The crosswalk was a war zone.
It wasn't fought with guns, but with contracts.
Dozens of young men and women in color-coded training tracksuits were sprinting across the six lanes of Teheran-ro. They dodged honking taxis and delivery bikes, their faces pale with terror.
Behind them, Zenith security guards gave chase.
"Stop!" a guard tackled a teenage boy to the asphalt. "You are in breach of contract! Come back!"
The boy screamed, kicking wildy. "I quit! I quit!"
"You can't quit!" the guard twisted the boy's arm. "Your training debt is 50 million won! You belong to the company!"
Yoo-jin watched from the lobby of the red brick building. He checked his watch.
"Min-ji," Yoo-jin said. "The line."
"On it."
Min-ji kicked the front door open. She stepped out onto the sidewalk, holding her bat. She wasn't wearing a mask. She was smiling.
She walked up to the curb. She drew a line in the dust with the tip of her bat.
"Cross this line," Min-ji shouted, her voice cutting through the traffic noise. "And you're safe!"
The boy on the ground bit the guard's hand. He scrambled up, ignoring his torn pants, and sprinted toward Min-ji.
The guard lunged after him.
WHAM.
Min-ji didn't hit the guard. She slammed her bat onto the pavement right in front of his toes. Concrete chips flew.
"Uh-uh," Min-ji wagged her finger. "Private property. You have no jurisdiction here."
"That is Zenith property!" the guard pointed at the panting boy behind Min-ji.
"Not anymore," Yoo-jin stepped out. He held up a smartphone. "I'm livestreaming to 200,000 people right now. Do you really want to be seen beating a minor on camera?"
The guard froze. He looked at the phone, then back at the towering black monolith of Zenith Tower across the street.
More trainees were arriving. They huddled behind Min-ji, shivering, clutching their ID badges like cursed talismans.
"This is kidnapping," the guard hissed.
"It's poaching," Yoo-jin corrected. "There's a difference."
He turned to the trembling group of defectors. There were about twenty of them. Some were crying. Some looked ready to throw up.
"Inside," Yoo-jin ordered. "Interview starts in five minutes."
The lobby of the BK Building was a mess. It smelled of wet concrete and old paint. There were no marble floors, no golden logos. Just a few folding chairs David had set up in a circle.
The twenty trainees stood awkwardly. They were used to the sterile, hospital-clean halls of Zenith. This place felt like a dungeon.
"Is this it?" a girl with pink-streaked hair whispered. "It's a dump."
"It's a start," Yoo-jin walked into the center of the circle.
He looked at them. Really looked at them.
His "Producer's Eye" wasn't a system interface anymore. It was instinct honed by a lifetime of survival.
He saw the stats written in their posture.
The boy with the torn pants: High desperate energy. Vocal node damage from over-practicing.
The girl with pink hair: Visual center material. Arrogant. Scared.
The tall guy in the back: Spy. Definitely a spy.
Yoo-jin didn't call out the spy yet. He needed numbers.
"Welcome to Starforce," Yoo-jin said. His voice echoed in the empty room. "I am Han Yoo-jin. You probably know me as the terrorist who blew up the internet."
A few nervous giggles.
"I know why you're here," Yoo-jin continued, pacing slowly. "You're here because you're stuck. Maybe you're too old. Maybe you're too short. Maybe you refused to get the plastic surgery they demanded."
He stopped in front of the pink-haired girl.
"What's your rank?"
"A-Class," she stammered. "Trainee Lee Ha-eun. I was supposed to debut next month. But..."
"But?"
"But the algorithm said my 'Likability Score' dropped by 0.5%," she looked down, shame burning her cheeks. "They cut me. Replaced me with a deep-fake avatar."
"A computer took your job," Yoo-jin nodded.
He turned to the group.
"Zenith wants perfection. They want code. I don't."
He pointed to a trash can in the corner.
"Throw them away."
"What?"
"Your Zenith ID cards," Yoo-jin said. "Your ranking badges. Your carefully curated profiles. Throw them in the trash."
The trainees hesitated. Those badges were their lives. They had bled for those ranks.
"If you keep them," Yoo-jin said coldly, "you can go back across the street. I'm sure the guards are waiting."
Lee Ha-eun looked at her badge. Rank A. Visual Leader.
She looked at Yoo-jin. She saw the scar on his neck. She saw the hunger in his eyes.
She ripped the badge off her shirt. She walked to the bin and dropped it.
Clatter.
It was the sound of a career ending. Or beginning.
One by one, the others followed. The bin filled up with plastic dreams.
"Good," Yoo-jin smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. It was a predator's smile.
"Now. Who wants to sing first?"
The "Audition" took place in the basement.
It wasn't a pristine dance studio. It was a boiler room with a few mirrors glued to the wall.
Min-ji sat on a crate, cleaning her bat. Kai leaned against a pillar, arms crossed, looking critical. Sol and Luna sat on the floor, watching with wide eyes.
"Name," Yoo-jin said.
