The Premium Pet Hotel
Muhammad was flapping his hand back and forth with a face so bright and untroubled that, for a moment, I completely lost whatever I'd been about to say. Ignoring him felt just as awkward, though, so I headed for the gate.
"Oh! Good evening!"
"Good evening, you mean?"
"Good, yes!"
He nodded and shot me a thumbs-up as if that confirmed it, and he could not have looked more harmless.
"So, what brings you here?"
"Uhm... One moment, please to wait!"
I couldn't tell whether he simply hadn't understood me. He made a noise that seemed to be asking me to wait, then turned his eyes off to the side. I followed his gaze, and a man with the air of a secretary came walking up.
"Good day. I am Ha Gwak-o. I interpret for Mr. Muhammad."
"Ah, yes... Hello."
I'd never imagined I'd need an interpreter just to talk to a neighbor. My disbelief didn't slow the man down, though. He traded a few lines of Arabic with Muhammad, then spoke.
"Mr. Muhammad wishes to know whether you, Mr. Shin Suhwan, have any thought of operating a pet hotel."
"A pet hotel?"
"Yes. A hotel in which pets lodge, rather than people."
"Can't say I've ever considered it."
Once that was interpreted, Muhammad launched into a long explanation for the man, his face thick with disappointment.
"He asks whether you might consider it just this once. He has a pet he loves very dearly, and of late he has been greatly worried that its health seems to have declined a little..."
A beloved pet, belonging to a rich man from the Middle East. I went tense on the spot. I'd seen the articles under headlines like The Exotic Pets of Middle Eastern Billionaires. Leopards, lions, tigers—predators of every kind—and people who went so far as to keep rhinoceroses. There was no way I could bring an animal like that into the house and the cafe, so I moved to refuse at once.
"Ah, I am well aware of how the pets of Middle Eastern tycoons are regarded in Korea. There is no need for concern. It is not a dangerous predator, but a small horse. A miniature horse—the sort children ride at riding experiences, you know."
A horse came to mind the moment he said it, because I'd wanted to put So-eun up on one someday. Even full-grown, they only reached about the waist of a grown man. Even so, that didn't leave me with any particular wish to take in someone else's animal and care for it. I opened my mouth to refuse, and the interpreter moved faster. He pressed a check into my hand.
Then he hurried to add the rest.
"Should you, Mr. Shin Suhwan, agree to take the animal, Mr. Muhammad will pay this amount every month. He is not requesting any special care. He says it would be quite enough for the animal to receive the same treatment as your other pets. You need not go to any extra trouble. He asks only that you please accept."
"Please!"
The interpreter was begging, and so was Muhammad. I couldn't get a word out. It wasn't because of the check in my hand. Absolutely not.
"He's going to pay this every month?"
I pointed at the billion-won check clutched in my fist, and it wasn't the interpreter who nodded. It was Muhammad.
"For my Bboni, I can do every thing!"
He looked as if he had no intention of ever giving up, and I had no choice but to nod. Absolutely not because of the check in my hand. It was only his heart for the animal, and that unshakable resolve, that moved me. It was absolutely not the money—the billion won. I had paid off the first loan, yes, and another one was still sitting there from buying the land around the place, but that was not why I accepted. Absolutely not!
"There are conditions, though."
I slipped the check into my pocket and looked at Muhammad. Whatever else was true, now that I'd agreed to take the little miniature horse he kept, there were things its owner needed to hear.
"First. Even if it's an animal I was asked to look after, I can't give it special treatment. The guys I live with don't number just one or two. Muhammad already said as much himself, so I figure he'll understand."
"Of course, yes!"
"And second. I really don't think it'll come to this, but... if the animal won't listen to me properly and starts raising a ruckus, I'll send it back."
"I am believing in the Druid!"
A tycoon from the Middle East trusted me. Was I supposed to be grateful for that? I entertained the useless thought for a second, then went straight on to the next condition.
"Last. The animal I look after will come into contact with other people at the cafe. After a basic course of training, of course. I spend most of the day at the cafe, so caring for an animal that stays off by itself at the house is... honestly a little annoying. If that's all right, I'll look after Muhammad's friend. That pony."
"Is good! And not pony—Bboni! It is!"
Muhammad accepted my conditions with a brilliant smile, went straight over to the house he'd newly bought, and came back from it leading a small horse.
"Bboni, it is!"
He thrust the little horse in front of me and made the introduction. A friend he had raised with great care for quite a long time, he said, a friend more precious than anything else—and with a loving hand he stroked Bboni's short mane.
"Bboni, please."
He bent his head to me in a bow.
"Don't worry. I'm a Druid."
No other flourishes were needed. At the word Druid, relief showed plain on Muhammad's face. He spoke briefly with the interpreter, and then the interpreter's mouth opened.
"Mr. Muhammad is busy with his various businesses and will not be able to visit often, but he checks Mytube and Outsta at any time, so he asks that you please be sure to upload."
"Don't worry about that. Even at my worst, I'll put something up once every two days."
"Thank you, so much!"
He kept bowing, thanking me over and over, and I got a strong sense of just how much he liked this one called Bboni—how much he loved her. I let a small smile come up and went over to her.
"Hey. I'm Shin Suhwan. You and I are going to be together for a while."
"Really? Something about you feels nice."
She came up and quietly rubbed her head against me.
"I'm counting on you."
I gave her mane a light stroke. It felt rough somehow, and soft at the same time. Muhammad, watching, laughed out loud in delight.
"Please take good care of Bboni!"
Beaming, he went into his house and came back out carrying a travel bag.
