Spiritual Beasts
"A pleasure to meet you. I'm Hae Subyeong, director and veterinarian of this hospital."
The man who greeted us sat in that awkward span of years where you couldn't quite call him old and couldn't quite call him young. He was the veterinarian who had agreed to give every animal I kept a full checkup today.
I housed a fairly peculiar collection, which meant I needed a hospital that could look them all over under one roof, and in practice this was the only place that fit.
"We'll be in your care today. Oh — and as I mentioned before, you're still all right appearing on the broadcast?"
"Of course. It's publicity for the hospital. How could that be anything but good?"
I smiled, gave a light nod, and led the animals straight inside. People in blue uniforms were waiting there to welcome us.
"And these folks are...?"
"Ah, I forgot to say. These are the veterinarians on our staff. Even I can't properly examine every kind of animal, you see."
I traded greetings with them, each one responsible for a different field. Once the introductions were done, they drifted past me toward the animals at my heels and offered soft, careful hellos — one going to the dogs, another to the birds, each seeming to seek out the creatures in their own charge.
Watching the vets try to make friends before the exams had even started, I felt a flicker of worry.
"Ack! D-don't hit meee..."
One of them was already getting thrashed by Namcat, and I honestly wondered whether I ought to trust them with the examinations at all. It had already been decided, though, so I let the checkups proceed.
First up were the Tokkiz, whom So-eun adored. She spent half her waking hours hauling them around, and privately I worried about their health.
"Could you have them hop up here and stretch out flat?"
They needed my help for the X-rays. Without the animals fighting the machine, the images came out remarkably clear, so there was no reason to refuse. I lifted the Tokkiz onto the plate one at a time. Settle the pose, speak the magic word — "Stop!" — just once, and I didn't even have to hold them.
With the X-rays finished, we moved straight into the examination itself.
"Hmm. The ears are clean. Nose looks fine, too... The coat's neat as well. Do you groom them often?"
"I do. So-eun's crazy about them, so I end up looking after them even more carefully, I suppose."
"They're in wonderful shape. If you look at the X-ray here, the bones themselves are sturdier than an ordinary rabbit's. And the teeth — they couldn't possibly be better."
The veterinarian assigned to the rabbits kept murmuring in open admiration, running his hands over them from one end to the other.
"Truly healthy little ones. Weight's normal, and there isn't a single thing lacking!"
He added that it had been a long time since he'd seen rabbits this healthy, and I couldn't help the way my shoulders straightened. Plenty of animals were still waiting, though, so I moved on at once. Next came the birds, Yubu among them — some of the magpies and crows, the geese, and Pe-eng as well.
Once again, the checkup began with X-rays.
"...Your legs are ridiculously long."
Looking at the images, I turned back to Yubu and Pe-eng with fresh surprise. From the outside their legs were stubby as could be, yet on the film they ran nearly the full length of the bodies you actually saw.
"Did these legs of mine truly appear so short?"
"My legs are shooort-yang!"
Yubu drew himself up tall to show his legs off, while Pe-eng only waddled, as if his simply refused to straighten. Alike and opposite all at once — a laugh slipped out of me. After that I got the geese, the magpies, and the crows through the X-ray just as easily.
"Yubu's fine overall, but he seems a little short on exercise. It would be better if you got him moving more. He weighs a bit more than a typical owl. His musculature is excellent, so it shouldn't become a problem, but still."
If all he needs is more activity, there's exactly one fix. I made a mental note to set Yubu and Namcat against each other again, then lifted Pe-eng onto the exam table.
"Pe-eng's in decent shape, too. To be honest, our knowledge of penguins has some gaps, so a more detailed exam is difficult. Even so, the X-ray and the external check show no problems at all."
The result was a little unsatisfying, but no problems was enough for me to be content.
"The magpies and crows... These really are magpies and crows? Why are they so huge?"
Those two sent the veterinarian into open shock, simply because they were larger than he'd expected. He handed me a sheet fresh off the printer — a life-size drawing of an ordinary magpie and an ordinary crow, rendered at a one-to-one scale. I held it up against the real birds, and the difference was impossible to miss.
