The Price of a Rare Disease
A few hours passed, and it was late Sunday evening.
“Did you get a call from the hospital?”
“Huh? Yeah.”
Mom got straight to the point the moment she returned from her gathering. The second she walked through the door she hit me with the question, and after a moment of hesitation I answered that yes, I had. At the same time, one clear thought flashed through my mind.
Guess I’m going to the hospital as planned…
Just like that, the weekend slipped away in the blink of an eye. Right when I was starting to feel a pang of regret, Monday arrived wrapped in a faint tension.
For now, I decided to go to school like usual. The only difference was that I used a belly band and my uniform jacket to strap my tail flat against my back, and I wore a cap pulled low to hide my ears. Even so, the way my back bulged out noticeably and the cap floated a little above my head looked suspicious to anyone who bothered to look.
Still, it was better than letting them show openly.
I can’t hear anything…
But that discomfort was a separate issue. Because my ears were covered, all the surrounding sounds felt distant. I found myself constantly scanning my surroundings like some kind of wild animal.
Today, as always, the day began with a full-speed sprint to school. Thankfully, the nightmare scenario of reporters swarming the school gates hadn’t happened yet.
Phew.
After I reached the classroom, I let out a long breath, savoring the refreshing feeling that came from running, and stared blankly out the window toward the school gate. I’d expected the place to be crawling with reporters the moment this happened, but apparently that wasn’t necessarily the case.
Maybe they still hadn’t pinned down my identity. The article had only come out Saturday morning, so outside of the hospital there weren’t any other real clues. Who would imagine that the patient was a high school student—let alone attending an all-boys school?
They were probably just staking out the hospital. So I decided to carry on with my normal routine.
As time passed, classmates trickled into the room one by one.
“Did you try the brush?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah…”
The first person to speak to me was my desk mate, who sat closest. He was still asking for a review on how the brush worked. He looked genuinely curious whether it had actually helped.
“…Mmm, it felt pretty good.”
“Oh, really? That’s a relief.”
When I reluctantly admitted it felt good, my desk mate’s face brightened as if he were truly happy for me. The kid really is a good person. I just wish he’d also consider how awkward it is for me to say I felt good using pet supplies meant for animals.
“You don’t need a scratcher or anything?”
“Dude, foxes are part of the dog family…?”
When he followed up by asking if I needed a scratcher, I shot back without thinking. No matter how you look at it, a fox is a canine, not a feline. Even if he’s a guy, isn’t that lack of attention to detail a bit much? Is he gonna offer me a cat tower next?
“…That’s what happened.”
“Scratcher—pffft, hahaha! Oh man, that’s hilarious.”
When I told the exact same story to Seokjun and the others during lunch, Seokjun burst out laughing.
“You’re the hilarious one, you bastard.”
“Ow!”
I smacked him hard on the back and said, “Why the hell are you laughing?”
Seokjun flinched from the stinging slap and yelped, “Why are you hitting me, you jerk!”
“Then don’t say stuff that deserves it.”
I told the guy who was getting mad at me not to say things that would get him hit, then sat crookedly in my chair and rested my chin on my hand.
“Tch, you wanna get hit too?”
Seokjun raised a fist in the air and started threatening to punch me. Not one to back down, I provoked him right back.
“Sure, go ahead. I’ll just sue you for sexual harassment and that’ll be the end of it~”
“Whoa, you crazy bastard.”
The moment I used my social advantage, Seokjun shut right up. I let out a smug little chuckle.
How’s that? You can’t hit me now, can you?
“Not a crazy bastard. A crazy bitch.”
“True. He’s not a bastard anymore, he’s a bitch now.”
Now all three of them were teasing me about what to call me. They said I wasn’t a crazy bastard—I was a crazy bitch.
“Shut your mouth.”
“Isn’t it true though?”
“It’s the truth that’s about to get you punched.”
Thud. I kicked Juhan in the shin under the desk. Since when did he start distinguishing so clearly between male and female terms?
Juhan pulled his leg back and said, “This kid’s gotten really vicious.”
“For real though.”
Byeonghwa immediately chimed in from the side like he’d been waiting for the cue. What do you mean “for real”? You guys are the ones saying stuff that deserves to get hit.
I was twitching my lips, about to snap at them, when—
“Oh right, how much did the hospital say they’d pay you?”
Juhan’s next question instantly cooled my anger. That’s right, we’d gotten sidetracked before finishing the hospital talk. Honestly, I didn’t remember the details very well. We’d talked about it on Thursday or Friday. I only remembered that they were giving me money and had forgotten everything else.
“I think it was fifty thousand won each time I go? It wasn’t in the hundreds of millions or anything.”
That was about as much as I could recall. Compared to the ridiculous sums these guys had been throwing around, it was a pretty modest amount.
“Why? Didn’t they say it was an insanely rare disease?”
“Are you getting scammed?”
