Daily Routine (1)
"Hm? You're up early today."
Noona, who was far more of an early riser than I was and the one who shook me awake every morning, looked genuinely startled to see me. The man who on any ordinary morning would still have been snoring was upright and conscious, and she seemed to find the phenomenon remarkable.
"I'm filming a vlog today. Well — I'm doing it as a livestream, so maybe calling it a proper vlog is a stretch."
"Don't tell me you're starting from this morning."
"I am. I'm just going to keep it going until I go to bed. People have been curious about my daily routine."
Noona stared at me as if she couldn't believe her ears. It wasn't the filming itself so much as the part where I meant to stay on air until bedtime. Even so, she must have decided it wouldn't actually be a problem, because she shrugged.
"Do what you want. Just don't count on me today. I've got plans."
"Then help me this morning, at least. I'll ask the crew once they show up."
"Fine. Go wash up first. I'll get breakfast started."
I nodded, washed up in a hurry, and came back out. The moment I was dressed well enough to be seen, I turned the stream on.
The moment the broadcast went live, people poured in. It was still early, so while there were plenty of Koreans, the share of foreign viewers looked a little higher than usual. Languages I couldn't even identify kept catching my eye in the chat.
I didn't have the leisure to lounge there reading them.
"First of all, there's one reason I started this early. A lot of you have been curious about my daily routine, so I thought I'd film it vlog-style and stream it at the same time."
The viewers cheered. If it was my vlog, they figured, they'd at least get their fill of the animals.
"Anyway, since I'm filming a vlog on top of the stream, please understand if I can't answer the chat."
"That's exactly what I'm about to show you."
I answered that one message and got moving. I still had to drag So-eun back to the real world from the dreamland she was snoring her way through.
She liked sleeping wedged between Noona and me best of all, and sleeping on my stomach second best — yet here she was, sprawled alone across the wide bed and snoring, in a set of pale-pink bunny pajamas, no less.
The moment the camera caught her, the chat was nothing but that. Wall to wall, and not a gap anywhere.
I paid it no mind and gave So-eun a gentle shake.
"Mmmngh……."
"So-eun, time to get up."
"Don't wannaaa."
"If you don't get up, no riding Bboni today."
"I'm uppp!"
At that she scrambled upright and planted both feet on the mattress.
"Huh? Daddy, what's that?"
"You know how Daddy does his streams? This is one. Want to say hi to the people watching?"
"Hellooo!"
Told to greet them, So-eun went straight into a full bow from the waist, putting her kindergarten lessons to work on the spot — and of course it was adorable. As her head dipped, the hood flopped down over her hair, and the bunny ears stitched to it bobbed with the bow.
The cheers left me, for no good reason at all, feeling my shoulders creep up toward my ears. I took So-eun and headed for the bathroom.
"So-eun needs a wash, so please wait out here a moment."
I propped the phone up any old way outside the bathroom, took her straight in, and washed her — shampooed her hair, washed her face, and came back out. Teeth could wait until after she'd eaten.
"Hehehe!"
Hair washed, face clean, the last of the sleep gone, So-eun beamed and went racing through the house. I caught her, got her changed, and the two of us headed for the table.
By the time we got there, Noona had breakfast ready enough that we could sit down and eat at once. The instant that landed on camera, the donation alert went off.
"Whatever this family eats, I prefer to make it myself."
Noona answered the question lightly. Ever since So-eun had started on solid food, she simply wasn't satisfied unless she handled our meals with her own hands.
At any rate, after that brief little Q&A, we started in on breakfast.
"Yummy!"
So-eun clutched her child-sized spoon and applied herself seriously to the meal, happily taking the side dishes Noona and I set on her plate from either side. Broccoli and its cousins, of course, she still expelled with a virtuoso's technique.
Once So-eun, proprietor of the smallest stomach, was full, Noona and I filled ours as well, and the morning rolled on. Noona started clearing up after the meal. I took So-eun back to the bathroom and brushed her teeth.
"Who are you going with today?"
"Mmm……."
So-eun's morning dilemma, the same one every day, had begun.
It wasn't much of a dilemma. She was only deciding who would carry her to kindergarten. Most mornings it came down to Cheongho or Bboni. Now and then, when she felt like enjoying the speed, she rode Maru — but that was truly only now and then.
"I wanna ride Bboni!"
