The roar of the crowd was a physical wave, crashing over the backstage area. Yoo-jin felt it in his bones, a deep, resonant vibration of pure, unadulterated shock.
Mina stumbled off the stage, her legs shaking, her face pale and slick with sweat. The furious, confident monster she had been just seconds ago was gone, replaced by a terrified, overwhelmed girl who looked like she was about to collapse.
Eun-bi and Min-hyuk rushed forward, catching her before she fell. Eun-bi wrapped a towel around her shoulders while Min-hyuk shoved a bottle of water into her hand. Ji-ho hovered nearby, his eyes wide with a mixture of awe and terror at what his music had just unleashed.
"You did it," Yoo-jin said, his own voice hoarse. "Mina, you did it."
She looked up at him, her eyes dazed. "Did I? I don't… I don't remember it."
It was true. She had poured so much of herself into that performance that she had come out the other side empty.
Their small, triumphant huddle was broken by a cold, sharp voice.
"That was… unexpected."
Isabelle Moon was standing a few feet away, her arms crossed, the members of Aurora flanking her like royal guards. Her perfect smile was gone, replaced by a look of cold, hard analysis. She was looking at Mina not as an insect anymore, but as a threat.
"A very bold choice," Isabelle continued, her eyes narrowing. "To build a debut around a narrative of anger. It's a powerful trick. But tricks get old. And anger is exhausting."
She gave Mina one last, dismissive look. "Enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame, whisper-singer. Let's see if you can sustain it."
With that, she turned and swept away, her flawless entourage in her wake. The declaration of war was no longer one-sided.
The battle wasn't just on the stage. It was online.
By the time they got back to their waiting room, the internet was on fire. Yoo-jin's phone was buzzing so hard it was practically levitating.
The performance clip of "Monster" was already past a million views. The comments section was a war zone.
User1: WHAT DID I JUST WATCH??? SHE ATE THAT STAGE AND LEFT NO CRUMBS.
User2: I'm an Aurora fan but… holy crap. That last note was 100% live. Isabelle could never.
User3: Okay but the concept is kinda scary? What happened to the sad ballad girl? I'm confused.
User4: CONFUSED? I'm obsessed. K-pop needs more artists with this kind of raw anger. She's not a doll. She's a whole mood.
The public was fiercely divided. There was no middle ground. People either loved the performance with a burning, obsessive passion, or they were confused and repelled by it.
Yoo-jin scrolled through the real-time album sales chart, his heart in his throat. Before the performance, they had been at a respectable 80,000 pre-orders. Aurora had been at 300,000.
He refreshed the page.
Mina's sales number was climbing. 90,000. 100,000. 115,000. It was a huge surge, but Aurora's was climbing too, the general public now rushing to buy the album of the group that had delivered the "perfect" stage.
Choi Mina: 130,000.
Aurora: 380,000.
They were losing. Badly. The public was shocked and intrigued by Mina, but they were buying Aurora.
Eun-bi's face fell. "It wasn't enough," she whispered.
Yoo-jin felt a cold knot of dread tighten in his stomach. The face of Ji-ho's mother flashed in his mind. This wasn't just about winning an award. It was about saving a life.
Then, Hana, who had been silently watching the online reaction from her corner, spoke up.
"Wait," she said, her eyes narrowed in concentration. "Look at the secondary metrics. Not the sales. The search trends."
She turned her tablet around. It showed a graph of the top trending search terms in the last hour. The number one spot belonged to Aurora. But number two was Choi Mina Monster.
And number three was Isabelle Moon Lip-Sync.
A slow, dangerous smile spread across Yoo-jin's face. He had forgotten about the weapon Hana had given him. He had been so focused on Mina's performance, he hadn't deployed his counter-attack.
"It's not over," he said, his voice low. He pulled out his phone and made a call to a number he now knew by heart.
Reporter Kim So-jin.
"I have a tip for you," Yoo-jin said, his voice calm and clear. "Something your readers might find very interesting. It's about the pyrotechnics at the showcase tonight…"
He didn't need to finish the sentence. He was planting a seed, a single drop of poison into the well of public opinion.
When he hung up, a new energy filled the room. This wasn't just a performance anymore. It was a multi-front war, and Producer Han Yoo-jin was just getting started.
He turned to his exhausted, worried team. "Our job isn't done," he announced. "The album officially drops at midnight. But our second music video drops in five minutes."
Mina looked up, confused. "Second music video? But we only filmed one…"
Yoo-jin just smiled. "Who said we only filmed one?"
He pulled out his laptop and navigated to their new, official YouTube channel. He clicked 'upload' on a video file that was titled simply:
Choi Mina - 'Echo' (Special Live Clip)
He had known all along that "Monster" would be divisive. It was the shockwave, designed to grab the world's attention.
But "Echo" was the song that would capture their hearts.
The video went live. It wasn't a polished music video. It was a simple, black-and-white video he had filmed in the basement studio a week ago. Just Mina, sitting on a stool, with Ji-ho playing the piano behind her.
It was a video of the two-faced goddess, showing her other, heartbreakingly vulnerable face.
The first comment appeared just seconds after it went live.
User1: I KNEW IT. I KNEW THIS GIRL WAS STILL IN THERE. T_T
Yoo-jin refreshed the real-time sales chart again. The numbers for both groups were still climbing. It was a race. A desperate, frantic race to the finish line.
And he had just played his final, secret card.