The hum of the central air conditioner was the only sound in the silent boardroom.
The strategist, a man in his third year with the company, felt a bead of sweat trace a path down his temple. He gripped the edge of the polished table, his knuckles white. "Chairman," he began, his voice heavier than it had been during his practice runs, "this has been the third quarter, and the data is inevitable. It's not working as we expected."
Mr. Joo, another executive, leaned forward, attempting to salvage the moment. "Chairman, perhaps it's time to proceed with plan D. The collaboration song with—"
"Mr. Sheeran?" A third voice, sharp with sarcasm, cut through the room. "..or Ms. Swift? Or perhaps, I don't know, Mr. Musk?"
The speaker, Chairman Park Jin-woo stared at a glass of water on the table, watching the light catch the Bulletproof Entertainment logo etched into its side. "You know better than that, Mr. Joo," he said quietly. "A collaboration is only good for how long? A year?"
He lifted his gaze and met the eyes of his strategist, who now looked to be on the edge of a cliff. "We are not here to apply band-aids," Jin-woo said, his voice firm. "We are here to find the cure."
The room stood still as Jin-woo's mind drifted back seventeen years, to a cramped studio and a conversation that had haunted him ever since. He remembered the young man who had made him hear his vision long before it was immortalized in racks of trophies and platinum records. The man only a few had ever seen, but whose sound was in every song that had ever left a studio in this Idol-factory country.
"Rio, believe me," a younger, thinner version of Jin-woo begged in frustration. "I know I can't give you as much as Han-sol does. But I want to work with you. Give me a chance."
The young man let his head rest on the back of his chair, eyes closed, an arm resting on his temple. "Mr. Jin-woo, I respect your vision, I do. But I don't want to be a part of this anymore. I've created a weapon of mass destruction."
"But Rio..." Jin-woo insisted. He wouldn't take no for an answer, not after every other agency had called him a moron for his project on "Authentic Artists."
"It's Leo," the young man said calmly, correcting the common misunderstanding of his name. "Not Rio."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Jin-woo. I can't. I need to catch my flight." He paused. A boarding call on Incheon International Airport signaled it was time to leave. He stands up covering his head with black oversized hoodie. "But... I never said your plan wouldn't work."
Now, seventeen years later, global recognition couldn't make Jin-woo forget that night. The night he met the Ghost Producer, the creator of what the industry insiders called the "RIO Vocal Chain"—the very sound he and every other agency still used as a final equalizer to this day.
"I think... I know the cure," Jin-woo said, a faint smile warming the room.
The executives waited in anticipation, like followers waiting for a prophet to deliver salvation.
"I'm going to ask him."
The aura in the room shifted to horror. "But… Chairman Park," Mr. Joo stammered. "That isn't a plan. That's an act of war."
Jin-woo's smile grew. "I'll give him an offer he can't refuse. Absolute creative freedom." The executives began to whisper amongst themselves.
Jin-woo turned to his assistant. "Secretary Min, send an email from my personal address. Tell him we're giving him full access to everything he needs." The whispers grew louder. The plan was now gravitating toward this ghost.
Jin-woo delivered the final blow. "Also, give him a blank check."
***
The scent of old paper and floor wax was the only tangible thing in the long hallway. For Kwon Min-ji, a Ph.D. candidate in her late twenties, the single, heavy, dark wood door at the far end was both a destination and a full stop.
Her sharp, dark grey blazer felt like armor, a necessary defense for a conversation that would decide the next seven years of her life. She knew she had to sell her idea to a man who still kept Freud on his desk. She knew it was a dead end.
She knocked. A muffled, authoritative voice bid her enter.
The office was a crossroads, and her fate was in the hands of Professor Kim—the Head of the Psychology Department, a man whose kind face was a poor mask for his rigid thinking.
"Min-ji-ssi," he began, the familiar honorific a quiet reminder of the hierarchy between them. He gestured for her to sit.
Min-ji placed her proposal on the corner of the desk with both hands, like an offering. "Thank you for your time, Gyosu-nim."
"I've read it." He gazed across the proposal in front of him. "And I have to admit, it is... inventive."
She knew instantly that she had already lost.
But she also knew she wouldn't go down without a fight. Her voice was a practiced performance of clinical calm. "Professor, the data from my pilot study shows a consistent pattern. The vocal biomarkers—the jitter, the shimmer—correlate directly with the subjects' suppressed trauma responses. It's a new angle on the diagnostic axis."
Professor Kim leaned back, the leather of his chair groaning in protest. He looked at her with a deep, paternal pity that was far worse than the rejection itself. "You are a brilliant researcher, Min-ji. That is why you must understand the difference between a new angle and a pitfall."
He gestured around the room, at the books, at the history. "We are in the business of understanding the human narrative. What you propose is to reduce that story to a quantitative value. You cannot diagnose a person's heartbreak with a graph."
Her hands, hidden under the table, clenched into fists. "With all due respect, Professor, the aim is to support the story, even before it's spoken."
"Is it?" he asked, his voice soft but absolute. "Or is it a dead end? You know as well as I do that this is merely correlation. The review committee will demand causation. And how will you prove that? By bringing patients into a lab and intentionally provoking their deepest traumas just to get the numbers right?" He paused, letting the weight of the question settle.
"Look, Min-ji-ssi," he continued, his tone softening. "As your supervisor and your mentor, I have a duty to protect our patients, and to protect you from a line of inquiry that is ethically indefensible and methodologically impossible."
He looked at her, his decision delivered not with malice, but with the weary finality of a man closing a book. "Find a new topic."
It was a dismissal.
Dr. Kwon's face was a perfect, neutral mask. She stood, her movements precise, and gave a deep, flawless bow.
"I understand, Gyosu-nim," she said, her voice a perfect echo of professional respect. "Thank you for your guidance."
She walked out of Professor Kim's office, her posture unbroken.
Back in her own small station, surrounded by whiteboards and glowing monitors, she stared at the official rejection notice from the university's funding committee on her screen. The frustration of starting all over again was a palpable weight. She had the theory. She had the preliminary data. But she had no way to prove it. Not without breaking her own professional oath.
Then, her expression hardened. With a quiet, almost violent resolve, she opened a file—the academic paper containing her radical, unprovable hypothesis. She attached the document to an email, the recipient line addressed to an international, open-source scientific journal. It was an act of pure, academic rebellion. A message in a bottle, cast not in hope, but in defiance.
She knew the university would never support it. But maybe, just maybe, someone else out there in the world was listening.
The Sound of Suppression: Analyzing Vocal Perturbations as an Objective Indicator of Psychological Distress in Trauma-Informed Care