Seo-han snapped on a pair of white latex gloves.
A sharp, elastic thwack echoed through the silent laboratory as the material sealed tight around his wrists, cleanly overlapping the sleeves of his neatly pressed navy shirt.
He assumed a flawless posture in front of the clean bench. The faint whir of the HEPA filter and the crisp, stinging aroma of absolute ethanol disinfectant brushed against his nose.
Atop the stainless steel counter, reagent vials, micropipettes, and a chilled cooling block rested in perfect, mirrored symmetry.
Seo-han pulled open the heavy door of the ultra-low-temperature freezer, unleashing a plume of freezing vapor that billowed out like fog. From its depths, he retrieved a small vial of Phantom Base.
The transparent liquid inside had frozen into a thin, crystalline film clinging to the inner glass wall.
"Let’s see how this one turns out..."
The murmur escaped his mask, dissolving instantly into the sterile air.
The corner of his mouth twitched minutely upward into a bizarre angle—neither a smile nor a sneer.
Seo-han quietly opened his laptop. The screen illuminated with a chaotic, interwoven 3D molecular model of a protein structure. Near the N-terminus of the peptide sequence, the cursor blinked steadily.
With practiced precision, his fingers glided across the trackpad, appending a palmitoyl group to the tip of the sequence.
On the monitor, the molecular simulation began computing in real time, immediately shifting the structural equilibrium. The slender, elegant lines of the peptide buckled abruptly the moment the sixteen-carbon lipid tail was attached.
The long, hydrophobic tail coiled inward, slithering into a vacant pocket on the protein's surface and locking flat against it.
Seo-han swapped the tip of his micropipette. Relying entirely on the tactile memory of his fingertips, he dialed the thumbwheel to calibrate the exact micro-volume.
He carefully drew up a pre-measured solution of active ester and let it glide slowly down the inner wall of the vial.
Drip. Drip.
As the reaction fluids mingled, a faint, shimmering vortex swirled beneath the transparent surface.
Seo-han clicked the start button on his stopwatch. The digits blurred as they began counting up.
"Whoever ends up with this is going to have one hell of a headache."
Seo-han didn’t smile. His eyes remained flat, cold, and serene.
During the brief window of the reaction, he flawlessly simulated the next phase of the process within the machinery of his mind.
The core of this particular trick was human albumin—specifically, serum-derived protein purified to an exceptionally high concentration.
In his previous attempt, he had used a primitive noise tactic, simply flooding the sample with raw human serum to blur the vision of the mass spectrometer (LC-MS/MS).
This time, the cloaking mechanism was far more sophisticated. He was hiding the target peptide directly inside the massive embrace of the albumin protein itself.
The lipid-tailed peptide would slip effortlessly into the hydrophobic pocket of the albumin, binding with absolute tenacity. The massive transport carrier would essentially swallow the drug whole.
The moment Ki Jong-ho attempted to digest this sample with trypsin to analyze it, the gargantuan albumin would shatter into a chaotic deluge of hundreds of fragments.
Amid that overwhelming tidal wave of noise, the true target—present only in nanogram traces—would either be chopped beyond recognition or adsorb irreversibly onto the instrument's column, evaporating without a trace.
With a limited volume of the drug and the constraints of Ki Jong-ho's equipment and time, finding the answer would be practically impossible.
The timer beeped.
Without a second of hesitation, Seo-han transferred the sample.
He introduced a buffer solution to induce the binding reaction and submerged the electrode of the pH meter. The digital display stabilized at the target pH.
He pipetted the pre-quantified, high-concentration albumin solution and dropped it in, one meticulous droplet at a time, while maintaining a gentle vortex.
The crystal-clear liquid began to alter its physical texture. It didn’t turn cloudy, but its refractive index shifted dramatically.
The viscosity climbed minutely, giving off a dense, syrupy consistency.
In a microscopic realm invisible to the naked eye, the molecules were clustering together into dense molecular assemblies.
Seo-han took a microscopic aliquot of the finished solution and deposited it onto a microfluidic chip for testing.
He slid the chip into the instrument slot, and the machine hummed to life with a low, tight vibration.
Moments later, a real-time graph mapping the binding fraction materialized on the monitor. The curve climbed aggressively before plateauing into a smooth, level ridge.
Seo-han’s eyes rapidly scanned the digital matrix.
"Perfect."
A low, satisfied breath escaped his lips.
The palmitoyl group had slotted into the albumin's hydrophobic pocket with zero margin of error, biting down tight.
The fraction of free, unbound peptide drifting in the solution had fallen to trace levels. In this state, the target would be thoroughly pulverized during any standard sample preparation.
