Just Don't Go to the Ranch
The moment Go Gi-jin, Veterinarian Go Panseok, and Rancher So fell into conversation among themselves, Na Seungchan felt a wave of relief wash through him. Go Gi-jin had finally lowered the phone he'd been thrusting in Na Seungchan's face.
Under ordinary circumstances, it would have been more than fair to start shouting. What kind of people walked into someone else's hospital room to demand a settlement and then stood around making small talk? If that was all they were going to do, they could get out. Judging by the way Na Seungchan had carried himself only minutes earlier, he was more than capable of exploding like that.
Instead, he simply let out a long breath and sagged into the pillows.
Heh heh... I might actually live through this.
He had never imagined that simply escaping those pleading, save-me eyes would feel this much like surviving.
Na Seungchan had been made to feel, if only a fraction, just how painful and harrowing the trauma of livestock culling could be. He had looked at nothing more than photographs, and still his chest had clenched shut and his breath had gone thin. That was as far as he would put it. Of course, in his head, he admitted none of it at all.
Huuu...
He sat there for a while after that long sigh, doing nothing. Then, slowly, his mind came back online — and with it, a fact he had completely forgotten while he'd been sitting there hollowed out.
Ah. The livestream!
He had left it running.
Na Seungchan's eyes snapped to where he'd set his phone. But the three men were still absorbed in their conversation, and the police officer listening in was just as intent. All four of them might as well have forgotten he existed.
He reached out, took the phone, and looked down at the screen as if he were only checking a text, fully intending to kill the stream. Out of habit, he skimmed the comments first — and jolted so hard he nearly dropped it.
The mood in the comments had turned.
W-wait. This... this is not how this was supposed to go.
The atmosphere was the exact opposite of everything he had aimed for. Goosebumps raced over his whole body, and a single phrase slammed into his skull: personality controversy.
In this business, a personality controversy could bury you in a heartbeat. The thought that he might be heading down that exact road sent a shudder through him.
Oh, shit. If this goes wrong, I'm finished, aren't I? What do I do?
He ended the livestream in a hurry and went hunting through social media. The conclusion he reached was simple.
Tuck the tail. Stand down.
The firepower backing the Go father and son was no joke. It was, at the same time, the firepower now aimed at him.
Na Seungchan cleared his throat.
"Ahem."
The conversation in the room was just winding down, and every pair of eyes turned toward him.
"What's that now?"
"Well, you're not exactly young, and it's cold out, so... let's just settle this quickly."
It was a breathtaking change of posture. Go Gi-jin, unfortunately, heard something else entirely — a demand to settle fast so the payout could be handed over.
"What settlement you talkin' about? You..."
Go Gi-jin shut his mouth. What he had been about to say was, I wouldn't give a man like you a single cent. Didn't you hear what my father said? He swallowed it.
What if hyung-nim and our Mongmong family end up catchin' heat for no reason? Gwak Su-ho hyung-nim too.
He didn't mind being criticized himself. Dragging the people around him into it was another matter. The urge to come on strong folded in his chest.
That was how he felt. His father, he suspected, would feel otherwise.
Dad's goin' to say no, I know it.
Go Gi-jin was glancing sideways at Veterinarian Go Panseok when his father crossed his arms.
"Go on, then. Speak."
"S-so, what I mean is. I got hurt, and you got hurt, sir, so... what if we each just cover our own treatment?"
Na Seungchan said it with his face half turned away. Go Panseok's eyes bored into him.
What's this? What's this little snake plotting now?
Under that fierce, hawklike glare, Na Seungchan's nerve collapsed on the spot. His shoulders drew up around his ears, and his voice crawled out of him.
"I-I mean. I didn't intend to, but I did end up hurting you, so..."
All he wanted was to get out of this room in one piece, and his mouth kept moving to make that happen.
"I was just flailing my arm around trying to get away, and then I... I'm sorry."
It was a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn from the man he had been only minutes before.
Hmph. Looks like the boy heard my son out and actually reflected.
That was what Go Panseok thought, watching Na Seungchan babble. Go Gi-jin had landed in almost the same place.
Guess he felt something from what Dad said?
On top of that, another thought had been sitting in Go Panseok's mind for some time.
Good. I was worried that if we dragged this settlement business out and got ourselves in people's mouths, that Jun kid'd end up catchin' the fallout.
Go Panseok had felt uneasy from the moment Na Seungchan had mentioned Mongmong Animal Hospital. He had been afraid Lee Jun would be hurt because of him. Watching the other man come out like this, he felt a genuine swell of relief.
"Alright. I'm glad you see it that way."
"I-I appreciate it."
"But listen here!"
Na Seungchan tensed at the words that followed.
