Chapter 90: Cellicure (1)

With Young-Joon’s announcement, Nicholas became one of the most searched-up people on the web. Nicholas was a scientist who was very knowledgeable in biophysics and protein engineering. He was pretty famous in the industry, but it was the first time he had been in the spotlight so much as his job as a scientist was distant from the public eye.

Nicholas was having some tea in his office while he read Young-Joon’s announcement. There was a slight disturbance outside his door.

—Is the CTO inside?

It was Kim Hyun-Taek’s voice.

—Yes, he is. But did you schedule a meeting?

—No, but I’ll step in for a moment.

—The CTO has to leave soon...

—I just need a second.

Click.

Kim Hyun-Taek opened the door stubbornly.

“What happened?” Kim Hyun-Taek asked as he sat beside Nicholas.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you going to be the director of that office? Did Ryu Young-Joon tell you that he was going to do this?”

“Mr. Ryu.” Nicholas corrected Kim Hyun-Taek. “Mr. Ryu asked me to do this. He said that he needed to work more in the frontlines of research, but someone had to take that important position. He said he could trust me.”

“...”

Cold sweat ran down Kim Hyun-Taek’s cheek.

“So when are you going?”

“You’re worried that Mr. Ryu will take over the empty CTO position at A-Gen if I go right now, right?”

“... Yes.”

“Don’t worry. I am not leaving right away since the current director’s term is not over yet,” Nicholas said. “And Mr. Ryu does not want to come to A-Gen right now. He is looking for the right time. He is preparing to merge A-Bio and A-Gen and make this place his main base. The moment he will come to swallow this place up will probably be when he comes to do the stock exchange he promised with our CEO.”

“Mr. CTO.”

Kim Hyun-Taek stuck out his head close to Nicholas.

“Sir, aren’t you old friends with Mr. Yoon? Are you going to betray him? Do you want to hand over this company to Ryu Young-Joon?”

“All I am trying to do is appoint a person who is worthy of the CTO position of the country’s top pharmaceutical company that will be created as A-Gen and A-Bio merge. I don’t want to know about the rest, and it’s none of my business.”

“What if Ryu Young-Joon finds out about that secret?”

“That secret?”

“The one. About anthrax...”

Nicholas closed his eyes with a serious face.

“Confess. Turn yourself in the few months I have left before I leave the CTO position and Mr. Ryu comes here, finds out about everything and destroys everything,” he said. “I also delivered the message to CEO Yoon as well. When you and CEO Yoon decide, I will take care of the problems myself without dirtying Mr. Ryu’s hands and leave.”

Kim Hyun-Taek glared at Nicholas for a while.

“I can’t do that,” he said.

“Director, do not force me to expose that incident.”

“... You will kick yourself for this and deeply regret your decision.”

* * *

Kim Hyun-Taek, who returned to the lab, began making rounds to every department. This was one of the situations that scientists feared the most, as he would attack them until everything was burned down if he found one little thing he didn’t like.

“Who uses a pipette and leaves it on the lab bench with the volume adjustment knob still on? Who manages their equipment like this?”

The shouting started from Room 101, the first room Kim Hyun-Taek went into.

As soon as Principal Scientist Kim Joo-Yeon figured out the situation, she quickly returned to her lab and let the Anticancer Drug Research Department know.

“The director is making rounds to the labs from the floor below us and shooting everyone up, so pull yourself together and be careful of what you do.”

“Ah, again? What happened this time?” Senior Scientist Kim Hyun-Seok said irritably.

“How should I know? The lab director is going crazy today, so be careful. Senior Park, you didn’t write four days-worth of lab notes, right? Did you do that? He’s going to go nuts if he finds out.”

“I’ll write it right now,” Park Yeon-Seo said as she quickly grabbed her notepad.

“You might get caught writing it here, so go to Room 212 and write it. If he asks why you’re there, just say that you stopped by to freeze-dry some protein.”

“Okay.”

She took her notepad and quickly left.