"They're healthy overall as well. It looks like there's been some fighting over rank, though. A few of them have wounds, so you'll just want to keep those tended."
Sure enough, when I looked over the flock, several of them bore scratches. I listened to a quick explanation of how to treat the wounds, then moved on to the next animal.
"Well now! This fellow Hanmu is remarkably healthy. He'll live another hundred years, easy."
"...You're joking."
"No, I'm serious. Judging by his condition alone, he still looks like he's only in his early teens. Their lifespan runs about a century, so living another full hundred years isn't out of the question."
I shut my mouth.
He wasn't just going to outlive me. He might outlive So-eun, too. How was I supposed to take that as anything but absurd?
"The raccoons are quite healthy as well. Their claws are a bit ragged, though, so I'd recommend managing them — a scratcher, or a trim. And they seem fairly intelligent."
The raccoons received a clean bill of health. After them came the cats.
"I'll be honest. I've been wanting to examine this one for real. Every time I see him I think, that's not a cat, that's a leopard cat. What kind of cat thrashes an owl and wins..."
The veterinarian in charge of the cats shook his head as if the whole thing defied understanding, then caught hold of Namcat. He folded the ears this way and that, parted the fur to check the skin, and didn't hesitate to pry the mouth open and inspect the teeth. Even that wasn't enough. He tried to look between Namcat's legs.
"Ack! Sorry, sorry! I won't look there, so stop hitting me!"
Namcat, who had never intended to allow things to go that far, assaulted the veterinarian. Fortunately, it didn't turn into a real problem.
"The cats are in good shape overall. And — congratulations."
"...Sorry? For what?"
"Poksini's pregnant. It's still early, so it hardly shows, but she's definitely carrying."
"Hah..."
I'd come to check on their health and walked into the news that Poksini was expecting. The absurdity of it shifted, a moment later, into something stranger. She wasn't my child, but she was family all the same, and the thought of her carrying kittens left an odd feeling in my chest.
"Cats generally handle this well on their own. A little help from you should be plenty."
I jotted down everything the veterinarian told me, then ran a hand over Poksini's fur.
With the cats finished, all that remained were the dogs, tails swinging hard.
"...Are these actually dogs?"
The moment their checkup began, the veterinarian in charge turned a perfectly serious face on me. Not this again.
"Take a look at this."
Dogs were the most common pets in the country, so the equipment for examining them was considerable, and the results came back in real detail. From that pile of findings, he pointed to a single line. It was Cheongho's — the bite force.
Subject:Cheongho
Bite Force:1,157 psi
"1,157 psi? How does that compare?"
"A little below a polar bear..."
"...I'm sorry?"
Once again, I couldn't quite hide how absurd it sounded. And the veterinarian wasn't finished.
"I saw yesterday's broadcast, and because of it I ran a few extra tests on Cheongho. Those came back far above average, too."
He explained that Cheongho's condition was peak — beyond peak. His back hadn't bowed in the slightest; set beside dogs of a similar age, he was so sound the comparison barely made sense. On top of that, after watching him drag two grown adults along, the vet had run a test just in case and confirmed that Cheongho could run while hauling more than four hundred and forty pounds.
He shook his head and said that in all the years since he'd started this work, he had never seen an animal like this. It wasn't only Cheongho, either. The other dogs posted numbers that couldn't be set beside an ordinary dog's. Maru, in particular, had punched her endurance clean through the top of the graph, and her top speed read at over forty miles an hour.
"Natae... He really doesn't move, does he?"
"No. Tell him to move and he still won't."
"Then why are his weight and everything else completely normal?"
"...Beats me?"
Why ask me? I was the one who wanted to know. Even so, not a single one of them had a health problem, and that was satisfying — more than satisfying. Most of them were in better shape than animals that had just been born.
Which meant I could look straight into the camera and say it without flinching.
I had proven, beyond any doubt, that the animals were healthy through and through, and I ended the broadcast with a light heart.
Once it was over, people began to say, in all seriousness, that the animals were spiritual beasts.
Faced with health like that — nothing ordinary about it — people accepted them, sincerely, as spiritual beasts.