"I go to work now. To see Bboni, I come here often!"
He was off to work, he said, but he'd come often—and with that he gathered his things and left. He vanished so abruptly that bewilderment was all that remained. Maybe this sort of thing happened to her all the time. Even with her owner gone off somewhere, Bboni didn't look the least bit bothered. If anything, she was staring at me with bright, round eyes.
"Let's go in."
Nothing but a single sheet of paper, light as anything, with an amount written on it that could not have been heavier—I took the check, and Bboni, and went into the house.
"Whoa! Daddy, what's that?"
"Suhwan, what is that...?"
I walked in with Bboni, and So-eun and Noona came back with exact opposite reactions. So-eun looked, for some reason, tremendously happy. Noona was startled to the limit.
"Her name's Bboni. She's going to live with us for a while. She belongs to Muhammad next door—I said I'd look after her for a bit."
"Waaah! Hi!"
So-eun lit up at that and ran straight at Bboni, grabbing her by the neck.
"...New master!"
"No, she's not!"
The second Bboni laid eyes on So-eun, she blurted out master, and I shouted in a panic. For an instant I pictured Bboni's real owner, Muhammad, back from a business trip and bawling his eyes out in front of the house. Surely it wouldn't come to that.
"Suhwan. What happened? You're looking after that, out of nowhere?"
I was doing my best to wipe that anxious future away when Noona tapped me and asked. Well, fair enough. What wife wouldn't be shocked if her husband stepped out for a minute because Muhammad had come by and walked back in leading a horse? I grinned, lifted the sheet of paper I'd tucked away, and gave it a little shake.
"What is it? A check?"
My income was in the middle of exploding, but even before that I'd been a high earner in my own right. I'd used checks plenty of times, and Noona had too, so a casual glance at one fluttering in the air was enough for her to know what it was. The amount, though, she apparently couldn't make out, and her face was full of puzzlement. Meaning to clear that up, I raised the check so the figure written on it showed.
"...O-one billion?!"
Once she'd confirmed the amount, Noona looked aghast. As if to make sure what she'd seen was real, she snatched the check out of my hand.
"This is real?"
"Yeah. Real as it gets. A Middle Eastern tycoon for you, I guess? Look after her for one month and he just hands over a billion won. Asks if I'm thinking of running a pet hotel, I tell him no, and he puts the check out on the spot. Too much money to refuse, sir... is sort of the feeling?"
Noona stared blankly at the check, mouth hanging wide open. I considered giving that open mouth one good poke with a finger, then the memory of getting bitten came back and I left it as a thought. I was clicking my tongue over the missed chance when Noona came to herself and spoke.
"Suhwan. Should we try a Premium Pet Hotel?"
"A Premium Pet Hotel?"
"Yeah! We'd just look after a few of them for a little while. You've got your ability, so people who really love animals would come find us, don't you think?"
"Hmm... doesn't sound bad?"
I gave a light nod. Honestly, Noona's idea felt all right. It was only possible because my superpower kept the animals and plants around me healthy and gave them physical ability beyond an ordinary specimen—and Muhammad, from the start, had probably come aiming at exactly that.
I wrapped up the preparations at once and put a post up on Outsta.
There was criticism, of course, that I'd caught a bad case of money-fever, but aside from Bboni the four remaining spots filled almost at once. Another Middle Eastern tycoon, an acquaintance of Muhammad's; a magnate who owned an enormous farm in Australia; the owner of a famous American company—people like that claimed the places. What came to stay with us was a huge parrot by the name of Grand Azure, a little pet spectacled caiman, a lemur that by all rights belonged in Madagascar, and a wallaby, kin to a kangaroo but smaller.
And the ones who lived alongside us, taking the full weight of my superpower, were completely changed from what they had been before they joined.
The big parrot, Grand Azure, came to speak Korean better than So-eun. Following along with the children's songs she loved, and the theme songs from her cartoons, the bird had a real gift for it. By the time it went back to its owner, its Korean was good enough that the owner had to go find a Korean interpreter.
The spectacled caiman—one of those crocodilians that don't strike you as very large even full-grown—was still small, but its strength had become tremendous. Raised long in human hands as a pet, it didn't turn that strength on people, but word came back that after it returned to its owner, it had overwhelmed a leopard one on one.
The lemur took a great liking to So-eun and toddled after her everywhere. Maybe that was why, in the time it spent with us, it woke up to a butler's calling. So-eun had a habit of rolling around on the floor when she played, and the lemur picked the dirt and the leaves off her clothes. After it went back to its owner, I heard it had put that awakened skill to full use and become a splendid butler. I even received a photo of it dressed in a tuxedo tailored for a monkey.
The wallaby, last of all, could almost be called ordinary. It had been a rather frail little thing and had come in the spirit of a convalescence, and it got its health back. I hesitate to call it a bonus, but it also came into enough strength to lay a muscle-bound kangaroo out cold.
Bboni, of course, hadn't gone without a change of her own. Muhammad dropped by now and then in a fit of experimental zeal and set her against a racehorse, and Bboni—legs as short as short could be—beat that thoroughbred with ridiculous ease.
"Oh! Thank you so much! A little more, I am asking!"
Thoroughly delighted that Bboni had gone and beaten a racehorse, Muhammad produced a fresh check and handed her right back over to me.
And once word of those changes got out, every kind of inquiry about the Premium Pet Hotel began pouring in.
"Come on—what is this, 'won't you take a human who isn't picky about his food and does what he's told'..."
Weird requests turned up here and there, but even so the pet hotel settled into place very smoothly. And my finances, naturally, grew very comfortable to match.