No matter who Clarivate nominated for the Nobel Prize, it was normal not to get too excited if the nominee wasn’t from one’s own country. After all, the actual award hadn’t been given yet, and it wasn’t even an announcement from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, but a prediction from a completely unrelated private institution. Despite this, Clarivate’s announcement excited people around the world sitting in front of their TVs.
“Look, Sia.”
Son Soo-Young, the first glaucoma patient to be cured and who wrote the first chapter of the Ryu Young-Joon legend, hugged her daughter and pointed to the TV. Blue, the baby who had pulmonary arterial hypertension, was now a two-year-old toddler named Sia.
“The doctor who saved us is getting a prize,” Son Soo-Young said. “He’s the one who cured Mommy’s eyes and let you breathe, Sia.”
“Aah,” Sia babbled.
She flailed her arms, slipping out of Son Soo-Young’s arms, and walked towards the TV.
Thump! Thump!
Son Soo-Young chuckled as Sia banged on the screen with a bright smile on her face. While others often said that raising a baby was really painful, such as the lack of sleep and the hard work, she loved every moment of it. Happiness was relative.
Beep beep! Click!
“I’m home.”Son Soo-Young’s husband was home from work.
“You’re home early.”
“I have a foolproof excuse to get out of company dinners. No one can say anything because they know my situation. They know that our… Agh.”
With a groan, he picked up his daughter, who was crawling towards him.
“They know that our Sia and you were sick.”
Son Soo-Young stared at him, then kissed him on the cheek.
“I got a job, too,” she said.
“Really?”
He turned to her, surprised.
“Yeah. The place I interviewed for before. It’s a little smaller than the publisher I worked at before I got glaucoma, but the salary is similar, and it’s closer.”
“Wow! Congrats!”
Her husband hugged her tightly with one arm while holding their daughter in the other arm.
“But don’t push yourself too hard, though. Okay?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Son Soo-Young nodded.
*
At the same time, in a small logistics company in Mumbai, India, employees were huddled around the TV, cheering.
“Wow! Four! They said four!”
“Doctor Ryu deserves it,” they shouted.
This was a company founded by Ardip, the legendary patient who drove Schumatix, the multinational pharmaceutical giant, to ruin. The company was called Doctor Maitreya; they had added “Doctor” to Maitreya, the Buddhist savior who was supposedly born in Varanasi, India. It didn’t take a local to figure out who the company name was in honor of.
Doctor Maitreya’s staff had an unusual gender ratio of ninety-eight percent women, primarily because he still hired all his employees from Kamathipura. After the destruction of that living hell in the Sahā world[1]The women who managed to escape experienced the incredible fortune of being cured of AIDS. The women who had cared for Ardip then started a company with him and began working together.
“If he doesn’t win the award, should we all go to Sweden to protest? How could someone like him not win the Nobel Peace Prize?” Ardip said.
“Ardip! The Peace Prize is given in Norway,” a woman replied.
The other women laughed heartily.
“Then we’ll go to Norway!”
*
“Why is the Peace Prize awarded in Norway?” asked Professor Kakeguni, last year's Nobel Prize recipient in Physiology or Medicine.
“Ha! Back when Nobel was still alive, Sweden and Norway had some sort of alliance or something. So, they probably decided to give one of the prizes to Norway,” replied Forsberg.
He was an extraordinary patient who had terminal cancer and had been given one week to live with advanced technology, only to recover with even more advanced technology. He was also a symbolic figure in Swedish medicine and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
“You must be disappointed. You probably want to present all four yourself,” Kakeguni said.
“If I could, I would give him the Nobel Prize for Literature and Economics, too,” Forsberg said. “But the Nobel Prize isn’t something I can control. I’m retired now.”
“That’s true,” Kakeguni replied with a gentle smile and a nod.
The two men had many points of connection—a Nobel Prize committee and winner, a doctor and medical doctor, and a professor of medicine and biotechnology. They had grown closer as Forsberg’s health improved.
