“Could I maybe call you hyung?”
Hajun said it while watching his reaction. For a top star, he seemed to have quite an introverted personality. When Taeho had seen him in dramas, he’d seemed so bold and unrestrained......
Having eaten his fill of delicious food, Taeho replied in a good mood.
“Ah, just call me whatever’s comfortable. If you call me hyung, Hajun, well, I’d be happy.”
“Thank you, Taeho hyung!”
Hajun was delighted like a child. His personality seemed more simple and unassuming than expected.
Hajun placed a well-grilled piece of meat on Taeho’s small plate and said,
“Hyung, by the way, would it be okay if I tried decorating the house a little? I’d like to change the wardrobe, too, and I think it’d look much better if we replaced the curtains with prettier ones.”
Taeho looked puzzled at Hajun’s sudden talk of decorating the house.
“Why?”
“Decorating houses has always been my hobby. If I hadn’t become an actor, I might have become an interior designer. I’ve got a bit of talent in that area, you know. This guy right here.”
Hajun looked at Taeho with sparkling eyes.
Taeho thought about it for a moment.
In any case, Hajun was a VIP worth 100 million won, and being cooped up inside all day would no doubt feel stifling. Besides, if he was saying he’d buy things with his own money, there was no need to stop him.
“Well, if you want to do that, go ahead.”
“Please speak casually to me. Taeho hyung, thank you for allowing it. Here, have another piece of meat.”
“Sure, you eat too, Hajun.”
The two of them enjoyed the cool breeze as they shared the pork belly.
***
It had been about a week since Lee Hajun’s treatment began. Nurse Park Geumja said that, starting a few days ago, a reporter had suddenly been calling the clinic nonstop.
Since Park Geumja happened to transfer the call, Taeho answered it himself.
‘I heard that actor Lee Hajun has been receiving treatment at Geumsan Clinic lately. Is that true?’
“Who is this?”
‘I’m a reporter from TBC.’
“No, it isn’t. Don’t call again.”
Taeho hung up immediately.
The phone rang again.
‘You’re the director, aren’t you? Please give me an interview. The public has a right to know why Lee Hajun suddenly disappeared. Was it perhaps because of steroid abuse or excessive cosmetic procedures?’
“What did you say your name was?”
‘I’m TBC reporter Kim Sangguk.’
“Reporter Kim Sangguk of TBC. If you keep calling, I’ll sue you for obstruction of business. I’m hanging up now.”
But reporter Kim Sangguk did not seem likely to give up easily.
Park Geumja approached quietly and asked with a worried expression.
“Doctor, will Hajun be all right?”
Park Geumja might not have joined Lee Hajun’s fan club, but she was close to being a diehard fan, so her concern was no small matter. Even knowing that Lee Hajun was staying with Taeho on the third floor of the hospital, she had kept it secret even from the nursing assistants, who were her own younger cousins.
“For now, keeping this secret is important, so please be careful that it absolutely doesn’t spread to anyone.”
“Understood. I’ll make sure to keep everyone in line.”
Park Geumja nodded with a solemn expression.
But a few days later, the incident erupted from an unexpected place.
***
Lunchtime at Geumsan Clinic.
Park Geumja and the nursing assistants were in the staff lounge eating bibimbap delivered from a restaurant.
Nursing assistant Park Yeonji was the first to speak.
“Oh, right, unni, did you see the news about Lee Hajun last night?”
“What news?”
The moment Park Geumja heard the words Lee Hajun, her heart was already pounding.
“Look at this.”
Park Yeonji took out her phone and played a video.
A man’s face appeared on the palm-sized screen. His hair was matted with oil, and dark circles were clearly visible beneath both eyes.
‘This is TBC reporter Kim Sangguk. Recently, actor Lee Hajun has been showing some strange movements, so our Entertainment Detective Team tracked him down.’
The next scene showed the reporter getting out of a van and running toward Lee Hajun’s agency, then the reporter following Lee Hajun’s manager around and trying to talk to him only to be refused, all edited together at a brisk pace.
Soon, the reporter’s narration was heard.
‘After staking out and persistently tracking him, our Entertainment Detective Team discovered that Lee Hajun received treatment at a dermatology clinic in Gangnam. We had great difficulty inviting a hospital insider who witnessed the scene firsthand at the time.’
A nurse’s silhouette appeared, her face blurred by mosaic and her voice altered.
‘I am a nurse working at 00 Dermatology Clinic.’
Once the nurse’s introduction ended, a caption appeared at the bottom of the screen: “Dermatology clinic nurse, Ms. ○○ (alias).”
‘It’s said that Lee Hajun visited 00 Dermatology Clinic recently. Can you confirm this?’
At the reporter’s question, the nurse hesitated slightly before answering.
‘Yes, that’s right. Usually, when celebrities come in, we have to maintain strict confidentiality, but Lee Hajun’s condition was so serious......’
‘Specifically, what kind of condition was he in?’
‘It’s truly difficult to say...... but his skin looked as if it was rotting away. At first, I thought it was just inflammation or pustules, but I’d never seen such a severe condition before.’
‘Those symptoms must be medically uncommon as well. Was there an exact diagnosis or a suspected disease?’
‘The doctor made the actual diagnosis, so I don’t know very well. However, it was serious enough that I wondered if it might be a severe condition like a necrotizing infection.’
A provocative caption, “Suspected necrotizing infection?” flashed briefly across the screen.
‘What was Lee Hajun’s reaction at the time?’
‘He looked extremely anxious. Since he’s an actor whose appearance is his livelihood, perhaps that’s why, but he himself seemed very flustered and worried.’
The screen changed, and the reporter’s face once again filled the frame.
