The Security Team Interview (1)

"Kooo..."

So-eun slept with a soft little breath, as if announcing to the world I'm sleeping, and the sight of her was unbearably cute.

Noona and I watched her for a while, then carried a little beer and a handful of snacks out onto the balcony. We settled into the chairs at the table there, and a cool night breeze brushed over us.

"I'm a bit chilly. I'll go get a jacket. Want me to bring you one too?"

"No, I'm fine. This is just right."

"All right."

I watched her head back into the room, then pulled out my phone and started poking around. I scrolled MewTube, glanced at Outsta, and by the time I looked up Noona was back, something thrown on over her clothes.

"Ta-da."

She'd come out in a thin cardigan. We tapped our beer cans together and each took a light sip.

"Oh, right. Suhwan, you know I've got plans tomorrow, don't you?"

"Tomorrow? Uh…… I feel like you mentioned it."

"I told you Jiyoon's getting married."

"Oh. Right."

It only came back to me once she said it, and I gave a small nod.

"Want to put in a wedding gift for my share too, while you're there? She's your friend, so I know her. Well…… we're not close, but still."

We'd been together since high school, so we knew each other's friends pretty thoroughly. Whether we were actually close to them was another matter. We at least knew who was friends with whom.

Thanks to that, slipping off to a PC café with my friends behind Noona's back had been nearly impossible back in our school days.

Anyway, we drank and talked about this and that, and the time slipped past before we knew it. A deep dark had settled over everything, and only the barest lights still picked the zoo out of the night.

"Hm?"

The zoo, empty of a single soul, suddenly grew loud. Yubu flew at the head of the flock, and the magpies and crows behind him surged into the air. Behind the birds, the land animals came charging after.

"What's going on?"

Their behavior wasn't normal, and I couldn't help wondering. Once the visitors were gone the animals were supposed to be resting, and they never swarmed around in a pack like this. The magpies and crows that flew their regular training routes after Yubu were one thing. The land animals stampeding along behind them was something else entirely, and I had never seen it before. Even farther ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠back, lagging behind the rest, the tortoises — Hanmu among them — were following with everything they had.

"I'll go see what's happening."

"Just in case, want me to come with you?"

"So-eun's here."

"I'll just carry her."

Noona found the animals' strange behavior unsettling, and a worried look crossed her face. Careful not to wake So-eun, who was sleeping soundly, she gathered the baby into her arms, and the two of us headed for wherever the animals had gone.

"There's nothing out here. Why'd they come this way?"

Following the path they'd taken, I couldn't begin to make sense of the destination. But as we drew close to where they had gathered, the reason for all that commotion became obvious.

"Ghhh…… S-somebody, save me……."

I found a man being pecked from every side by all kinds of birds — and pinned beneath Hodori, no less. Crushed under that heavy body, he couldn't budge an inch while the birds went at him.

I caught Pe-eng, who had been pecking the man with more zeal than anyone, and asked what had happened. The little one boiled the whole thing down to a single word.

"Intwuder!"

"An intruder? What — so we've got a thief again? Seriously, how did they get through the security system……."

The sheer absurdity of being robbed again hit me. Back when it was just the café, someone had broken in once, only to be caught on the spot by the animals, and the story had gotten around. People already knew perfectly well that trespassing in our zoo meant a reckoning from the animals themselves.

What kind of fool didn't even use the internet? I looked down at the man trapped under Hodori. Suspicious didn't begin to cover it. He might as well have been wearing a sign that said I'm a thief. It was the dead of a pitch-black night, and yet he had on sunglasses and a black mask, a black cap yanked low, and a black tracksuit from collar to cuffs. Anyone would have taken one look and called him suspicious.

I shifted Noona, still holding So-eun, behind me and approached the man I took for the thief. She tried to stop me from behind, telling me not to go, but honestly I wasn't worried. Hodori was there, and dozens of other animals besides. I didn't think for a moment that I was walking into any real danger.

