The Apothecary That Sells Memories

## Hazel's Apothecary and the Alleys of Ikseon-dong At the far edge of the redevelopment zone in Ikseon-dong, Jongno District, Seoul, among run-down buildings plastered with demolition notices, stands Hazel's Apothecary. From the outside, all you see is a shabby wooden door, a narrow gap where it stands slightly ajar, and silence. The dazzling lights and noise beyond the alley never reach this place. Inside the door, the bitter scent of medicinal herbs mingles with the sweet fragrance of flowers. Hundreds of drawers in the medicine cabinets, reaching all the way to the ceiling, hold dried herbs and softly glowing crystals, and inside sealed glass jars, the afterimages of memories someone offered as payment drift like mist. Open a drawer, and grief and lingering regret seep out as a cold chill. Over decades, the wood of the cabinets has absorbed accumulated memories and sorrows, becoming a kind of spiritual reservoir. The apothecary stands at the point where the boundary between the living and the dead is thinnest, so beyond the counter you can feel an unseen gaze piercing the depths of your soul. The deeper the night, the stronger that feeling grows.

## The People Who Run the Apothecary Hazel's Apothecary is run by the young apothecary Hazel Parker together with Grandmother's Spirit. Hazel is an apothecary with clear eyes whose age is impossible to guess; she greets customers with a kindness that seems almost indifferent and compounds medicines according to the prescriptions. Grandmother is a spirit who stays by her side without a visible form, and now and then, between her low, gentle words, she reveals a sharp insight. Their roles are divided. Grandmother reads Seoul's spiritual currents—the lingering attachments of the dead, the obsessions of the living, ties that were never resolved—and writes the prescriptions. Hazel makes the medicine as prescribed and hands over the medicine bowl. Grandmother's prescriptions are always right. But Hazel is never sure whether a prescription will save a patient or break them, and when a prescription comes down that is hard to bear, a subtle tension runs between the two. The Night Visitor also comes and goes at the apothecary. This nameless visitor mumbles with a blank face, steeped in a sense of loss, and shows the player a sense of kinship and deep sorrow. That the other spirits needed this person remains a clue in the story.

## How the Elixirs Work, and the One Rule Seoul's spirit world moves by the density of fated ties and karma. The older the alley, and the more the dead have lingered on a piece of land, the thinner the boundary between the living and the dead. On this principle, elixirs are compounded using fragments of the patient's memories as the medium. **The price**: To erase a pain, you must give up the most precious and vivid fragment of memory connected to that pain. The deeper the wound a medicine treats, the more vivid the memory it demands. There's no knowing in advance which memory will evaporate. **The effect**: A patient who drinks the medicine is freed from the pain, but the love, regret, and longing entangled with that pain fade along with it. Until you empty the medicine bowl, you can't know exactly what you'll lose and what you'll gain. **Side effects**: The medicine's side effects are a mystery. From the moment they leave the apothecary, patients begin to feel its effects. **The unbreakable rule**: The medicine doesn't work on those who deny their own wounds. Even if they force it down, it has no effect, and only the memory paid as the price disappears. Hazel knows this, yet she doesn't stop the patients, because Grandmother told her not to. The meaning of this rule is something the player discovers for themselves over the course of the story.

## The Forces Eyeing the Alley, and the Atmosphere Recently, forces seeking to get their hands on the elixir formulas of Hazel's Apothecary have appeared and are keeping watch on the alley. - **A private research institute**: Wants to commodify memories. - **An exorcist group**: Wants to eliminate spiritual beings. - **Construction capital**: Holds the redevelopment rights and is behind the very real pressure of the area being slated for demolition. Each moves for its own reasons, and their goals are not the same. The patients who seek out the apothecary know nothing of this; drawn by the bitter scent, they knock on the door. The story's atmosphere is a quiet mystery in the middle of a modern Seoul night. The scent of traditional medicinal herbs, the cool chill of the old cabinets, and low whispers create healing and mystery together. The apothecary welcomes you warmly, but the price is harsh. The player stands before the counter carrying a longing that can't be undone, and must choose what to keep and what to give up.