Among the Ashes
What Lee Jun had seen since coming up this mountain were burned trees, rocks and stones turned black, earth stripped of every last blade of grass — a world of charcoal and ash.
That was all.
And yet…
Right before his eyes, tiny blackened lives were wriggling.
At the appearance of a stranger, a frantic chorus of chip-chip-chip, chitter-chitter slammed into Lee Jun's ears — restless, terrified cries that sounded for all the world like they were screaming to be saved.
And then there were the others.
How much did they suffer?
Lee Jun let out a low, pained sound as he looked at the clumps that were not wriggling at all — the ones that had gone stiff. They would have wailed in agony until the very instant their breath gave out inside the firestorm. Or perhaps, before the crimson blaze even reached them, they had trembled and trembled until their hearts simply stopped.
Looking at those hardened black lumps, Lee Jun wept. No tears fell, but it was, without question, a weeping face.
Nnh… It's nothing like what I saw on TV…
A few years back, Australia had burned in the worst fire in its history — a blaze that spread across the entire continent for a full six months, scorching everything in its path, a disaster so vast people had called it a catastrophe for all of humankind. It had swallowed 11.5 million hectares, a stretch of land wider than all of Korea, and in its wake a billion wild animals had lost their lives.
Watching that hellscape on the news, on Myeotube, he had ached for them. He had been sorry. Sorry he couldn't rescue them. Sorry he couldn't help the animals who were hurting. Sorry for all of it, every last bit.
But standing in a fire site himself was nothing like watching it on a screen. What he saw was different. What he felt was different.
He was angry. Rage surged all the way to the top of his skull. Even a natural disaster would have made him furious and heartbroken — but this had not been a natural disaster. It was man-made.
He resented the person who had caused it. He didn't know the face, didn't know where they lived or who they were. How many living things had died because of one person's carelessness? How much had they suffered before their breath stopped?
His fists clenched on their own. His knuckles went white.
Then Sapsaree caught his eye.
Ah…
He remembered Sapsaree tearing toward him in a panic, crying that they were hurting, crying that they had to go — and the memory snapped him back to himself. Lee Jun drew a deep breath and opened his eyes wide.
That's right. This is not the time to stand here like this.
What he had to do now was treat those little ones. That was why he was here.
Lee Jun sat down with painstaking care. Fear was already rippling through the squirrels at his arrival; the only thing he could do was make himself smaller. The moment he settled onto the ground, Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi — who had been comforting the squirrels — came toward him. The squirrel hung back a little and walked over too.
"Hy- Hyungnim-ong. Help Yom-yom-i's friends, ong."
"Th-that's right. Those guys want water. But we can't give them any."
"Hyungnim-ong. Put the bean in, ong. Make them stop hurting, ong."
"They're all shriveled up. They're hungry. But they can't eat."
Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi, the corners of their eyes wet, poured the words out in a frantic tumble. It was as jumbled as Sapsaree's usual rush of speech, but Lee Jun understood at once.
"You've been worrying because those friends are hungry and in pain."
Nod, nod. The cats dipped their heads and leaned their bodies against him, then mumbled, almost under their breath.
"So, so pitiful, ong."
"The friends are pitiful."
Watching them gaze at the cluster of squirrels with such aching pity, Lee Jun found himself thinking, They're so round and plump, even their hearts are round and warm. Round faces, round bodies, round paws…
And while he was thinking it, round-faced Sapsaree planted a broad paw on Lee Jun's leg.
"That's right, dayo. The friends smaller than Sapsaree's paws are so pitiful, dayo. They smell like hurting, dayo. Rub-rub them better, dayo."
He meant scrape the pus from the wounds and disinfect them.
"Alright. Let's do that. But first, tell them not to be afraid of me, and then we'll start."
"I know, ong."
"We already told them."
"Yom-yom-i-ong, this is Hyungnim-ong. Our Hyungnim is going to make Yom-yom-i's friends stop hurting, ong."
Hoesaegi glanced back at the squirrel fidgeting behind them as he said it, then turned his head to Lee Jun again.
"Hyungnim-ong. This is Yom-yom-i-ong. A friend, ong."
Sapsaree asked from the side,
"The little friend's name is Yom-yom-i, dayo?"
"Yeah. It's Yom-yom-i."
At Gkamnyangi's answer, Sapsaree turned toward the squirrel — toward Yom-yom-i.
