BWAAAAAAK!
I checked Outstar once, then shook my head at the DMs swarming in past any hope of counting them.
Mutube subscribers had blown past ten million, and it was no exaggeration to call myself a mega-influencer, which meant Outstar's inbox was bursting at the seams every single day. Ads were in there, and plenty of nonsense spouted by lunatics, but tucked between them were all sorts of good stories, and there was a real pleasure in glancing through now and then. It felt like picking treasures out of a filthy mountain of junk, one by one, and that made it strangely enjoyable. Every so often someone would seem to be writing something kind, only to spin the entire point a hundred and eighty degrees like a professional drift racer — but even that had a charm of its own.
"Huh?"
And then, digging through that flood of DMs in search of a decent story, I stopped cold on one of them.
"I abuse animals?"
I couldn't hide how absurd I found the words in that DM, and I looked around. Natae lay sprawled on the robot vacuum, being carted this way and that; Pe-eng had found the sofa so comfortable that the penguin was flopped belly-up over the armrest, dead asleep; the raccoons were straining with everything they had to loot the snack drawer; and Cheongho and the Tokkiz were quietly healing themselves as they watched So-eun sleep, her breath whispering softly in and out. Look wherever I liked, there wasn't a single corner of it where I could imagine I was abusing them.
So I brushed the claim off. It was, quite literally, not worth an answer.
My fans could not do the same.
Using the fan cafe as their base, they began to move as an organized force. They hunted down posts from people claiming I abused animals and buried them under bombs of opposition and downvotes — and on top of that, they spammed so many reports that the posts themselves were getting wiped. A post that merely cursed me out with every filthy word in the book, they wouldn't touch. But the moment anyone so much as claimed I abused animals, they swarmed in and tore it apart.
Couldn't they shut down the people badmouthing me while they were at it…….
A pang of regret hit me, but only for a moment. Leave them like this, and there was no telling what these uncontrollable people might do. I immediately posted on Mutube and the fan cafe, asking them to stop the organized response.
"They say stans are what create the antis. I've got no interest in manufacturing people who hate me for no good reason."
Plenty of folks had come to loathe famous celebrities after getting thoroughly sick of the outrages their fans committed. Even so, my fans were decent enough in their own way, and at my request the organized movement stopped almost at once. I'd written that answering, one by one, words that weren't worth answering would only steal my precious time — and everyone agreed and went along.
The people insisting I abused animals did not stop. If anything, now that even my fans were giving them nothing to push against, they seemed to flail all the harder.
In the end, I decided to turn on a broadcast and clear my name. Having to explain that I hadn't done something I'd never done in the first place — so this was the life of a famous man. Was this how Hong Gildong felt, unable to call his father Father, or his brother Brother?
"Quit the nonsense."
"Tch."
Noona, telling me I was saying useless things, reset the angle of the camera pointed at me. We were filming out on the lawn, and a sudden breeze had nudged it just a little off.
Once I confirmed I was properly in frame, I started the broadcast at once. People poured in within seconds, and the chat went wild. I'd said I was going to put the animal-abuse controversy to rest for good, and it felt as if every sort of person had come running. Some said there was nothing to clarify. Some told me to hurry up and clarify already. And some had their answer decided before I ever opened my mouth — that no matter what I said, the fact that I'd abused animals was not going to change.
"All right, everyone calm down. Today, we have a guest."
The word guest set people stirring. I didn't pay them the slightest mind and called out the people I'd prepared ahead of time. Three men in all.
"Now. These gentlemen came all the way to the cafe in person to say that I abuse animals."
The moment they appeared, the chat caught fire all over again, most of it people cursing the ones who'd just walked on. Their faces twisted when they saw it. Right — and with what confidence had they crawled all the way out here.
"Please don't insult them too much. You know what a protractor is, right? Measure your angle carefully before you chat."
"……I'm suing every last one of you. Since when does a cat type in the chat."
"Why couldn't one? Namcat! Get over here and type something."
At the words of the man speaking as if his mood were thoroughly foul, I called Namcat over at once. I set a laptop down in front of him as he approached with that haughty little walk of his, and Namcat immediately started typing.
Both front paws went pap-pap-pap-pap across the keys, and the moment he was done he vanished, every bit as haughty as when he'd arrived.
"……."
I took a certain pleasure in that expression, the look of a man who had just bitten into shit. And before he could get out whatever he'd been about to say, I moved straight on.
"First of all, there's exactly one reason I called these people out. To show you that what they're claiming — that I abuse animals — is a misunderstanding."
I asked who wanted to speak first, and all three hemmed and hawed, watching one another. Even so, the one among them with a decent streak of shamelessness raised his hand.
"Setting everything else aside, I believe the abuse of Cheongho is perfectly clear. She may be a small child, but she weighs no less than ten kilograms — more than twenty pounds. Loading a weight like that onto a dog's lower back is no different from abuse. In human terms, it's like setting nearly half your own body weight on your shoulders."
