Chapter 39: A Player of Life (1)
The shareholders’ meeting came to an end.
As soon as it ended, the reporters ran out of their seats and came to Young-Joon. They surrounded him and bombarded him with questions.
“Doctor Ryu! Please tell us more about the Alzheimer’s cure.”
“When will you start clinical trials?”
“I heard that you were doing additional clinical trials for glaucoma as well. Are you not participating in that, Doctor Ryu?”
Young-Joon answered them as concisely as possible and quickly left. The guards stopped the reporters who were following him.
However, he ran into another group of people. This time, it was the shareholders. However, they were not people who were thanking him because they earned some money. With serious expressions, they ran in front of him with tears in their eyes.
“Doctor Ryu, thank you.”
“I have glaucoma in one eye.”
“My mother has dementia.”
“Thank you so much.”
“Please develop a cure soon. I am begging you. Dementia is such a sad and difficult disease, even to the family members.”
“I believe in you, Doctor Ryu.”
“I’m sorry, Doctor Ryu, but does it not work for spinal nerves yet?”
“Does it not work for organ regeneration? My husband is waiting for a liver transplant...”
“Do you think this cure will work on Lewy Body Dementia? My younger sibling is struggling with this.”
“It’s different from stem cells, but can you cure cancer?”
“My wife has to go to the washroom every two hours after getting her bowel resection from colorectal cancer. Can you do something like this?”
“...”
Since Young-Joon cured glaucoma in just a few months and now, he was saying that he was going to cure Alzheimer’s, it seemed like he would be able to cure any disease.
The people who had patients around them were getting anxious. They wouldn’t have asked these kinds of questions to an ordinary scientist. But Young-Joon’s achievements were something else. People crowded him with the expectation that maybe this person could have the solutions to all kinds of severe diseases.
Young-Joon looked very solemn.
“I will conquer those diseases as quickly as possible.”
* * *
“I’m doing it because you want me to, but are you sure this is okay?” Park Joo-Hyuk asked Young-Joon at the cafe after eating.
“What is?”
“I was wondering if it’s okay for you to start an affiliate company without consulting it with your company.”
“It’s okay. So what if they don’t do it? It’s a one-way stab-in-the-back, so it doesn’t matter. We’re not worried about hurting each other’s feelings or anything.”
“Hah... You did the stock subscription?”
“Yeah. I sold the flu drug and paid for it. I paid you the money I borrowed, right? I’ve been so busy that I’m not sure.”
“You paid it all back the day you said you got the money for the drug.”
“That’s a relief. I still have quite a lot left... Should I get you a car or something? You’re always working hard to help me.”
“Don’t need it. But I feel like you have somewhat changed.”
“I changed? Was I a dick because I got a little rich or something? Or was it about the car?” Young-Joon asked.
“No. I know you said that because you are really grateful. You would be an ungrateful bastard if you didn’t even offer. I took care of little Ryu Young-Joon and wiped his snot.”
“Then how did I change?”
“Not in that way, but... Kind of...”
Park Joo-Hyuk squinted. After searching for the right words, he said, “You’ve gotten clever or something. Stabbing your company’s management in the back and scheming something like this makes you seem like some sort of genius psychopath.”
“What kind of nonsense is that?”
“It was nonsense. Sorry.”
Young-Joon sipped his iced americano. He thought for a bit, then asked, “Do... Do you think I really changed?”
“Yeah,” Park Joo-Hyuk replied.
“The Ryu Young-Joon I know is kind of timid and sort of a loser, you know? He’s not one to do something as bold as this. Do you remember in high school when you skipped late-night study hall with me to go play games, but you went back to school because you were too nervous to play?”[1]
“That was so long ago. I was young back then.”
“But that’s who you are to me. So it is kind of weird to see you planning something this dramatic against the management people of a huge company like A-Gen and actually doing it.”
“Hm.”
“Of course, you have a crazy side, and you did do some weird things when you were pissed. In university, you fought with your advisor and put up a poster about it. But this feels worse than that.”
“...”
“Why? Is it bothering you? It’s okay. You’re still Ryu Young-Joon even if you’ve changed a little. Even if you pretend to be nasty, I know that inside, you’re still that loser. Oh, wait. I’m getting a phone call.”
Park Joo-Hyuk took his phone and went outside. He had a habit of pacing back and forth whenever he called someone.
“...”
Watching him, Young-Joon was lost in thought.
‘I changed?’
Before, during the year-end seminar, Park So-Yeon had said something to him. She said that he had changed. Park So-Yeon said that Young-Joon seemed angry. She said that a nice, dog-like person who liked people and always smiled had changed. But now, he had heard this from his friend of twenty years. This time, he called him a psycho.
Young-Joon checked Rosaline’s status window.
[Rosaline Lv. 4]
—Metastatic Status: Heart (2%), Liver (46%), Brain (7%), Kidney (13%), Spinal Cord (4%)
—Synchronization: 11%
—Cell Fitness: 2.5
—Gene Expression Control: None.
Rosaline had gained a level and became level four in the process of developing an Alzheimer’s cure. There weren’t any special abilities that had been added, but there was a value that bothered him.
‘Eleven percent of synchronization.’
Rosaline had once told Young-Joon how to eradicate the flu. It was to spread a virus derived from influenza and infect the entire world population. Thousands, even millions of people could die, but Rosaline said that they would easily pass the break-even point as it was within the number of deaths caused by influenza in three years. Then, the flu virus would be destroyed as humanity would gain resistance to the flu. It was really something that a psychopath would think of.
