Don't Eat This, You'll Die
Kwak Suho was just about to catch his breath after wrapping the shoot for Don't Eat This, You'll Die when Lee Jun spoke up.
"Suho, let's upload this right now."
"Yeah, I was going to start editing the second I got home anyway. There's barely anything to cut this time, so it shouldn't take long. I'll tidy it up, drop in the captions, and get it posted."
Kwak Suho answered with a bright grin, still glowing from a performance even more spectacular than he had imagined. Then he added one more thing.
"I should be done in about three days. I'll send you the file then."
The captions for this video would carry the professional copy Lee Jun had written. Sending the file meant he wanted Jun to review the subtitles before they went live.
"Forget that for later. Just put the full version up now."
"What? Just throw it up as is?"
"Think of it as a live stream and upload it. Ah, if I'd known it would turn out like this, I should've just told you to go live in the first place."
"Oh, come on..."
Kwak Suho stared at him, speechless.
He was a man who poured his soul into every edit. He filmed with that same devotion, and he wanted the people who watched to see something beautiful. That was why he always polished a video until it sang before he ever hit upload.
And now Jun wanted him to slap it online raw? Even if the three little cuties who exploded every view count were in it. Even if it was the greatest footage he had ever shot, the kind he already wanted to watch again himself.
This was still wrong.
"Hey, if you wanted that, we should have prepped for a live stream from the start."
"It's fine. The second those three show up, people watch. That's enough."
"Then I'll rush the edit and have it up tomorrow. I mean it."
"Just upload it. Animals are dying while you sit there fussing!"
Lee Jun was in a hurry. Who could say there wouldn't be another victim like Gamja tonight — or tomorrow morning?
"We still have to put your captions on it, don't we?"
Kwak Suho's voice rose.
But those captions were for people. That was not what Lee Jun wanted. The moment the footage went up, any animal who saw it would hear the three of them deliver their warning. That was the entire point.
If I tell him that, he won't even believe me.
Lee Jun set about talking down a Kwak Suho who was still squawking about the edit.
"Then let's do it like this. Say, 'We captured a once-in-a-lifetime video and wanted to share this excitement and this thrill with our subscribers just as it happened, so we're posting the raw footage first. Please be generous with anything rough. A polished cut will follow in a few days.' Wouldn't your subscribers love that even more?"
"Hmph."
Kwak Suho's ears seemed to flutter.
"I have a feeling they'll go crazy for words like together, excitement, thrill. And this isn't just any video. It's the one starring our. adorable. little. stars. The ones your subscribers have been waiting for. Am I wrong?"
Lee Jun leaned hard on the word cuties.
"Well. That's true."
"You said you got flooded with DMs again today from people dying to see them."
Kwak Suho let out a short sigh, then answered at full volume.
"Fine. We'll do it your way."
He pulled his laptop from his bag at once and got to work.
Lee Jun spoke to him over the clatter of keys.
"One more favor."
"What?"
"In the pinned comment, ask everyone to please watch it together with their pets. And tell anyone viewing outdoors to turn the sound on. Ah — they don't need to blast it loud enough to bother other people."
"Because the dogs and cats at the hospital watched the performance too, so the pets at home should watch with them?"
"That's right."
That was Lee Jun's bigger picture. He nodded, and Kwak Suho's eyes lit up.
"Oh? That's actually great. It's like the pets got invited into a theater showing a movie starring the cuties, and the humans are just peeking in from the aisle. Wow, Jun, you..."
Kwak Suho shot him a thumbs-up and dove back into the upload.
What on earth is he picturing... Well, as long as the animals watch the video, that's all I need.
The moment their conversation ended, Kwak Suho put the video up. The view count began climbing the instant it went live, and it did not stop.
Kwak Suho Channel had always pulled impressive numbers. And with Hoesaegi, Gkamnyangi, and Sapsaree — nicknamed the view-count black holes — all appearing together, a surge was only to be expected. Even so, the numbers were climbing so much steeper than usual that Kwak Suho and his subscribers alike could only stare.
"Ha. It hasn't even been an hour and it's already a million..."
Kwak Suho could barely breathe. And still the count kept rising.
"I-is this thing going to hit t-ten million in a single day?"
"That would be wonderful."
Lee Jun could only hope that as many animals as possible would see the video, and get themselves out of harm's way.
Fortunately, Lee Jun's hope was already coming true.
On the Myeotube comments, on Gowi Cafe, and across every kind of social media, testimony began pouring in from people who had watched the video with their pets. At first the posts trickled in one or two at a time. Before long they were flooding every feed.
New comments on Myeotube were spawning so fast they were almost impossible to read.
On Myeotube they kept it brief. Then they bolted for Gowi Cafe and their own communities, posting full accounts of pets who had locked onto the video and answered it with perfect seriousness. Members backed every review with photos and clips. And those reviews spread like wildfire.
It was not happening only in Korea, the land of high-speed internet. True to the global stardom of Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi, the video was playing in every corner of the world within hours.
By early the next morning — less than twelve hours after the upload — people walking their dogs through the parks had a fierce new light in their eyes.
