makeup, nothing to hide the fact that she was just a normal girl. But Yoo-jin knew what she held inside her.
He had found her singing in a small, shabby music academy while scouting. He'd heard her voice through a wall and had frozen, the sound hitting him with a physical force. It was a treasure.
"Please begin," Director Kang said, already looking back at his tablet.
Seo-yeon closed her eyes. She took a single, deep breath that seemed to draw all the tension from her body. And then, she sang.
There was no backing track, no microphone. Just her voice, filling the sterile, opulent room. It was a soulful, heartbreaking ballad about loss and longing. The voice was not just technically proficient; it was drenched in a profound, mature emotion that a girl of eighteen had no business possessing. It was a voice that told a story, that painted a picture, that could make you feel the ache of a love you'd never even had.
Yoo-jin didn't watch her. He watched the executives. He pleaded with them through his gaze alone. Hear it. Just listen. Forget the analytics, forget the market research. Just for one minute, listen to that.
For sixty seconds, the voice held them all captive. Even Director Kang's stylus had stopped tapping. The raw, unfiltered artistry of it was an alien presence in this room, a wildflower blooming through concrete.
The last note hung in the air, vibrating with emotion, before fading into a heavy silence.
Seo-yeon opened her eyes, her chest rising and falling. She bowed deeply.
"Thank you, Seo-yeon. You may wait outside," Director Kang said, his tone unreadable.
The moment the door clicked shut behind her, Ms. Choi let out a soft, delicate snort. "Well, that was certainly… heartfelt."
Director Kang set his stylus down. He looked directly at Yoo-jin, a predator that had finished observing its prey and was now ready to play with it.
"Manager Han," he began, his voice dangerously soft. "I'll ask you directly. What is the business plan here? What is the product?"
"The product is her voice, Director," Yoo-jin said, leaning forward, his own voice tight with a desperate sincerity. "A voice like that is a once-in-a-generation talent. We can market her as a true artist, a vocalist who can command stages with nothing but her skill. The public is getting tired of perfectly synchronized dance routines and auto-tuned vocals. They're hungry for something real. She could be our Adele. Our…"
"Adele is a Western anomaly that proves the rule," Ms. Choi interjected smoothly, examining her perfectly manicured nails. "And this is Korea. We sell an image, a fantasy. Her voice is good. I won't deny that. But her face… it's a face for radio."
Director Kang smirked. It was a cruel, thin slash of a smile. "Let's speak in a language everyone in this room understands, Manager Han. Numbers. Data. ROI. We have a trainee in Development Group B, Kim Min-ji. Vocally, she's average. Her dance is passable. But her face is a perfect commercial asset. Our analytics team, using facial recognition data cross-referenced with current social media trends, projects that she will secure a minimum of fifteen endorsement deals within six months of her debut. Based on her visuals alone."
He steepled his fingers, his gaze pinning Yoo-jin to his chair. "Lee Seo-yeon, your 'generational talent,' is projected to secure zero. Her 'soul,' as you so quaintly put it, does not translate into contracts for cosmetics, fried chicken, or mobile phones. We would have to pour, conservatively, two hundred million won into plastic surgery just to make her visually viable for a group debut. For what? A nice voice? We can fix a voice in post-production. We can't fix a fundamentally unmarketable face without extensive, expensive, and risky overhaul."
Yoo-jin felt a cold wave of despair wash over him. He was trying to sell a masterpiece to men who only saw the cost of the frame. "Data can't measure goosebumps, Director. It can't quantify the feeling in this room when she was singing."
"You're right," Kang said with a chilling finality. "It can't. But it can measure profit and loss. And goosebumps don't pay for music video productions that cost half a billion won. They don't pay the salaries of our staff. Your job, Manager Han, is to find me idols who can generate revenue. Not street buskers who can make you feel sentimental."
He turned to the rest of the table. "I see no further potential for investment. All in favor of terminating Lee Seo-yeon's trainee contract and reallocating her budget to Kim Min-ji's pre-debut visual management package?"
Three hands went up instantly. It was a silent, effortless execution.
Yoo-jin's hand remained on the table, clenched into a fist.
"The motion passes," Director Kang declared, a hint of satisfaction in his voice. He made another note on his tablet. "Manager Han, you will inform her of the company's decision. And in the future, please bring me candidates who can actually make us money. This meeting is adjourned."
The executives stood, gathering their things, already talking about lunch reservations at a Michelin-starred restaurant. They walked out of the room without a backward glance.
Yoo-jin remained seated for a long moment, the silence of the room pressing in on him. Humiliation and a deep, simmering rage churned in his gut.
He found Lee Seo-yeon in a small, empty practice room, staring at her reflection in the mirror-walled dance studio. He didn't need to say a word. She saw it on his face.
He opened his mouth to try and soften the blow, to say something, anything, but the words wouldn't come. All he could manage was a hoarse, "Seo-yeon… I'm sorry."
She turned from the mirror. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but she wasn't crying. A single, silent tear traced a path down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her hand.
"It's okay, Manager Han," she whispered, her voice impossibly steady. It was the same voice that had filled the conference room with so much power, now reduced to a fragile breath. "I understand. Thank you… thank you for believing in me. That was more than I had before I met you."
Her quiet dignity was a thousand times more painful than any outburst of tears or anger would have been. She bowed to him, a formal, respectful ninety-degree bow, and walked out, leaving him alone in the center of the vast, empty room.
He walked back to his desk in the bustling A&R department, a ghost moving through a world he no longer recognized. Posters of Stellar Entertainment's biggest stars smiled down from the walls—perfect faces, perfect bodies, perfect, manufactured smiles. He felt a profound, soul-deep exhaustion. Ten years. He had given ten years of his life to this company, fueled by a passion for music and a dream of discovering real artists. And what had he become? A cog in a machine. A butcher of dreams, forced to deliver the killing blow himself.
He slumped into his chair, the cheerful office chatter fading into a dull roar. He stared blankly at his computer monitor, the words of Director Kang echoing in his mind. A waste of time.
Then, it happened. A sharp, blinding pain erupted behind his eyes, as if a spike of white-hot iron had been driven straight through his skull. He gasped, a cry catching in his throat as he grabbed his head with both hands. The world swam, the bright lights of the office blurring into streaks of white. The sounds around him distorted into a low, metallic drone. He squeezed his eyes shut, convinced he was having an aneurysm, that this was the end. His vision went completely black.