Ghosts of Eternity

The underground warehouse of Eterno, where the humid air hung heavy and damp, exuded a bizarre aroma—a mingling of the sharp sting of disinfectant with the damp, mineral smell of old concrete.

In that space, where only the low hum of the ventilation fan filled the silence, Mr. Park ripped through the packing tape with a harsh screech. Immediately after, a white cascade of cold mist emitted by the dry ice poured out from the seams of the styrofoam box like a waterfall.

Through that chilling smoke, Mr. Park carefully lifted a tray filled with glass vials. It felt as though the sub-zero chill was piercing through his thin gloves, turning his fingertips a flushed red and stripping them of sensation, but he didn't care. He smiled broadly from ear to ear as he inspected the contents of the box.

In the eyes of this loser—who had once blown his entire apartment in gambling and been relegated to a shabby apartment block on the outskirts of the city—the reagents before him seemed to look less like mere chemicals and more like gold bars that would allow him to stand on his feet again.

"Mr. Lee, I'm asking out of genuine curiosity, but why are you doing all-cash transactions while buying reagents like this? If you place a formal order through the Aether Bio corporate entity, you can issue tax invoices and keep it completely clean. Is there... like, a separate slush fund you've tucked away in your back pocket or something?"

Without halting his hands as he adjusted the level of a newly installed metal shelf on the wall, Seo-han indifferently turned his head. Beneath his loose denim shirt, its sleeves rolled up, the precisely chiseled tendons along his forearm twitched minutely. Seo-han’s chilly gaze slid past Mr. Park’s greasy forehead and lingered briefly on his thick neck.

"You don't need to know. I’m giving you an extra 20% over the market price for these goods, so why are you so curious, Mr. Park? If you want to question the source of money, do it at a bank, not here."

Mr. Park flinched at Seo-han’s freezing tone and scratched the back of his head. He tossed the block of dry ice he was holding onto the floor. The white fog, creeping low across the ground, swirled around Seo-han’s black combat boots.

"Hey, it's not like I don't trust you, Dr. Lee. Come on, we’ve got history together since your grad school days. I’m sure you’re handling things perfectly, but a guy can’t help but worry, you know?"

"Keep that worry to yourself..."

Seo-han pulled a small, silver metal case from his work pants pocket and flicked it with his index finger. A sharp, precise clack echoed through the enclosed underground warehouse, cutting Mr. Park off mid-sentence.

"It should be about time for your dose to wear off. Do you need some more? You’ve been looking a bit dull again lately, Mr. Park."

With that sound, Mr. Park’s movements instantly froze as if a spell had been cast over him. His pupils visibly dilated, staring fixedly at the case in Seo-han’s hand. That miraculous drug, which could change the world into high-definition within an hour and revive the masculinity he thought had died.

An instinctual craving and avarice flashed across his dull eyes in an instant. Yet, he soon wore a complex, subtle expression and let out a long, heavy sigh.

"Well... that medicine is truly, staggeringly good, you see. For about four days, it’s like my whole body is on fire and the entire world is beneath my feet. But the aftermath is the real problem. Once the effect ends, I just snap right back to my usual, pathetic self."

Mr. Park transferred the remaining vials to the shelf, thumping his stiff lower back.

"I’ve got a track record of driving my wife crazy during those four days, you know. You know I'm staring fifty in the face. I used to actively avoid her, but when I’m running like a hydraulic machine for days on end, she liked it at first, but later she started running away from me. The real issue is after the drug drains out; I don't even have the energy to lift a finger. Then, it goes the opposite way—I get dominated by her, or I have to tiptoe around and avoid her out of fear of getting eaten alive. In the past, when I was tired, I could defend myself by joking that old married couples aren’t supposed to paw at each other like newlyweds, but now I can’t even say that because of what I pulled during those four days. It’s absolutely killing me."

Seo-han placed the reagent bottles in a flawless line on the leveled shelf, speaking indifferently.

"That is an area where you must manage your own pacing and conduct. What matters is not such a trivial domestic happenstance, but the 'will to live' itself that governs the entire system."

Mr. Park massaged the back of his neck, staring blankly at Seo-han’s back. Seo-han turned around, zeroing his gaze directly into Mr. Park’s dull eyes.

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"Do you know this? Biologically, the moment a human being stops craving anything at all, aging accelerates. The brain categorizes the organism as 'decommissioned' and shuts down the gonadal axis. That miserable apathy you experienced is literally an express train to death."

At Seo-han’s dry diagnosis, Mr. Park swallowed dryly. It wasn't wrong. The lifeless, middle-aged face he confronted in the mirror when the drug wore off was undeniably sinking toward decay.

"Ah, hearing it that way, I guess you're right. I’d rather have the bed frame shatter to pieces than wither away like that."

This time, Seo-han pulled a small, matte-black cylinder from his pocket—different from the silver case he had shown earlier.

"Then take this upgraded version. There is no need for the hassle of sterilization and injection. I recalibrated the absorption route and smoothed out the response curve. It should reduce the sharp crash you used to experience and stretch the output longer."

