Seoul National University Hospital, Neurology Intensive Care Unit.
It was a little past lunchtime when the helicopter carrying Seoha landed on the rooftop. Cheolho, who had been at the office, received the call and hurried out, picked up the two of them, and headed for Seoul.
“Professor Kwon?”
Kwon Dohyeong, the country’s foremost neurologist.
Government agents had come to his home on his day off.
They told him that a very important person was being transported to the hospital and asked him to hurry. Professor Kwon, without even knowing what was going on, got into the car.
‘A politician or a chaebol, I suppose.’
Seeing as even a state agency had been mobilized, it seemed the patient must be quite the heavyweight. An equal society, proclaimed only in words. The fact that the weight of a life could differ so greatly depending on social status filled him with self-loathing.
But the moment he saw the face of the patient carried in on the stretcher, Dohyeong could not hide his agitation. The tremendous burden, something he was experiencing for the first time in his life, made his hands tremble.
What if a misdiagnosis damaged even one percent of this genius’s brain?
He, too, was a scientist.
If something like that happened, he felt he would never be able to forgive himself.
“I’m going to wash my face.”
Dohyeong splashed cold water over his face several times to wake himself up, then steadied his breathing.
Tests continued throughout the afternoon.
MRI, fMRI, EEG.
It would be accurate to say that they ran every test they could.
Professor Kwon fell into thought as he flipped through the results one page at a time. In more than twenty years as a doctor, he had seen all kinds of patients. Brain tumors, cerebral infarctions, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis… But this was his first time seeing a case like this.
“What is this?”
A resident enlarged the PET-CT image.
A glucose metabolism activation map.
In a normal brain, the frontal and parietal lobes should be evenly lit. But this patient was different. The left region of the prefrontal cortex was abnormally hyperactive. A value exceeding fifty percent above normal.
“Can overwork explain this?”
Dohyeong stared at the image, then shook his head.
“If it were overwork, it would appear overall. It wouldn’t be concentrated on one side like this.”
An ideal pattern of brain usage.
And yet there was no basis for conclusively calling it pathological.
“This is strange, too.”
The resident looked over the EEG results.
“He’s asleep, but arousal signals are still present?”
“Yes. But that isn’t completely unheard of, either.”
He spread all the test results out across the desk.
No tumor.
No infarction.
No infection.
No metabolic abnormality.
Everything was suspicious. But he could not find the cause.
Each individual value told him there was nothing wrong, but the overall picture was oddly misaligned.
“People don’t collapse for no reason.”
He considered possible causes.
Not all brain diseases could be explained through neurology.
‘Could it be a software problem?’
He opened a drawer and took out his business card holder.
There was a card he had received a few years ago at a conference in Amsterdam. At the time, their sessions had been different, so he had merely listened to the man’s lecture and left it at that.
Ezra Davis.
Chair professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, the most unrivaled institution in neuropsychiatry.
Dohyeong looked at the clock.
“He should be in Japan for a conference…”
He looked at the business card and dialed the number.
* * *
“Mr. Yu, have you recently heard a voice in your head that was not your own?”
A sharp gaze.
At the abrupt question, Seoha’s mind went blank.
The first thought that came to him was the tragedy Einstein had suffered.
Einstein’s final wish to be cremated after death was not honored. Thomas Harvey, the pathologist in charge of the autopsy, stole his brain without consent, cut it into 240 pieces, and preserved it. All because of his obsession with uncovering the secret of genius.
He turned his gaze away.
His father and mother were looking at him with their hands clasped together. Seoeun’s face, lips pressed tightly shut as she held back tears.
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then opened them.
“No.”
He did not want anyone to discover Ducky’s existence.
The things he had borne alone since childhood—this would not change in the future, either.
His mouth felt rough and dry. There was a heavy sensation settling in one corner of his chest. Deceiving others was never a pleasant feeling.
“Hahaha!”
Ezra suddenly burst into loud laughter.
It was a hearty laugh, loud enough to shake the air inside the hospital room. Miyeong and Cheolho looked at him in confusion.
“My apologies. An occupational habit slipped out.”
He waved his hand and spoke glibly to Seoha’s family.
“I always ask that question to patients I meet for the first time. Please don’t mind it. It’s a kind of routine.”
The stiffness faded from Miyeong and Cheolho’s faces.
Ezra turned and picked up the chart lying beside the bed. As he did, he naturally took one step closer to Seoha.
Click.
Pretending to examine him, he turned on his light and checked Seoha’s pupillary response, then slipped a small note into Seoha’s hand.
When Seoha looked up in surprise, Ezra had already turned away.
He was calmly explaining the test results to Seoha’s family. Seoha discreetly hid the note in his hand beneath the sheet.
* * *
A four-star hotel beside the hospital.
Shrrrk.
In the evening, Ezra Davis rose from the bed and drew back the curtains in his room.
“When will he come? I hope it won’t be too late.”
Decades spent as a psychologist and psychiatrist. He was a man thoroughly accustomed to lies.
Patients always lied.
Intentional deception, or an unconscious defense mechanism meant to protect oneself. There were countless reasons.
Therefore, it was only natural that he came to listen more closely to the physiological responses shown by patients’ bodies than to their answers.
“Pfft!”
He laughed.
Seoha was the worst liar he had ever met.
When a person lies, their blood pressure rises.
