Chapter 227

Translator: Dreamscribe

Spring in Maryland is short.

Every year, Clara Wyss only realized spring had passed once the heat arrived. But this year was different.

She sat on a bench and looked around the campus.

Freshness was spreading gently across the entire campus. Pale green leaves glistened with raindrops, while newly blossomed flowers swayed in the breeze.

Clara suddenly closed her eyes at the unfamiliar feeling.

‘When was the last time I actually felt the arrival of spring?’

Her life had always been spent with her head down, going back and forth between the laboratory and the hospital ward.

Spring was when paper deadlines approached, summer was when she had to pay close attention to the temperature of laboratory samples, and winter was the season when cancer patients’ conditions deteriorated rapidly.

The breeze felt pleasant.

The sunlight was warm too.

It felt as though the sensation of being alive was slowly seeping into her skin.

She looked down at the envelope resting on her lap.

The letter of introduction she had carefully tucked between the pages of a book so it would not wrinkle. Perhaps the research that had been stalled for more than ten years might finally find a breakthrough.

A faint smile appeared on her lips. Then she offered a silent prayer.

Spring would only grow shorter in the years ahead, but she hoped that at least this year’s season would remain in her memory for a long time.

As soon as she returned to the laboratory, she booked a flight to Korea.

***

Getting to Team Apex Korea was an ordeal.

Fourteen hours by plane. Then another three hours in a taxi. Her colleagues had unanimously tried to talk her out of it, saying she was crazy.

“You’re going all the way to Korea without even having an appointment?”

“Wouldn’t it be better to refine your research proposal a little more instead?”

Their reactions were realistic.

She might be a professor at Johns Hopkins, but the person she wanted to meet was Yu Seo-ha. Even at this very moment, research institutions and corporations from around the world were probably lining up for a chance to claim some of his time.

But Clara shook her head.

“There are things that papers and data alone can’t explain. I have to meet him in person.”

She refused to back down.

She spent several sleepless nights organizing her data and separately compiling only the most essential simulation results. If she was given even a few minutes, she would have to explain everything within that time.

Clara closed her eyes inside the taxi heading toward the research facility.

Her mother lying in a hospital bed, smiling until the very end and insisting that she was fine. And herself at twenty-one, unable to do anything.

‘I won’t give up this time.’

Bump.

The taxi rolled over a speed bump.

As they left Seoul’s densely packed city center behind, the greenery deepened.

Low mountains and fields, quiet roads. And after driving for much longer-

“We’ve arrived.”

The driver spoke while looking into the rearview mirror.

Clara stepped out of the taxi and looked up at the research facility.

High walls, a hushed atmosphere that made the place seem cut off from the outside world. The building had the restrained appearance of a security facility.

Security personnel in black suits stood near the entrance.

[Team Apex KOREA]

The metal plaque gleamed in the sunlight.

Clara swallowed dryly without realizing it.

A place where the greatest geniuses in the world had gathered.

And perhaps a place where the future of human medicine might be changed.

She tightened her grip on the strap of her bag and slowly walked toward the main gate. As she reached the entrance, the security personnel stepped in front of her.

“We’ll need to verify your identification and the purpose of your visit.”

With trembling hands, Clara handed over her passport along with the letter of introduction Dean Whitman had written for her.

‘Mens et Manus’

An artisan holding a hammer and a scholar holding a book. The logo symbolizing MIT.

The guard examined the envelope embossed with a gold design, then briefly spoke with someone over the radio.

“Your credentials have been confirmed. We’ll escort you inside.”

As she walked down the corridor, she looked around.

English, Korean, German.

Researchers could be seen here and there, engaged in serious discussions.

“Joseph, I just finished fixing the error that was pointed out yesterday. The director says he’ll review it soon.”

“What? I told you I’d code that section myself! Move, Park! My pride is on the line here. I’m the team leader. He trusted me with this, so how am I supposed to show my face if there’s another error?”

Their faces showed deep exhaustion, yet strangely, their eyes were all vividly alive.

She watched Joseph code with dazzling speed.

‘So that’s Utopia.’

Crunch time seemed to be an everyday occurrence here.

Even so, what kept their spirits up was surely the sense of accomplishment that came from knowing they were doing something extraordinary.

“You can wait here.”

The room she was escorted to was a conference room enclosed by glass walls.

After a brief wait, the door opened and a young man walked in.

Step, step.

Yu Seo-ha.

A man she had seen countless times in photographs and videos.

Yet there was something special about meeting him in person.

His eyes were clear, like a deep lake. His gaze was calm, and yet it somehow felt as though he could see straight into her thoughts.

The tension and excitement of the researchers she had passed in the corridor.

Clara felt she could understand them a little now. Before she realized it, she had shot to her feet.

“Professor Clara Wyss.”

His voice was low and calm.

His English was standard and polished, like that of a professional broadcaster. Despite being a foreigner, there was almost no trace of an accent from which one could guess his ethnicity or region.

“You’ve come a long way from Maryland to Daejeon. It must have been quite a journey.”

Seo-ha smiled brightly and extended his hand first.

“Not at all. I wanted to meet you so badly that I would have circled the Earth a few more times if necessary.”

His hand was unexpectedly warm.

Come to think of it, she had spent so much time shut away in the laboratory that it had been a very long time since she had held someone’s hand.

“Please, have a seat.”

He offered her a chair first.

Seo-ha sat across from her as well and picked up the folder on the table.

Clara’s eyes wavered.

The data she had spent several sleepless nights organizing. The final pieces she had been unable to abandon among all her failed hypotheses.

Seo-ha flipped through the pages rapidly.

Rustle.

Rustle.

At a speed that was difficult to believe.