No matter what tricks Ki Jong-ho pulled, cleanly isolating this bond would be impossible.
The flawless cloaking barrier he desired was complete.
With his gloved hand, Seo-han lined up four empty vials. Using an automated dispenser, he portioned out exactly one milliliter of the solution into each.
He left the exterior of the glass completely unlabelled.
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Slotted into a refrigerated tray, he lifted one vial to inspect it against the harsh white light of the ceiling.
The liquid swirling inside was utterly unremarkable—clear, still, and benign. It betrayed no anomaly whatsoever.
Yet beneath that tranquil surface lay layers of a diabolical protein-engineering design, folded tight and waiting to plunge Ki Jong-ho into absolute despair.
Seo-han snapped the vial back into the tray, opened a black insulated container, and lined it with thick foam padding.
The four vials slid smoothly into the custom cutouts, fitting flush with a precise, unyielding snugness.
Jeong Hyun-jin arrived at the SNU Medical School annex back entrance in the stark cold of early morning.
A black insulated container hung from his hand, the veins on his knuckles bulging tight against the handle.
The case was compact, but Hyun-jin gripped it with a desperate intensity far greater than any briefcase full of cash.
As the heavy door to the top-secret analysis lab swung open, a wall of cold air and mechanical heat rushed out simultaneously.
It was a stagnant cocktail of metallic ions, harsh disinfectants, and the bitter residue of stale coffee.
Professor Ki Jong-ho, his crumpled shirt collar peeking out from beneath his lab coat, turned around from the monitor.
Behind his reading glasses, his eyes instantly locked onto the container.
Hyun-jin set the box down on the benchtop with a firm thud.
"Take it."
Ki popped the latches. Nestled within the foam padding were three transparent vials.
One was already inside Hyun-jin’s system. The remaining liquid was as clear as distilled water.
Ki reached out, then hesitated. He snapped on a fresh pair of gloves first, his fingertips visibly trembling.
"Is this the raw solution?"
"Yes."
The curt confirmation made Ki’s Adam's apple bob heavily.
Blood suddenly rushed back into a face that had spent the last three days decaying over microscopic residue. He hoisted one of the vials against the light.
He had braced himself for another murky sample suffocated by serum noise, but this was unnervingly pristine.
"If it’s the raw solution... we can at least make an attempt."
The moment those words hit the laboratory floor, the entire atmosphere shifted. Ki slammed his palm flat against the benchtop.
"Recall the entire laboratory staff. Open up both LC-MS/MS lines and clear all HPLC reservations immediately.
Set digestion conditions for trypsin, chymotrypsin, and Glu-C—the whole array. Crack open fresh desalting cartridges."
Two research assistants bolted.
Phones rang, doors slammed shut, and refrigeration drawers slid open in rapid succession.
The overlapping sounds of centrifuge lids locking down, nitrogen gas venting, and furious keyboard clicks filled the space.
Ki turned to face Hyun-jin.
"Last time, the human serum protein noise was an impenetrable wall. It completely blinded the mass spectrometer.
But a raw solution changes the mathematics. Once we strip away the primary matrix, the structural formula will emerge."
Hyun-jin crossed his arms, offering a rigid nod.
"If you fail this time, Professor, you might as well take down the sign to your laboratory."
Ki didn't bother to reply; his attention had already drifted back to the display.
The first vial was diluted, transferred to a preparation tube, and calibrated for protein precipitation.
The HPLC samples were passed through a 0.22-micron filter and partitioned into autosampler vials.
The LC-MS/MS system maintained a low, aggressive hum as the column temperature climbed and the mobile phase pressure stabilized within the safety threshold.
The first chromatogram materialized on the monitor.
Ki stroked his chin.
"...!"
Where a sharp, beautiful single peak should have emerged, a bizarrely broad, smeared shoulder stretched across the axis.
It wasn't a clean signal; it was a muddy, bleeding mass. The resolution was atrocious.
The retention time made no sense—a chaotic pattern indicating a substance repeatedly sticking to the column and tearing away.
He immediately shifted parameters. Altered mobile phase composition. Modified gradients. Adjusted flow rates.
The second run was worse.
"This makes no sense," Ki muttered under his breath. Beside him, a researcher held their breath.
Ki immediately routed the sample to the preparative HPLC line.
"We isolate first."
He fractionated the sample into tight, sequential cuts, re-injecting each individual fraction back into the mass spectrometer.
Yet, the further they fractured the sample, the more the target signal dissolved into a ghost.
The data packet existed, but it eluded his grasp—clinging tightly to some massive molecular carrier, leaking only its mass profile.
Ki’s hand froze over the mouse.
"Wait."
