ATGRA 25

Hyung cares about me, he cares not, he cares about me, he cares not, he cares about me…….

“He cares not……”

Plucking the last petal, Jung Pureum threw the pitiful, stem-only rose to the floor. Jung Saebom, who had been watching his pathetic display, clicked her tongue.

“You’ve really lost your mind.”

“I am perfectly normal.”

“What are you talking about? You’ve always been abnormal.”

A friendly conversation flowed between the siblings. When Jung Pureum raised his middle finger at Jung Saebom, Jung Saebom raised both of her middle fingers in return.

“Stop dragging it out and just confess already.”

“If I confess now, there’s a ninety-seven percent chance I’ll be rejected.”

“What about the other three percent?”

“That is the possibility the entire universe has created for me.”

“That was a bit pathetic, so I won’t curse at you this time.”

“Thanks.”

Telling him to stop being so sentimental and just finish his flower fortune-telling, Jung Saebom threw another flower to Jung Pureum. After her recent dance performance ended, the bouquet she had received was being disassembled piece by piece in Pureum’s hands.

“What exactly do you like about Moon Yeonghwa?”

“Everything…… he’s cute.”

“……”

“The more time passes, the more I like him. Don’t you think this is a side effect of the gongjindan?”

“No. I think your eyesight has just gotten worse.”

Clicking her tongue, Jung Saebom got up and turned on the television. This was the only way to make that psycho talk less nonsense.

Perhaps the rerun of the entertainment program had ended, because only commercials were playing on the television. After flipping through a few channels, Saebom gave up on finding a watchable program and threw the remote control down.

Jung Pureum, who had been telling his fortune by sacrificing a few more roses, finally got up from his seat when the result came out that Moon Yeonghwa cared about him.

“Now I should go out into the hallway.”

“At this hour?”

“If I’m lucky, I might run into hyung on his way home from work.”

“Ugh…… you crazy bastard.”

Jung Saebom had watched her younger brother go crazy over the man next door for a whopping eight years. Not just her, but their entire family had long since gotten used to Jung Pureum’s obsessive unrequited love.

As she recalled, Jung Pureum had not been this over-the-top from the beginning. Moon Yeonghwa in his college days was often a complete wreck. They heard the sound of the neighbor’s kitchen exploding about once a week, so it was not easy to have a good first impression.

Moreover, Moon Yeonghwa was only book-smart and bad at everything else. It goes without saying that he had no life skills, but his lack of social awareness was the worst of all.

So at first, she thought Moon Yeonghwa was playing with her brother. She thought that since that young kid was chasing after him, he was not accepting him because he was a beta.

But upon closer observation, Moon Yeonghwa really did not know. All he thought was that Jung Pureum was just following him like his own older brother. He seemed to be a person who lived without ever thinking that others would see him as a potential romantic partner.

Jung Saebom looked at her younger brother’s broad back. The kid was more like a farmhand than a nobleman, but he was not the type to be left out in the cold wherever he went. She was worried about why he had to like someone like Moon Yeonghwa and make such a fuss.

“Do I, do I look okay now?”

Pureum, who was adjusting his clothes in front of the mirror, asked Saebom.

“You’re ugly.”

“Yeah, you too.”

After the friendly exchange between siblings, the sound of the front door closing was heard. Saebom, leaning against the back of the living room sofa, just sighed.

Her family, excluding her, already seemed to think of Moon Yeonghwa as a future son-in-law of sorts. It was even more so after Jung Pureum became an alpha.

But Saebom still found Moon Yeonghwa awkward. She felt this way even though she knew he was not a bad person and that he might harbor feelings for her brother that he himself was not aware of. In any case, it was a problem that he made people suffer because of his lack of awareness.

“Huh?”

Picking up the remote she had thrown with her foot, she stopped flipping through the television channels abruptly.

[Fast and effective diet, right now <Riritang!>]

A familiar ad copy caught her eye. Riritang? It was the diet herbal medicine that a classmate from the same department had recommended to her a while ago.

She had said she started taking it after winning a trial event and that the effects were really good. Saebom recalled the face of her classmate, who had looked so gaunt that her cheekbones were protruding.

“Well, she’ll figure it out on her own.”

A diet that relies on medicine is not likely to yield good results, but it was not Saebom’s business to worry about. It was someone else’s problem, after all.