His gaze slid over densely tangled equations, biomarker data, and cellular-response graphs.

“Professor.”

“Yes?”

“Would it be possible to see the original, unprocessed data?”

“Y-yes, I have it right here!”

Rustle.

She did not know why, but the important thing was that he was interested.

She opened her bag and pulled out the stack of papers she had shown Whitman. Seo-ha’s expression grew even more serious as he looked at them.

The material Clara handed him.

The first page went back an astonishing twenty years.

[Tracking the Drug Resistance Mechanism of Cancer Cells. Initial hypothesis - Resistance develops through the accumulation of specific genetic mutations.]

Two years later, an extension of the same hypothesis.

But the data had begun to deviate from her predictions. Resistance developed far faster than the model she had proposed.

A single word was written in the margin.

‘Why?’

Another two years later, the hypothesis was revised.

Not a single genetic mutation, but the simultaneous activation of multiple pathways. From this point onward, the volume of data increased dramatically. Pages packed tightly with numbers, anomalous values highlighted in fluorescent marker. One page even bore the trace of a nosebleed.

Seo-ha examined every single detail carefully.

The following year, a new approach.

Modeling cancer cell populations not as a single system, but as a Multi-Agent System. An attempt to treat each cell as an independent decision-making unit. Game Theory equations were written in the margins.

Then, several years later, traces of frustration appeared again.

Predicting the variables of a single cell was possible, but describing a system in which hundreds of millions of cells interacted simultaneously was impossible even with the use of a supercomputer.

Were those blurred ink stains on the paper from her tears?

Protein expression pattern analysis.

The date was relatively recent. As Next-Generation Sequencing technology advanced, she had been able to secure enormous amounts of genomic data.

‘There is a correlation. I just don’t know the causality.’

[Study on the Interaction Between the Immune System and Cancer Cells]

Her signature paper was linked there.

A model predicting the effectiveness of Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors. From this period onward, clinical data had been attached to the material. Patient numbers and records of treatment progress. The sheer tenacity behind it was enough to send a chill down one’s spine.

The timeline had now reached five years ago.

Single-cell RNA Sequencing data. The results of tracking the gene expression of every individual cell within a tumor in real time. Technological progress had opened new possibilities for Clara during this period.

But only briefly.

Seo-ha could read the traces of anguish and frustration in her handwriting.

‘I don’t know. Is this really the right direction?’

The last three years.

The data continued to pile up. But no solution could be found anywhere.

And then the final page.

The date was from this year. The simulation results she had organized were expressed as equations. Millions of pathways unfolded into a tree structure. Branches split endlessly beneath them.

At the bottom was one final note.

‘Does anyone in this world even exist who can read this?’

Seo-ha closed the materials.

Drip.

Drip.

Droplets fell onto the equations that had risen to the brink of a critical point inside his mind.

Before his eyes, the vast quantity of data Clara had recorded over twenty years unfolded into a three-dimensional landscape. Curvature appeared over the genetic mutation data from her initial hypothesis. The Multi-Agent System of hundreds of millions of interacting cells became the endlessly twisted curves of Noncommutative Geometry, surging and writhing.

“Huh?”

Clara looked at Seo-ha with concern.

His gaze was fixed on empty space. His pupils moved rapidly, as though tracking something invisible.

She was a biologist, but she was also a doctor.

‘No hyperventilation or facial spasms. He hasn’t lost consciousness either.’

Still, it was certainly concerning.

She started to rise and reach toward him, but someone approached and stopped her.

“Shh!”

Two mugs sat on a tray.

It was a young European man. He hurriedly set the tray down, then raised an index finger to his lips.

‘An assistant?’

“B-but!”

“Something must have triggered him. It probably isn’t dangerous, so let’s watch him for a moment.”

Clara turned at the voice from behind her.

It was Su-jeong, a beautiful woman whose appearance seemed strangely out of place in a laboratory.

“Triggered?”

At Clara’s question, Su-jeong nodded.

“Seo-ha has looked like he’s been wrestling with something for a while now. He knew the direction, but I guess something about it didn’t sit right with him. He said having too many variables made it crude.”

“Then right now....”

“It looks like you may have given him some kind of breakthrough, Professor.”

Clara’s eyes widened.

‘The data I made?’

Rustle.

Seo-ha was turning through the pages.

His hand stopped at the section dealing with the interaction between cancer cells and the immune system.

scratch scratch.

Seo-ha picked up a pen and began modifying the equations she had written.

Hundreds of millions of cancer cells.

A network constantly mutating and dividing.

The branching paths of Drug Resistance.

Protein expression fluctuating probabilistically.

Everything began rearranging itself beneath his hand.

She wished someone could tell her. Just what in the world was he seeing right now?

The truth was, she had given up.

At some point, she had stopped being certain whether the data she was recording held even the slightest meaning.

And yet she had been unable to stop.

Was it obsession? Or cowardice that kept her from putting down the pen even as she sneered at herself.

Why had she been unable to quit even though she knew it would not work?

‘Ah!’

She realized it.

‘I was hoping, desperately, that someone would solve this for me.’

She had hoped that someone with superhuman intellect would appear and solve the problem as if by magic. And in case that day ever came, she had spent countless sleepless nights recording everything in the hope that even a little of it might help.

He continued turning the pages and modifying the equations. Something hot surged up inside her.

“Professor.”

Seo-ha, who had raised his head before she realized it, looked at her and spoke.

“Yes.”

“To think you have this many tracking samples.... You’ve brought me a treasure.”

Clara’s face crumpled. A moment later, she began sobbing, choking on the sounds of her own tears.

The lonely twenty years she had endured.

That time, which she had believed was useless, had finally found meaning after she met this young man.

*****

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