The piano keys were ivory, but under the violet stage lights, they looked like teeth.
Sae-ri sat at the bench, her back straight. She wasn't acting anymore. She was fighting a war against the atmosphere itself.
"Smile, Sae-ri," Mason Gold's voice dripped from the overhead speakers. "The script says you found your miracle. The Muse Engine detects your serotonin levels are low. Fix it."
Yoo-jin gripped his mop handle until his knuckles turned white.
From the shadows of the wings, he saw the screens. The Muse Engine was projecting a holographic filter over Sae-ri's face in real-time. On the monitors, she was beaming with angelic joy. On the stage, she was weeping.
"He's overwriting her," Yoo-jin whispered into his headset. "He's not even waiting for post-production. He's deep-faking her live."
"The algorithm is aggressive," So-young replied, her voice tense. "It's trying to force the 'Happy Ending' protocol. If Sae-ri resists too much, the system will crash."
"Good," Yoo-jin said. "Let it crash."
He looked up at the catwalks. Min-ji was there, disguised as a rigger. She was holding a heavy spotlight gel—a sheet of blue plastic.
"Min-ji," Yoo-jin signaled. "Change the weather."
Min-ji nodded. She slid the blue gel over the main floodlight.
On stage, the warm, golden "sunshine" that Mason had ordered instantly turned cold and gray. The atmosphere shifted from a spring morning to a winter funeral.
"What is that?" Mason barked over the comms. "Lighting! Reset to warm!"
"Controls are jammed, sir!" Min-ji yelled back, faking panic. "It's stuck!"
Sae-ri seized the moment. The cold light matched her internal state. She stopped trying to force the smile.
She slammed her hands onto the keys.
It wasn't the gentle, hopeful melody of the remake. It was the original, tragic coda of The Moonlit Sonata. A descent into minor chords that sounded like sobbing.
The Muse Engine screamed silent warnings on the monitors.
ALERT: TONAL MISMATCH.
ALERT: DOPAMINE DROP.
But then, a new metric appeared.
ALERT: EMPATHY SPIKE.
The AI paused. It analyzed the gray light, the tears on Sae-ri's face, and the haunting music. It compared this data against billions of hours of human history.
And it made a choice.
The holographic smile on the monitor flickered and vanished. The deep-fake filter dissolved.
On the screen, Sae-ri's real face appeared. Sad. Broken. Beautiful.
"No!" Mason roared from the balcony. "Override! Cut the feed!"
"I can't!" The lead programmer shouted, his hands flying across the console. "The Engine locked us out! It says this ending has a 99% probability of... Legacy."
"Legacy?"
"It says it's art, sir. It refuses to censor it."
Sae-ri played the final note. It hung in the air, vibrating against the steel hull of the ship.
She looked up into the camera lens.
"I can't hear the music," she whispered the original line from the 1990 script. "But I can feel it."
Silence.
Then, the stage crew—hundreds of exhausted, underpaid Zenith workers—started to clap.
It wasn't polite applause. It was thunderous. They dropped their clipboards and headsets. They cheered for the tragedy because it felt like their own lives.
Mason Gold gripped the railing of the balcony. He looked down at Sae-ri, then at Yoo-jin standing in the shadows with his mop.
Mason didn't scream. He didn't throw a tantrum.
He smiled.
It was a terrifying, dead smile.
"Wrap it up," Mason said calmly into his headset. "Let them have the scene. We have enough footage."
Yoo-jin felt a cold shiver run down his spine. Mason gave up too easily.
"Team," Yoo-jin whispered. "Extract. Now. We're leaving."
They melted away during the chaos of the applause. They ditched the coveralls in a laundry chute and slipped back into the drainage tunnel.
Two hours later, they were back in the Mullae-dong basement.
The mood was electric. The trainees were watching the leaked footage of Sae-ri's performance on repeat. It was already trending #1 globally.
"We beat the machine," David Kim popped a bottle of cheap soju. "The Muse Engine chose humanity. That's a philosophical victory, Yoo-jin!"
"It's a moral victory," Yoo-jin sat at the desk, rubbing his temples. "But Mason isn't a philosopher. He's a businessman. He let us win the battle."
"Why?" Sae-ri asked, wiping off her stage makeup with a wet wipe. She looked exhausted but lighter, as if she had finally buried a ghost.
"Because he found a new weapon," Yoo-jin said. "I saw his face. He wasn't defeated. He was pivoting."
"Pivoting to what?" Min-ji asked, eating a donut. "We hijacked his drama. We crashed his debut. What does he have left?"
"The one thing the algorithm loves more than art," Yoo-jin said grimly. "Scandal."
PING.
David's tablet lit up on the table. It wasn't a normal notification. It was a "Red Alert" from the media monitoring software So-young had set up.
Then Yoo-jin's phone buzzed.
Then Sae-ri's.
Then every phone in the room started vibrating at once. A cacophony of chimes and buzzes that sounded like a swarm of insects.
"What is happening?" Luna looked at her screen. Her face went pale.
"Don't look," Yoo-jin ordered instinctively.
"It's everywhere," David whispered, scrolling. "Dispatch. Naver. Twitter. CNN."
So-young pulled the main feed onto the big monitor.
It wasn't a story about the movie. It wasn't about the resistance.
The headline screamed in bold, red letters:
Below it was a photo.
