Chapter 288: An Ordinary Scientist (2)

“Uh...”

Ryu Ji-Won looked puzzled.

“Where’s Mom and Dad?” Young-Joon asked.

“They went to Aunt’s house for something. They’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Hello,” Rosaline said to Ryu Ji-Won.

“H... Hello,” responded Ryu Ji-Won reflexively in the midst of extreme confusion.

“I’m Rosaline. Nice to meet you.”

Rosaline walked over quickly and shook her hand. Then, she jumped on to the living room sofa, lied down, and began to shake her legs distractingly.

𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

“Wait.”

Ryu Ji-Won gestured over to Young-Joon and took him to another room. She locked the door.

“Who is she?” she asked.

“I adopted her. I brought her from the United States. She looks similar to Sae-Yi, right?”

“Not just similar to Sae-Yi, she looks exactly like her except for her hair color.”

“Yeah.”

“Is that why you adopted her? Because she reminds you of Sae-Yi?”

“No way. Rosaline was with Doctor Elsie before, but she can no longer take care of her now. She doesn’t have a guardian, and she was going to be sent to an orphanage, so I said I would take her. I think she’s a talent that needs support at the corporate or national level.”

“Is that the girl who was photographed with you in Korea?”

“Yeah. Doctor Elsie brought Rosaline with her when she came to Korea. Rosaline is from a Korean-American family.”

“...”

“Anyway, take care of her. I’ll take her to live with me if you or our parents have any problems, but consider her family.”

Ryu Ji-Won went outside and sat on the living room sofa.

Rosaline was sitting on the sofa with her shaking legs propped up on the armrests.

“Uh... Can I call you Rosaline?” Ryu Ji-Won asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m Ryu Ji-Won, Ryu Young-Joon’s younger sister.”

“Yes, I heard from Ryu Young-Joon.”

“...”

Ryu Ji-Won was confused. She thought Young-Joon and Rosaline were close because they went to amusement parks together and he adopted her so suddenly, but maybe they were awkward, as she didn’t call him Dad. But she called him Ryu Young-Joon, not even Uncle or anything... Was this the American way?

‘Anyway, it doesn’t seem like she’s very comfortable with my brother, so I’ll take care of her between the two of them,’

Ryu Ji-Won thought to herself.

“Ji-Won, I’m going to go to the grocery store for a minute,” Young-Joon said as he walked out the front door.

Then, Rosaline suddenly jumped up from the sofa and shouted, “Ryu Young-Joon! Get me some T-Rex Legs!”

“...”

Young-Joon peeked out from behind Ryu Ji-Won, who was standing in front of the door.

“They only sell that in amusement parks, not grocery stores.”

“Then what do they sell at grocery stores?” Rosaline asked.

“Ice cream?” Young-Joon said.

“Then ice cream!”

“... Okay. Do you want something, Ji-Won?”

“No. I feel like I’m going to get sick if I eat now.”

“Alright.”

After Young-Joon left, Ryu Ji-Won calmed herself.

“Do you want to watch some TV?” she asked, turning the TV on.

‘What do kids her age like?’

Ryu Ji-Won flipped through the channels and stopped at a cartoon movie.

“Woah!”

Rosaline was astounded. On the screen, a yellow rat was giving a million-volt electric shock to someone. She sat up straight and began to focus on the screen so much that it seemed like she was going to fall into the TV at any moment.

Ryu Ji-Won chuckled as she watched Rosaline.

‘She’s still a kid.’

Rosaline reminded her of Ryu Sae-Yi. Now that she took a good look at her, Rosaline was so pretty and cute.

“Do you know this cartoon?” she asked.

“No.”

“That rat’s name is Pitachu. It zaps bad guys with a million volts of electricity...”

“The electric eel has its vital organs clustered in the head area, while their tails contain around six thousand cells in series, arranged in about one hundred forty parallel rows. These cells rapidly operate sodium-potassium pumps in their membrane, creating a high voltage difference inside and out of the membrane, which they use to generate a temporary high voltage of up to eight hundred volts,” Rosaline said.