Mr. Park’s eyes looked ready to pop out of his skull. He snatched the black cylinder from Seo-han’s hand as if receiving a holy relic.

"What? No injection needed, and it lasts longer? Dr. Lee, I always knew you were a genius, but this is a completely different ballgame!"

An abnormal surge of vitality returned to Mr. Park’s face once more. He stuffed the cylinder carefully into the deepest part of his inner pocket and clapped Seo-han lightly on the shoulder.

"Man, you really are the savior of my life. Don't worry about the supplies. I’ll scour the ends of the earth to make sure I bring you the freshest materials."

Humming a tune, Mr. Park exited the warehouse with a light stride. Seo-han stared at the space he had vacated until the heavy iron door of the basement slammed shut, cutting through the silence. In the empty underground space, only Seo-han’s chilly gaze and the mechanical hum of the ventilation shaft remained.

Those in power craved youth, and Mr. Park craved his vanished masculinity. And the masses, driven by the most trivial yet relentless desire to become beautiful without pain, willingly opened their wallets.

Seo-han viewed all these cravings through the exact same lens. A signal, a demand, and an algorithm.

About a month ago, the 'Hair Donation Campaign' that had set Aether Bio’s internal bulletin board ablaze had left a lingering, ghost-story-like question among the researchers.

Seo-han had isolated the unique markers present exclusively in human hair from the piles of hair clippings stacked in the corner of the lab. Operating his proprietary Selectome platform, he precisely screened for the optimal antibody candidates that clung to those markers like a magnet.

And at the terminal end of that antibody sequence, he engineered a fusion with an enzyme module designed to react solely with the hair structure, entirely without irritating the skin barrier. It was the precise moment the final candidate substance based on the Antibody-Enzyme Conjugate (AEC)—'AEC-101'—had finally taken shape.

On the lab bench, a single ampoule sat illuminated by the cold fluorescent light from the ceiling, gleaming brilliantly. Seo-han lifted the ampoule with a pair of tweezers and shook it gently at eye level. The refracting beams of light scattered faintly across his expressionless face.

"This is no mere depilatory agent."

His low voice broke the quiet of the vacant laboratory.

The liquid inside the ampoule was a secret weapon destined to completely reshape the landscape of the global hair removal market—a market expanding massively year after year toward a multi-trillion-won scale.

It was fundamentally distinct from the crude chemical creams on the market that indiscriminately melted protein and left the skin barrier in tatters, or laser hair removal that required enduring the agony of burning hair roots over multiple clinic visits. Without causing a single hint of irritation to the skin surface, the antibody-guided payload infiltrated beneath the epidermis, systematically dismantling only the root of the hair at a molecular level.

"Pain-free, absolute control."

If one could cleanly erase unwanted body hair in the comfort of their own bathroom in just ten minutes without any irritation, it was no longer cosmetics; it was an everyday revolution reshaping the map of the human anatomy.

Seo-han dialed an internal extension.

"Supervisor Park, upload the report on the skin irritation and selective degradation tests. I only need to see three metrics: epidermal damage rate, inflammatory response, and regeneration speed."

The following morning, a thick dossier landed on Seo-han’s desk. Glancing only at the graph on the first page, Seo-han skipped straight to the conclusion.

[No anomalies detected. Epidermal damage rate within permissible thresholds. Selective degradation limited to hair structures.]

Closing the report, Seo-han headed straight to the mirror in his private laboratory. A rough, dark stubble from two days of not shaving awaited him.

He squeezed a small amount of the refined gel form of AEC-101 onto his fingers and spread it thinly along his jawline and philtrum. There was none of the foul, sulfurous stench typical of commercial creams. Only a cool sensation of moisture enveloped his skin.

The wait was brief. The moment the timer stopped, Seo-han took a wet piece of gauze and lightly wiped his chin. There was no metallic friction of a razor blade, no stinging burn, and no blue shadow left behind from the roots.

With every pass of the gauze, the coarse whiskers slid away effortlessly. Beneath it, what remained was perfectly refined hardware, devoid of even a trace of a blue shadow.

Seo-han traced his chin with his fingertips. Instead of a rough resistance, a cool smoothness transferred along the ridges of his fingerprint.

Having verified the definitive feedback, he confidently rolled the sleeve of his denim shirt higher and applied a thin layer of the remaining gel to his other forearm. Far from pain, there wasn't even the faintest itch—an overwhelming display of efficiency.

Wiping his forearm with the gauze once more, the dark, coarse hairs vanished like a mirage, cleanly exposing transparent, perfectly refined skin beneath. The texture was flawless, without a single hint of redness.

Slowly rubbing his forearm, Seo-han drew a cold, satisfied arc with his lips.

"This will sell."

His gaze shifted to the draft of the business plan on his desk.

If 'Ghost' was a weapon of the dark designed to leash the necks of the powerful, this clear gel would become the currency of the light—governing the daily routines of the global population and filling the coffers of Aether Bio.

The grand alchemy that would elevate Eterno's dark fund flows into a legitimate revenue structure for Aether Bio was, at this very moment, proving its ruthless efficiency on Seo-han’s forearm.