Chapter 95: Cellicure (6)

Young-Joon stood in front of Lee Yoon-Ah and hit Synchronization mode.

Whoosh.

Young-Joon felt like he was standing alone in the middle of the beach as the wave was rushing in. The biological processes that were occurring in Lee Yoon-Ah’s liver were being reconstructed in his head.

The liver was the organ that had the most cells as a single structure in the body. All those cells processed enormous amounts of metabolism. It was enough to call it the chemical lab within the body.

In order for the liver to do its job, it had to constantly receive numerous substances equivalent to raw materials from other organs. For this, the liver had two arteries; it received blood loaded with fresh oxygen from the hepatic artery connected to the heart, and it received blood containing absorbed nutrients from the portal vein connected to the intestine. About two thousand liters of blood were supplied a day from the two arteries, and 1.4 liters of blood passed through the liver per minute. As it was an organ with an active blood flow, it also had the property that blood vessels were easily produced. That also applied to cancer cells.

‘Angiogenesis.’

It was the biological process for cancer cells to pave a new way for blood to flow through; the new blood vessels would become entangled in a disorderly way, forming a turbulent flow.

The goal for that was to supply glucose. The main source of food for rapidly multiplying cancer cells was glucose as it was the easiest material to change into energy. Cancer cells would absorb a huge amount of glucose from the newly formed blood vessels and grow.

The multiplying cancer cells also conducted this process in Lee Yoon-Ah’s young and weak liver. They didn’t stop there, but moved to the blood vessels and loaded themselves onto the flow of blood. This was similar to a carrier of a virus leaving the area of the epidemic. The immune cells, which acted like police, tracked them and eliminated a lot of them, but there were ones they had missed.

Lee Yoon-Ah’s liver cancer cell traveled through the blood and...

—Ack!

Rosaline suddenly screamed.

[Synchronization Mode over.]

A message popped up in Young-Joon’s head. At the same time, he stumbled while holding his temple after feeling a piercing pain in his head.

Song Ji-Hyun, who was standing beside him, was surprised.

“Are you alright?”

“... I’m fine. Doctor Song, I’m sorry, but let’s talk later. Professor Kim, I will visit your office later. I have to think for a little bit,” Young-Joon said.

Song Ji-Hyun looked worried, but she did not follow him out. For some reason, she felt like she shouldn’t bother him.

Young-Joon, who walked to the end of the hall, went halfway down the emergency stairs and stood in a place where no one was around.

‘What happened?’

Young-Joon asked Rosaline.

—... I cannot analyze this.

Rosaline replied.

‘What?’

—Tracking the spread of cancer is difficult, even for me. You have to use a large amount of fitness to see it.

‘But you said the fitness consumption was 5.3? I had that much.’

—Now it is at zero.

Rosaline replied.

It was true when Young-Joon looked at the status window. He had completely run out of fitness.

—Do you know?

‘What?’

—The liver cancer metastasized in Ryu Sae-Yi before she died as well. Your fitness decreased significantly because of that trauma.

‘I... don’t remember.’

Young-Joon said.

—You erased it from your memory because the pain was too strong. But I went into your amygdala and saw your trauma that was black and entangled. There was definitely a memory about the metastasis of liver cancer among the stored fragmented memories. You heard it directly from Ryu Sae-Yi’s doctor at the time.

‘I heard it myself?’

—Yes. The memory of you hearing that her liver cancer had spread is in your unconscious mind.

All of a sudden, Young-Joon’s legs gave out and he stumbled. He was surprised. Tears were also rolling down his cheeks. He felt like an alternate self hiding in his body shed tears; he didn’t feel any sadness, but his eyes were crying.

—You have to pull yourself together. From the beginning, this wasn’t just treating a child to me, but fighting with your trauma.

Rosaline said.

‘Wait...’

Young-Joon’s shoulders trembled lightly. Some scenes floated around in his head like hallucinations: the hospital room that felt dim and gloomy for some reason, doctors and nurses who were coming and going busily, and the small, thin body of his youngest sister who was dying. He remembered the horrible sense of helplessness he had when there was nothing he could do.