"Yes?"
"Promise me just one thing."
"What... promise?"
"As a rule, you stay away from ranches! Unless it's some job you absolutely cannot do without goin' to one — you don't go."
"Yes. Yes. I won't go. I will never go near one again."
Na Seungchan answered at full volume, and this time the answer had truth in it. When he had blurted out a settlement a moment earlier, he had been saying whatever tumbled onto his tongue. This was real.
Ugh. If I ever set foot on a ranch again, I'm not even human.
The mere thought of a ranch would drag up, unbidden, those wretched, desperate eyes of the pigs.
Na Seungchan's gaze flicked to the phone still in Go Gi-jin's hand, and his shoulders shuddered. He was busy branding a ranch jinx — or a trauma — into his brain when Go Panseok spoke again.
"I'll cover your treatment. It won't even come to that much!"
"I-I appreciate it."
"Appreciate nothin'. That's enough of that."
"Alright, alright. That wraps it up, then. You got that? Don't you go changin' your story later — you withdraw that complaint!"
Section Chief Baek drove the spike in.
"Yes."
"Then you get yourself well."
That was all Go Panseok said before he walked out of the room. Go Gi-jin moved to follow, and Na Seungchan let out, in one rush, the breath he had been holding.
Then he started turning over how to close this out for his subscribers. The settlement had gone smoothly, so he could say there had been a misunderstanding and leave it there.
And if I mention that the old man even paid my medical bills, the subscribers won't think I was the one in the wrong.
He was arranging the lines in his head when something was thrust abruptly into his field of view. He looked up. Section Chief Baek Gyeongsin was watching him.
"A complaint's come in, y'see."
"A complaint? We just finished settling."
"Director Go's matter is settled."
"Then what..."
"That'd be me."
The voice belonged to the man who had been standing silent at Section Chief Baek's side the whole time: the owner of Sodeuljib Ranch. Na Seungchan's head turned toward Rancher So, and Section Chief Baek supplied the rest.
"Meanin' you walked onto this man's ranch without permission, that right?"
Rancher So had filed a criminal complaint against Na Seungchan for trespassing on private property. Not only had Na Seungchan set foot on Sodeuljib Ranch without leave — he had gone in while ignoring the owner's clear wish that he stay out.
"Th-that's the matter we just finished, isn't it?"
"Ah, that matter and this one are different, see. He told you to get out, and you didn't leave, that right? And what was it now. Mr. Na Seungchan walked in carryin' a threatening object, that right?"
"What? A weapon? When did I ever?"
Na Seungchan stared at Rancher So as if the man had lost his mind.
"That's ridiculous. What weapon was I supposed to have been holding? The CCTV — look at the CCTV, you'll see!"
"I did look. You were wavin' a camera and a phone around."
"R-right. And other than that, I wasn't holding anything."
Na Seungchan relaxed. The next sentence took the soul right out of him.
The car hummed down the road. Go Gi-jin drove, and Veterinarian Go Panseok sat in the passenger seat, and neither of them said a word. Go Gi-jin kept his eyes on the asphalt and drove. Go Panseok turned his face to the right and watched the window.
Some five minutes of that, and something caught Go Panseok's eye.
A coffee shop. The place his son always stopped at for something sweet whenever they passed this way.
Kid loves that place.
The thought had barely formed before it came out of his mouth.
"Say. Let's pull in over there and have a drink before we go."
If Lee Jun had been listening, he might have asked what on earth that was supposed to mean. Go Gi-jin understood at once.
"Aigoo, you thirsty, Dad?"
"You little— who's thirsty in this cold? I'm sayin' we should stop 'cause it's a place you like."
"Oh, Dad. Plenty of folks your age go there just fine. If you want somethin', you can just say you want it."
"Never you mind. Fine, we'll just keep goin', then?"
"Aigoo, don't you go sayin' a thing like that. You'll have me up all night feelin' bad. Hold on — I'll make a U-turn up ahead."
"Alright."
The man answering and the man driving both had a smile sitting at the corner of the mouth. Once the dam on the conversation broke, Go Panseok kept going.
"You alright, then?"
"About what?"
"You. Are you alright. From when you were a public veterinary officer."
He meant the culling sites — the places Go Gi-jin had been sent to while serving as a veterinary officer for epidemic prevention, in place of regular military duty.
"Ah, I'm fine. What's there to be, anyway?"
Go Panseok's face darkened at his son's answer. He could say that all he wanted — how torn up must he be on the inside?
"That's why I told you to just go to the army."
If he had, he never would have been deployed to a culling site. Go Panseok had, in fact, tried to talk his son into enlisting instead of becoming a public veterinary officer.