Up close, I could see the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠thief groaning under Hodori in detail. He must have taken the order to heart — never hurt a person, no matter the situation — because he didn't have a scratch on him. He was only dusty from rolling around on the ground. It wasn't worth fussing over, so I looked away from him and turned to the other animals.

"You all came running because of this guy?"

"It is so. A magpie upon patrol reported an intruder's presence, and we came rushing hither at once."

"Intwuder's a thiefy!"

"We caught this human, so might we have a little meat? The raccoons stole it again……."

I snatched the chicken the raccoons were trying so hard to hide against their chests, set it in Hodori's mouth, and looked back at the thief. The crack and crunch of the chicken — bones and all — being crushed between the tiger's jaws rang out.

"Eek — eeeek! P-please spare me!"

Hearing Hodori, the very tiger flattening him into the dirt, neatly gulp the chicken down, the thief all but sobbed as he begged for his life.

"Boss. This son of a— …… No, sir. This human wet himself, sir."

A wet patch was even spreading outward from around his lower half.

Needless to say, I had no intention of letting him go over that. I had to make an example of him, so that no one else would even think of breaking in. I called the police at once and handed the thief over. The officers flinched for a second at the sight of a criminal caught in the act and pinned under Hodori, but the moment the tiger stepped aside they hauled him off in a hurry.

Wait — was that even an arrest? He'd latched onto the police, begging them to save him.

Remembering how he'd only looked relieved once he'd climbed into the patrol car himself, I had to wonder whether arrest was the right word at all. It hardly mattered either way. Noona and I headed home.

Cheongho, the military working dog, was reassuring enough on his own, but knowing a tiger like Hodori was watching over us, Noona didn't look worried anymore.

"……So it wasn't just the one?"

When we got back, we found the house torn apart. They hadn't managed to break through the locked door, but a window had been smashed, and through it we could see the wreck of the interior. That wasn't all that was waiting for us.

More than a thousand bees were beating their wings and darting about in a threatening cloud, and caught in the middle of all that buzzing was another thief, shivering so hard he couldn't move an inch.

"So one of them drew the animals off while the other tossed the house?"

I parted the bees without much trouble and looked at the thief shaking with fear. The police had only just left, so I called them back, and from among the swarm I summoned the largest of them — the Queen Bee.

"Yeah. Good work. Thanks to you, it wasn't serious."

I could read ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠what she meant from the pheromones she released and the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠beat of her wings. She lowered herself as if asking to be praised, and I gave a light stroke near her wings.

"So two of them came to rob us?"

"Yeah. That one's stuck in the bees and can't even move."

"We have a security system. How did they get through that, too……."

Noona let out a long sigh. Even so, she didn't look nearly as worried as she had at first. With more than a thousand bees standing guard, there wasn't much reason to be uneasy. I felt the same, so I sighed lightly myself and handed the thief over when the police came back.

After several days of investigation, we learned what had happened. There had been a flaw in the security system, and people who knew exactly where it was had disabled the system and broken in.

In the end, Noona and I decided that even a security system was hard to trust, and we resolved to hire a security team. Better that I look after it and run it myself than hand the whole thing off to someone else.

The moment I decided, I posted a recruitment notice. I promised compensation that would easily beat the best offer in the industry, and résumés came flooding in. There were so many that checking them one by one was impossible, so I added a few conditions.

I had only tacked the conditions on, and ninety percent of the applications fell away. Even so, once I filtered for relevant experience — graduates of athletic colleges, former special forces, and the like — there were enough people left to hold interviews.

I decided to interview them right away. Calling it an interview was generous. In practice, it was a kind of skills test. Noona worried a little about us going outside the zoo, even if things were fine within it, and I couldn't keep putting this off.

On the evening of the security team interviews, after the zoo's visiting hours had ended, people of considerable size packed the entrance shoulder to shoulder.

Every one of them had applied for the team. Some had rough, mean-looking faces, and plenty of others had looks that didn't match their bodies at all. And of course, quite a few women had applied for the posts that would guard So-eun and Noona.

Looking at them, I felt an odd, steadying sense of reassurance, and I called them into the zoo.