What? Director Go Did What?

Lee Jun was not a man who raised his voice. Almost never. But the question he threw back at Go Gi-jin rang through the living room like a struck gong.

"What? Director Go did what?"

The three animals had already been watching the two of them with their full attention — the air in the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠room had gone strange enough for that — and at the shout they leapt as if the floor had burned them.

They were that startled.

Hoesaegi, Gkamnyangi, and Sapsaree hunched their shoulders to their ears and edged backward, step by careful step. Unease sat thick in their eyes.

Any other day, Lee Jun and Go Gi-jin would have soothed them at once. Neither of them could.

Go Gi-jin did not even answer the question. He stayed on the phone, clutching it in one hand and bellowing in a voice like he had swallowed a locomotive whistle. This was anything but a normal call.

"Hold on—how much did Pa even drink to go and punch someone? Yeah, and the fella who got hit—how's he doin'? Can he even walk?"

Gi-jin was more worried about the man his father had struck than about his father sitting in a police station. And of course he was. Veterinarian Go Panseok was a man of the same terrifying strength as his son. Anyone would have been worried.

Lee Jun, who had shouted himself a moment before, finally nodded. Ah. So he made a mistake.

As far as Lee Jun knew, Go Panseok was not a man who used his fists. But alcohol was another matter. A drinking quarrel, most likely. That was the conclusion Lee Jun reached, and he watched Gi-jin on the phone with a look of genuine regret.

After a moment his gaze drifted toward the kitchen. A silhouette was taking shape in the doorway, bit by bit.

About a third of each face — Hoesaegi, Gkamnyangi, Sapsaree — was visible there. The ugly turn in the room had sent them fleeing into the kitchen, but they still wanted to know what was happening in the living room. Three pairs of eyes trembled as they fixed on Lee Jun. The other three eyes were still hidden behind the wall, and those, too, would have been shaking.

He had never seen them like this. Not since they had started living together. Ah, damn it. I scared them.

He had done something he needed to apologize for. That came first.

Sorry, and walking toward them, Lee Jun spoke.

"Kids. I startled you shouting like that, didn't I? I'm sorry."

A soft face. A gentle voice. Watching Lee Jun return to himself, all three heads tilted.

Not ducking back behind the wall — tilting out into the open. The remaining two-thirds of each face came fully into view.

These were not the faces that had fled in fear a moment ago. Only curiosity sat there now.

Lee Jun let out a breath of relief.

He did not come any closer. He sank down right where he was and spoke. They were clever. They deserved to understand.

"I just shouted because I was surprised."

Looking at Lee Jun seated on the living room floor, the three of them held a conversation with their eyes.

That's our Hyung-nim, ong.

That's our Hyung-nim's voice.

He's not mad anymore, is he? That's our Hyung-nim, dayo?

Seems that way, ong.

Should we go to him?

Let's. Let's go, dayo.

That was what they said. Their feet, however, would not quite move. What if he thundered like that again?

Then Hoesaegi thought, Sapsaree's the little brother, ong. Gkamnyangi's suffered enough because of me, ong.

So it had to be him.

Hoesaegi spoke — with his eyes, again. I'll go check, ong.

He peeled himself off the wall and stepped forward.

Tump, tump, tump.

The gait was as proud as ever. The stride, though, was half its usual length — so that if Hyung-nim shouted again, he could spin and run.

Once Hoesaegi moved, Gkamnyangi and Sapsaree crept out into the living room after him, just as carefully.

Watching the three of them approach as if the floor might give way, Lee Jun sank into thought. It's a fact that the atmosphere in a house reaches all the way into an animal's health. One loud shout, and they turn this cautious.

Hoesaegi. Gkamnyangi. Who were those two, if not the bosses of their packs?

And Sapsaree was no coward either.

If even they went this careful over a single raised voice, what would it do to the sensitive ones? It's true, though. When the mood in a house goes bad, their coats turn rough. There was even a dog who passed blood in his urine over it.