"You never know. There might be castor oil meal fertilizer in our neighborhood park too."
"Aigoo. I had no idea there was poison sitting in the neighborhood park. None at all."
They scanned the ground with burning eyes for any trace of the fertilizer, and they checked for dropped food while they were at it.
"Oh my god, is that a hot dog? Who throws something like this here?"
One guardian glared at a half-eaten hot dog. On any other day she would have huffed and walked on. Today she did not want to leave it.
"I don't see a trash can. Can't be helped."
She pulled out a bag and picked up the hot dog. As she did, she spotted a piece of candy lying beside it. She scooped that up too and dropped it into the bag.
At the same hour, the same thing was happening in another park. A guardian was bagging a chicken drumstick.
"Aigoo. This marinade has onion and garlic in it. What if the kids eat it and get sick?"
The poop bags people carried for their dogs had become trash bags, filling up with leftover food. The little ball Lee Jun had thrown — no, the little ball Hoesaegi, Gkamnyangi, and Sapsaree had thrown — was growing larger by the second.
And it was not only the people.
The dogs and cats were the same. Dogs who would normally have shoved their noses into every smell and gone mouth-first for anything that looked tasty now only sniffed — and even that from a long way off. And when any dog drifted too close to food on the ground, someone warned them off.
That someone was Jamong.
His guardian, Yu Ji-yeon, was on their morning walk through Evergreen Park. Jamong ambled along with his long tail swaying, pausing to sniff, pausing to pee, carrying himself with the easy composure of a dog who came out every single day. Compared to the old days, when she had been dragged gasping at the end of his leash, it was a revolution.
"If I hadn't met Director Lee, I'd still be tearing around like a lunatic."
That was when it happened. Jamong began slapping the ground with his front paws, pak-pak-pak, as if he were beating the dirt.
Yu Ji-yeon looked down.
"Jamong, what's wrong?"
He lifted his head, locked eyes with her once, then dropped his gaze again. This time he did not slap the ground. He growled.
Grrrrrr!
His face was furious. Jamong almost never got angry. Startled, Yu Ji-yeon dropped to her knees.
"Jamong, what is it? Does your paw hurt? Did you get a thorn?"
She bent to check his foot — and found herself staring at a piece of gum.
"Oh my god. Why is this here?"
Her face turned as grim as Jamong's. Gum she would have walked past without a thought even yesterday morning. Several pieces that looked exactly like xylitol gum were scattered across the path.
She bagged them, muttering as she worked.
"I had no idea xylitol could send a dog into hypoglycemia. They said even five of these would put Jamong in danger... Why are there so many? If he had eaten all of these... aigoo."
After the performance the day before, Lee Jun had given the guardians a brief explanation of every food that had appeared on stage. Xylitol had been part of that talk. It triggered a rush of insulin and dropped blood sugar with terrifying speed. A dog who ate it faced not only hypoglycemia but acute liver failure.
Yu Ji-yeon's shoulders shook as she picked up the gum. When she hadn't known, what was the harm in one or two pieces? Looking at them now, they might as well have been poison.
"Aigoo. I thought only things like cold medicine were dangerous. I should stop chewing gum from now on."
The bag she used was a poop bag. She photographed the gum at once and posted it to social media.
Posts like hers began flooding every feed all over again. Reporters who had been watching Lee Jun's work caught the story almost immediately, and the internet articles started going up. The first of them came from Kim Eun-ji, a reporter at Dongbang Sports.
Kim Eun-ji, who had already written about Evergreen Park and sparked a wave of interest in ecological parks, now published a piece on how Don't Eat This, You'll Die was capturing the attention of pet guardians — and she put the danger of castor oil meal fertilizer front and center.
She stressed that the fertilizer was harmful not only to dogs and cats, but to people. Citizens were furious to learn that a product they had believed was environmentally friendly carried a lethal toxin — that it was being spread through parks and walking paths, and sold openly as pot fertilizer. It was all too easy to imagine a child, or even an infant, mistaking the savory pellets for a snack and putting them in their mouth.
Watching it all unfold, Lee Jun was delighted.
"This is going even better than I thought."
"Ain't that the truth. Be real nice if they banned castor beans from that fertilizer while we're at it. Though I dunno if there's anything cheap enough to replace it."
"Well, castor beans are ridiculously cheap."
"True enough. Still, with the mood like this, somethin' good's bound to come of it, don't you think? Anyway, I feel real good about this."
Go Gi-jin's mouth tugged into a grin as he shared the joy. And it was not only Go Gi-jin. Their colleagues, their seniors, their juniors — veterinarians everywhere threw their arms wide and celebrated. They were the ones who had pulled animals back from castor oil meal poisoning in the exam room. They were also the ones who had been forced to watch animals die of it.
Go Gi-jin's phone erupted in a burst of meows and woofs.
Meow-meow-nyaohoong-mrrrf-woof!
"Dad, you have supper yet?"
They happened to be eating dinner themselves, but the fact that this was how he answered the phone was so perfectly Go Gi-jin that Lee Jun almost laughed. He chewed and swallowed the rice in his mouth as fast as he could. It was a video call. He would need to say hello too.
