Ghosts of Eternity

A deep shadow from Namsan swallowed the glass windows of the reception hall.

Between the cool drafts from the air conditioner, the heavy smell of leather mingled with the sharp scent of alcohol. On a large monitor, the crowd packing the lobby of Seoul National University Hospital in Hyehwa-dong ebbed and flowed like a swarm of ants.

Chairman Jung Ui-hyun roughly pushed his crystal glass across the marble table.

Clink—

The hard clink of crystal against marble cut through the room's silence.

“They’re parading Ghost in broad daylight. Tell me, Vice Chairman Jung—does that look normal to you?”

Jung Ui-hyun’s heavy voice made no attempt to hide his displeasure. He adjusted the lapel of his dark charcoal gray suit and leaned deep into the sofa. Vice Chairman Jung Hyun-jin sank into the opposite sofa, loosening his Italian silk tie.

Perhaps thanks to his regular doses of Ghost 2.0, the muscles around his eyes twitched subtly, unable to contain the overflowing energy.

“How could it be normal? Over 8,000 applicants across the nation went out of their minds applying for a Phase 2 trial recruiting a mere 180 people. This isn't a drug trial—it's a new religious revival. I had no idea there were so many chemically dead men in this country.”

Jung Hyun-jin let out a dry laugh and swirled his glass. Jung Ui-hyun tapped the leather seat impatiently.

“Choi Do-sik, Shin Hae-ryung, and even General Park Sang-do—those old geezers couldn’t even keep a single headline from spreading?”

“Old man Choi Do-sik left it open on purpose,” Jung Hyun-jin added softly. “He released the bait to scrape together a list of which pharmaceutical companies and brokers would jump at it.”

His eyes, however, soon settled into a cold stillness.

He was thinking of Dr. Lee Seo-han’s arrogant face—the man who had ruthlessly cut off even the 100-million-won monthly advisory fee, claiming it was no longer necessary. In Jung Hyun-jin’s eyes, Seo-han had severed the very shackles binding them as co-conspirators in a shared weakness, looking down on them as nothing more than test subjects.

At least, that was what Jung Hyun-jin believed. A primal fear scraped down his spine: the moment he failed to prove his usefulness as an intermediary, his access to the next dose might be cut off overnight.

“What if this leads to a National Assembly hearing instead of the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety? We won’t be building an empire. We’ll be running a circus.”

Beside them, Goo Tae-min, staring at his tablet screen, nudged the frame of his glasses upward with the tip of his finger. The display showed terms like Aether Bio, Rejuvenation Spray, and Ghost plastering the top real-time search rankings.

“Measures are required. We must respond in stages.”

Goo Tae-min’s voice was as precise as the turning gears of a machine.

“First, we have the elders shut down public exposure completely. Then, we dilute the remaining rumors into simple ‘biotech hype’ or an ‘exaggerated investment bubble.’ We must make it so that only those who want to believe will believe. If we draw the attention of the entire nation, it will create problems for our regulatory negotiations.”

Goo Tae-min swiped the tablet screen to bring up a complex draft of legislative amendments.

“This is not simply about raising entry barriers to secure a monopoly. Right now, together with Senior Presidential Secretary Baek Seo-yoon, we are reshaping the regulatory framework so that it works in our favor. The moment this fact is exposed to the outside, everything crumbles. Until Phase 3 is complete, there can be no noise.”

Jung Ui-hyun cast a seasoned look at him.

“You’re building a regulatory firewall to buy time to cement the legal foundation.”

“Precisely. Until the legal revisions are complete and Phase 3 wraps up, this drug must remain a ghost that does not exist in this world.”

Jung Hyun-jin paused with his glass halfway to his lips and stared fixedly at Goo Tae-min.

“That sounds good, but if we erase it too cleanly, won't it look even more suspicious?”

“It needs to look suspicious,” Goo Tae-min answered without a moment’s hesitation.

Jung Ui-hyun’s eyebrow twitched slightly. “Explain.”

