Chapter 118: The Missing Core

From early morning, Park Su-jin was on the move. Just yesterday, after finishing a comparative analysis between the information received from Yu Hye-ro and the previous research data, his confusion had only deepened.

The more he dug into the parts that didn’t quite add up, the more hypotheses surfaced. Among them, one detail stood out above all others.

The second test subject—Jung Su-han—was a patient suffering from a rare disease.

Park Su-jin had a vague understanding of the illness. He’d attended a few forums on rare diseases related to abilities. But rare diseases were called rare for a reason—information was scarce, and most of what existed amounted to little more than uncertain conjecture.

Jung Su-han’s condition was a form of autoimmune disease, in which the body’s immune cells recognized the ability core as an enemy and attacked it. Because medicine still couldn’t explain how ability cores came to exist in the human body in the first place, treatment methods had inevitably stagnated.

The sample size was too small, and the number of people interested in it even smaller.

At a national level, documentaries had been produced to raise awareness about rare diseases affecting ability users, but public interest remained minimal.

Lost in thought, Park Su-jin suddenly lifted his head.

“…A documentary.”

A documentary he’d watched years ago flashed through his mind. He immediately began rummaging through his external hard drive. Memories surfaced—of the time when he still carried a sense of responsibility as a researcher, when guilt toward Yu Hye-ro had driven him to collect every scrap of data he could find on ability-related illnesses.

Dragging down countless files, his gaze finally stopped.

“Jung Su-han….”

The real name, not anonymized, appeared on the screen. Lying on a hospital bed with a deathly pale face was a boy who looked barely alive. Standing before him was a middle-aged man whose expression seemed even more lifeless.

[“…It’s not anyone’s fault, is it? There’s no heredity, no family history. The doctors and everyone else say it’s just bad luck, but… how could a parent accept that? How could I so easily think my child is sick just because he’s unlucky? My wife isn’t an ability user, so it feels like it’s all my fault… I’m sorry.”]

The voice, thick with suppressed tears, was tangled with countless emotions. The first time Park Su-jin had watched this documentary, he’d been unable to hold back his own tears.

[“I never planned on appearing on something like this, but… if doing this might help find a treatment, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do. If it means my child can live just a little longer… Right now, everything is lacking—research, treatment, all of it. And… somewhere out there, there might be someone suffering from the same illness as my child. Or there might be in the future. I wanted to help, even if only a little.”]

Hiss. Hiss. The camera zoomed in on the face of a child wearing a ventilator. His features were so young he looked barely old enough to be in elementary school.

Compared to what Park Su-jin had seen just yesterday, the child’s condition did seem to have improved.

But Park Su-jin knew that was only how it appeared. There was no way the Association’s research institute could have accomplished in just a few years what the rest of the world had failed to do.

[“If my child can be cured, truly… I’ll do anything. Anything at all.”]

They were simply exploiting a desperate father’s hope with a sleight of hand.

But how?

Park Su-jin began to ponder the method behind the deception. With his left hand, he flipped through research materials; with his right, he scribbled notes incessantly.

That was when he found it—the void within the ability core.

Jung Su-han’s ability core contained no ability. In other words, it lacked the very source required to use one.

Because of that void, the immune cells had likely misidentified the ability core and attacked it. If someone was going to become the mutant known as an ability user, then their body should have changed accordingly—but the problem was that Jung Su-han’s body remained that of a non-ability user.

There were notes explaining how potions and drugs designed for ability users had little effect on him. Records showed steadily increasing dosages. Eventually, severe side effects from overdosing had forced a halt to the drug trials.

Judging by what he’d seen yesterday, it seemed those trials had resumed nonetheless.

Come to think of it, drugs hadn’t worked well on Yu Hye-ro either. Ability enhancers and manifestation agents, in particular, had been almost useless on him. Yet Yu Hye-ro didn’t suffer from a rare disease—and his body wasn’t that of a non-ability user.

He needed to identify both the similarities and the differences between the two.

At that moment—

Knock, knock.

Someone knocked on the door to Park Su-jin’s office. When there was no response, the visitor opened the door and stepped inside.

“Are you busy?”

“…A little. Why?”

It was Gam Ju-an. Knowing how tense Park Su-jin had been lately, members of the Knocker Guild usually avoided coming near his office.

“Is it urgent?”

That was why Park Su-jin assumed Gam Ju-an must be here for something important. But Gam Ju-an merely shook his head. Since Park Su-jin still had his face buried in his work, he failed to notice the concern in Gam Ju-an’s eyes.