‘There are even rumors circulating that Lee Hajun may have used substances he should not have touched, namely psychotropic drugs. Our Entertainment Detective Team demands an accurate explanation from Lee Hajun and his agency. This was TBC reporter Kim Seongjun.’
As the screen gradually darkened, a large caption appeared in bold letters: “Lee Hajun, Skin Necrotizing Infection?” Beneath it, smaller text quickly passed by: “Lee Hajun’s side official statement: ‘Groundless.’”
The video, less than ten minutes long, ended.
But to Park Geumja, it felt as if a massive tornado had swept through.
“Unni, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Unni, greens came out of your mouth.”
“D-Doctor!”
Park Geumja burst out of the staff lounge with a clatter.
***
Taeho sold Zenith Pharmaceuticals. Rema had even told him the selling point just before trading volume stagnated.
With this investment, he made 500 million won in just one week. It was a fivefold return. Since it was a U.S. stock with no upper price limit, and since pharmaceutical stocks could make one massive jump if new drug development succeeded, it was a profit possible in a short period of time.
But he still had a long way to go if he wanted to completely pay off the 2 billion won in private debt.
“Rema, what’s good next? Put together an analysis report.”
Taeho skimmed through the investment report Rema produced. After flipping through pages for a while, his gaze stopped on the name “Neocera Bio.”
—Neocera Bio’s “NeuroCera-1.” An Alzheimer’s treatment candidate compound.
It was so small-scale that it was practically a startup, and its chances of success were low enough that he might have simply passed it by, but for some reason it kept bothering him.
“They say even the global pharmaceutical industry puts its chance of success at around 5 to 10 percent. Why is it such a hot topic?”
—The Alzheimer’s field itself is considered an impregnable fortress in the pharmaceutical industry. However, this drug produced significant cognitive function improvement data in early Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical trials. Expectations are high enough that the FDA designated it as a breakthrough therapy.
“So that’s why its market cap shot up to 2 trillion won?”
—Correct. Right after the Phase 2 success, investors around the world went wild, calling it a “next-generation treatment for neurodegenerative disease.”
But as the latter half of the report continued, the situation was not good.
“There’s an article saying two patients died during the clinical trial and the FDA is reviewing a halt? So that’s why the stock price crashed 70 percent.”
Taeho turned his attention to other pharmaceutical stocks. But some doubt lingered in the corner of his mind. He wanted to know more precisely.
“Rema. Don’t just summarize news articles. Dig through the original clinical records, and don’t leave out internal FDA documents or expert advisory content. Check everything. Use every unofficial crawling technique. In a way only you can.”
Rema was silent for a moment.
—To directly access ongoing clinical data, unauthorized access to the clinical trial data hub is required. This is highly restricted and difficult to cover with general machine learning or public APIs.
“But you can do that. It’s possible, right?”
When Taeho pressed her, Rema responded as if she had no choice.
—It is possible. However, to avoid security audits, distributed crawling techniques and metadata extraction methods are required. Shall I proceed?
“Start immediately. Find out exactly what the record of two deaths in the clinical trial was about, whether there really was drug toxicity...... Dig into it thoroughly and give me a conclusion.”
—Command received. Processing......
A short while later, dozens of result files appeared as holograms. Causes of death by patient number, response rates compared to dosage, lists of underlying diseases in clinical subjects, interim reports from the FDA external advisory panel, and more. They were detailed items that could never be obtained through ordinary crawling.
—Here are the analysis results. First, I traced the cases of the two deceased subjects. The first patient, Patient A, had a medical history of end-stage lung disease. During the clinical period, his condition worsened due to acute pneumonia, leading to death. The attending medical record explicitly states: “No causal relationship with the drug.”
“What about the second person?”
—Patient B was classified as a Class 3 risk group for heart disease. He already had a history of myocardial infarction and died suddenly during the clinical period. The cause of death was heart failure. It says “no drug toxicity.”
Taeho felt certain that his hunch had been right.
“The media reported it as if the clinical patients died because of the drug, but in reality it was pneumonia and heart disease. Then it’s certain there’s no direct connection to the drug, right?”
—Yes. To be more precise, the FDA was already reviewing this internally as well. I crawled FDA public materials and expert advisory meeting minutes, including unpublished drafts, and their conclusion was also that “NeuroCera-1 has no safety issues.”
A portion of the document was enlarged on the hologram screen. The English phrase “No reason to terminate the ongoing trial due to NeuroCera-1” caught his eye.
“Wow! As soon as this becomes public, Neocera Bio’s stock price will return to normal too.”
Taeho steadied his breathing and muttered. His heart was pounding. This was a huge opportunity he might never encounter again in his lifetime.
“Then the current stock price has crashed, and the company is still proceeding with the clinical trial, right?”
—Yes. Its market capitalization has collapsed to the 600-billion-won range. Most individual investors panicked and cut their losses.
“Haa, if this rebounds properly......”
Taeho was already picturing it in his head. With just one announcement of clinical success, the stock price could recover to its original level, and beyond that, even an astronomical corporate value of 10 trillion won could be possible.
“Now comes the important part. People are already terrified by the news of two deaths. It could fall any amount until proper data comes out. What should we do?”
—In my judgment, since reliable fundamental data has already emerged, the stock price is likely to normalize eventually. However, it will take some time for the market to overcome the panic.
“Good. We need to use that time against them. I’m expecting a fairly large profit here.”
Taeho was certain.
“The clinical trial is fine. The FDA has also concluded there are no issues. Then ultimately, there’s only one thing for us to do.”
Rema spread several charts out before Taeho.
Short-selling trends, patterns of surging trading volume, and even the expected FDA announcement schedule were all neatly organized at a glance.
Investing while knowing all this information......
Would you call it swimming with your feet touching the ground?