BXBX NOVEL Chapter 5: Scientist Ryu Young-Joon (5)
Chapter 5: Scientist Ryu Young-Joon (5)
Young-Joon walked up to the counter and spoke quietly to the nurse.
“Excuse me, sorry. What does that patient over there have?”
“Pardon?” The nurse asked with a look of confusion.
“I cannot disclose any patient information.” The nurse told Young-Joon.
“I’m a doctor, too. It’s just because that patient does not look good and I’m worried for him. It could be an emergency.”
Young-Joon was lying when he said that he was a doctor, but he felt like he needed to say something like this in order for this to work.
“I’m sorry,” The nurse replied.
“It’s schizophrenia, right?” Young-Joon asked again.
“... I can’t tell you.” The nurse adhered to her ethics. However, she could not hide her brief look of surprise; she was still human, after all.
In fact, that man was a patient who had been treated here multiple times, and the nurse knew his face. The patient did have schizophrenia. Everything that Rosaline had determined was true, meaning that the patient was unconscious, hearing auditory hallucinations continuously, and was in a state of extreme anxiety, nervousness, and panic.
“Hurry up and call a doctor. That man looks like he’s in a dangerous condition.” Young-Joon told the nurse.
However, the nurse dragged her feet to call someone as she stared at Young-Joon in doubt.
“... Wait here for a moment.”
It was the moment she stopped sitting on her hands and stood up to go get someone.
“Argh!” Suddenly, the schizophrenic patient suddenly got up and began screaming.
“Kyah!” As the nurse screamed in surprise...
Thud thud thud!
The patient began running with his feet stomping on the floor. He was headed towards the window; he was trying to jump out.
“No!”
The moment the nurse shouted, someone grabbed the patient from behind just as he was about to jump. The man was huge, about one hundred and ninety centimeters and around one hundred kilograms, but Young-Joon had an average height and weight. It seemed like he wouldn’t be able to grab and control the patient by himself, but Young-Joon had another power.
[Accepting specific stimulation to myofibroblasts of the brachioradialis, biceps brachii, triceps brachii, and extensor digitorum.]
[Emergency situation. Fitness consumption changed to autonomic consumption.]
[Overexpression of adrenaline.]
[Activation of actin.]
With those messages, Young-Joon felt a burst of strength in his arms.
Thud! Young-Joon tackled the patient onto the ground and held him down. The man struggled, but he could not overpower Young-Joon.
“What is it!”
At last, a doctor ran out, surprised, with a few male nurses. The chaotic situation quickly calmed down.
The doctor gave the patient a sedative and tied down the patient.
“Phew.”
The nurse at the counter sighed in relief as everything went back to normal. There could have been a dangerous situation if the man who said that he was a doctor did not act fast. The nurse looked around the waiting room for him, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“Where did he go?”
She looked back at the chart he handed her.
[Ryu Won-Joon]
[010-1111-1234]
[Hospital Room No. 101, 50-27 Jungyun-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul]
“...”
The nurse did not notice it before when she just quickly scanned it, but reading carefully now, she could see that all the information that man wrote down was false. There was no way a phone number like 1111-1234 existed, and Jungyun-ro only existed up to 37-1. Considering this, the name he wrote down was probably false, too.
“Who is that guy?”
* * *
Young-Joon left the hospital. He had gone through a truly shocking incident.
‘Rosaline is real.’
He had a brilliant source of knowledge that could understand molecular biology at the atomic level in his head. Young-Joon even saw the structure of dopamine in the schizophrenic patient’s head. Maybe he could develop a cure for schizophrenia. Also, how amazing was it that he figured out that codeine, a common ingredient in cold medicine, turned into morphine in the body? This ability that allowed him to understand those processes in the blink of an eye without any kind of experiments was an OP ability for a scientist.
“...”
‘How can I use this?’ Endless possibilities filled his head.
Bleep!
Then, another message popped up.
[Rosaline’s fitness is currently low. Rosaline has found out the following things while recovering her fitness.]
