Prologue

The hallway leading to the co-CEO’s office on the ninth floor of the SM Entertainment headquarters was usually a place of hushed, corporate reverence. That afternoon, it became the runway for a parade of quiet despair and simmering fury.

Karina led the charge, her stride a sharp, staccato beat of designer loafers against polished marble. The calm, ethereal leader seen on stage was gone, replaced by a woman whose jaw was clenched so tight it ached. Behind her, the other three moved in a discordant cluster. Winter walked with her arms folded, gaze fixed on some invisible point a thousand yards ahead, her expression not cold but eerily vacant. Giselle muttered under her breath in a rapid mix of Korean, Japanese, and English, the fingers of one hand flexing as if gripping a phantom microphone. Bringing up the rear, Ningning sniffled quietly, using the sleeve of her oversized hoodie to dab at her eyes, her usual radiant smile replaced by a wobbling lip.

They didn’t knock. Karina simply gripped the handle, took a breath that did nothing to steady her, and pushed the door open.

Co-CEO Tak Young-jun was mid-sentence with his assistant, a man holding a tablet like a shield. Both looked up, not with anger, but with the weary recognition of men who had seen this particular storm cloud forming for weeks.

“Sir,” Karina said, her voice taut. “We need to talk. Now.”

The CEO held up a placating hand to his assistant. “Close the door, please.” As the assistant complied, Tak Young-jun leaned back in his chair, his gaze sweeping over the four young women who represented one of his company’s most valuable assets. He saw the cracks in the porcelain. “Sit. Tell me.”

It poured out, not in a coherent report, but in a messy, overlapping deluge of frustration.

“I can’t sleep,” Karina hissed, perching on the edge of a chair. “I close my eyes and I see my own fancams. The mic pack was crooked during Illusion on Music Bank. My finger placement was two centimeters off during the Supernova choreo in the rehearsal video. It’s a loop, CEO-nim. A perfect, criticising loop.”

Winter, sitting beside her, spoke to the window. “The notes in the studio… they feel like shapes. Not sounds. I hear them, but then I’m thinking about whether international fans will think my vibrato is too nasal, and then the shape is gone, and I’ve missed my line.” She blinked slowly. “The producers think I’m not trying.”

“I am trying!” Giselle snapped, the sound making Ningning flinch. “I’m trying to write verses that don’t sound like kindergarten rhymes for the global market, and everything I write is trash. It’s all trash. So I delete it. And then the managers give me that look like I’m wasting company time, and I just want to—” She cut herself off, rolling her eyes so hard it was a miracle they stayed in her head.

Ningning’s voice was a small, wet whisper. “I just miss my mom’s braised pork belly. And her yelling at me to wear socks. And now when unnie buys us dinner, I get so happy I want to cry, but then I do cry, and then I feel stupid, so I have to be extra loud and happy to make up for it, and I’m so… tired.” A fresh tear escaped, tracing a path through light makeup.

Tak Young-jun listened, his fingers steepled. He’d seen post-comeback fatigue before, but this was different. This wasn’t exhaustion; it was a systemic malfunction. He called the head of SM’s internal medical clinic.

“Physically, they are Olympic athletes,” the doctor said over speakerphone, his voice tinny. “Perfect bloodwork, excellent cardiovascular health, body fat percentages you could set a watch to. This isn’t my department, sir. The pressure of that last campaign—the simultaneous domestic and international promo, the non-stop travel, the sleep deprivation coupled with extreme performance demands—it’s left a mark. But it’s not on their bodies. It’s on their… software. I can’t defrag a human brain.”

The CEO’s assistant, a keen-eyed man named Park, saw an opening. “Sir, the productivity metrics from their last three studio sessions and rehearsal blocks have dropped forty percent. The creative team is complaining about morale. The Synchronization comeback was a grand slam, but the machine that hit it is now overheating.”

Tak Young-jun pinched the bridge of his nose. He then placed a call to someone listed in his contacts as ‘Guide & Guardian.’

BoA’s voice, calm and authoritative, filled the room after a single ring. “Young-jun-ah. You’re calling about the girls.”

“You’ve heard.”

“I’ve felt it. The energy is splintered. They are performing a high-wire act with no net, and they’ve just looked down.” BoA, their non-executive mental care director, spoke with the wisdom of a legend who had seen every trapdoor the industry possessed. “You have a team of world-class engineers for their voices, choreographers for their bodies, stylists for their image. But who is engineering their minds for this? You built a rocket and forgot the flight computer. Get them a performance psychologist. A specialist. Not a generic therapist. Someone who understands the unique psychosis of being under a global microscope.”

The line went dead. Tak Young-jun looked at the four young women in his office—Karina, a leader watching her crew fracture; Winter, lost in the static of her own mind; Giselle, a creative force turning her fury inward; and Ningning, a brilliant star dimmed by simple, human loneliness.

“Alright,” he sighed, the decision made. “We’re hiring a specialist.”

* * *

The job posting was nestled in the alumni portal of St. Silas University, London—a portal Julian Kang had legitimate access to, thanks to student ID #SLS-48802-K, and which he checked exactly once a year to maintain the façade. The listing from SM Entertainment was dry, corporate, and desperate. ‘Chief Performance Wellness Director… must mitigate post-traumatic growth disorder in high-achievement cohorts… optimize cognitive bandwidth…’

The credentials they wanted were absurdly specific: a BS in Behavioral Sociology, an MSc in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, a post-grad cert in Advanced Cognitive Behavioral Optimization. He had them all. Authentically. Verified.

The fraud wasn’t in the parchment; it was in the cranium behind it.