“You haven’t gone home in over a week.”

“…Has it really been that long?”

He’d been closing in on a long-sought clue, so much so that he hadn’t even noticed the passage of time.

“Are you even sleeping properly? I heard you’re not eating either.”

Gam Ju-an sounded slightly annoyed. Only then did Park Su-jin lift his head, his shoulders aching stiffly.

Gam Ju-an quickly approached the desk, holding a black bag.

Thud. He set it down squarely on the desk. Park Su-jin naturally closed the file he’d been looking at and pushed it aside.

“Eat.”

“Leave it and go.”

“I’m not leaving until I see you eat. That’s the guild members’ consensus. I’m just the representative.”

Considering Gam Ju-an himself used to lock himself away for days when absorbed in work, it was oddly endearing that he was now worrying about someone else.

“Feels like mirror therapy,” Park Su-jin muttered.

Gam Ju-an seemed to think the same, muttering under his breath. In the end, Park Su-jin set aside his glasses and picked up the porridge—warm to the point of being hot.

Gam Ju-an circled around the desk and stood close beside him, practically keeping watch. His gaze drifted to the monitor.

A scene from the documentary was playing. Onscreen, Jung Su-han’s father was crying.

“Oh—this man.”

“You’ve seen this too?”

Park Su-jin spooned the still-hot porridge into his mouth without flinching. Gam Ju-an handed him a bottle of water and nodded.

“Yes. He’s one of our guild’s clients… I figured he must’ve had some kind of story, but I didn’t know his child was sick.”

As Gam Ju-an finished speaking, his eyes skimmed the documentary’s title and subtitle—then snapped back to Park Su-jin. Park Su-jin froze, spoon midair.

“What?”

“…Yes?”

“You said our client?”

“Yes. Come to think of it, he hasn’t come by for the past few years. Still, I remembered him because he was unusual. He wasn’t a hunter, but he bought large quantities of ability enhancers and recovery potions. Sometimes he even looked for anesthetics or sleeping agents—the kind that dull pain. The ingredient used for those was banned about five years ago.”

That ingredient had been one of the herbs commonly found in dungeons. A compound forbidden for use on non-ability users had been detected in it—a substance notorious for its toxicity and addictiveness. While no major side effects had been found in ability users, the International Hunter Association had issued a ban as a precaution.

Hunters who felt catharsis in pushing their bodies to the limit had protested fiercely, but enforcement was strict enough that it had vanished even from the black market.

“He said it was the only thing that worked. At the time, I thought he’d built up a tolerance or had some unusual constitution… but maybe he used it on his child. He stopped coming as soon as sales were discontinued.”

Gam Ju-an clicked his tongue in pity. His child was a non-ability user—yet also an ability user.

Nodding along with Gam Ju-an’s speculation, Park Su-jin rose to his feet.

“The client records haven’t been deleted yet, right?”

“They’re deleted after five years. Still, I’ll check.”

Gam Ju-an hurried out of the office. Park Su-jin tapped the desk nervously with his fingertips.

A moment later, Gam Ju-an returned, both hands empty.

“…They’re already gone. By about a week.”

“Ah…”

Park Su-jin let out a strained groan and buried his face in his palms.

“Is it urgent? Research-related, right?”

“…Yeah.”

Gam Ju-an sighed along with him. Park Su-jin stared blankly at the final line of the documentary, which displayed a message asking viewers to come forward with tips. For a moment, he considered contacting the broadcaster to ask for the father’s contact information.

But there was no way a broadcast station would handle personal data that carelessly.

Then Gam Ju-an suddenly groaned, as if something had just occurred to him.

“Ah.”

“……”

“Come to think of it, he once contacted me directly—on my personal number. Late at night. He said he urgently needed that medicine.”

“What?”

“If I dig through my phone, I think it’ll be there…”

Gam Ju-an was the type to use things for a long time. On top of that, he was handy enough to fix them himself, keeping devices in pristine condition without ever needing service.

The outdated phone, long since discontinued, gleamed as if new. As Gam Ju-an worked the device intently, he suddenly stomped his foot.

“I found it!”

At last, they’d uncovered a link. It was time to peel back another layer of the veil covering the truth.

📚 Also on NHV Novels

Male Body, Female Soul

DramaFemale ProtagonistGender Bender

Read Now →
Not interested