"Aigoo, Dad, what are you talkin' about? I got to keep seeing the cows, keep treating them. It was so good."
"Even so..."
"You're the one who said it, Dad. If not me, then who? And you were right. If I hadn't gone, some other vet would have."
His son, throwing his own words back at him.
"You stubborn fool."
That was for his son, the boy — the one who should have stayed away if staying away had been possible.
Thank you.
And that was for his son, the veterinarian. Of course, that last part never reached Go Gi-jin's ears.
"Aigoo, we're here, Dad. We're goin' in, right?"
"Alright. Let's go in."
The two of them got out of the car and walked into the cafe side by side.
"Dad, what do you want?"
"Whatever. I'll have what you're having."
"You sure? It's real sweet."
"That's fine. I'll give it a try."
Today, Go Panseok had decided to follow his son's taste.
"Well then, we've been workin' hard since this morning, so how about a fresh chocolate latte? Aigoo, and a slice of cake too. You want cake, Dad?"
"I'm alright."
"Yeah? Their cake here's real good, though."
"That so? Then get one for your mother too."
"Will do."
Go Panseok watched his son head up to the counter, the corner of his mouth climbing all the way to his ear, and muttered to himself.
"Well. He'll be alright."
A face like that, and that was enough. A smile rose on Go Panseok's own face as he looked at his son's back.
A short while later, that smiling face collapsed in utter ruin.
"Aigoo, that's sweet. What do you even drink this for?"
Go Gi-jin took one look at the expression of a man who had just swallowed the most undrinkable thing on earth, and laughed.
"Heh heh. Oh, Dad. That's the whole point. What else would you drink it for?"
"You're a strange one, I swear. You finish it."
Go Panseok said it and pushed the enormous glass cup across the table.
"Thanks, Dad. Heh heh heh."
Go Gi-jin stood up as he said it.
"I'll go grab you something else. An Americano'd be good, right?"
"Don't you bother. I'll get it myself — you just sit there and drink."
While the Go father and son were sharing that quiet stretch of time, posts about Foot-and-Mouth Disease and livestock culling were pouring onto Gowi Cafe — Cats Are Precious.
Most of the writing was in that vein: people realizing they had only ever treated the subject as a news blip scrolling past on a screen, and that they were only now beginning to take it seriously. Attention was turning, too, toward the people who actually had to carry the work out.
All of it was a ball Na Seungchan had sent into the air. And the people most startled by where it landed were the ones who worked in the field.
Lee Seongwoo, who dropped by Gowi Cafe from time to time, was one of them.
Lee Seongwoo — who worked at a fairly large animal hospital in Incheon — stormed into the exam room in a full-blown temper.
"Ah, for crying out loud! Sales, sales, sales."
The director had just chewed him out.
He dropped into his chair and muttered, irritation thick in his voice.
"I ought to just quit this damn hospital. As if I wouldn't have anywhere else to go."
It happened to be lunchtime. On any other day he would have sat there watching the director's face, waiting to be invited to eat. But when you had already made up your mind to resign, what was left to walk on eggshells about?
Lee Seongwoo took off his white coat, stepped out, and said to the receptionist,
"I'm going to eat."
The place he found was a bean sprout soup restaurant. That insufferable director had flattened his appetite, so a hot bowl of bean sprout soup and rice was exactly what he needed to kick it back into gear.
"One extra-large bean sprout soup with rice, please."
Order placed, Lee Seongwoo went looking for somewhere to put the anger. The place that always settled his mind when he was furious — the hometown of his heart — Gowi Cafe. He opened it, and his eyes went naturally to a new post.
"Did FMD break out today? Why is every new post Foot-and-Mouth, culling, Foot-and-Mouth, culling? And why are posts like this even here?"
Subjects that never came up on an ordinary day. He tapped into a post, and in a matter of seconds he had fallen into it. He spent the rest of the meal hunting down post after post, reading and reading again. He was scraping the bottom of the earthenware bowl without any memory of having finished it, and he muttered,
"So there are people like this in the world."
Thinking of the Go father and son, Lee Seongwoo found himself thinking, just as naturally, of Mongmong Animal Hospital. Of Hoesaegi, of Gkamnyangi, of Sapsaree — all of whom he was already so fond of.
"Oh, that's right. I heard the director at Mongmong was asking around if anyone knew a decent vet."
He remembered the news that Lee Jun had been asking fellow veterinarians for a recommendation. If this was how he was going to be treated — dismissed, wrung out like a machine for making money — he would be better off looking after the Yonggami, the Brave Ones, at Mongmong Animal Hospital.
The thought settled. Lee Seongwoo set down his spoon and muttered,
"That's it. Write the resignation. Write it, and go over there today."