“Come in.”

Song Ji-Hyun opened the door for Young-Joon.

“Sorry for coming on such short notice.”

Young-Joon, who came in, sat on the sofa in the living room.

“Would you like something to drink? Song Ji-Hyun asked.

“Sure. Thank you.”

“You like coffee, right, Doctor Ryu?”

Song Ji-Hyun brewed a cup of coffee with the coffee machine in the kitchen. She put some ice in a cup, poured the coffee inside, and gave it to Young-Joon.

“I noticed you only drink iced americanos when we have a meeting.”

“What can I say? I’m addicted to caffeine.”

Young-Joon took the coffee and took a few sips.

“What happened to your cheek?” Young-Joon asked when he saw Song Ji-Hyun’s face up close. Her right cheek was a little red.

“He swatted me away when I was trying to give him medicine and hit me in the face.”

A little embarrassed, Song Ji-Hyun caressed her cheek.

“Oh…”

“It’s okay. It’s not like it happens often. I made a mistake.”

“Where is your brother right now?” Young-Joon asked.

“He’s in his room. He’s probably sleeping.”

“I see.”

“What’s this?” Song Ji-Hyun asked after seeing a piece of crumpled paper in his right hand.

“Oh, this. It’s nothing.”

Young-Joon slipped it in his pocket, but she saw what was written on it as he put it in.

‘Is it the survey that was on the elevator?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“...”

After some thought, Song Ji-Hyun said, “To be honest, my brother isn’t in good condition. I lied when I said that we caught the symptoms early. Even if he was better, most people react like that survey.”

Young-Joon wasn’t very surprised.

Song Ji-Hyun said, “They just want us to move out of this apartment because it’s unsafe and the price is going down. They’re pressuring us.”

“...”

“That’s why I said I would take care of him for a bit because it seemed like they were so tired of everything.”

“I see. But your parents are lucky to have you.”

Song Ji-Hyun smiled bitterly.

“I wouldn’t have even left the house if I was such a good daughter.”

“...”

“It’s been a while since I’ve been here, and the atmosphere has gotten much more hostile and blatant. Didn’t the guard say something when you said you were coming here?”

“He told me to be careful and not get hurt.”

“Haha,” Song Ji-Hyun.

“It might sound funny for me to say this with a bruised cheek, but Jong-Ho sometimes harms himself, but he’s not the kind of person who would hurt someone,” she said. “But I understand the other residents being scared.”

“Really?”

“Because the media reports that someone with schizophrenia has murdered someone.”

“...”

Song Ji-Hyun began to vent like she had been keeping a lot in.

“I think it’s becoming especially worse lately. Things like how they committed arson in an apartment, or they stabbed someone in a bathroom in a bar, stuff like that,” she said. “It’s framed as if you become very likely to commit a crime if you have schizophrenia. But Doctor Ryu, the prevalence of schizophrenia is one percent. If there are fifty million people in this county, five hundred thousand of them have schizophrenia.”

“That’s right.”

“If you think about that number and look at the crime rate, it’s actually lower than the general population. It’s kind of unfair to the patients and their families.”

“Most of those people are taking medication and staying in treatment. They are maintaining their cognitive abilities nor are they committing violence.”

“Exactly, and even among the severely ill patients who have gone off their treatment and relapsed, there really aren’t that many who attack others because most of those people are extremely anxious and scared to even leave the house.”

“...”

“But once an accident happens, patients with schizophrenia will hear voices and commit crimes like assault. I think that’s why it appears on the news more and why people are more scared of schizophrenia. So I am sad that people in our apartment feel that way, but I also understand,” Song Ji-Hyun said.

“I don’t want to blame the citizens either. But adding onto what you said, I think there’s a problem with the country’s management system, too.”“Right!” Song Ji-Hyun shouted like she was waiting for him to say that. “You also know. The hospital admittance criteria has become a lot more picky since 2017. Now, it’s become more difficult to admit severely ill patients. Even if they are in a condition that is obviously dangerous, they can’t be admitted unless there’s a clear possibility of self-harm or harming others.”

“Really?”

“Yes. There was a lot of pushback from the psychiatry field when they changed the admission criteria in the statue, but it just went through without any real feedback.”

“...”

“And in the U.S., if a citizen calls the police about a patient with schizophrenia, the police can take them to a psychiatric emergency center if they see the patient and think they could be a danger to the public, right?”

“A psychiatric emergency center?”

“Yes. Admittance isn’t decided there, but the doctors observe them for a period of time, and then they can admit them if they have to. The police also have the authority to take you there. Not in Korea, the police don’t have that power, and there’s no such thing as a psychiatric emergency center. In Korea, it’s just a private medical institution that runs inpatient units.”

“...”

“It’s true that the current system isn’t one that can handle a serious disease that affects half a million patients.”

The conversation paused for a minute. Young-Joon drank his coffee and Song Ji-Hyun fiddled with her phone.

“Doctor Ryu, you said that you came to see my brother today, right?”

“That’s right.”

“...”

Song Ji-Hyun thought for a moment. Young-Joon was someone who had taken down the most dreaded diseases known to humanity, even Alzheimer’s, which seemed impossible to conquer. He regenerated and destroyed brain cells and restored cognitive abilities and memory. By comparison, schizophrenia was probably easier to conquer as schizophrenia usually had milder less brain damage. The problem was that they didn’t really know how schizophrenia worked, but Song Ji-Hyun had hope because it was Young-Joon.

“The fact that you came all the way here… Is it what I think it is?” Song Ji-Hyun asked cautiously.

“I am developing a schizophrenia treatment.”

“Is it a substitute for dopamine inhibitors?”