“I don’t know where that animal has a resistive insulator to protect itself from its own voltage. Judging by the electricity sparking from its cheeks, it must have a high voltage difference on the red side of each cheek, but producing a million volts there is bound to damage the brain. Maybe it doesn’t have a brain in its head, but in its belly or tail.”

“...”

Ryu Ji-Won felt like she had brain damage.

‘What is this girl saying?’

Thud.

“I’m home.”

Young-Joon returned and held out the ice cream to Rosaline.

“Thank you.”

Rosaline ripped the packaging, ate it in a flash, and then took another.

“Ah... Rosaline, You’re going to get a stomachache!”

Ryu Ji-Won, whose brain was momentarily paralyzed, barely managed to stop Rosaline.

“A stomach ache? Stomach ache?” Rosaline said to her.

“Yeah... The stomach flu.”

Wondering if the Korean word was too difficult, Ryu Ji-Won told her again in English. However, Rosaline scratched her head.

“I’ve never heard that word before. Do you mean gastroenteritis?” Rosaline asked.

Ryu Ji-Won had to swallow her pride and look it up on Google. It was a medical term for inflammation in the stomach.

“Yeah, gastro... That thing,” she said in a small voice.

“It’s alright. Thank you for worrying about me,” said Rosaline, who had gulped down her second ice cream and was sucking her fingers.

Ryu Ji-Won felt her stamina draining rapidly.

“Uh... Okay... Watch some TV.”

“Okay.”

Ryu Ji-Won patted Rosaline’s head and ran away to her room.

‘What did my brother bring from the United States?’

*

“You’re energetic today for some reason,” Kim Soo-Chul asked.

“All I have now is research. That’s all I’m going to do from now on,” Song Ji-Hyun said as she unloaded the PCR product onto agarose gel.

“You were running around the U.S. and Nicaragua just recently. Did something happen?”

“...”

“Did you get dumped by Doctor Ryu?”

“Ugh, shut up. I’m trying to focus.”

“It’s true...”

Kim Soo-Chul gave her a pitiful look.

Song Ji-Hyun closed the lid on the agarose gel tray and applied voltage. She tossed the pipette tip into the trash irritatedly and looked back at Kim Soo-Chul.

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t confess or anything,” Song Ji-Hyun said. “But... Well, I’ve given up now. He doesn’t seem interested in me. I don’t want to put pressure on him, and I’m tired of following him around.”

“You wish you’d gone to A-GenBio when Doctor Ryu scouted you before, right? If you went, it would have been easier to get to know him and be acknowledged by him, since you’d see him all the time.”

“No, what are you talking about? I don’t regret that,” Song Ji-Hyun said. “I liked Doctor Ryu, not A-GenBio.”

“Really? I’m kind of touched.”

“Maybe I would have been favored if I did what I was told well and got recognized, but I don’t want that. I have my own research that I want to do, and our company supports that. If I go to A-GenBio, I have to do what Doctor Ryu is doing.”

“Wow. A strong research philosophy of your own. That’s cool.”

“Stop teasing me and get back to work. We can do our research thanks to Doctor Ryu getting us some Nicaraguan soil.”

“About that.I think one of the bacteria you identified and picked out has the ability to reduce uranium, cesium, chromium, and technetium to stable metals.”

“Really?”

Song Ji-Hyun was shocked.

“Which ones?” she asked.

“Number eight and eleven. The rest died when we irradiated them, but those two survived. Number eleven seems to just be resistant, but number eight seems to be multiplying and getting energy from removing the radiation.”

“Let me look at the data.”

Song Ji-Hyun and Kim Soo-Chul went to the computer.

The bacterial cultures were treated with five different concentrations of uranium, cesium, chromium, and technetium. As there were twenty experimental groups and three replicates for each, there was a statistical value for sixty data points.