"All right. Let's do that."
Decision made, I helped her off to school. In practice that only meant handing over the bag I'd packed the night before and setting her up on Bboni.
"I'm off, sir!"
So-eun climbed onto Bboni with Nureongi — put to excellent use as a third arm — coiled tight around her body, and took off straight for kindergarten.
I couldn't very well help worrying, so I sent Cheongho along behind them.
With So-eun's drop-off finished, I got down to the real work of the day.
"First time seeing the zoo before we open, isn't it?"
People reacted in their own ways to the empty zoo. Regulars found it novel. Everyone else was busy spotting the animals as they looked without a crowd in the way.
"The Pudgies got caught the other day running off with a guest's phone, so they're on cleaning duty. No treats unless they finish. These guys' sticky fingers get worse by the day……."
I shook my head and walked on past the raccoons, who were picking up scraps of trash and dropping them into the bin.
My first stop was the aviary, packed with Yubu and the magpies, the crows, the parrots, and a whole host of other birds.
"Sleep well?"
The moment I offered a morning hello, the aviary erupted in hoots and squawks. I waved at the birds and took a look around.
The keepers had clearly already been through. Feeders and water dishes were filled to the brim, and the aviary was tidy in its own way — hard to believe more than a hundred birds lived there.
"Any sick birds, raise a wing. Nobody? If you're sick, don't hide it. Really nobody?"
At that, every bird shook its head at once. Fair enough. They lived deep inside the reach of my power. Getting sick wouldn't come easy.
They hopped about and fluttered off looking perfectly healthy, so I nodded and stepped out of the aviary. I still had the other animals to check before the visitors arrived, and I couldn't afford to dawdle.
Next was the Reptile Pavilion, only recently put in place.
True to cold-blooded form, the reptiles were already out enjoying the morning sun. Not a single one was missing. Every last reptile lay sprawled in the light.
"Well? You all settling in all right?"
"Yeeees. It's sooo goooood."
They answered in a long, lazy drawl, then flopped back onto the floor and went right on basking. The look of them said it plainly enough — we're comfortable, don't poke us, go away — and I let out a short laugh.
"These ones seem more than satisfied with the zoo. All right, let's look in on the others."
After the reptiles came the tiger enclosure. They were the animals who never once missed first place as the most pitiful creatures in the zoo, and the chat caught fire.
Most of the viewers felt sorry for Hodori and the other tigers. Pushed around by Namcat, robbed of their food by the raccoons — pity came naturally.
I huffed a laugh, opened the gate to the enclosure, and stepped inside. Some of them were sleeping without a care in the world. Plenty of others were already slinking around, even at this hour.
"Anyone get sick overnight?"
"No. We're hungry, though."
"……Robbed again?"
"……It was gone when we woke up."
I burst out laughing, then passed Hodori's story along to the viewers who were clearly lost. Food vanishing while you slept — that set them off laughing too.
"Wait — what kind of amount is that? Exact, and yet somehow vague. Like somebody's cost price."
Reading the chat going on about how expensive chicken was, I handed out the chicken I'd brought along, one portion at a time. The tigers, stomachs empty after their food had been cleaned out overnight, wolfed it down. Even the ones who'd been asleep shot upright to demolish their share.
"……Starving them? Please. I feed them seven times a day. They just get robbed of every last bit."
At that, the chat went right back to lamenting how pitiful the tigers were.
I was long past used to it, so I let the chat slide and moved on to the other animals.
This time it was a pair who held a rather important place in the zoo — the northern white rhinos, only two of them left in the entire world. One was heavy with a swollen belly. Precious beyond measure, the pair of them.
A place that precious meant at least one researcher on station at all times, there to look after them around the clock. The night shift, having confirmed just how healthy the two had become, was even starting to doze.
"David. Are these two all right?"
"Oh, they're fine! Excellent, even. Ever since these friends arrived, their condition has looked like the best I've seen!"
David was the very reason the rhinos had ended up at our zoo. I nodded along to his report, climbed the fence, and went over to them.
Same as with the others, I asked whether anything was bothering them and ran one more light check. Fortunately there wasn't a single thing wrong. They were perfectly healthy.
After that I made a circuit of the remaining enclosures as well. Walking the zoo the way you'd call morning roll — that was the first order of my day, every morning before we opened.