*

Unfortunately, the adlay tea bags remained in our clinic’s break room. This was because ordering the break room snacks was entirely Ms. Kim Miyoung’s job.

As the director, I did not have much authority. I was just something like a medicinal herb combination machine, the face of the clinic who performs acupuncture. The truly important tasks of filling the break room or prescribing gongjindan were handled by Ms. Kim Miyoung and Nam Jungyoon.

On top of that, there was no time to leisurely inspect the break room. In the short time I was away, Baek Wonhee had finally caused a scene.

[Fast and effective diet, right now <Riritang!>]

[A safe diet with a healthy medicinal herb combination by a professional oriental medicine doctor!]

[A confident summer body line, consult now!]

The ad copies were all familiar. I think I have seen this in diet herbal medicine ads from other clinics. They just changed the word order.

On the YoutTube channel that Ms. Kim Miyoung turned on, a beauty YoutTuber was promoting <Riritang>. Seeing ‘Paid advertisement included’ written at the top, it seemed she was an influencer hired with money.

But even though it was a video filmed with the disclosure that it was an ad, the number of views was enormous. This was because the said YoutTuber had actually succeeded in losing 15 kilograms. Losing 15 kilograms in a week? This is quite amazing.

Moreover, the YoutTuber in the video ate very well. To think that you can eat all the food you want and still lose weight steadily. What kind of nonsensical medicine is this?

I narrowed my eyes in suspicion.

“Do you think this kind of medicine makes sense?”

“Of course not.”

“No, if it was something like losing 15 kilograms in half a year, I would understand. A week? This is even less realistic than the gongjindan that makes you an alpha.”

“What’s with you, Director? Our gongjindan is real.”

“That’s true.”

If there is a herbal medicine in the world that can make you an alpha, there might as well be one that can make you lose that much weight in a week.

For a moment, I almost doubted the greatness of herbal medicine. The possibilities are endless. How would I know? Maybe Baek Wonhee really found a divine combination method and created a herbal medicine that only removes fat.

The problem was that it was selling too well. Even the people who came to our clinic for acupuncture showed a tempted reaction when they saw the diet herbal medicine ad hanging in the Wonhee Oriental Medicine Clinic across the street.

Dieting is, after all, one of the long-standing interests of modern people. It is not surprising.

In a world with a developed food culture like today, it is difficult to maintain a healthy weight. Since there are so many delicious things as resources have become abundant, it was not strange for people who find it hard to control their appetite to seek the help of medicine.

But still, isn’t a herbal medicine that makes you lose 15 kilograms in a week a violation of the Medical Service Act? I was seriously shocked that this ‘Riritang’ was approved by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. What? How did that pass?

I rubbed my brow, which had been unknowingly furrowed, with my hand.

The only positive function of Baek Wonhee was that he made me instantly forget about those three days with Jung Pureum. My heart had been in turmoil, my mind hazy, and I kept thinking about Jung Pureum, but after seeing the Riritang ad, all my distracting thoughts disappeared.

In fact, ignoring whatever Baek Wonhee did was more beneficial for my mental health. The alpha-making herbal medicine and the diet herbal medicine were not even in the same category anyway. Although the broad category of herbal medicine was the same, the exact target customer base was different.

Moreover, the price of Riritang was higher than that of the alpha-making gongjindan. Since the efficacy was said to be good, there would be many people who would buy and take it at that price, but I thought my eyes were going to pop out when I first saw the price. Did he make the deer antlers with gold and put them in? One dose was almost 800,000 won.

“It seems to be a high-end strategy.”

“Just selling it at a ridiculously high price?”

“Luxury goods are also sold at ridiculously high prices, but everyone lines up from dawn to buy them.”

Nam Jungyoon turned off the YoutTube that Ms. Kim Miyoung had turned on, with a look on his face that said this was going to be a headache.

If I had known this would happen, I should have taken a course like Introduction to Business Administration when I was in college. In my freshman and sophomore years, I could not set my own schedule, so I could not study marketing-related subjects.

While I was kicking myself and regretting my college days, Nam Jungyoon just clicked his tongue.

“Even if that’s really real, the side effects would be no joke.”

He was right. All medicines usually have side effects. This is the same for both herbal and Western medicine.

