The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 298

"Is it really worth it?"

Garrison lifted his eyes to look at her but stayed silent.

"You know better than anyone how much blood and sweat you've poured into this over the last five years. You sacrificed your reputation, your career, your entire net worth. People used to fight tooth and nail just to collaborate with you. And now? Now you're scrambling to scrape together the cash just for encapsulation! You're a Nobel laureate, Garrison. Yet here you are, holed up in a dying clinic, getting raided four times a month. You don't even have a decent chair in your office. You eat instant ramen every day and drink the cheapest tea on the market. Do you really think this is worth it?"

She kept her eyes locked on his as she spoke, her gaze fiercely sincere, brimming with an unbearable frustration on his behalf.

She lifted her hand from the armrest, making a small, almost unconscious gesture in the air, as if trying to grab onto something, before letting it fall back down.

"DeepBlue's drug is already on the market. Genesis-1 is being hailed as the next-generation cancer miracle, and it's rolling out in clinical trials everywhere! With your talent, if you just swallowed your pride and worked on refining or synthesizing their formula, you could be right back at the top where you belong. You know as well as I do that reverse-engineering happens in medicine all the time! Why are you so obsessed with starting from scratch? Why can't you just let go of the Vitas Strain from five years ago?"

The reception room was dead quiet for a long time. A breeze drifted past the window, rustling the leaves of the pothos plant before settling back into stillness.

Garrison placed his cup on the coffee table, the base clinking softly against the glass surface. "I know."

He paused, his voice dropping slightly but remaining crystal clear. "I don't trust Genesis-1. I don't trust DeepBlue Technologies. The only thing I trust is what I can see and create with my own two hands."

A wry, helpless smile tugged at his lips. "Besides, we don't even know who copied who yet."

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