“I’m really glad I got to see such a marvelous genius before I died.”
“He was once my student, you know,” Kakeguni said with a shrug.
“What do you mean, ‘your student’? You only taught him for a year.”
“Still, a one-year student is still my student.”
“Well, aren’t you so lucky to be on the bandwagon?”
*
Clarivate’s prediction was still all over the news.
Kang Hyuk-Soo was shaving at the time.
“Huh? Wait. Can you check the TV…?” he said.
“Don’t talk and stay still, or you’ll get cut. Try not to move your mouth while I’m shaving you,” said Park Joo-Nam, who was trimming his beard.
“Why are you always so desperate to watch the TV in that little time you have before your taxi shift? You should be looking at my face,” she chided him.
“No, that’s not..”
“What if I get Alzheimer’s again? How much are you going to regret it then? Are you going to put me in the passenger seat and take me around to pick up customers again?”
“...”
“Sigh. When I think about that time…”
“You don’t even remember.”
“I remember parts of it,” Park Joo-Nam said, holding the razor in front of Kang Hyuk-Soo’s nose.
“Uh, hey, put the razor down before you talk.”
“Doctor Ryu is such an incredible person. Curing me of my dementia…”
“I think they’re talking about Doctor Ryu now, so can you turn up the volume?”
“They’re talking about Doctor Ryu?”
Park Joo-Nam stopped shaving and turned to the TV, which was showing a report on Clarivate prediction.
[Ryu Young-Joon predicted to be the most likely Nobel Prize recipient in four categories.]
“Oh my god! What is that?”
She quickly ran toward the kitchen table and grabbed the remote.
“Oh, don’t run! You’ll fall!” Kang Hyuk-Soo nagged.
“Wait,” said Park Joo-Nam as she turned up the volume on the TV.
*
Tedros, the secretary-general of the WHO, was planning to expand the mosquito eradication project in Guangdong province to a global scale, along with health care services for people from the labor camps in Xinjiang Uyghur.
“It’s strange,” Tedros said as he and his staff watched Clarivate’s prediction on the tablet. “Thanks to Doctor Ryu, medicine has advanced so much that we’re doing things that we never dreamed of doing before, but somehow, I feel like I’m a hundred times busier than I was before Doctor Ryu came along.”
“That’s because huge projects keep coming up thanks to Doctor Ryu,” a staff member replied.
“I’m probably the busiest secretary-general of all time.”
“We feel the same way.”
“Shouldn’t I get a Nobel Prize or something for all this work?” Tedros said playfully.
“Instead of that, why don’t we establish a Ryu Young-Joon Award to commemorate achievements like mosquito eradication and AIDS eradication?” suggested another staff member.
“If it’s an award for accomplishing things like that, I don’t think anyone besides Doctor Ryu would receive it,” Tedros said.
“Who knows? There are plenty of outstanding silver medalists out there.”
“Hm. The problem is that the gap between first place and the rest is just too big.”
*
Song Ji-Hyun, the silver medalist behind Young-Joon, let out a sigh as soon as she saw him.
“Everyone is making such a big fuss,” she said.
They were chatting over coffee at a small cafe in Yongsan-gu. Given the situation, they met quietly, both wearing sunglasses and hats.
“Are they asking for interviews?” Young-Joon asked.
“Yes!” she shouted.
Song Ji-Hyun was nominated by Clarivate as the second most likely candidate to receive the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
“No matter how many times I tell people that I don’t have a chance at winning it, how it belongs to you, and they just chose me because Clarivate has to pick fifteen nominees…”
“Don’t say that. You deserve it too, Doctor Song,” Young-Joon said. “You’re the first author on the brain death treatment paper, and you made Cellicure, an incredible liver cancer cure.”
“Still…”
“And you were also the first one to come up with dendritic cell bypass in Sweden.”
“No, you have to leave that out. It was a delusional idea, and it wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for you, Doctor Ryu,” Song Ji-Hyun said, shaking her head.
“It’s always those crazy ideas that drive science.”