Those days seven years ago that felt like hell slowly began to rise to the surface of his memory. He felt like those memories, which were like faded black-and-white photos, gained color and were being played in front of his eyes like a video.

Then, Rosaline witnessed the huge rush of neurotransmitters erupting from the boundary between the hippocampus and the amygdala. It was like a tsunami that was rushing in after a big earthquake.

—Oh... Crap... This is trouble.

‘...’

Young-Joon was seeing the fragments of his memories with Rosaline. Ryu Sae-Yi’s voice lingered in his ears like he was hearing a ghost.

“I don’t want to get treatment anymore, oppa[1] I think I’m all better now. Please help me...”

Ryu Sae-Yi always used to throw up on the bedside after undergoing radiation and strong chemotherapy. Then, she cried for an hour while suffering from a stomach ache.

Ryu Sae-Yi, who was a lot younger than Young-Joon, used to act childish a lot of the time; she always pouted whenever she tripped or bumped into something. But from some point, she didn’t even react when a needle was put in her as if she was a corpse.

“The cancer has spread.”

Her doctor’s voice rang in Young-Joon’s head.

“It has spread to the lungs. A lot of new blood vessels were created there as the cells had similar properties to the liver cancer cells, and they are pressing down on the alveoli and blocking her breathing.”

His mother collapsing to the ground was vivid in his mind like it happened just yesterday. She collapsed onto the floor like people did in the movies. Young-Joon remembered how she blamed herself, saying that it was because she had Ryu Sae-Yi when she was so old, and that it was all her fault. He could see Ryu Sae-Yi, who was dying, holding his hand and faintly smiling.

—Hello? Ryu Young-Joon..?

Rosaline called Young-Joon repeatedly like she was anxious. Young-Joon was out of breath. It was hard for him to breathe as if excessive stress and tension were physically putting pressure on his lungs.

—I will activate the parasympathetic nervous system and calm you down.

Rosaline squeezed out the little bit of fitness that was recovered and controlled the expression of acetylcholine, a hormone.

Young-Joon’s heart rate and breathing was slowly returning to normal.

—Are you feeling better?

‘Yeah... Thanks.’

—Ryu Young-Joon. Your amygdala is basically doing a coup d’etat, okay? I think I have to go over there.

‘...’

—To be honest, I’m not confident I’ll be able to stop it that easily. It’s better for me to correct a forward head posture or a spinal disc herniation; what can I do about that massive nerve cell rebellion alone when I don’t even have fitness?

‘... Sorry.’

—Let’s do this. I will engulf a portion of the glucose rushing to your brain right now. I’ll try to fend off the trauma with that. Eat foods with a lot of sugar for a week.

‘Rosaline. I have to save Lee Yoon-Ah.’

—I’m sorry, but there’s no way for me to help. You are more important to me than Lee Yoon-Ah.

Young-Joon clenched his eyes shut.

—But Ryu Young-Joon, we exchanged quite a lot of things with each other in the meantime. I received your feelings, and you have a lot of the knowledge I have.

Rosaline said.

—Do you know that there are genes that determine intelligence?

‘...’

—If you measure the expression level of those genes, it is ten times higher in you than Einstein right now. Even if I’m away, even if you can’t use Synchronization Mode, you’ll be able to do it on your own. Believe in yourself.

‘...’

—Then, I’ll be back.

Click.

The status window that was floating in front of Young-Joon’s eyes disappeared. Rosaline was gone. She didn’t respond even if he called her, as she went over to the amygdala and buried herself within his trauma; she was controlling the neural signal herself and fighting against it.

Young-Joon could feel that she was fighting as the memories and emotions that were rushing in so hard from his unconscious mind that it was making him breathless had calmed down quickly. But it wasn’t like he had become an emotionless psychopath like the last time Rosaline went into his amygdala. It was because she was not active there, but only combined with the trauma.