“To the public, it should look like an illusion. To those who need it, it should remain real.”

Goo Tae-min enlarged the search trend graph with his finger.

From the moment the video footage at the Hyehwa-dong site began to spread, search volumes had spiked exponentially. Beneath it, sharing speed per account and regional access distributions were meticulously categorized.

“There are three types of people interested right now.”

The first dataset glowed red.

“Casual onlookers. If the articles and videos vanish, they will move on to another topic within a week.”

The second group turned orange.

“People who actually need Ghost for themselves or their families. The more information disappears, the more obsessively they will search for traces.”

In the final group, names of domestic and international pharmaceutical companies, private hospitals, and investment firms packed the screen.

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“And the third group. They no longer doubt the truth. They are only looking for purchase methods and the manufacturer.”

Jung Hyun-jin laughed softly. “In short, strip away the fools and keep only the useful ones.”

“More accurately, we segment the access paths.” Goo Tae-min swiped the screen again. “A drug that appears to be an illusion to the general public, but exists as a reality to those who need it. That state is the safest.”

“It doesn't exist in the world, but it exists for those with money and information?”

“Yes.” Goo Tae-min’s response was brief. “The moment Ghost is advertised, it becomes a commodity. But as long as it exists only as a rumor, it becomes a faith.”

A brief silence settled over the reception room.

Jung Ui-hyun slowly raised his glass and drained the remaining alcohol down his throat.

“Dr. Lee won't be pleased if he hears this.”

“CEO Lee has no interest in how the public interprets Ghost.”

“Aren't you viewing Lee Seo-han too simply?”

At Jung Ui-hyun’s question, Goo Tae-min’s gaze paused for a moment.

He did not think Lee Seo-han was trying to hide the drug's efficacy. Nor did he believe he was trying to rule the world.

He simply hated having his research interrupted above all else.

That apathy was, to Goo Tae-min, the most ominous part.

A man who wanted power could be bargained with.

A man who wanted money could be bought.

But a man indifferent to the desires of the world could not be predicted at all.

“That is why we must clear the field first,” Goo Tae-min said. “So that when CEO Lee Seo-han turns his head, there is not a single annoyance left behind.”

At the same time, in another space on Namsan.

In an underground bunker surrounded by thick concrete walls, the low hum of the ventilation system was the only sound breaking the silence. Fueled by the feverish vitality radiating from the elders who had taken Ghost, the room’s air conditioner was set several degrees lower than usual.

Choi Do-sik pointed a bony finger at the wall of monitors. On the screen, the face of a YouTuber doing a live stream in front of the Hyehwa-dong Clinical Trials Center remained frozen.

Since receiving Ghost, Choi Do-sik’s once-curved spine stood straight, and his eyes burned sharp like a hawk spotting its prey.

“Shut those fools up. This isn't something to be consumed through a cheap camera lens.”

Standing beside him, General Park Sang-do struck the floor with the heel of his combat boot.

Thud.

The underground shelter vibrated heavily. With his knee pain gone, he seemed almost unable to contain the vitality surging through him.

“This is no different from a wartime situation. Clinical data bordering on a national secret being turned into a street spectacle—this is a clear security breach.”

Former Judge Shin Hae-ryung rapidly flipped through a stack of documents on the table.

“We have more than enough justification. Patient privacy, clinical trial confidentiality, and unauthorized drug advertising regulations—pulling those in will be plenty. Convene the Korea Communications Commission, the Korea Communications Standards Commission, and our contacts in the major portal companies.”

Choi Do-sik picked up the encrypted hotline receiver.

“Begin.”

That single word immediately flowed down from Namsan through an encrypted private network.

In an unofficial situation room inside the National Intelligence Service—a place known to only a handful of people—a communications manager adjusted his headset and checked the command code appearing on his monitor.

[Classification: Emergency Protection of National Strategic Technology]

[Target Keywords: Aether Bio / Ghost 2.0 / Rejuvenation Spray / Hyehwa-dong Trial]

[Action Level: Tier 3]

The staff member’s fingers paused briefly as he confirmed the order.