Perhaps as Young-Joon became more synchronized with Rosaline, his personality was affected? The human mind was thought of as something that was a free and independent realm, a deviation from the physical world, but it wasn’t.
‘Personality was affected by genes.’
A research team from Cambridge University published a paper in Nature in collaboration with French and American universities. It was a paper that had analyzed the genetic background of empathy. They assessed empathy in forty-six thousand individuals and analyzed their genomes.
What they found was that mutations at specific loci of 22 genes were identified exclusively in individuals exhibiting high levels of empathy. Conversely, the people who didn’t have that mutation were low in empathy.
This meant that empathy was created by genes. Genetic factors also played a strong role in psychopathy. And it was a widely known truth that the proportion of people with low empathy increased as one climbed up to higher social positions. The scientific community generally believed that the difficult process of advancing to high-ranking positions naturally selected individuals with lower empathy levels. It was a harsh metaphor, but it was like how those who could refuse a friend who called them out at night after breaking up with their long-term significant other and prepare for exams would pass.
And now, Young-Joon was A-Gen’s director, and he was going to be the CEO of A-Bio. He was at quite a high social position. The things he had done in the process was blackmail Ji Kwang-Man, commit huge things without the company knowing, and take advantage of his soaring fame to make a situation that management could not resolve.
‘Was I someone who could do things like this?’
Could Young-Joon have done this, aside from planning and intelligence and in terms of personality or boldness? What if this was all created by Rosaline? Young-Joon thought that he thought of the plan himself and created an air-tight plan, but what if it wasn’t him, but Rosaline continuously giving him ideas?
Young-Joon examined the status window again.
—Metastatic Status: ... Brain (7%)...
Chills ran down Young-Joon’s body.
“Hey! Lee Hae-Won is here.”
Park Joo-Hyuk, who had left the cafe, came back with Patent Attorney Lee Hae-Won. She looked a bit thinner.
“Her face is half the size it was before. Do you have a lot of work?” Park Joo-Hyuk direction the question at Lee Hae-Won.
“Yes. I lucked out and got a lot of work, but it’s killing me...”
“Hello...” Young-Joon greeted Lee Hae-Won in a dejected voice.
“Why are you so depressed all of a sudden?”
“Nothing you need to know about.”
“Ha, what a weirdo.”
Young-Joon let out a big sigh.
“It’s okay.”
Young-Joon didn’t have to be that scared. He found a place where he could keep researching, he was giving hope to a lot of people, and he was developing the drugs he wanted. Everything was going well. He just had to stop using Synchronization Mode for the time being, just in case, and watch for any other side effects that may arise.
“Well then, let’s talk about work.”
Park Joo-Hyuk glanced at Lee Hae-Won.
“Do you have more to give me?” Lee Hae-Won asked. Her eyes seemed like they were saying that she didn’t want any more.
“I do,” Young-Joon replied.
“There is a patent that I published through the patent law office at A-Gen that is exclusive to Lab Six. The company’s stakes were set pretty high, so I’m going to move it to A-Bio, my new company.”
“What is it?”
“It’s probiotics. I am going to use it at A-Bio. Could you just prepare it for now? A-Gen management doesn’t know yet, but I am going to make a deal and get it. Then, we can start it for sure.”
“You’re going to get that in turn for your company stakes?” Park Joo-Hyuk asked.
“This and more shares. And one more.”
* * *
Young-Joon had paid off all his debt. He paid off his private debt, his parents’ debt, and his student loans.
And on Saturday morning, he got on the Gyeongbu Line train. It was to go to Daejeon, his hometown. Returning home after achieving success was the dream of countless young people, and it was also Young-Joon’s dream.
‘But I didn’t know I was going to succeed this much.’
He wasn’t going to recklessly spend his money, but he was going to buy his parents a house for them to live in. He was going to go look at some places when he was there.
Young-Joon sat at his seat and went into Science on his phone. Some passionate scientists who were a bit of a nerd had a tendency to read papers in their free time as well. It was similar to how people who drew for a living doodled in their free time if they had a pen and a notebook.
There was a paper published about a gene called isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1). It was a gene that influenced cell metabolism and epigenetics. Mutants of this gene were found often in gliomas, which were tumors that were found in the brain and spinal cord.
As Young-Joon was focusing on the paper, a message popped up.
[Synchronization Mode: Would you like to analyze IDH1? Fitness consumption rate: 0.1/second.]
Young-Joon closed the message. He was going to stop using Synchronization Mode for a while and see what kind of changes happened; his synchronization value might decrease if he didn’t use it.
—Why aren’t you pressing it?
A message popped up. Young-Joon’s hand froze.
‘What’s happening? I didn’t use Synchronization Mode or Advice, but I’m getting a message?’
—Rosaline is Level 4 now. When you read a paper, do an experiment, or focus on research like you are doing now, the cerebrum is activated, and the Rosaline cells in the brain cause a cascade. Because of that, it exceeds the threshold of stimulation required for my consciousness to occur.
—When you receive a Synchronization message, you always press the button when you have enough fitness. But you are not acting that way this time. Is there a reason?
“...”
1. Korean high schools have a mandatory late-night study hall for grades 11 and 12 from 6:30 to 10:00. ?
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