Daily Routine (2)
With the last of the pre-opening routine behind me—the zoo's morning roll call... no, the patrol—I headed not for the main gate, but for the rest area at the center of the grounds.
Simply closing the cafe that had been, you might say, the zoo's very beginning would have been too much of a shame, so I had built one right in the middle of it.
I stepped inside to find the staff bustling in the final minutes before opening, Yeongji among them.
The instant I crossed the threshold, though, something came flying at me.
"It's Master! Master!"
"Hug me! Hug meee!"
What had thrown itself on me was a pair of dogs—Jjamong the Welsh Corgi, and Soolbbang the Bichon. I'd already seen them before bed, and still they were this glad to see me; I scrubbed them hard, almost lifting and shaking them as I petted, and they only tangled themselves closer, delighted. They had lived in the cafe so long that, of every place in the whole zoo, it was the one they loved best.
"Brother-in-law!"
I was still petting the two of them when Yeongji came scurrying over in a crisp apron. She had run up calling my name, and now she stole a quick look around me.
"Where's So-eun?"
"Kindergarten, obviously."
"Aww..."
Disappointed to find So-eun gone, Yeongji drooped on the spot. Of all the things in the world, playing with So-eun was what she loved most.
Chat messages piled up one after another, as if the viewers agreed completely. I snorted a laugh at the reaction and glanced around—and found Natae sprawled flat on the floor.
He was a creature who spent the whole day being carried here and there in visitors' arms, but his day always, without fail, began in this very spot. I looked at him, and he was blinking. Eyes open and blinking was a sight Natae only offered when he was in peak condition; if he felt even a little off, he just lay there and barely opened them at all.
"Natae looks fine."
"How can you even tell that, brother-in-law?"
"A feeling, I guess? I just know when I look."
"I'm so jealous!"
Yeongji's eyes shone as she stared at me. She loved animals so dearly that my Superpower was something she envied. I gave her a light smile and ordered a coffee. Drinking a cup while we opened was as much a part of my routine as anything else.
"I knew you'd come, brother-in-law, so I made it ahead!"
As if she had never been sulking at all, Yeongji held out a coffee she had prepared in advance. I took it and started for the door.
Clang!
I would have made it, too, if a porcelain ornament hadn't come crashing down right in front of me.
Startled, I looked up and found a creature with its fur puffed out soft and fluffy.
"...What are you doing up there?"
"Resting?"
It was Chicken, proudly displaying those short legs from behind the shelves where the porcelain ornaments were lined up. Is she serious? She wasn't trying to assassinate me, was she?
The suspicion was probably nothing, but I set the unbroken ornament back up where it belonged all the same—and I didn't forget to grab Chicken and haul her down.
Leaving the disappointed viewers and Chicken behind, I stepped out of the cafe once more and walked straight for the main gate. Opening time was nearly upon us. Along the way I spotted Ssangdungi pacing haughtily along the top of an enclosure fence, and Poksini moving this way and that with her kittens carried in her mouth, and I arrived at the gate light on my feet.
Looking at the entrance just beside the ticket booth, I could already see quite a crowd lined up.
I caught the long line, already stretched out before we had even opened, on camera, and the viewers reacted in all sorts of ways. I waved back at someone waving at me—almost certainly a viewer—and then unlocked the entrance gate.
"We're open!"
I called it out and threw the doors wide, and the staff in charge of checking tickets hurried into place and began confirming people's admission. Once the visitors started coming through, I offered them a light hello, posed for a few photos, a bit of fan service—and then I was moving again. The whole pre-opening routine was finished, so I was fairly at ease, and my pace was an easy one.
"The busiest I get is from the moment I wake up in the morning until we open. After that, things are pretty laid-back."
I strolled home and went straight to the garden.
"Some of you already know, but this is the garden at our house. We keep it so we can eat fruit and vegetables regularly. It's less that we want to be self-sufficient, and more that we want to grow things we can actually trust to eat. That kind of feeling."
I spoke while filming the beds, and the chat raced upward.
Every fruit on the garden was huge and lusciously ripe, and the viewers were unanimous that it was something extraordinary. They could hardly help it. What hung there was a size you simply didn't see—so big you'd have a hard time finding the like of it at a large supermarket near the house, or even at a produce market.
From among them I casually picked a strawberry about the size of my fist. It was big enough that if I gave it to So-eun, she would bite into it almost the way you'd bite an apple.
"Right? The sugar content's really high, so they're incredibly sweet."
When I added that they were sweeter than quite a few chocolates, people kicked up a fuss, each of them dying for a taste. I breezily ignored the requests and headed for a corner of the garden, where an enormous hive—as big as So-eun's upper body—had taken up residence.
"This is where we keep bees. I wouldn't exactly call it beekeeping, but it's where we raise them, at least."