Tier 3 was not simple monitoring.

Visibility restrictions.

Search blocking.

Temporary suppression of posts.

Simultaneous emergency cooperation requests to platform providers.

“Are we applying all of these?”

The division chief standing beside him answered without taking his eyes off the screen.

“Don't ask questions. What came down from above is a protection order.”

“The legal review number is blank.”

“It will be filled shortly.”

The moment the division chief spoke, approval codes began appearing in the empty fields.

The Korea Communications Standards Commission.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.

Seals from different government agencies were stamped one after another, mere seconds apart.

The staff member swallowed dryly.

Normally, this cooperation process took days. It was the kind of work where approval chains traveled back and forth multiple times because no department wanted to take responsibility first.

Now, however, the legal justification was catching up after the order had been issued.

“Starting with the portals.”

The room erupted in the clatter of keyboards.

On one side, phone calls were placed to managing editors at major news outlets. On another side, urgent official notices were delivered to policy heads at major platforms. On a third screen, real-time broadcast accounts and access locations around the Hyehwa-dong area were rapidly categorized.

[Media.]

[Personal Streams.]

[Overseas Accounts.]

[Presumed Pharma Affiliates.]

Red markers attached themselves next to each account one by one.

One staff member asked, “What about videos routed through overseas servers?”

“Don't bother trying to delete them,” the division chief answered in a low voice. “Just identify the mirror sites and the people accessing them. Knowing who picked them up is more important than wiping them clean.”

Domestic traffic on the screen dropped precipitously.

Conversely, traffic routed through Singapore, Switzerland, and the U.S. East Coast began to rise steadily.

The division chief narrowed his eyes as he watched the flow.

“So the ones who caught the scent are revealing themselves.”

While putting out the local commotion, more dangerous observers were coming out of the shadows.

That was precisely the result Choi Do-sik had been waiting for from the start.

By the time Choi Do-sik lowered the receiver, the live feed on a major terrestrial news channel froze, followed immediately by flashing red breaking news banners.

[Government to Hold Emergency Health Policy Briefing on New Bio-Drug Clinical Trial]

Cameras chasing a sensational scoop transitioned within seconds to an empty podium in a Sejong City briefing room.

The situation on portal sites was even more dramatic. Words that had dominated the top of real-time search rankings collapsed to the bottom of the charts, as if swept away by a giant broom. News articles featured on major portal homepages turned into blank white pages the moment users clicked them.

[Page Not Found]

Dozens of articles evaporated into thin air with every refresh. In front of the Hyehwa-dong Clinical Trials Center, the bewildered shouts of young people tapping frantically on their smartphone screens echoed through the monitor speakers.

“The public forgets quickly,” Shin Hae-ryung said with a cold smile. “Remove it from their eyes, and they act as if it never existed in the first place.”

The screen of a major YouTube channel streaming live to nearly a million viewers suddenly went black. Replacing it was a red warning mark:

[This video has been made private due to alleged violations of medical advertising regulations.]

The public frenzy exploding in the comment sections was crushed beneath a single warning notice. State control moved faster than the information itself could spread.

Within minutes, major online communities hid behind cold notices reading [Temporarily Unavailable Due to Maintenance].

General Park Sang-do crossed his thick arms and let out a dark chuckle.

“Quiet now. Strays only understand force. Take away the place where they bark, and they go quiet.”

It had taken just one hour. The massive commotion shaking the nation vanished as if it were a lie. Portals and online communities fell into an eerie, peaceful silence.

Choi Do-sik muttered softly without taking his eyes off the monitor.

“I wonder what Dr. Lee will say when he hears this news.”

His sharp eyes burned not with simple relief, but with a persistent analytical desire to dissect the true nature of Lee Seo-han.

No one answered.

They believed they had exercised their power to protect Ghost. Yet there was a truth none of them uttered aloud:

The moment that silver mist stopped flowing, the very first people to crumble would be themselves.