“Wait.”

Kim Joo-Yeon flinched when she thought of something.

“Didn’t the Diagnostic Department fight with the director once?”

“Not the department, but a Scientist there, Park So-Yeon, fought with the director because she refused to give him the experiment data,” Lead Scientist Hwang Chan-Mi replied.

“Holy... She’s going to get executed today. Tell her to take the rest of the day off and run away. If he sees her today, she is going to be executed immediately.”

“Is he in that bad of a mood today?”

“Yeah. I’ve known him for over ten years, and it’s the worst. You know the Diagnostic Department well, right, Chan-Mi-ssi? Call them right now. Tell them to run away, I’m being serious. I’m not responsible for that department, but it won’t be great if the vibe of the entire lab is down.”

Hwang Chan-Mi sighed and picked up the phone. But she was too late.

—Um... He’s already here...

Principal Scientist Song Yu-Ra from the Mobile Diagnostic Device Research Department said in a quiet voice.

“This is trouble.”

Kim Joo-Yeon sighed.

Park So-Yeon was quivering as Kim Hyun-Taek stood in front of her. He looked like he was going to kill someone.

“Pull out the data on the diagnostic kit development. Let’s see the progress.”

Park So-Yeon entered the passcode on her computer and opened the data.

“Explain it,” Kim Hyun-Taek said as he crossed his arms.

“The A-Gen Simple Chip is being developed based on PDMS, and it uses antibodies to quickly diagnose protein...”

“You don’t think I know that? When I am supervising this project? I’m not talking about the idea sketch, but the progress.”

“... We are currently designing a circuit for PDMS now. It works by putting an antibody at the end of each of the forty-right lines and cross-verifying it six times.”

“Why six times?”

“Because the binding specificity of the antibodies used aren’t that high. We are increasing the accuracy by cross-verifying it six times.”

“Then shouldn’t you be working on improving the binding specificity of the antibody?”

“But we are not doing protein engineering...”

“Then you can work with a team that does protein engineering!” Kim Hyun-Taek shouted.

Song Yu-Ra quickly intervened.

“Um, sir. We talked about this during our last meeting. The protein engineering team said they don’t have the time to take on another project...”

“They finished a project four days ago. They can do it now,” Kim Hyun-Taek said as he glared at Park So-yeon. “Communicating with other departments is one of the fundamentals of research. Don’t you know how Ryu Young-Joon makes all those great achievements from that teeny company?”

“...”

“It’s because he steals all the abilities of A-Gen’s departments!” Kim Hyun-Taek shouted.

Now that he was talking about it, it made him angry. It was true; A-Bio’s own equipment and facilities weren’t great. They didn’t even have a facility that raised animals for experiments. He used it all from A-Gen. From the super-resolution visible photoactivated atomic force microscopy (pAFM) he used to destroy the opposition of the HIV vaccine to the countless experimental animals like mice and chimpanzees, the department that conducted the clinical trial, and even the PDMS chip and human resources from the Mobile Diagnostic Device Research Department, Young-Joon used it all from A-Gen.

‘Fxxk.’

Crash!

Kim Hyun-Taek kicked the table. With a sound, the chair with wheels was pushed back from the impact.

“I don’t know what you are all thinking. Are we part of A-Bio? A-Gen is the one that pays you! I pay you! The work that the Research Support Center does is a mess. It’s all to support A-Bio’s research! Look at the Clinical Trial Management Center. We don’t have a single drug that is going into clinical trials! It’s all A-Bio, A-Bio... Is this company A-Bio’s?!” Kim Hyun-Taek screamed. He glared at Park So-Yeon like he was going to kill her.

“Scientist Park So-yeon. So, did you get on Ryu Young-Joon’s good side by making a good diagnostic kit and offering it to him?”

“Pardon...?” Park So-Yeon was baffled.

“If you have the time to use all your strength to make a product for another company, do it after you are done with what you are supposed to do! Collaborating with other departments and catching up with their schedule!”