Bees were buzzing every which way, and still I felt not a trace of fear as I stepped up close to the hive. Their wingbeats must have caught the microphone now and then, because the viewers were in an uproar about their ears being blasted. I blocked the lens lightly with a finger, then approached a small hive beside the large one—a hive that, next to that big house, showed no sign of bees coming and going. I walked up to it and took the little spoon that had been left at its side.
"Starting now, I am going to poke this hive with a spoon."
The chat caught fire.
I grinned at the chat blazing over what I'd said, and drove the spoon straight into the hive's mouth. There was a crunch, the sound of something inside giving way. Paying it no mind, I worked the spoon a little farther and drew it out thickly coated in honey. I smeared it over the strawberry and ate, and the already-sweet berry turned sweeter still.
"This is why you keep honeybees."
It was sweet upon sweet, proud as any sugar bomb, but the viewers kept on about how sorry they felt for the bees. Watching that, I figured a small misunderstanding needed clearing up.
"This isn't a house where the honeybees live. It's a place they stock with honey for our family. There are no larvae inside—nothing but honey."
Right on cue, the camera caught two honeybees that went in dusted thick with pollen, came back out looking tidy, and returned to the big hive.
"I give them a place to rest and something to eat when there aren't any flowers, and they've agreed to give me honey. A kind of contract. I set it up this way because I can't go wrecking their actual home."
I perched one honeybee on each of my five fingers, and only then did the viewers seem to believe me.
"Anyway! After we open, I look after the garden like this and check on the bees. Well... they handle themselves so well there's hardly anything you could call managing."
I said it while looking over how the bees were doing, then pulled out a chair, took a spot, and sat.
"On a normal day, once I've made the rounds about this far, I take care of MyTube and Outstar. If you follow me, you already know—this is mostly when the posts go up, right?"
At that, some of the viewers chimed in that yes, that was right. I glanced over MyTube and Outstar for a moment and started showing them this and that. On MyTube, whenever a comment caught my fancy or made me laugh, I put it on screen. On Outstar, the first thing I pulled up was the DMs. An inbox so full it was impossible to count drew noises of amazement.
"I know some of you are unhappy that I don't reply to DMs. But I'd like you to think about this, too. There are so many I couldn't possibly check them one by one."
A few were of the mind that surely everyone already knew that, but here and there others apologized for having misunderstood. By the time I had finished with MyTube and social media, it was somehow around lunch.
So-eun would eat well at kindergarten, so Noona and I decided to eat out for the first time in a while. We filmed a short mukbang at a pork cutlet place nearby, came back to the zoo, and I decided to move a little for the sake of digestion. Which is to say, I had decided to walk the dogs. It wasn't purely a choice made for digestion, of course. I had a reason of my own.
However much they were let loose in the zoo and adored by the visitors, what those kids needed was our family's affection. They had grown clever from being under my ability for so long, and because of that they understood perfectly well that the visitors were only connections passing through. That was why they hungered for the love of the family that would be with them for life.
I called the dogs together at once. Aside from Cheongho, who had gone along after So-eun, Maru, Jjamong, and Soolbbang gathered. Natae... I didn't bother calling him. Call him and he would obviously just be flopped on the ground.
"All right, shall we take a nice light walk?"
"Because the camera can't be shaking, obviously?"
"You'll see."
I let out a snort of a laugh at the viewer who kept picking at what I'd said. And then I broke into a run with the dogs. The scenery whipped past in a blur, and the wind slapped my face.
"Boooss—! Take me with youuu—!"
I could hear the cameraman shouting from somewhere behind as he rode the electric scooter, but I kept my attention on how good it felt to run.
"Master! Just a little faster!"
"Hey, do that and Jjamong and Soolbbang can't keep up."
Partway through, Maru demanded more speed, but I couldn't grant it—not if the other two were going to come along. At any rate, I had left the cameraman a fair distance behind and was running like that for a while when someone fell in beside me.
"Daddy! Whatcha doing?"
It was So-eun, mounted on Bboni and matching our pace. I snuck a look at my watch. Kindergarten had already let out.
Has it gotten this late already? Thinking that, I wrapped the walk up. The dogs looked thoroughly satisfied, so I gave them a light sweep of the hand—and then, with a whirr, the cameraman caught up.
"Boss. Could we maybe switch this scooter for one with the speed limiter off? I can't keep up..."
I shrugged at the donation and took So-eun home. A quick wash, a change of clothes, and she set off roaming every corner of the zoo. Following her around and looking after her was, in practice, the whole of my afternoon routine.
And yet... I was starting to get the feeling that more viewers were tuning in, and more donations coming through, than during the morning routine.
It didn't seem to be just a feeling. Even so, I managed to spend a day the same as any other, and bring it to a close.