He talked at length, but it came down to this: I was putting So-eun on Cheongho's back, and that was abuse.
"You could see it that way, I suppose. But the problem is that it's an argument considering only the general case, with no thought at all for the individual. Shall we take the army as an example? Some people finish a march under a full combat load without any trouble, and some can barely manage their basic kit. So if you set only that light load on someone who can carry full gear, plus a comrade's gear, and still have strength to spare — is that abuse?"
"That's a human standard."
"No. Cheongho is exactly the same. That one doesn't even find it heavy when I climb on. And carrying So-eun is entirely what he wants. If anything, he tries to get her up there every chance he gets, to the point it's a nuisance."
"Don't talk nonsense. What dog bears the weight of a grown man! And do you have any proof Cheongho wanted it? It's nothing but what you yourself claim!"
Hearing that, I let a thin smile spread across my face. It was exactly the answer I'd wanted. At once I called out Cheongho, along with the two burliest employees in the cafe.
"What's the situation, sir? Why are you strapping the line on, sir?"
Having called them out, I buckled a harness onto Cheongho and had the two men grip the lines tight. Then, after putting a little distance between us, I opened my mouth.
"Cheongho! This man says you're never to carry So-eun again. Absolutely! No exceptions! Even if you drop dead! What do you think?"
"Not worth a thought, sir. I'll kill him, sir! Let go! You — get over here! You're dead, sir! Let go of me! That bastard's mine to wreck! He dares say not to carry the Young Mistress? He's dead, I repeat, sir!"
Cheongho barked like a lunatic — keong, keong, keong — and lunged as if to charge. He was even dragging across the ground the two sturdy grown men holding the lines attached to him.
"Wh-what are you doing!"
"What do you mean, what. You're the one who said it was just my claim, aren't you? All I did was pass it along exactly as it was. Him being pissed off is your responsibility, not mine. That's what you get for talking nonsense."
Spit strung from his jaws — a slightly unkind way to put it, but Cheongho was a mad dog incarnate. Faced with him dragging two adult men steadily closer, the man who had called it abuse went white with terror and couldn't keep still. He looked one second away from bolting, but I had the camera on him, and he couldn't quite bring himself to run.
"Does even that look like me abusing Cheongho?"
"B-but……."
"Those two big men are hauling back on him, and he's still dragging them over here — you think he can't handle So-eun? He reacts like that when he's told to stop, and you still think I forced him?"
Whether it was pride or something else, he couldn't get a word out.
"I said let go, sir! That bastard needs wrecking, sir! You just wait!"
"I-I misunderstood! I'm sorry!"
The silence didn't last. By then Cheongho had dragged the two employees in close, and the man broke under the fear.
"Cheongho. I was kidding."
"Ah. Is that so, sir?"
At my words he wore a perfectly peaceful expression, as if to ask when he had ever been raving. Once I unfastened the harness as well, he scurried off and took his place beside So-eun, and even subtly backed his hindquarters toward her, as if to say go on, climb up.
"You see that, and you're still going to say I abuse him?"
"……I'm sorry."
He ducked his head in a bow, then fled just like that. I let out a short laugh and turned to the two who remained.
"Anything either of you would like to say?"
They hesitated, then opened their mouths.
"And making animals dispose of leftovers is abuse. The child is a picky eater, so how can you give the animals what she won't eat."
"You're abusing them by using them too much to make money, aren't you. The snacks sold from the snack machine — the ones people give the animals — are amounts that far exceed what a normal animal eats. This is abuse through food. I'm not playing some cute word game, and I'm not calling it a mere exaggeration. This is real abuse."
At a glance, the two had said much the same thing. And this was a part I'd already anticipated.
"First, the idea that I make them clean up whatever So-eun doesn't eat is a misunderstanding. They eat it because they want to. I'm not force-feeding anyone. I even stop people from giving them things they shouldn't eat."
"They already have food they eat perfectly well, so the idea that the animals would want—"
The man about to rebut me shut his mouth at the scene visible inside the cafe.
"Honk."
"Get lost! I'm eating this!"
"You dare shove Big Bro? You're dead!"
"You lot fight it out. This one's mine—HONK!"
"Hah! First goose to eat it claims it!"
Beside So-eun, who had spat the broccoli out of her food, a fierce battle had broken out among the geese. A battle for the broccoli So-eun had spat out.
"Even seeing that, you think I'm force-feeding them?"
"……."
"And you say it far exceeds what a normal animal eats……. So then, among the animals in our cafe, is there a single fat one?"
"The raccoons……."
"And how long ago do you think those guys slimmed down?"
At that, the two shut their mouths. They did try to say something more, as if they couldn't stand to lose like this, but every last claim they made was nothing but talk not worth answering.
"And since so many of you are worried about the animals' health, tomorrow we'll be having them examined at an animal hospital. I'll show it live, so please come watch tomorrow, too!"
To shut down even the logic of people crying abuse in the name of the animals' health, I had decided on a checkup. The cooperation of a large animal hospital nearby was already arranged.