“...”

“If the protein engineering team is done with a project, you should have found out on that day! You just have to contact them and ask! Do you have to wait until the lab director tells you?”

“... I’m sorry.”

Park So-Yeon lowered her head.

“The entire company has gone mad! Ryu Young-Joon’s success story has made everyone insane. The CTO is already kissing his ass, so how could his subordinates be in their right mind?”

Kim Hyun-Taek clenched his fists and trembled in anger.

That was when...

“It’s hard for just a Scientist to figure out the progress of a project since it is confidential information.”

Ryu Young-Joon’s voice was heard from the office entrance. When everyone glanced at the door, he was actually standing there.

“How could someone call another department every day and check their progress? A regular scientist can’t do that. Aren’t lab directors the ones who should organize and assign projects and coordinate schedules so that departments can collaborate together? I don’t know why you’re angry at the newest person in the department for not doing

your

work that

you

passed onto her,” said Young-Joon.

“...”

Kim Hyun-Taek froze for a second, then glared at him with hostility.

“Doctor Ryu. Are you now coming in and out of my lab without telling me in advance?”

“I’m here because of an experiment for the diagnostic kit I developed last time. I got your permission when I signed the contract.”

“You’re done with that experiment.”

“If it was, the lab entrance wouldn’t even have opened with the Lab One pass that was temporarily issued to me,” Young-Joon said as he shook the pass in his hand. “Read the contract again because it hasn’t ended. And the reason I am here is to do a few additional experiments to improve that diagnostic kit.”

“...”

‘He’s developing it more? Here?’

Kim Hyun-Taek felt like his blood was boiling. He felt like he was going to faint because his blood pressure was so high.

“So are you saying that you are going to do experiments here?”

“Yes. And I need Scientist Park So-Yeon’s help because I have to use the PDMS chip. I don’t have a lot of time, so do you have more to say to her? Should I wait outside?”

“... No.”

Kim Hyun-Taek barely suppressed his boiling anger and left the office. Young-Joon watched him leave, then went to Park So-Yeon. She turned her head and didn’t look at him.

“So-Yeon-ssi, can we have a talk?”

“... Yes...”

Her helpless voice was teary. She turned her head so that Young-Joon wouldn’t be able to see her tears, but he felt like he knew what she looked like. She was definitely not in the condition to discuss work-related things right away.

‘I’m going to have to talk to her after I calm her down.’

Young-Joon took Park So-Yeon to the cafe inside the lab.

* * *

“Latte?”

“... Yes.”

Park So-Yeon kept wiping around her eyes with her fingertips. She was worried that her makeup had been ruined.

When she took the latte Young-Joon handed her, she choked up again a little. It was because it was a matcha latte, something she always used to drink when they were dating.

“Are you feeling better?”

“... Yes.”

“Don’t take it to heart since he does that often. Although, I think it’s a lot worse today.”

“...”

“Anyways, to get to the point, I’m thinking of redeveloping the diagnostic kit into a format that can be used in the pet and livestock industries,” Young-Joon said.

Park So-Yeon clenched her eyes shut, then opened them.

‘Let’s just talk about work.’

She swallowed all the words that came to mind. She sniffled then took a deep breath.

“... You’re talking about making a diagnostic kit for animals?” Park So-Yeon asked.

𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

“Yes, that’s it.”

The international patent approval for the one hundred twenty two types of treatments for pet and livestock was almost finished. If he developed an animal disease diagnostic kit, it could create synergy with this.

The world livestock industry was worth more than thousands of trillions of won. Thanks to that, the amount of damage of livestock that were mass-killed by hoof-and-mouth disease, tuberculosis, and AI[1] every year was easily over a trillion won. It wasn’t easy for the person who does the killing, nor the livestock, nor the owners of the farm. Now, it was time to stop that.

Science that had been advanced to the extreme could put an end to the despair that repeated itself every year.

1. short for avian influenza, or bird flu ?