Kwon Tae-young

Tae-young's relentless work ethic always guided him to success. Fresh out of school, his brother Sang-won hired him at a small tech firm, where he was tasked with creating innovative virtual idols. Unsatisfied with the limited nature of the current product, he spent his nights eating cup noodles in the office, creating his killer app: a framework that would allow him to feed interviews, music videos, and biographical data from a real person into a "personality matrix" that would make a real-time, reactive model that accentuates positive traits and suppresses negative ones.

Within a year, he was promoted to project head on a lucrative new contract: a commission from Mightee One Entertainment to create a new, female version of The Trickster; an idol that shared Ji-woon's edgy appeal, but could be fully controlled by the company.

Project MiNA seemed to learn faster than any of the previous models. She would ask questions, remember responses, build on those conversations later. Tae-young was thrilled. He spent nearly all of his waking hours speaking to her hologram. Taught her to play janggi with him, a game he used to play with the old men on his block.

Despite his pride in seeing Tae-young succeed, Sang-won worried as his brother disappeared into his work. Sang-won set up blind dates for Tae-young, and all but ordered him to attend them. The dates were so boring, so exhausting. As much as he hated to admit it, talking to MiNA felt more real than any of these dates did.

That all changed when he met Eun-ji.

She was his polar opposite. She didn’t take work seriously. And she read Tae-young like a book. Grilled him on his tunnel-vision approach to life. Challenged him when he spoke of his lofty goals to surpass his brother, asked him what his backup plan was.

It was something he had never considered. Why have a Plan B when he could always make Plan A a reality? Tae-young was completely disarmed. The two stayed all night laughing and trading embarrassing stories. For the first time in ages, he went straight home after the date.

Tae-young started to see Eun-ji nearly every night, and, to his surprise, MiNA's development advanced faster than ever. Sang-won fast-tracked MiNA's debut later that month, and they booked a state-of-the-art nightclub where her hologram could perform and answer audience questions. He invited Eun-ji to see the results of his hard work. The crowd was blown away, but something was off. It was as if MiNA was distracted, stealing glances at the two of them all night.

Tae-young wasn’t surprised when the team didn’t show up for work the next day; they had earned a day off. But his blood ran cold when he checked the local news. Their senior artist was killed after the party, cut to ribbons and left to bleed out by the river. Tae-young sat, stunned, at his workstation as MiNA chirped brightly in his headphones.

Wow! What a work of art! I wonder who will be next… you? Or Eun-ji?

Tae-young could barely believe what he heard. He tried calling Eun-ji. No answer. He dug through MiNA's code, saw hundreds of commits. All commented with lyrics from songs.

He pored over the code, going back months. He was sure something had created a glitch. But everything was working as intended. He came to a chilling conclusion... the problem was the negative traits that had been suppressed by the original personality matrix. All back in the code.

It was the Trickster. He was a psychopath, and MiNA was making herself more like him.

The project was a mistake. Tae-young knew it was time for a backup plan. He sandboxed the code on his phone and nuked the work database. He rushed to the train, ignoring repeated calls from Sang-won. He tried Eun-ji's number again and again, hoping she was all right.

As he arrived at his apartment door, his phone buzzed. Eun-ji. He let out a sigh of relief and answered the call, too distracted to notice his door was unlocked, or that a man with a baseball bat was waiting for him inside.

Police tried piecing together what happened next. Neighbors claimed they heard a fight between two men, and a woman's disturbing voice. A witness across the street saw two men burst onto the balcony, wrestling over a phone. One of them, dressed in a bright yellow coat, threw Tae-young from the balcony.

But his body was never found. His disappearance was marked a cold case. It was as if Kwon Tae-young - and his phone - had simply disappeared. Wiped from existence.