His Bachelor’s from the University of Toronto was secured through a beautiful, symbiotic relationship with a post-doc candidate named Leo, who had the theoretical knowledge of a god and the social anxiety of a fern. Julian provided him with cash, a social shield at department events, and the answers to the one subject he struggled with—statistics. In return, Leo wrote every one of Julian’s essays, from ‘Social Contagion Theory’ to ‘The Durkheimian Paradigm in Modern Media.’ Julian attended just enough lectures to recognize the professors’ names.

St. Silas was a more expensive, transcontinental version of the same scheme. His “Distinction” in I-O Psychology was earned by a brilliant, agoraphobic woman in Mumbai named Priya, who attended every virtual seminar as him, wrote his thesis on ‘The Bio-Hacking of the Idol Mind,’ and aced the exams from 5,000 miles away. Julian spent those two years in London cultivating a convincing “academic” aesthetic—tweed blazers, a well-highlighted library copy of Jung—and networking at pubs with people who would later, for a fee, become his “prestigious references.” He learned the language of psychology fluently. He just never internalized a single, actual principle.

The background check SM Entertainment ran would have pinged green across the board. University registrars confirmed his enrollment and graduation. Sir Alistair Thorne (a struggling actor friend with a killer RP accent) and Dr. Helena Vance (a former girlfriend with a phony website) gave glowing, encrypted references about his “clinical intuition” and “disruptive methodologies.”

The fraud was perfect because it was, on paper, real.

Sitting in the taxi to SM headquarters, Julian scrolled through Aespa’s music videos on his phone. Karina’s commanding gaze, Winter’s ethereal cool, Giselle’s sharp edge, Ningning’s vibrant warmth. The plan wasn’t just to get a job. It was to become their necessary sanctuary. Stress was a lock. He would position himself as the key. And with enough proximity, trust, and “somatic recalibration exercises”… well, the possibilities for a charming, credentialed guide were extensive.

The interview was held in a room that felt like a futuristic aquarium. Three men sat across the table: Assistant Park, Head of HR Kim, and the anxious-looking Creative Director Lee.

“Dr. Kang,” Park began, glancing at a tablet that undoubtedly held Julian’s flawless dossier. “Your academic background is precisely what we’ve been searching for. Your thesis title alone is… intriguing.”

Julian offered a smile that was one part humility, two parts profound understanding. “Thank you. It’s born from recognizing that elite performance isn’t sustained by discipline alone, but by the strategic management of internal narrative.” He let the jargon hang, watching their faces. HR Kim nodded slowly. Creative Director Lee leaned forward.

Julian began his performance. “What you’re seeing in Aespa isn’t a pathology. It’s a predictable systems overload. Their roles—leader, vocal anchor, rapper, spark—have distinct cognitive profiles. Karina’s hyper-vigilance is a leader’s amygdala stuck in perpetual threat-assessment. Winter’s dissociation is an artist’s prefrontal cortex attempting to critique the work as it’s being created. Giselle’s frustration is the clash between creative limbic impulse and the internalized censor of the global market. Ningning’s emotional lability is the somatic expression of unattached mirror neurons—she’s literally feeling the absence of reciprocal emotional energy.”

He was describing a car engine by naming the shiny parts while having no idea how a piston worked. But to them, it sounded like a revelation.

“So, it’s not just stress,” Creative Director Lee murmured.

“Stress is the symptom. The cause is cognitive misalignment,” Julian said, launching into his pre-rehearsed trilogy. “Phase One: Diagnostic Synaptic Mapping through guided dialogic regression. Phase Two: Implementation of Bespoke Cognitive-Behavioral Optimization Protocols—we rewrite the faulty internal scripts. Phase Three: Somatic Recalibration. We use targeted nootropic and neuro-peptide support to lower the physiological barriers to mental clarity.” He gently tapped his briefcase. “To lubricate the process.”

HR Kim’s eyes widened slightly at the scientific sheen. Park was already looking convinced.

Julian deployed his core principle. When in doubt, reframe the doubt onto them. “The question for SM isn’t about my methods, which are evidence-based and rigorous. The question is about commitment. Are you prepared to invest not just in treating these symptoms, but in building a new, resilient psychological architecture for your artists? One that turns this vulnerability into sustainable, creative horsepower? The old model of ‘push through’ is what created this bottleneck. My model builds a wider pipe.”

He saw the exact moment he won. It was the subtle relaxation in Park’s shoulders, the way HR Kim made a satisfied note. They weren’t buying his expertise; they were buying their own relief. He had given their terrifying, amorphous problem a name, a blueprint, and a man with a briefcase to solve it.

Two days later, the offer landed in his inbox. Chief Performance Wellness Director. A staggering salary. An office with a view.

Julian leaned back in his chair, the official SM contract glowing on his screen, the faces of four incredible, struggling women glowing on another. His credentials were real. His knowledge was a hollow, beautifully decorated shell. Their minds were a complex, beautiful puzzle.

And Julian Kang was the smartest fraud in the room, holding the only key that mattered: the one to the door they’d just invited him through.

The treatment was about to begin.

* * *

The SM Entertainment main lobby smelled of money, anxiety, and floor polish. Julian Kang adjusted the cuffs of his Brunello Cucinelli blazer—a calculated investment—and approached the reception desk with a smile that projected ‘important, but approachable.’

“Julian Kang. Chief Performance Wellness Director. First day.”

The receptionist’s eyes flicked from his face to her monitor, her fingers flying across the keyboard. A beat later, a look of respectful recognition. “Ah, yes, Dr. Kang. Welcome. Here is your employee ID. Security will escort you to your office.”

The escort was a broad-shouldered man in a sharp suit who nodded once. “This way, sir.” The route was a maze of sleek corridors and soundproofed doors. They passed no one. “Your office is in the Wellness Wing,” he explained. “Quiet. For privacy.”