The Aura Management office had transformed from a creative sanctuary into a high-stakes waiting room. The initial adrenaline from the "Vinyl Ambush" had long since evaporated, leaving behind a thick, anxious silence that was more draining than any shouting match. It had been three full days since Han Yoo-jin had emailed the lossless audio file of "My Room" to Simon Vance. Three days of watching a silent email inbox and a static YouTube subscription feed. The mood, which had been cautiously optimistic after their successful song production, had curdled into a collective, nerve-shredding suspense.
Yoo-jin sat at the head of the folding table, trying to project an aura of calm leadership, but on the inside, he was a wreck. He was the one who had rolled these dice. He was the one who had gambled their entire future on the discerning taste of one arrogant, unpredictable critic. His laptop screen was split into two windows: his email client and Simon Vance's YouTube page. He refreshed both every thirty seconds, the repetitive click of his mouse the only steady rhythm in the tense room.
Ahn Da-eun had retreated into her deepest, most impenetrable shell of cynicism. It was a familiar defense mechanism, a way to brace for an impact she felt was inevitable. She sat slumped in her chair, pretending to be absorbed in a webtoon on her phone, but Yoo-jin saw her eyes flick constantly toward his laptop screen. She was a fortress pretending to be bored while the enemy catapults were being rolled into position.
Go Min-young, on the other hand, wore her anxiety like a heavy cloak. She couldn't sit still, pacing the small office, twisting a loose thread on her sweater. She was the worrier, the one whose brilliant imagination was now being used to conjure every possible negative outcome, each more terrifying than the last.
Even Kang Ji-won, the stoic hermit, was not immune. He was pretending to be absorbed in his work, hunched over a small keyboard and fiddling with sound patches, but he hadn't created a single usable beat all day. This was the first time in nearly a decade that a piece of his uncompromised music was out in the world, about to be judged. He was just as invested as the rest of them, hiding his vulnerability behind a mask of detached professionalism.
"He's not going to do it," Da-eun said suddenly, her voice flat and loud in the quiet room. She didn't look up from her phone. "He probably deleted the file as soon as he got it. He was just messing with you because you annoyed him in that store. It was all a power play."
Yoo-jin saw her true thoughts flicker in his vision, a silent, desperate prayer. [Please prove me wrong. Please, please prove me wrong. If even he hates it, then I really have nothing left to believe in.]
Before Yoo-jin could respond, Min-young voiced her own spiraling anxieties. "Or what if he does a video… and he hates it?" she asked, her voice small and trembling. She stopped pacing and looked at them, her eyes wide with genuine fear. "He won't just say he doesn't like it. He'll take it apart, piece by piece, like a scientist dissecting a frog. He'll say my lyrics are juvenile and emotionally overwrought. He'll say Da-eun's voice is technically flawed and lacks professional control. He'll say Ji-won's production is derivative of some obscure German synth-pop band from the 1980s that only he and twelve other people have ever heard of."
Ji-won bristled from his corner, his fingers freezing over the keyboard. "My production is not derivative," he muttered, his pride pricked. But Yoo-jin could see the flicker of insecurity in his eyes. It was the deepest fear of every true creator: not just to be dismissed, but to be misunderstood, to have your unique creation mislabeled as a cheap copy.
Yoo-jin knew he had to stop the downward spiral before it consumed them all. He clapped his hands together once, a sharp sound that made everyone jump. "Stop," he said, his voice firm and steady, cutting through the thicket of fear. "All of you. Stop."
They all looked at him.
"We can't control what he's going to do," he said, meeting each of their gazes. "We can't control his opinion. We cannot game the mind of Simon Vance. All we could do was create the best possible song we could make, and we did that. And we got that song into the hands of the one person who could change the game for us. The rest… is out of our control. Fretting about it is a waste of the one resource we have in abundance right now: time."
He tried to shift their focus. "Let's concentrate on what we can control. We still need a concept for a music video. Even if it's a low-budget one, we need a visual identity. What does 'My Room' look like?"
It was a deliberate attempt to distract them, to get their creative gears turning again. But it backfired. The idea of planning a music video for a song that might be publicly executed in a matter of hours felt absurd, like picking out furniture for a house that was about to be demolished.
The tension in the room remained, thick and unyielding. It was Da-eun, surprisingly, who broke it with a moment of unexpected grace.
"You know," she said quietly, her voice devoid of its usual sarcastic edge. She was looking directly at Yoo-jin, her expression serious. "Even if this whole thing crashes and burns tomorrow… thank you."
Yoo-jin looked at her, taken aback. This was the most sincere thing she had ever said to him.
"For hearing us," she clarified, her gaze flicking over to include Min-young and Ji-won. "You're the first person in this entire business who ever actually listened. To any of us. You heard the lyrics behind Min-young's shyness. You heard the music behind Ji-won's anger. And you… you saw whatever it is you see in me."
She leaned back in her chair, a semblance of her old fire returning, but this time it wasn't defensive; it was proud. "So, no matter what some arrogant foreigner says in a YouTube video… we made a good song. A damn good one."
Min-young nodded fiercely, wiping a tear from her eye. Ji-won, from his corner, gave a single, almost imperceptible nod of his own. It was a small but profound moment of unity. They weren't just a CEO and his assets anymore. They were a team, forged in a crucible of shared rejection and creative passion. Their success was no longer solely dependent on external validation. They had validated each other.
The poignant moment was shattered by a small, electronic ding from Yoo-jin's laptop.
It was the sound of a new YouTube upload notification.
[Audiophile has just uploaded a new video: "A Diamond in the Rough, or Just Another Rock? An Unsolicited Discovery."]
The room went utterly, deathly silent. Every person froze in place, their eyes locked on the laptop screen. The title was a masterful piece of psychological torture, perfectly, terrifyingly ambiguous. It could mean anything. It could mean everything.
Yoo-jin's hand hovered over the trackpad, and he could feel it trembling slightly. The entire future of Aura Management, the culmination of all their hopes, fears, and desperate gambles, was contained within that hyperlink. He looked at the faces of his team, seeing his own terror reflected back at him. It was time to face the verdict.