"Yom-yom-i, dayo. Our Hyungnim is going to make Yom-yom-i's friends stop hurting, dayo."
Six pupils became eight, and all eight locked onto a single point: the squirrel, Yom-yom-i.
With so much attention suddenly piled on him, Yom-yom-i made a rapid chip-chip-chip and rubbed his front paws together. He was frightened, and flustered, and grateful, all at once.
The Hy- Hyungnims' Hyungnim.
And they had said this was the Hyungnim that the Hyungnims who had given them so much food believed in and followed…
Yom-yom-i found his courage.
"Ah — greetings! I am Yom-yom-i."
Lee Jun looked at the squirrel with warm eyes.
You can tell just by looking. This little one has been feeding all the rest of them by himself.
How hard had it been? How frantic must he have felt?
If I had to keep a family that size alive in the middle of a disaster — with everything burned and nothing left?
Surviving an apocalypse was a tragedy in itself. Lee Jun was proud of Yom-yom-i for having lived through conditions that harsh. No — he was grateful. Yom-yom-i could have gone off alone, far away, just to save himself. He hadn't.
Those tiny feet are completely raw. The claws are worn down so far you can't even see them.
A wild animal's paws were never going to be soft. Even so, these were far too rough. Wounds showed here and there, and the claws that ought to have been long and sharp were simply gone.
"The doctor's here now. Leave it to me."
Lee Jun stroked Yom-yom-i's back — light as down, barely there. Then he pulled a bottle of water from his pack, along with several portable bowls whose height could be adjusted for easy carrying. He collapsed them as low as they would go and poured the water in a thin trickle.
Yom-yom-i's eyes went huge.
"W-water."
"That's right. Water. Yom-yom-i, would it be alright if the doctor came a little closer?"
He was asking permission to approach the others.
"Yes!"
Yom-yom-i cried it out at the top of his lungs. The great doctor who had given them water this precious — Yom-yom-i gazed up at Lee Jun with something like reverence. There was not a scrap of fear left in him.
The living ones look to be about twenty, and then…
Whether they had burned to death or died afterward of the aftereffects, there seemed to be about as many squirrels who had already lost their lives. Some lay right beside the living. Some a little farther off. Which meant these ones had been huddled together with the friends who were already gone.
Lee Jun's heart ached, but for now he focused on the squirrels who were still alive.
Let's start with water.
He picked up a syringe. Color rushed back into Hoesaegi's face.
"Hyungnim-ong, you gonna bean-bean them, ong?"
A voice that had had no strength in it at all a moment ago was suddenly full of it. Beside him, Gkamnyangi's eyes sparkled as he stared at Lee Jun.
"No. I can't give them shots yet."
"…Why not, ong? Then what's that, ong?"
Hoesaegi looked at him with a distinctly reproachful glare.
"Right now, the most important thing for these friends is water."
"That's right, ong. The friends said they wanted to drink water, ong."
"Exactly. So I'm going to give them water now."
"Ah, I know. We fed Donggeuli with the bean-poker."
"Ah, is that it, ong? Hyungnim-ong. Give it to them quick, ong!"
The cats' faces bloomed open again.
They really are sharp. To remember even that.
That the two of them had held onto the memory of Donggeuli being fed liquid food through a syringe before her esophageal dilation — it was impressive, and endearing.
"That's right. I'm going to give them water with this."
Lee Jun began feeding the squirrels water from a needleless syringe. The ones who could still move their bodies had already gone to the bowls and were drinking. Some could only move their front legs; some scooted along on their trunks — but every squirrel who could drink on their own had made it to the water.
Lee Jun gathered up the ones who couldn't move and fed them himself.
Gulp, gulp, gulp.
As the water went down their throats, their faces slowly eased. A squirrel looked up at Lee Jun with an expression that had gone quiet and comfortable. He set the ones who had drunk enough down — not on the ash-choked dirt where they had been huddled, but on a soft blanket.
The squirrel startled.
"Th-this is strange. It's warm."
"Yeah. Nice, right?"
Lee Jun gave the startled squirrel a stroke, then moved on to give water to the next one. Then, a little louder, he spoke in their language.
"Kids, if you've had your water, climb up over there and eat."