Young-Joon’s conscience was not any different.

He went to see Professor Kim Chun-Jung.

“Can I see Patient Lee Yoon-Ah’s CT scans again?” Young-Joon asked. Kim Chun-Jung pulled up the scan file on her computer and showed him.

Young-Joon said, “I think the cancer has crossed over to the portal vein.”

“It’s near the boundary.”

“Then isn’t there a risk of metastasis?”

“There is.”

“Cellicure can track the metastasized cancer cells and destroy them. It is effective in killing cancer cells. However, if we don’t check where and how much it spread beforehand and poke around recklessly, there might be severe side effects.”

“Phew...” Kim Chun-Jung let out a long, worrisome sigh.

“You are right, Doctor Ryu. But even if the cancer spread, there is no way to find out in the early stages.”

“...”

Young-Joon thought about it for a moment, then said, “I will find a way.”

“What way?”

“A way to diagnose the metastatic tumor early on. Please confirm the location when I find a way. Let’s hold off on administering Cellicure until then.”

“Wait, what are you talking about? You are going to find the trace amount of metastasized cancer?”

Of course, Young-Joon was the person who invented a technology that diagnosed cancer from one drop of blood. However, that was just diagnosing whether cancer existed in the body or not; finding out where it had spread to was a completely different matter. From the outside, cancer cells were no different than normal cells, and it was indistinguishable from regular tissue until it swelled and became a tumor. But how was Young-Joon going to find cancer cells that had just metastasized?

“Patient Lee Yoon-Ah doesn’t have that much time, Doctor Ryu. How long will it take to develop that technolog...”

“I will bring it next week.”

“... Next week?”

“Yes. I do not want even a little bit of uncertainty in treating that patient. I will cure her no matter what I do. Give me a week.”

Young-Joon rose from his seat. He went downstairs to find Song Ji-Hyun.

“Let’s go,” Young-Joon said.

“What? What about Cellicure?”

“We have decided to hold off on it for a little bit. Before that, I think I need to make a more thorough diagnosis of the patient.”

* * *

“What’s up with our CEO recently?” Park Dong-Hyun asked Jung Hae-Rim.

After returning from Sunyoo Hospital, Young-Joon lived in the lab for five days. He canceled all his meetings as well. As Rosaline was pouring all her strength into stopping the trauma, he had to do everything by himself.

Young-Joon went back to his old ways; he let go of the convenience of being able to select all the right answers from Rosaline’s perspective and returned to the fundamental attitude of a scientist.

However, everything changed after he met Rosaline. Although he couldn’t use Synchronization Mode, which allowed him to vividly observe microscopic phenomena at the cell level, he had Rosaline’s insight.

Young-Joon read seventy papers about the characteristics of liver cancer, cancer cells, the metastasis mechanism of cancer cells, and the diagnostic methods of cancer in five days. Yoo Song-Mi was shocked every time she came into Young-Joon’s office when she saw the pile of sugar supplement wrappers in the garbage can.

It was true that the CEO was acting weird nowadays. Everyone wondered what was driving someone like him insane. Although, everyone thought that it maybe had something to do with Cellicure’s clinical trial since he was acting that way after visiting Sunyoo Hospital.

Click.

Young-Joon opened his office door and came in. His complexion was pale.

Yoo Song-Mi, who happened to be in his office, said, “Sir, you are going to get diabetes. Why do you keep taking sugar supplements?”

“I had quite a bit, but not all of them.”

“Pardon?”

“They are for experiments,” Young-Joon said.

He took another supplement that was on his desk, put it in his mouth and chewed it.

Cancer cells ate about twenty times more glucose than regular cells, so the concentration of glucose in cancer tissue was very high.

“Cancer cells like glucose. They like it so much that they relocate blood vessels for it,” Young-Joon said. “We will track glucose. That will tell us where the cancer cell is.”

1. Oppa means older brother, and is used by younger women to refer to older men. ?