A white terrier named Happiness. Whenever voices rose at home, he would pass bloody urine without fail. Lee Jun had learned later that while Happiness was having those episodes, the older brother had been a high school senior, and he and his mother had argued constantly. Every time they did, the blood in the urine came like clockwork.

I wonder if Happiness is doing all right. If I could have talked with him then the way I can now, I would have treated him so much sooner.

The thought had only just settled, heavy in his chest, when Hoesaegi softly set a front paw on Lee Jun's seated leg.

This was the cat who used to hop straight up onto his lap.

Now he ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠only rested the paw there and looked up. Then he turned his head toward Go Gi-jin, who was still roaring into the phone, and looked back at Lee Jun again.

He was reading the room.

Lee Jun scooped him up in both arms and stroked him.

"It's okay. It's nothing."

"You mean it, ong? It's really nothing, nyaong?"

"Yeah. That's right."

At those words, Gkamnyangi and Sapsaree, who had been hanging back a little, launched themselves into Lee Jun's arms.

Whump.

Thud.

Both of them at once, and Lee Jun's body rocked. That was Sapsaree's size. Even as he tipped backward he kept stroking the two of them.

The three of them, back to themselves again.

Lee Jun held them and looked over at Go Gi-jin.

That was when Gi-jin's voice came through.

"Y-yeah. I-I'll head down right away. N-no, Ma, I can't manage it this minute. It'd have to be tomorrow evenin' at the earliest."

He was telling her he would come after clinic hours.

"Gi-jin. Go. Don't worry about this place."

Gi-jin broke off the call long enough to answer him.

"We've got a mountain of appointments, though. I'll go once clinic's done."

"It's fine. The other doctors and I can cover it. The clients will understand. Your mother must be worried sick. Go."

"Y-you sure that's alright?"

"Of course it is. If I had my way I'd go with you, but…"

"Th-thank you, Hyung-nim."

Gi-jin's mother, who had been listening to the whole exchange, asked the question herself.

"Yes, of course. Gi-jin will head down right away. Please don't worry too much."

"Anyway, I'm leavin' this minute."

Gi-jin ended the call and started getting ready to go, muttering under his breath.

"What in the world even happened? Why'd he go and hit someone?"

"How's the other man?"

"I don't even know. All they're sayin' is he got admitted to the hospital. Ma's in a state, I reckon. Up till now Pa's never once hit anybody. Ah—wait. There was that one time."

"There was?"

This was not the first time? The words rose as far as Lee Jun's lips and would not come out. Gi-jin went on without being asked.

"I got the livin' daylights beat out of me once, actually. Ma says that was the first time Pa ever hit a person."

Lee Jun wanted to know why. This was not the moment to ask. He changed the subject instead.

"Does Director Go have a drinking problem?"

"A habit? Nah, not really. Well, if gettin' loud after a few drinks counts as a habit, then I guess so. He's never gone and hit a person like he did today. Anyway, the only one Pa's ever laid a hand on is me."

"R… right. Sounds like the argument must have gotten badly out of hand."

"Seems that way. He's never hit people before. He better have gone easy on the fella, at least!"

Like father, like son. Lee Jun knew exactly how strong Gi-jin was, and his head nodded on its own.

"Well then. I'll be off."

"Go. And don't think about rushing back. Stay until it's properly sorted out. If you need any help, call me."

"I will. Thank you, Hyung-nim."

And with that, Go Gi-jin left in a hurry, bound for Hongseong.

"Hah… what on earth is going on?"

Left alone, Lee Jun still could not settle.

"Director Go isn't that kind of man."

Gruff, yes — but honest to the bone. A man who had given his days and nights to treating animals, and had lived that way for more than thirty-five years.

Then another thought arrived.

"Was the stress from this last mobilization that bad?"