[There is currently an imbalance of microbes in your gut. Rosaline requires the following in order to recover this: probiotics. Reward: 0.8 Fitness.]
‘Probiotics?’
Normally, probiotics referred to a mixture of live bacteria or yeast for your body; it was basically just lactobacillus.
‘It gives me fitness as a reward, huh?’ He was intrigued.
Young-Joon walked to the pharmacy on the first floor of the building.
“Hello.” The pharmacist greeted him as he entered. She was a young pharmacist who was quite pale and pretty. Young-Joon had come to this pharmacy, which was only about ten minutes from his house, often ever since he was a graduate student. It used to be run by an elderly woman, but Young-Joon was a little surprised as he saw someone unfamiliar.
“Can I have some probiotics, please?” Young-Joon asked when he approached the counter.
“Yes, just a moment.”
The woman rummaged through the shelves about the counter on her tippy toes. The name tag on her chest caught Young-Joon’s eye.
[Pharmacist Song Ji-Hyun]
“Does someone else run this pharmacy now?” Young-Joon asked.
“Oh, it was actually run by my aunt, but she went on vacation. Since I also took a leave of absence from my company as well, I told her I’d run it for a bit.” Song Ji-Hyun answered with a smile, then put something on the counter.
“Here. Probiotics.” Song Ji-Hyun pushed a box called Active Lactobacillin toward Young-Joon.
“If you’re a pharmacist and you worked in a company, I’m assuming it was a pharmaceutical company?” Young-Joon asked as he ripped the box open.
“Yes. It wasn’t a big company, just a venture company.”
“I see. Then, is this product from your company?”
“Haha, no, it’s not. Our company also works with probiotics, but we don’t have a product yet. The reason I gave you that one is because it’s the best one out there. I take it as well and it’s quite effective.”
‘It should be reliable if pharmacists take it too, right?’
Young-Joon checked the back for the manufacturer.
“Roche?”
“Yes. It’s from a company as big as A–Gen. They have good processing technologies and it also has a variety of bacteria in it. It’s also the benchmark that we aim to achieve.”
Young-Joon read the component label on the back.
“It has a lot of Bifidobacterium lactis in it. It seems like a type of bacteria... What does it do?”
“Um...” Song Ji-Hyun blushed a little. “It’s... good for constipation.”
“I see. Thank you... Huh?”
Young-Joon tilted his head in confusion as he ripped the rest of the box.
“What is it?”
“Oh, nothing.” Young-Joon gestured with his hand. However, there were incredible things in front of his eyes.
[Lactobacillus acidophilus AT0021, Lactobacillus casei AT0014, Lactobacillus bulgaricus AT0033, Lactobacillus rhamnosus AT0041, Bifidobacterium bifidum AT0051, Bifidobacterium breve AT0117, Bifidobacterium lactis AT0121, Lactococcus lactis AT0449, Enterococcus faecalis AT0511]
“...”
The components list appeared in front of him automatically in their scientific names. It was definitely excellent, but it wasn’t anything incredible as it was the same thing as reading the label on the back.
‘Wait.’
He hadn’t used Synchronization Mode yet, unlike when he gained insight into the cold medicine.
‘Then maybe...’
Young-Joon gulped and stared at the label.
‘Won’t I be able to know more about each component in this probiotic if I use Synchronization Mode?’
Bleep!
[Synchronization Mode: Would you like to gain insight into these probiotics? Fitness consumption rate: 0.02/1 second]
[Activation of Synchronization Mode!]
The number of bacteria, their biological activation, and mechanism in the gut appeared in front of his eyes.
“Ugh!” Young-Joon stumbled, crushing the box of probiotics in his hand. Song Ji-Hyun stood up in concern.
“A–Are you okay?”
She ran out from behind the counter; she was worried that he would faint or something. However, Young-Joon regained his balance in just a few seconds.
[No more fitness remaining.]
A message in red blinked in front of his eyes.
“Wheeze... Wheeze...”