He pulled up the raw, unmanipulated spectrum. A vast molecular weight distribution.
The heavy, unmistakable shadow of a dominant protein frequently found in human serum. But the structural texture was entirely different from last time.
This wasn't simple contamination. A specific molecular weight range was repeating with terrifying stability.
"Skip the desalting phase. Run a direct deconvolution on the raw data."
The researcher executed the command. As the algorithm cleared the noise, a single identity crystallized on the screen.
Ki leaned forward so abruptly his glasses nearly tapped the glass of the monitor.
"I found it. It’s human albumin!"
A sharp collective exhale rippled through the lab. Someone in the back whispered, "Albumin?"
"Excellent," Hyun-jin barked. "Then strip it away."
For a fleeting second, Ki shared that exact confidence. Color returned to his face.
"Yes. Albumin is a known variable. We have standard depletion protocols for this."
An albumin depletion kit was immediately retrieved.
They hooked up an affinity column and loaded the sample—a reliable method designed to capture and strip the albumin clean.
The eluent dripped steadily, and the fractions were collected. Everyone’s eyes locked onto the screen.
Ki’s expression turned to stone.
The target peak had vanished entirely. Where the albumin had been extracted, there was only a barren baseline and unidentified molecular debris.
"Again."
This time, enzymatic digestion. Trypsin treatment.
They loaded it into the incubator and waited out the clock before injecting the digested matrix back into the LC-MS/MS.
On the display, a torrential downpour of shattered albumin fragments flooded the screen like a monsoon.
But the actual peptide they were hunting had been obliterated even more severely.
Masses were truncated, charge states were shattered, and the original sequence fragments could no longer be aligned.
"Chymotrypsin."
Another catastrophic failure.
"Organic solvent precipitation. Crank the acetonitrile concentration. We have to break that bond."
The solvent was introduced, creating a heavy precipitate. They separated the supernatant from the pellet and ran both.
The supernatant contained absolutely nothing, and the pellet yielded only denatured, useless residue.
"Swap the column. Ditch the C18; load the phenyl-hexyl."
They swapped the column and rebuilt the method parameters from scratch. The outcome remained identical—unresolvable.
If anything, the sample degraded further on the column stationary phase.
The exact millisecond the carrier matrix collapsed, the target molecule ripped itself apart alongside it.
As Ki stared down the raw data, the certainty slowly drained from his face.
He re-examined the source data from the baseline. The albumin signal. And the microscopic tail hidden directly in its wake.
That tail wasn't behaving like an independent component. It moved like a shadow cast by the albumin itself.
If you depleted the carrier, the target died with it; if you digested the carrier, the target shattered first.
The following afternoon, Hyun-jin returned to the SNU Hospital research annex.
Ki Jong-ho looked skeletal, his eyes hollowed out by an all-nighter, his voice parched dry.
"He didn't hide it."
Hyun-jin’s eyebrows shot up. Ki jetted a trembling finger at the monitor.
"It behaves as an intrinsic part of the albumin itself."
Hyun-jin went momentarily silent. Ki pressed on, his breath catching painfully between his sentences.
"He didn't just obscure the structure. He engineered the analysis process itself into a dead end.
The exact second you touch it to strip it away, the target destroys itself. Isolation, digestion, sample preparation—he anticipated and weaponized every single protocol against us."
Hyun-jin’s face flushed a deep, violent crimson.
Unable to contain his frustration, his arm swept across the bench, sending an empty pipette tip box crashing to the floor.
The plastic shattered, scattering debris across the tile.
"Equipment worth hundreds of billions, and you can’t unlock this one lock?!"
Ki spun around violently, his usual detached academic demeanor snapping completely.
"It’s not that we can’t unlock it!"
The laboratory froze instantly. Ki gritted his teeth, his voice shaking with a desperate fury.
"He engineered it specifically to resist analysis!"
Only the ragged sound of their breathing remained, punctuated by the suddenly deafening hum of the equipment fans.
Hyun-jin bit his lip, the glint in his eyes fracturing.
Beneath his volcanic rage, a primal terror reared its head.
He was reminded, with absolute, bone-chilling clarity, that the clear liquid inside those tiny vials held the absolute leash over his own physical existence.
Ki slowly walked back to the monitor. On the magnified spectrum, the shattered molecular fragments floated on the screen.
They were artifacts of a failed experiment, yet they illuminated the hand of the designer with terrifying clarity. It was as though every possible path had already been anticipated.
Ki gripped the edge of the desk so hard his knuckles turned white.
"This man..."
Hyun-jin stared silently at the screen beside him. Ki removed his glasses, whispering blankly without even thinking to clean the lenses.
"What the hell is he?"