People always dream of a perfect divine elixir, but the possibility of a result of artificially combined chemical components being completely harmless to the human body is slim.

For example, something that is good for the eyes may cause hair loss, and something that is good for the stomach may cause constipation. This is unavoidable. Moreover, generally, the stronger and more potent the effect, the more severe these side effects become. Because poison and medicine are two sides of the same coin.

“Still, they wouldn’t sell something dangerous, would they?”

“We’re selling gongjindan without proper clinical trials too.”

“Our gongjindan has no side effects.”

“That’s true.”

I do not know if nothing has been revealed yet or if there really are none, but there have been no reported cases of side effects for the gongjindan I made.

Come to think of it, since it forcibly changes one’s secondary gender, it seems plausible that this would have side effects too. I suddenly became worried. What if I stand before the judgment of the law again after barely avoiding a lawsuit?

“We’re fine. Your grandfather, Director, had already requested clinical trials from all sorts of places anyway.”

“My grandfather did?”

“You didn’t know?”

I did not know?

I looked at Ms. Kim Miyoung with a shocked face. When did he take care of all that without telling me?

“No, I just thought you knew everything, Director.”

“……”

“We’ve been thoroughly verified as safe, that’s why.”

I tried not to get my grandfather’s help as much as possible, but I ended up getting it again. It is not like the heavens would fall and the world would end just because I got help from an adult, but I felt a bit uncomfortable.

My grandfather was a really good person, but he was a bit rigid, so he always worried about me, who had manifested as a recessive omega. He would often tell me not to do dangerous things and that I could quit everything if things got tough.

It is true that he supported me both physically and financially because my passion for what I wanted to do was strong, but this was also closer to him helping me restlessly because he was worried I might get into trouble.

Because he thought I could not succeed in business as an omega…… in case something bad happened to me in this world rampant with discrimination.

I felt sorry and grateful at the same time, and my chest felt tight. Every time I received help like this, I felt an inexplicable sense of defeat. As if I had not achieved anything on my own.

“From next time, if my grandfather tries to help secretly, please let me know.”

“Oh dear, it’s not that I intentionally didn’t tell you……”

“Assistant.”

“I just, I was worried. Our clinic was struggling a bit in the beginning.”

Since I was the one who could not gain Ms. Kim Miyoung’s trust in the beginning, I had nothing to say.

Still, seeing Ms. Kim Miyoung avoiding my gaze, not knowing what to do, and looking sorry made me feel bad too. I did not mean to blame her, but as I spoke, it ended up being me who was cornering her.

“Well, that’s not what’s important right now.”

Nam Jungyoon clapped his hands with a ‘짝’ sound, as if to lighten the mood between us.

“That Riritang, should we try buying some too?”

“What for?”

“Who knows? Maybe they put something strange in it.”

“Is there a need to go that far? It’s annoying that Baek Wonhee is doing well, but instead of holding a ritual to wish for his downfall, it’s better for us to just work hard at our own thing.”

At my words, Nam Jungyoon looked back at me as if surprised. He acted as if he would chase him to hell and make him fail, but what was this sensible response?

It is true that I do not like Baek Wonhee, but it is not like he has done me any harm right now. He just upgraded the diet herbal medicine he was originally focusing on and released it, so what could I do about that?

And trying to do better than him is a more normal response for a member of society than wishing for someone else’s downfall.

In this infinitely competitive society, is there anything uglier than trying to trip someone else up? I just have to work harder. A person should have some shame even if they have no common sense. Throwing the first punch is not something a civilized person would do.

I might hold a ritual to wish for Baek Wonhee’s downfall, but going there and causing a scene is a different story. No matter how much I hate Baek Wonhee, I should not become the same kind of person as him.

“Baek Wonhee, he’ll probably pick fewer fights with us if his own business gets busy.”

“That’s true, but……”

“We just have to keep doing what we’ve been doing.”

I checked the ad copy for Riritang one last time.

<A healthy diet without straining yourself, while eating everything you want!>

It was truly a nonsensical statement, but someone would desperately want to believe that it was real.

Right now, I also just wanted to believe that it was real. If it became possible to maintain health easily thanks to the infinite possibilities of herbal medicine, that would be a revolution in oriental medicine.