A calm voice said, “Mr. Chen. The Advance PDF has been opened. Your biometrics are logged. You have seventy-two hours to deliver the performance schedule to Ally’s manager—or we release the signed copy with your witness stamp.”
The first bomb dropped at 6:00 AM, when Leo forwarded the PDF to three journalists and one very confused K-pop stan account on Twitter.
He closed the file. Then he opened a new document. A blank page. He typed a new title:
Leo rubbed his eyes. The BBMAs were six weeks away. OMA wasn’t a standard acronym. Overseas Market Adjustment? Original Master Allocation? He scanned further.
His phone buzzed. Then again. Then a call from an unknown number in Seoul. He ignored it and flipped to page three. A flowchart. Red arrows crossing continents. Ally Ventura—a Miami-born singer who’d never spoken a word of Korean—was being moved into a category dominated by seven-member girl groups from HYBE and SM Entertainment. The “Advance PDF” wasn’t a suggestion. It was a surgical strike.
He wasn’t going to deliver the schedule. He was going to deliver the truth.
Page four: projected payout shifts. If Ally won in the K-Pop category instead of Latin, her streaming multipliers would jump 340%. Titan Records would net eighteen million dollars. But the footnote—handwritten in the PDF’s margin—made Leo’s stomach drop:
A countdown timer. Embedded. Active.
By sunrise, the hashtag #AllyDeservesBetter was trending worldwide.
Below it, a single line of fine print: “Pre-ceremony performance rights & category reallocation. Effective immediately.”