The possibility that the lie may be discovered—because the human body recognizes that situation as danger. The amygdala processes that signal no differently from prey on the plains encountering a lion. It prepares for combat in order to respond to an immediate crisis.
Of course, skilled deceivers can control this to some extent.
Regulating one’s breathing to slow the heart rate and maintaining a steady gaze. Such coping methods were included in the training programs of special agents.
Yu Seoha had probably never lied in his life.
His blood pressure had not merely risen; he had gone red from his neck all the way across his face. Such an unguarded response would be hard to find even in a seven-year-old child.
Ezra had to quickly smooth over the situation.
After all, a psychologist unable to win a patient’s trust was even more useless than a surgeon afraid of blood.
The CT scans Professor Kwon sent him clearly suggested that there was an abnormal finding in Seoha’s brain.
The subcortical regions and limbic system, including the putamen, thalamus, and hippocampus, were hyperactive.
This phenomenon bore some resemblance to that seen in certain patients with schizophrenia, but it was completely different in that there was no accompanying damage to the gray matter. Moreover, the prefrontal-parietal network seen in patients with dissociative disorders was active. There were studies showing that this aided memory ability, but—
Was it possible to take only the benefits while minimizing the side effects to such an extent?
‘It’s as if…’
As if the brain had rewired its own circuitry.
He shook his head roughly.
Impossible.
The human brain is not designed with a purpose. When a specific stimulus is repeated, synaptic connections may be strengthened, but that is, at most, a passive adaptation based on experience. The environment changes the brain; for a human to intend such a thing is absurd.
“Fascinating.”
There were far too many things he could not understand.
Even so, through the CT, Ezra could glimpse one aspect of Seoha’s genius.
Schizophrenia and genius have a genetic link.
In a manner of speaking, it was like the same seed growing into completely different plants depending on the soil. The inverted U-shaped model spoken of in psychiatry.
Knock, knock!
He looked at the clock.
Nine o’clock in the evening.
‘Faster than I expected.’
“Come in.”
Creak.
When the door opened, Seoha stood there hesitating awkwardly.
He wore jeans and a hoodie. Hospital slippers were on his feet. He was alone, without a guardian, and he held nothing in his hands.
‘Hm?’
An agent in a black suit was watching from a distance, as though protecting him. Ezra guessed that Seoha had likely received permission to go out while keeping it secret from his family.
“…”
“Have a seat.”
Ezra pointed to the sofa by the window.
The main light was off, and two stands on either side of the bed were on. The bed had been pushed into the corner, and in its place, two single armchairs had been set at a slant, facing each other.
It was a counseling room Ezra had improvised for Seoha.
While Seoha settled into his seat, Ezra turned his gaze out the window. It was to avoid making him feel as though he were being observed.
Rustle.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Ezra Davis. Do you happen to know who I am?”
“Yes.”
Seoha shifted his posture as if the chair were uncomfortable and answered.
“Through my books, I assume. May I ask which book you read?”
“All of them…”
“Mm?”
“All nine books you’ve written, Professor.”
Ezra’s eyes widened.
Several of them had gone out of print years ago. They were not easy to obtain unless one was connected to academia. What had he been trying so hard to find out?
Ezra swallowed and asked.
“Since when? Don’t worry. Nothing said here will leave this room. If I disclosed it, I would be violating HIPAA in the United States and the APA Code of Ethics. Not only would I lose my license, I would be subject to criminal punishment.”
Seoha’s face relaxed considerably.
“It was when I was in sixth grade…”
It was a long story.
The symptoms he had experienced around the age of twelve were clearly on the obsessive-compulsive spectrum. Seoha had suppressed them by stimulating the brain’s reward circuit through mathematical beauty.
But this was not something a child who had not even entered middle school should have been capable of doing.
Ezra’s fingertips trembled faintly.
“Recently, Ducky has gotten a little cheekier…”
Seoha continued speaking as if he found it enjoyable.
But Ezra was so astonished he could hardly keep his mouth closed.
‘Twelve years old.’
The average age at which obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders first manifested clinically. But the problem was what came after.
‘A child who created his own inhibitory mechanism at the very moment of onset.’
As he listened to the more recent parts of the story, his expression turned incredulous.
Ducky.
That was not a defense mechanism.
In psychiatry, a defense mechanism is a psychological strategy in which the ego mobilizes the unconscious to handle anxiety it can endure.
Seoha seemed to regard Ducky as an ordinary psychological prescription, but this was clearly a misunderstanding. The core of a defense mechanism lies in its unconscious nature.
Seoha had been different from the start.
He gave it a name and created rules. And over ten years, he conversed and negotiated with Ducky, refining it with precision.
The CT images rose in Ezra’s mind.
‘N-no way!’
What if, through this process, he had been altering the physical structure of his brain?
His throat suddenly went dry.
There was only one reasonable conclusion he could draw.
He and his mathematical ego had created, within his brain, the most ideal environment in which they could live.
“Professor?”
Seoha looked puzzled, as if asking why he was so surprised.
Ezra shook his head.
The symptoms Seoha had experienced and his case of self-treatment were clinically worthless.
Because no one else would ever be able to reproduce them.
Suddenly, a certain hypothesis flashed through his mind.
Unlike when he was young, the current Seoha had opened several of his brain’s circuits. Those parts were originally the territory where Ducky had resided. If Seoha became able to use that territory directly, what would Ducky become later?
Extinction, rebellion, integration, or would it descend into something even darker and deeper? Until that day came, there was no way to know.