"Park Dong-soo," the boy with the torn pants stepped forward. He was shaking.
"Position?"
"Main Dancer. Sub-Vocal."
"Show me."
Dong-soo took a breath. He launched into a routine. It was the standard Zenith monthly evaluation choreography. Sharp. Precise. Robotic.
He hit every beat. His angles were perfect. He looked exactly like the thousands of other boys in the Zenith factory.
"Stop," Yoo-jin cut him off after thirty seconds.
Dong-soo froze. Terror filled his eyes. "Did I make a mistake?"
"No," Yoo-jin sighed. "That's the problem. You didn't make a single mistake."
Yoo-jin walked up to him.
"You dance like you're taking a test. You're trying to get a score of 100."
"Isn't that... good?"
"It's boring," Yoo-jin said. "I've seen that dance a million times. The algorithm can do it better. Why should I watch you?"
Dong-soo stamina faltered. "I... I trained for six years..."
"Why?" Yoo-jin pressed. "Why do you want this?"
"Because I want to be a star."
"Wrong answer," Yoo-jin turned away. "Next."
"Wait!" Dong-soo grabbed Yoo-jin's arm.
Min-ji stood up instantly, but Yoo-jin raised a hand to stop her.
He looked down at Dong-soo's hand gripping his expensive suit. The boy's knuckles were white.
"I don't have anywhere else to go," Dong-soo's voice cracked. It wasn't the polite trainee voice anymore. It was ugly. "My parents sold their shop to pay for my training. If I fail, they lose everything. I can't go back!"
Tears streamed down his face, ruining his stage makeup.
"I hate dancing," Dong-soo sobbed. "I hate it so much. My knees hurt every day. But I have to succeed. I have to pay them back!"
The room was silent.
The other trainees looked away, uncomfortable. They all knew that feeling. The crushing weight of debt and expectation.
Yoo-jin looked at the boy.
"You hate it," Yoo-jin repeated.
"Yes," Dong-soo wiped his nose.
"Good," Yoo-jin pointed at the center of the room. "Dance that."
"What?"
"Dance the hate," Yoo-jin commanded. "Forget the choreography. Show me how heavy that debt is. Show me how much your knees hurt."
Dong-soo stood there. He closed his eyes.
He didn't count the beat. He just moved.
It wasn't pretty. He stumbled. He dragged his feet. He punched the air like he was fighting a ghost. He fell to his knees, then clawed his way back up.
It was messy. It was desperate.
It was real.
Min-ji stopped cleaning her bat. Kai pushed himself off the pillar.
Dong-soo finished, panting, lying on the dirty concrete floor.
"Pass," Yoo-jin said softly.
The room let out a breath they didn't know they were holding.
"Next," Yoo-jin called out.
By sunset, they had signed twelve contracts.
Yoo-jin sat in his makeshift office on the third floor, reviewing the files. They were a ragtag group. The rejects. The injured. The "too old."
"We have a Main Vocal with a panic disorder," David listed, reading from a tablet. "A Rapper who got kicked out for fighting. And a Visual who refuses to diet."
"It's a circus," Kai laughed, lounging on the sofa. "Mason is going to laugh at us."
"Let him laugh," Yoo-jin signed the last paper. "Circuses sell tickets."
Suddenly, the room went dark.
"Hey!" Min-ji yelled. "Who turned off the lights?"
"It's not just the lights," David ran to the window. "Look outside!"
Yoo-jin walked to the window.
Across the street, the massive digital billboard on Zenith Tower had changed. It wasn't showing ads anymore.
It was a solid wall of white light.
Floodlights.
Fifty massive industrial spotlights were mounted on the side of Zenith Tower, aimed directly at the BK Building.
They were blinding. The light poured through the windows, bleaching everything white. It was impossible to look outside. It was impossible to sleep.
"He's light-polluting us," Sae-ri shielded her eyes. "He's trying to flush us out like rats."
A low hum began to vibrate the glass.
Hummmmmmmmm.
"Sound cannons," Kai covered his ears. "Directional speakers. He's blasting a low-frequency hum right at our building."
"It's psychological warfare," Yoo-jin realized. "He's going to make it impossible to practice. Impossible to think."
The trainees downstairs began to scream. The noise was nauseating.
"What do we do?" David yelled over the hum. "Call the police?"
"Police won't come for noise complaints in Gangnam," Yoo-jin stared into the blinding white light.
Mason was declaring a siege. He couldn't use guns, so he was using physics.
"Close the blinds," Yoo-jin ordered.
"That won't stop the sound!"
"I know," Yoo-jin walked to the wall where they had installed the soundproofing foam. It vibrated with the enemy's attack.
He put his hand on the wall. He felt the rhythm of the hum.
"He wants to make noise?" Yoo-jin smiled. It was a terrifying smile.
"Let's give him a melody."
He turned to his team.
"Get the speakers. The big ones from the Arena concert."
"Why?"
"We're not going to block the sound," Yoo-jin unbuttoned his collar.
"We're going to sample it."