Not long ago, just before the Lunar New Year holiday, Foot-and-Mouth Disease had broken out on a massive scale. Sixteen livestock farms across the Anseong area and the Chungcheong region.

One of those farms sat on the road from Hongseong — Gi-jin's hometown — toward Dangjin.

It was a farm Go Panseok knew. Of the hundred and ten dairy cows there, fifteen had shown suspected symptoms of FMD. The farmer had called for a house visit, saying the cows' milk yield had dropped off a cliff. While the veterinarian was examining them, he saw epithelial cells sloughing from their nostrils and the insides of their mouths, and he reported it to the authorities — suspected Foot-and-Mouth Disease.

Confirmatory testing followed, and the diagnosis came back. FMD. Only fifteen animals confirmed. The rest were normal.

But the FMD virus does not travel only through an infected animal's bodily fluids and feces. It travels on the breath. Airborne, it has been documented spreading fifty kilometers over land, and more than two hundred and fifty kilometers across the sea. The infectiousness is staggering.

For that reason, every animal sharing a space with FMD-positive cattle becomes a target for Livestock Culling — stamping-out — whether it is sick or not.

So all one hundred and ten cows on that farm were destroyed. A disposal that fit the quarantine authority's guideline to the letter.

The truth was, even without that policy, culling was the standard sequence of events after an outbreak. And winter, now, was ideal weather for the virus to spread. FMD survives better the colder it gets. Once it appears, the contagion is ferociously fast and ferociously strong. That is why early, rapid action matters so much.

An order goes out to empty every farm within a three-kilometer radius of a confirmed-positive site.

Lee Jun had first heard that phrase from Gi-jin, and he had asked, Empty the farm? Where do you even send that many animals? Do you have to find farms that will take them in?

The answer that came back was horrific. Send them where? There's a movement ban in effect.

When an epidemic like FMD or avian influenza breaks out, livestock workers receive a text.

Right. There's a fine if you don't comply, isn't there?

Ten million won. Or you do prison time.

That was the word Lee Jun had learned from Gi-jin, answering like that.

"Emptying the farm" was a euphemism for stamping-out.

So when the order fell on a farm to be emptied, it did not mean move the animals living there to another farm. It meant kill them.

And who did that work?

The officials. And among those officials were the veterinarians. A veterinarian had to be present at every culling site.

Who would want to go to a place like that?

Who would want to do that to cows looking up at them with those big, round, uncomprehending eyes?

But it had to be done. They did it because it had to be done.

At least now the law required that the animals be unconscious before they were buried. In the past, they had shoved living animals down into deep-dug pits and covered them over.

At any rate.

Go Panseok had been mobilized for this round of culling as well. Across the farms he knew, the cattle destroyed came to four hundred and fifty head. Of those, Go Panseok himself emptied one farm. The farm that had held a hundred and ten.

From that day, for a full week, he did not call Go Gi-jin.

This was a man who used to phone every single day because he missed his little ones, who would stay on a video call for five minutes if it was short and more than twenty if it was long, just to look at the three of them.

And then the calls simply stopped.

"Gi-jin said he suffers for a month afterward. Sometimes more than two."

There had been a day, once, after Go Panseok had come home from being mobilized for a cull. Gi-jin had told them he had heard his father talking in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his sleep.

He lived with an easy laugh, day to day. But was that what it looked like inside him?

Unbidden, Lee Jun thought of a senior colleague who had been mobilized for a cull and, afterward, taken his own life under the weight of the trauma.

"They say most of the people who get called up come out of it with severe post-traumatic stress…"

If a man who never used violence had gone so far as to assault someone, had he reached his breaking point?

And if he had — then what? Would therapy help? Would it even make a difference?

The worry grew heavier, and another one rose on top of it.

"Please. Please tell me he didn't hit him too hard."

Where did Gi-jin's strength come from, if not from that man?

Lee Jun could only hope that the person in the hospital had gotten off with a light injury — light enough that they could settle it cleanly, and go home.