That was for the squirrels who could feed themselves. Before long the blanket was a wriggling carpet of them — squirrels whose fur had been singed away, squirrels with burns, squirrels whose legs wouldn't work. Every one of them was smiling brightly, nom-nom-nomming acorns and grain on the fluffy blanket.
Once he had gotten water into all of them, Lee Jun started treating them. But first aid was all he could manage out here. Anything more was impossible. Burn care was not something you finished in a day, and the squirrels who needed IV fluids and intensive treatment were no different.
His gaze drifted to one corner of the blanket.
That one looks like multiple organ failure…
If he left it, it might not make it. Lee Jun looked at the ones who had already gone to the Animal Star.
Like them. No — not just that one. All of them might have developed complications.
Once a burn set in, you had to treat burn shock aggressively — manage the lung damage, control the pain, support their nutrition. Even the ones who hadn't been burned directly had been in the path of a firestorm. Heat damage was inevitable. And not one of them had received any treatment at all.
Seeing them this feeble, it could be malnutrition — or it could be organ damage. If he hadn't known, that would have been one thing. But he knew. He had seen it with his own two eyes. He did not want to walk away and leave them.
Hnn…
Lee Jun sank into thought.
"What do I do?"
The best option was to take them to an animal hospital and treat them there. But would these little ones agree to leave their own home ground?
As he turned it over, a scene rose in his mind: animal rescue teams in fire-scoured Australia finding koalas and kangaroos and carrying them out. The koalas had gone without question, and even the kangaroos — famous for being fierce and unmanageable — had settled into the rescuers' arms. They had struggled a little, of course.
But I have a bigger advantage than they did. Let me try talking to them.
Lee Jun called to Yom-yom-i.
"Yom-yom-i."
"Yes! Hyungnims' Hyungnim!"
Hyungnims' Hyungnim — now what was that supposed to mean? Looking at Yom-yom-i answering so brightly, so clearly, Lee Jun huffed a small laugh. Maybe it was because a little hope had seeped into the despair he'd felt at first, but a smile found its way onto his face.
"Yom-yom-i, I want to make your friends stop hurting, but I'm going to need your help."
"Yes, sir! Just say the word."
Yom-yom-i's eyes were still shining. Hoesaegi, Gkamnyangi, and Sapsaree had their ears pricked, watching Lee Jun.
"Your friends are going to need treatment for a while. Treatment means making the hurt stop — and it's hard to do that here."
So they would have to go to the animal hospital — and he was just wondering how to put that when Hoesaegi started paddling his front paws.
"Hyungnim-ong, are the friends going to Mongmong Animal Hospital, ong?"
"Hehe, kids, you're going to Mongmong Animal Hospital!"
"Wow! Hyungnims' Hyungnim! Thank you. I'm so grateful."
"Hehehe, friends-ayo. Mongmong Animal Hospital is super nice, dayo!"
Three of them — no, four, with Yom-yom-i — tumbling over each other with the words, and Lee Jun could only blink.
"Y-you know Mongmong Animal Hospital?"
"Yes, sir! The Hyungnims told me. They said it's a really, really good place."
These guys just did my job for me. He was still thinking it when Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi cried out at the same time.
"Hyungnim-ong. We're leaving the friends to you, ong."
"You have to make them stop hurting."
They looked at him with pleading eyes.
"I will. Of course I will. Yom-yom-i, the others all said yes too?"
Lee Jun lifted the admirable little squirrel onto his palm. A moment ago he had barely dared stroke him, afraid of scaring him — but it felt alright to look at him up close now. He was right.
Settled in Lee Jun's palm, Yom-yom-i smiled with his whole face.
"Yes! Hehehe."
"You little…"
Lee Jun stroked the brave, stout-hearted, selfless Yom-yom-i, and then he ran his eyes over him from end to end. A visual exam — looking a patient over with your own eyes — was as natural as breathing for a veterinarian.
Aside from the wounds on his legs, is the rest of him alright?
He was studying Yom-yom-i when, unbidden, Haennim-i rose in his mind — the jaundice he had missed, hidden in dark fur.
This one's been running all over the place, so he should be fine. A bit of dehydration, maybe some malnutrition, but…
Something snagged his gaze. Yom-yom-i's ears.
The skin inside them was a vivid, startling yellow. It was a dingy yellowish color to begin with; someone else might never have noticed. But to Lee Jun's eyes it was unmistakable.
Jaundice. That was why the ears were that bright, impossible yellow.