"Ate already. You eat yet, boy?"
"I'm eatin' with Hyungnim right now."
Go Gi-jin swung the phone around at once, and Lee Jun bowed his head.
"Hello, sir."
What came next was always the same. Go Panseok would ask how Jun was doing, then immediately demand the troika. Go Gi-jin would stand up and point the camera at Hoesaegi, Gkamnyangi, and Sapsaree.
Today was different.
"Listen here, Jun. Director Lee."
"Yes."
In the countryside, where orchards and fields stretched in every direction, accidents with castor oil meal fertilizer happened far more often than they did in the city.
"What did I do? I just set a spoon on the table the seniors had already laid out. And even that spoon wasn't mine. It was theirs."
Lee Jun turned his head toward the three of them. The moment they heard Go Panseok's voice they had come trotting over in a line and settled themselves beside Lee Jun and Go Gi-jin.
"Aigoo, what're you doin'? Hurry up and pass the camera to the kids, would ya?"
"I'm passin' it already~."
"What's takin' so long? An impatient fella'd drop dead waitin'!"
"I turned it. See?"
The second the three of them filled the screen, Go Panseok broke into a big, rumbling laugh.
"Aigoo, our genius actors! Y'all eat yet?"
Meo-ong! Nyaong, woof woof.
Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi lifted their front paws and waved as they called out. Sapsaree barked with his whole face split in a grin.
"Aigoo, you precious little things. I live for seein' you kids. That's what keeps me goin'."
While the three of them answered Go Panseok, Go Gi-jin muttered under his breath.
"And here he used to say he lived for seein' his own son..."
"I can hear you, you little punk."
"You heard that? I was just mutterin' to myself..."
"That what you call mutterin'? You said it loud so I'd hear, that's what. Anyway, Director Lee. You did a hell of a job this time. And the meat'll arrive tomorrow."
"You always do this..."
"It ain't from me. The ranchers around here are sendin' it. To say thanks. So you know that. And our friends all said to tell you they're grateful too."
Go Panseok's friends meant the large-animal veterinarians. The livestock farmers and the vets alike were grateful for what Lee Jun had done.
"Thank you."
"And uh, what's it... I played it for the kids here too. That Taesan fella started barkin' up a storm — must've heard their voices."
"Thank you for playing it for them."
"Anyway, our Hongseong folks this time, they uh... they wanna present you with a plaque of appreciation."
"Pardon?"
"Go eat your dinner."
Go Panseok hung up before Lee Jun could get another word in. Lee Jun was still staring at the darkened screen when Go Gi-jin laughed.
"Aigoo, look at that. Dad got all bashful and ran off. He could've just said he was grateful and wanted to give Hyungnim an award. Right, Hyungnim?"
Lee Jun smiled.
The truth was, he had been smiling for days. Large-animal veterinarians like Go Panseok, the vets around him, the Seoul Veterinary Medical Association, the Korean Veterinary Medical Association, the animal protection groups — they had all reached out to tell him this was giving them strength. They were people who had been fighting to spread the word about the danger of castor oil meal fertilizer themselves. People passionate enough to convene legislative hearings on a ban. And they had drawn new force from Hoesaegi, Gkamnyangi, and Sapsaree's video.
From people, too. Far more pet guardians than ever before now understood the danger and were joining in. That was why plaques of appreciation were being promised from every direction. Kwak Suho, who had made the video, was drawing just as much attention.
"It's something to be grateful for."
He was thankful to every person who had taken an interest. But what made Lee Jun happier still was the view count on Don't Eat This, You'll Die. It had climbed in a steep, unbroken line, and it was still climbing. Every time he looked at those numbers, his mouth curved into a quiet arc.
Kwak Suho kept crowing that the revenue was insane. Nearly half of that revenue was Lee Jun's share. That was good.
The more money we have, the faster we reach the goal.
But the better reason was this.
Countless animals will have seen it. They will have heard it.
A fertilizer problem tangled in every kind of interest. Rather than sit and wait, stomach tight, to see when it might finally be solved, he had spoken straight to the ones who were actually in danger. That was something only Lee Jun could do.
The moment the call ended, he walked to the window and watched the three of them chattering about Taesan.
Being able to talk with them is a blessing. A real stroke of luck. A precious gift. I have to use it well from now on.
That was when his phone rang. It was Han Na-hyeok.
"Hyung, have you eaten?"
Lee Jun led with the same question himself.
"I have. Anyway — you're coming at two tomorrow, right?"
"Yes. The appointment is at two, so I was planning to get there around one-thirty. Should I come earlier?"
"No need for that. But there's a dog I'd like you to take a look at."
A dog who was not on Lee Jun's appointment list.
"Then I'll come a little earlier. Since clinic starts at two, have them come at twelve or twelve-thirty. That should give us plenty of time."
"Thanks. I'll tell them twelve-thirty tomorrow."
"Yes. I'll be there before then."
After he hung up, Lee Jun realized he had not asked what kind of dog it was, or what was wrong. He did not particularly want to call his busy senior back.
"Well. I'll find out when I get there tomorrow."
He thought that, and went back to his dinner.