“Are you alright?” Song Ji-Hyun asked in concern.
“I’m fine.”
Young-Joon swallowed the probiotics.
“You said that your company also studies probiotics, right?”
“Pardon? Oh, yes.”
“Is it going well?”
“We were studying something good we found before I left. It will go well, I’m sure.”
Young-Joon was immersed in thought after reading the data chart that was analyzed in Synchronization Mode. From about two years ago, there were many attempts from countless pharmaceutical companies to discover a new strain of Bifidobacterium. Most of them were still trying.”
“Is it about Bifidobacterium?”
“Pardon? Ahaha...”
Song Ji-Hyun scratched her head like she was a bit embarrassed.
“Well, it is the most popular fiend right now. It’s a well-known secret in the industry. Since it’s been a while since my leave of absence, I’m not sure how advanced the study...”
“It won’t.”
“Pardon?”
Finding a new strain of Bifidobacterium was meaningless as Rosaline was telling him that the strains that have already been developed have the most optimal conditions.
“Bifidobacterium is done.”
“But...”
People had to study a completely new strain of bacteria. All the pharmaceutical companies were all targeting a completely wrong type of bacteria.
‘Clorotonis limuvitus.’ Young-Joon thought about the secret strain of bacteria the Synchronization Mode showed him.
“What should we study if not Bifidobacterium?” Song Ji-Hyun asked
“Beats me. I have no idea.”
Young-Joon told her out of pity that they wouldn’t find any gold in the empty mine they were digging at, but he wasn’t going to tell them where the jackpot was.
He grinned and walked out of the pharmacy. His heart raced in excitement.
Young-Joon organized all the thoughts that were racing through his head on the way home. Biology was a field of study that was relatively underdeveloped. Comparing it to navigating the world, humanity was just at the beginning of the Age of Discovery. Countless researchers were wandering through the sea of knowledge and drawing messy maps.
However, Rosaline’s knowledge was like a high-resolution satellite; it was powerful.
“Kim Hyun-Taek... The new cancer drug...” Young-Joon mumbled. They were the ones who drove his career as a scientist to the ground.
However, lotuses bloomed from muddy ponds; if he had hit rock bottom, the only thing left for him to do was to jump up and soar into the sky.
Young-Joon downloaded the form for submitting his two weeks notice. He had already lost all loyalty to this place; he had nothing to give to an exploitative company like this that steals from the vulnerable.
The only thing that bothered Young-Joon was that he had left with Rosaline, the sample that the scientists from the Life Creation Department had studied for over ten years. To be honest, a normal scientist would not put his own blood into an artificial cell if they were reasonable and scientific. Rosaline probably wouldn’t have been created in that lab for decades if he didn’t accidentally touch the shard of glass. As such, Young-Joon didn’t really have to feel guilty for the creation of Rosaline, which was purely coincidental. The reason he was bothered by it was probably because of his strict morality.
‘Park So-Yeon also told me to let go of some, too... Should I really do that?’
Was Young-Joon obligated to return to A–Gen with a powerful force like Rosaline and fill the pockets of villains such as Kim Hyun-Taek and Management just because he felt guilty toward the Life Creation Department?
Young-Joon began filling out his two weeks notice.
‘Where am I going to go if I quit A–Gen?’
The most prestigious and monopolistic pharmaceutical company in the country was A–Gen, so all the other companies were trivial. There was nothing Young-Joon could gain from going to places like that because they lacked the infrastructure for that kind of research. Rosaline did tell him the answers, but it was up to Young-Joon to create that in the real world.
Small companies did not have advanced equipment, such as a tool for flow cytometry, lattice light-sheet microscopes, or HiSeq sequencers. There would be a lot of obstacles to overcome when trying to obtain genetically modified organisms or human-derived materials required for experiments. It would be near impossible to be approved for a clinical trial.
“But there are a few companies that can compete with A–Gen in other countries.”
Huge pharma-giants such as Roche, Pfizer, Conson & Colson were big enough to be able to fight against A–Gen.