“...”
“Hey!”
Suddenly, someone intervened, leaning over the table. He was a tall and handsome young man, who looked like a model. They could feel the eyes of many people in the coffee shop turning towards them. Song Ji-Hyun and Young-Joon, who were startled, turned their heads in the opposite direction to avoid being seen.
“Hey, hey. Sit down, quietly,” said Song Ji-Hyun, gesturing to the man.
“Um, sorry, but who are you?” Young-Joon asked.
“It’s me. We’ve met before.”
“Really?”
“It’s my younger brother,” Song Ji-Hyun said.
“What…”
Young-Joon was momentarily speechless. He had met Song Jong-Ho, her younger brother, once more, about three months after his schizophrenia was cured. Even then, he thought he had changed a lot—he had lost a lot of weight, his skin was cleaner, and his eyes were brighter. But now, Song Jong-Ho looked like a celebrity.
“Come to think of it, you were famous for being handsome when you were in school, right?”
“That was a long time ago.”
Song Jong-Ho scratched his head and sat down.
“Anyway, my sister said she was with you, so I stopped by on my way to the library to study because I wanted to see you. I’ll leave soon.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you beforehand. I didn’t know he would actually come,” Song Ji-Hyun said apologetically.
“It’s alright. It’s nice to see you after a long time.”
Young-Joon shook hands with Song Jong-Ho.
“Doctor Ryu, you mentioned you have a younger sibling, right? I remember because you said they went to Jungyoon University. I’m going to study hard and go there.”
“Yes. She’s in her second year,” Young-Joon said.
“Doctor Ryu also has a niece,” Song Ji-Hyun said.
“A niece?”
“She lives in the States, and Doctor Ryu took care of her when she came to Korea.”
“So she’s Korean-American?” Song Jong-Ho asked.
“Yes, well… Not exactly a niece, but a distant relative…”
“She’s really pretty,” Song Ji-Hyun said.
“Really? I want to see her. Do you have any photos?”
“There’s some on the fan club page,” Song Ji-Hyun said.
“They’re on the fan club page?”
Young-Joon’s eyes widened. He’d never heard that before.
“Yes. You took your niece to the amusement park, right? Someone took a picture of you and posted it, asking if it was you. It almost became a huge issue, saying that she was your hidden daughter or something,” Song Ji-Hyun said.
“... Why am I just hearing of this?” Young-Joon asked.
“Um…”
Song Ji-Hyun scratched her head.
“Because as soon as I saw that post, I immediately commented that she was your niece…” she said.
“You’re in the fan club, too?” Song Jong-Ho asked.
Song Ji-Hyun avoided eye contact and just sipped her coffee.
“After that, the people at Lab Six told me that she was just a relative. But it died down quickly because the fans knew that if they kept talking about it, reporters would pick it up and try to make a scandal out of it. It wasn’t a big deal,” she said.
“I see.”
Young-Joon nodded.
“But I think the post is still there.”
Song Ji-Hyun scrolled through the old posts on her phone.
“A lot of them have been deleted, but there’s one left. Do you want to see it, Doctor Ryu? The quality isn’t great, so it wasn’t newsworthy, but since you were secretly filmed…”
Song Ji-Hyun pulled up the photo on her phone screen. Song Jong-Ho’s eyes narrowed.
“I think I recognize this girl from somewhere…”
“What was her name again? Rosaline, right?” Song Ji-Hyun asked Young-Joon.
“...”
Young-Joon gulped.
“She’s your niece?” Song Jong-Ho asked.
Before treating Song Jong-Ho’s schizophrenia, Rosaline went into his brain as a cell to find the cause of his schizophrenia.
“She’s the girl I saw in my hallucinations,” Song Jong-Ho said.
Song Jong-Ho, who had woken up from sleep after taking medication, saw Rosaline in the form of Ryu Sae-Yi and her status window for a few seconds in a state of dopamine overexpression.
1. in Buddhism, this refers to the mundane world other than nirvana. ☜
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