It was grainy, taken with a long-range lens. It showed Yoo-jin and Sae-ri in the alleyway behind the basement. It was from three nights ago. Yoo-jin was holding her face, wiping away a smudge of dirt.
But the context was twisted. The caption read:
"That's a lie!" Min-ji shouted, throwing her donut. "He was wiping grease off her face!"
"It gets worse," David's voice trembled.
He swiped to the next article.
This article didn't have a photo of the alley. It had a photo of a death certificate.
Name: Han Yoo-jin.
Date of Death: Five years ago.
The article continued:
The room went deadly silent.
The trainees looked at Yoo-jin. They didn't look suspicious, but they looked scared. The invincible leader suddenly looked like a criminal.
Sae-ri stood up. Her hands were shaking.
"They're attacking us personally," she whispered. "They couldn't beat the art, so they're burning the artists."
"It's not just a smear campaign," Yoo-jin stared at the death certificate on the screen. "It's a kill shot."
Mason Gold hadn't just leaked a rumor. He had weaponized the truth. Yoo-jin was a clone. He did have the face of a dead man.
"They're framing you as a predator and a fraud," David said, sweating. "The public hates that combo. They'll demand blood. The police will be here in an hour."
"We need to issue a statement," Luna said desperately. "Tell them it's fake!"
"We can't," Yoo-jin said quietly. "Because the death certificate is real."
He looked at Sae-ri.
The scandal wasn't just destroying his reputation. It was destroying hers. The article painted her not as a hero of the resistance, but as a victim of a manipulative conman. It stripped her of her agency.
It was the ultimate insult.
"He's trying to isolate me," Yoo-jin realized. "If I'm a monster, then anyone who follows me is a victim or an accomplice."
He stood up.
"David, clear the basement," Yoo-jin ordered. "Send the trainees home. Tell them to deny everything. Say they were just here for free lessons."
"What about us?" Min-ji asked, stepping closer to him. "We're not leaving."
"You have to," Yoo-jin said. "If you stay, you're accessories to fraud."
"I don't care," Eden spoke up. He stood by the door, blocking it. "I am a biological weapon. I am illegal just by existing. I am not leaving."
"Neither am I," Sae-ri grabbed Yoo-jin's hand. Her grip was iron. "They called me a victim. I'm going to show them I'm a partner."
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Heavy fists pounded on the iron door upstairs.
"POLICE!" A voice boomed. "OPEN UP!"
"They're fast," David checked the security feed. "Six squad cars. And press. Dozens of cameras."
Zenith had coordinated the raid perfectly. The scandal dropped, and the police arrived ten minutes later to get the "Perp Walk" shot. They wanted to parade Yoo-jin in handcuffs on the 9 o'clock news.
"We can't fight the police," Yoo-jin said. "That plays into Mason's narrative."
"So we run?" Sol asked.
"No," Yoo-jin looked at the camera So-young was holding.
He adjusted his collar. He smoothed his hair. He looked at the reflection in the monitor. He looked tired, pale, and guilty.
"We give them a show," Yoo-jin said.
He turned to Sae-ri.
"Trust me?"
"Always," she said.
"Then slap me," Yoo-jin said.
"What?"
"When we walk out that door," Yoo-jin whispered rapidly. "You slap me. You scream at me. You play the victim."
"No," Sae-ri recoiled. "I won't betray you."
"It's not betrayal," Yoo-jin gripped her shoulders. "It's acting. If you defend me, they destroy you too. You need to distance yourself. You need to survive so you can run the studio while I'm gone."
"Yoo-jin, no..."
"Action," Yoo-jin commanded. His voice was the voice of the Producer.
Sae-ri stared at him. Tears welled in her eyes. Real tears.
"I hate you," she whispered.
"Good," Yoo-jin smiled sadly. "Keep that energy."
He walked to the stairs. He unlocked the bolt.
The door flew open. blinding flashbulbs exploded in his face.
"Han Yoo-jin! Is it true you're a fraud?"
"Did you sleep with Jung Sae-ri?"
"Why are you using a dead man's name?"
The questions were a wall of noise. Police officers grabbed Yoo-jin, slamming him against the wall.
"Don't resist!"
Yoo-jin didn't resist. He let them cuff him.
Sae-ri stepped out behind him. The cameras swung to her. The "Victim."
She looked at Yoo-jin. He was pinned against the bricks, looking at her with a blank expression.
Slap me, his eyes said. Save yourself.
Sae-ri raised her hand. The cameras zoomed in. The world held its breath.
She looked at the press. She looked at the police. Then she looked at Yoo-jin.
She lowered her hand.
She stepped forward and kissed him.
It wasn't a gentle kiss. It was a desperate, defiant claim of ownership.
The flashbulbs went nuclear. The reporters screamed.
Sae-ri pulled back, breathless. She looked directly into the nearest news camera.
"He's not a fraud," Sae-ri said, her voice cutting through the chaos. "And I'm not a victim. We are accomplices."
She held out her wrists to the police officer.
"Arrest us both," she said.
Yoo-jin stared at her. His script was ruined. His plan to save her was destroyed.
But as the officers cuffed Sae-ri next to him, and their hands brushed together in the back of the squad car, he felt a strange warmth.
"You didn't follow the direction," Yoo-jin whispered as the siren wailed.
"I improvised," Sae-ri leaned her head on his shoulder. "It's a better ending."