“Oh my God! This is amazing!”

Song Ji-Hyun smiled brightly.

Only at the highest concentration of chromium did the amount of bacteria remain the same as the beginning, while it multiplied in all the other experimental groups. There were also tiny crystals at the bottom of the solution, which had formed as the radioactive substances reduced and combined with the metal ions added to the culture medium, transforming into a stable state.

“We’ll have to analyze it further, but I think it worked. The mystery of microorganisms in extreme environments is really... It’s beyond imagination.”

It was once believed that there were millions of microorganisms on Earth. But in 2016, Doctor Kenneth J. Locey and Doctor Jay T. Lennon used two statistical techniques to back-calculate and estimate that there were about one trillion microbial species on Earth. And about 99.999 percent of them were species that humans have yet to identify.

The same went for microorganism number eight.

“What should we name it?” Kim Soo-Chul asked.

“Microcellijenner?”

“You don’t want to put your name into it as the discoverer, Doctor Song?”

“That’s so embarrassing. Why would I do that? And let’s not get ahead of ourselves, since we need to check this a few more times.”

“You look the most excited right now,” Kim Soo-Chul said.

Song Ji-Hyun turned to Kim Soo-Chul, barely holding in her laughter.

“If it works well, see if we can bring this to Japan and use it in Fukushima,” she said.

*

“Do you want to go to elementary school next year?” Young-Joon asked Rosaline.

“Elementary school?”

“I thought you wanted to go, right? You’re registered as a nine-year-old, so you do have to go to school for compulsory education.”

“What will I learn there?”

Young-Joon thought for a moment. They would show her seven pictures of rabbits and ask how many rabbits there were in total.

“... It might be a little shocking that you have to learn that sort of thing. It’ll be too easy for you.”

“Really? I’m more worried that I won’t do well.”

“What do you mean?”

“I became much more human thanks to you, but I still don’t have a few emotions,” Rosaline said. “For example, I’ve never felt sadness, and I’ve never cried. To me, tears are just an aqueous solution containing proteins and salts secreted by the lacrimal glands to control the dryness of the eyes.”

“Hm...”

“I’m not sure I’ll mix in with people very well.”

“It’s okay. You’ll do well.”

Young-Joon lightly hugged Rosaline.

“Let’s get you some clothes.”

“Clothes?”

“This is all you have right now,” Young-Joon said as he lightly shook the hem of the t-shirt Rosaline was wearing.

“There are some clothes that Sae-Yi used to wear, right?”

“Let’s buy new ones, not Sae-Yi’s,” Young-Joon said.

“When do I go to school?”

“You don’t have a record of attending school, so we’ll have to enroll you. But it’s still September, so we still have six months left. You’ll start next March.”

“Hmph.”

Rosaline fiddled with her hands in boredom.

“Until then, you can play with me,” Young-Joon said, tapping Rosaline on the nose.

*

October was just around the corner. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has been very busy, as it was Nobel Prize season again.

But there was a problem.

“Four awards...”

Doctor Fredrik from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences fiddled with the list, staring at it in dismay. This amazing genius scientist had managed to dominate all four fields in which he was nominated.

Marie Curie, Linus Pauling, John Bardeen, and Frederick Sanger were all renowned scientists famous for having won two Nobel Prizes, but even they never won two in the same year.

But Young-Joon was set to receive four awards at the same time. This unprecedented situation created an unimaginable problem.

The Nobel Prizes were announced one after another and awarded on the same day. However, the Nobel Prize in Physiology, Chemistry and Physics were awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded by the Norwegian Parliament in Oslo.

Since Young-Joon couldn’t be in both places at once, Fredrik had to coordinate with the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee to find a solution.

However, because it was such a traditional and prestigious prize, it wasn’t easy to change the established rules.

Neither Sweden nor Norway was willing to compromise on the location or time.