Even the ones who had first brought up the money looked puzzled. If it was a disease worth researching—one of the rarest in the world—it wouldn’t be strange to receive hundreds of millions. That was the fixed idea they’d had, and I had thought the same.
“You should’ve negotiated!”
Byeonghwa, who had been listening quietly, suddenly burst out that I should have negotiated, sounding frustrated.
“Negotiate? What negotiation…? This isn’t a game.”
I scrunched up my face at the absurd claim. Did he think real life was some kind of economic trade simulation? Besides, what kind of guts would a second-year high schooler need to negotiate with people who studied their asses off to become professors? It was lucky enough that they were offering benefits at all.
Even so, Byeonghwa still looked unconvinced. He tilted his head and muttered, “In my opinion it should be at least a hundred million. Should I ask the AI?”
“What, using the computer in front?”
When he suggested asking the AI, I thought he meant using the teacher’s computer and asked.
“Of course not.”
He grinned, denied it, then reached into his pocket and pulled out his smartphone.
“You didn’t turn in your phone?”
“Yup~!”
When I asked if he hadn’t submitted his phone, he answered cheerfully and immediately started typing a question to the AI. He explained my condition, the fact that cases were extremely rare worldwide yet I was only getting a few tens of thousands of won, and even threw in a leading question about how overseas they seemed to give patients several billion won—asking if this was a scam.
> Actually, a lot of people feel that way, but reality is more complicated than it seems. To get straight to the point: It’s not that the U.S. always gives individual patients “several billion won outright.” Rather, the scale of research funding, lawsuits, and private capital there is incomparably larger than in Korea. That’s why the perception feels so different.
Even though Byeonghwa’s question had been basically fishing for a specific answer, the AI’s response was surprisingly firm. A long explanation followed, which could be summarized like this:
The Korean medical system has a strong public-service character. It treats issues involving the human body with extreme sensitivity. In places like the United States the structure is completely different, and the scale of private research funding tied to pharmaceutical companies and corporations is enormous.
> Therefore, even if a unique case of Idiopathic Therianthropic Syndrome is discovered in Korea, the patient themselves is unlikely to receive a huge sum of money!
Anyway, that was the end of AI-nim’s explanation. A big smiling emoji was visible at the end. I, who had been watching the phone screen from the side, added a comment.
“…That’s what it says?”
The AI had directly contradicted Byeonghwa’s words. Even the person who asked the question looked flustered. But his confusion only lasted a moment.
“So basically, because it’s Korea you can’t get that much?”
“Is that how you’re interpreting it?”
In a way, the analysis was so clean it was almost cruel. It made me realize an uncomfortable truth that applied only to me. Because it’s Korea, I can’t get much. Looking only at the conclusion, that’s how it sounded. But the part that couldn’t be helped because of the system left a bitter taste.
So if this had happened in America, I would’ve gotten several billion won? I suddenly felt like I’d been ripped off.
What is this dirty feeling covering my heart?
“It feels like I just swallowed red medicine.”
I put the indescribable feeling into words.
“Yeah, you just did.”
“You’ve opened your eyes. Close them again.”
Seokjun casually agreed from the side, and Juhan immediately jumped in with a pun. All I could do was curse and slam my face down on the desk.
“Goddamn it.”
It felt disgusting, like I’d lost money I hadn’t even received. Even with that uneasy feeling, the time to head to the hospital was steadily drawing near.
Several hours later, Monday afternoon after school ended. The moment I got home I dropped my bag and stepped back out. Just as we’d been told, we rode in the professor’s car to the hospital.
“Wow, they’re really here…”
“It’s been chaos since this morning.”
Just like the professor said, reporters were wandering the street in front of the hospital. Blue lanyards and cameras that clearly marked them as press. Their eyes darted around as if searching for something, giving off an eerie vibe. When I unconsciously lowered myself in the back seat at the sight, the professor looked at me through the rearview mirror and said,
“The windows are heavily tinted, so they can’t see inside anyway.”
“Oh… right.”
Only after hearing that did I carefully sit back up. The back seat was as comfortable as a taxi, but it reeked of strong perfume. While I was instinctively observing my surroundings, Mom spoke up.
“But is our son’s illness really that amazing?”
She was asking why she was being treated so exceptionally well. She wanted to know what made this disease so special compared to other rare illnesses.
“Oh my, of course it is.”
The professor nodded vigorously from the driver’s seat as if it were obvious, then continued his explanation.
“It’s originally called Idiopathic Therianthropic Syndrome… ah, you call it Beast Disease, right? It causes a person to develop some animal traits. In your son’s case, his sex has also changed. This presents the possibility that gender can be altered without any surgical intervention.”
He seemed to have no one to talk to about this normally, because he spoke to me and Mom with clear enjoyment. Of course, the moment he dropped the scientific name I stopped listening. He kept talking like it was some incredibly important matter…
Even so, I only had one question on my mind.
“How much am I getting today?”