“No, it’s a cure.”

“Oh…” Song Ji-Hyun exclaimed.

It was just as she expected.

“I didn’t think it would be anything similar to existing drugs if you were making it.”

“It’s still in the early stages of development, so don’t get your hopes up,” Young-Joon said.

“Can you tell me a little bit about the technology?” Song Ji-Hyun asked.

“Um…”

Young-Joon scratched his head.

“Um… Don’t be surprised.”

Then, Young-Joon explained the radical treatment that Rosaline made.

“What?”

Song Ji-Hyun was still shocked even though Young-Joon told her to not be.

“You’re going to put a hundred genes in the mitochondria and deliver that to the brain cell?”

Song Ji-Hyun froze.

“Because that’s the only way to put in hundreds of genes,” Young-Joon replied.

“Well… That is true, but…”

Young-Joon understood why she was flustered.

“But psychiatric treatment requires both drug and psychological treatment. The doctors will know what to do once it gets approved and commercialized. But right now, I need some research data about psychological factors,” Young-Joon said. “What I’m saying is that I need to know what psychological factors caused schizophrenia in real patients to factor that into developing my treatment.”

“…”

Song Ji-Hyun bit her lower lip.

“You want to know what happened when my brother was a student?”

“Yes. Tell me anything you think would be relevant.”

* * *

Rosaline popped out of Young-Joon’s body as soon as he entered Song Ji-Hyun’s house. She went to the small room right away, and she had been watching Song Jong-Ho even since. This was Young-Joon’s order.

—The actual psychological causes might be different than what Doctor Song thinks. I’ll talk to her, and in the meantime, could you go into his brain and find the memory that caused schizophrenia?

This wasn’t very difficult for Rosaline. She went into Song Jong-Ho’s nose. She traveled through the nasal mucosa and into the bloodstream. After traveling in the bloodstream for a moment, she made a little cut in the blood vessel and went into his brain. It was the first time she was entering a human brain that wasn’t Young-Joon’s as a cell.

Dopamine swarmed to Rosaline’s cell membrane.

“How bothersome.”

Rosaline swatted them away and moved to the midbrain.

She slowly moved along the dopamine pathway like she was taking a walk. There were millions of neurons intertwined in a complex web. The infinite combinations of electrical excitations created here was what made the human brain a small universe of its own. No computer could calculate the number of variables, but everything was clear to Rosaline.

“Found it.”

Rosaline found a small neuron among the bundles of cranial nerves. It led to the amygdala and the hippocampus.

This was a much easier opponent compared to that. Rosaline searched through the hippocampus cells and the amygdala. She observed Song Jong-Ho’s old memories and his emotions related to his trauma.

“...”

It was like pulling out a bunch of archaic books from an old library and going through them one by one.

Rosaline burned her fitness a little faster to increase her efficiency. When she was analyzing the signals from twenty thousand seven hundred cells…

A huge explosion shook everything. The cell membranes became damp, and a lot of electricity was flowing.

“What happened?”

Rosaline immediately assessed the situation. She thought there had been an accident, but it was nothing; Song Jong-Ho had just woken up and sat up. However, it was accompanied with a flood of dopamine.

“The drug that Song Jong-Ho took inhibits dopamine receptors,” Rosaline said as she looked up at the dopamine pathway in the limbic midbrain. As the drug just blocked dopamine receptors, the amount of dopamine did not change. If there were the same number of nuts and bolts, the bolts would become useless if all the nuts broke, but the bolts didn’t just disappear. That was why there was so much dopamine everywhere.

“Ugh… I should tell him to not make me work for a while after this.”

With a frown, Rosaline cleared away the dopamine that was wandering near her cell membrane.

Song Jong-Ho came out into the living room. Usually, he fell in and out of consciousness. Even with the same drug, he would sometimes be lucid, and other times he wouldn’t be. When he wasn’t lucid, he would wake up shaking in the corner of a room. When he wasn’t lucid, he would be very irritable and spew nonsense to other people. RIght now, the medication was working well, and he was pretty calm.

“Who are you?” Song Jong-Ho asked.

Even though he was lucid, he still slurred his words. Young-Joon and Song Ji-Hyun were sitting in the living room with a puzzled look on their faces.

“Your guest?” Song Jong-Ho asked Song Ji-Hyun.

“I’m Ryu Young-Joon.”

“... Oh? Nice to meet you. But what is this? Maybe the medication hasn’t kicked in yet. I’m still seeing things.”

Song Jong-Ho waved his hand in front of his eyes while rubbing his temples.

“There are words. Hey, what did I take today?” Song Jong-Ho asked Song Ji-Hyun.

“Words?” she replied.

“Uh… Rosaline…? Level…”

Young-Joon flinched.

Rosaline popped out of Song Jong-Ho’s mouth.

—Phew. That was tough.

Stretching her neck, Rosaline walked over to Rosaline.

“Hey, it’s a little kid now! A little girl appeared!” Song Jong-Ho said in surprise.

Rosaline quickly turned and glanced at Song Jong-Ho.

Rosaline snapped her fingers. Then, she went back into Young-Joon’s body.

“Huh…”

Song Jong-Ho couldn’t see anything anymore.

Young-Joon asked.

—There was a sudden burst of dopamine when my cell was in the patient’s brain. It was a temporary effect of being swept up by that.

—Luckily, he has schizophrenia, so he probably sees a lot of hallucinations. Just pretend that you don’t know anything.

Song Jong-Ho touched his hair like he was anxious.

“Are you still having hallucinations?” Song Ji-Hyun asked.

“No. I think the medication is kicking in now. I’m fine.”