Australia (1)
I was humming a light little tune as I tended the flower beds, and the whole afternoon felt wonderfully peaceful.
Bees buzzed from bloom to bloom, pollinating everything in sight, so there wasn't much that truly needed managing. Even so, I went along snipping anything that had grown strangely and pulling the weeds that had crept in.
Then, as I was tidying the beds, I heard light, quick footsteps.
"Appa!"
So-eun — the only person in our house who owned footsteps that light and quick — came pelting over and threw herself into my arms.
"What's my girl doing here all of a sudden? Weren't you playing with the Tokkiz?"
"Yeah! But Mommy said bring Appa!"
"Mommy did?"
"Uh-huh!"
At the news that Noona was calling, I dusted myself off and stood. The moment I rose, So-eun hastily plucked a strawberry and popped it into her mouth.
"Want to come with me?"
"Mm!"
She answered with her mouth full of strawberry, both arms flung wide. I scooped her up and headed for the office, where Noona would be.
"Hehe, strawberries yummy!"
"Right? That's 'cause Daddy grew them."
"Grow more!"
"Should I?"
They must have been delicious, because So-eun wore a blissful look and nuzzled her face against my chest.
I carried her into the office like that and found Noona having tea with a white woman.
"Suhwan, you're— Did you give So-eun a strawberry?"
"Huh? How'd you know?"
"How do you think? She's left a lip print on your shoulder."
I looked down and tugged at my shirt. Right where So-eun had buried her face, a strawberry-juice imprint of her lips stained the fabric.
"Hehe!"
She beamed, bright and innocent, as if to announce she'd done it herself. For a second I was speechless, but I smiled back, stroked her hair, and turned my attention to the woman seated at the table.
"You called me because of her?"
"Yeah. She came looking for you."
I tilted my head at that. People came looking for me often enough, but Noona almost never summoned me over it. Even a fan who'd flown in from overseas wouldn't usually get me called in like this.
The question answered itself almost at once.
"Hello. I'm Grace, the Korea representative for the Australian Tourism Board."
The woman — Grace — greeted me in flawless Korean and held out her business card.
"Australia?"
"Yes. The country known in Korea as the land of kangaroos and koalas. I believe people online call it the Kangaroo Country?"
For a moment I had nothing to say. Hearing an Australian herself call her own country the Kangaroo Country felt strangely off.
I recovered quickly, though, and asked why she'd come looking for me.
"The Tourism Board has a request we'd like to make of you, Druid, so I took the liberty of dropping by unannounced. Please accept my apologies for not contacting you beforehand."
Grace bowed her head deeply, apologizing in Korean so fluent I might have taken her for a native.
"That's all right. So what kind of request is it?"
"Do you remember the massive bushfires that swept Australia a few years ago?"
"Ah... yes. I heard they were pretty serious."
They'd been catastrophic fires with repercussions felt around the world, so the moment she said it, the memory came back. They hadn't touched me directly, but they'd dominated the news for quite a long time.
What I couldn't figure out was why she was bringing them up now.
"The reason I'm mentioning the fires is that we'd like you to visit the affected areas, Druid."
"Me? Why would you want me to go there?"
I couldn't help being skeptical. The fires had happened before So-eun was even born — before my superpower had awakened — and a great deal of restoration had already been done. Traces remained, sure, but I didn't think they needed me.
"The burned regions are recovering, yes, but there's a problem, and we need your help. We're planting saplings and doing everything we can to restore the ecosystem, but the fires were so intense that the soil itself was badly degraded. Even the saplings we plant barely grow the way they should."
I nodded. It was already widely known that my superpower affected not only animals, but plants as well.
"Even under ordinary circumstances, Australia has a great deal of land and very little of it that people or animals can actually live on. Most of it is desert-like and uninhabitable. And now the fires have shrunk that livable area even further, which puts us in a very difficult position. Residential zones are a problem, and wildlife habitat has been destroyed as well..."
As Grace described how dire things were, I remembered the reports: an area larger than the whole of South Korea had gone up in flames. Even with years gone by, restoration on that scale would be brutal. A small patch of damage takes ages to repair; a burn that vast would obviously take far longer.
There was a problem, though.
"My superpower only reaches about a kilometer. How do you expect me to cover an area that huge? You're not asking me to walk the entire thing, are you?"
"Not at all. What we need is a starting point for the restoration. The way grass spreads outward from an oasis, we intend to expand the recovered zone little by little."
That was reasonable enough. I nodded.
"Then what about compensation?"
"While you're in Australia, every convenience will be provided as a matter of course, and we're prepared to offer a substantial fee. The figure was set with reference to the rates at the pet hotel your zoo operates."
Grace quietly held out her phone. On the screen were figures that appeared to be the amount the Australian government intended to offer.
"For a stay of about two weeks, this is what we'd pay."
The sum came to ten times what Muhammad used to pay to board Bboni back in the café days, before the zoo. And the fee wasn't even the whole of it.
"For your zoo specifically, we'll arrange for the export of any Australian animal you wish."
"Even koalas?"
I asked it back, startled.
A koala had stayed with us once, through the pet hotel, but we'd never been able to keep one as a proper resident. Kangaroos and wallabies were kept at our zoo and at several others around the country, but there wasn't a single place in Korea raising koalas. When one had come through the pet hotel, people had shown up just to see it.
If any animal could be exported, I wanted a koala immediately. Grace seemed to read that on my face, and she nodded.
"Yes. Every animal — koalas included. We're aware of the tremendous influence you've had on the breeding of the northern white rhinoceros, so Australia is looking favorably on animal exports. We normally prohibit them for the sake of animal protection and endangered species, but if it's you, Druid, we can trust you."
Well, there really wasn't a better place for protecting endangered species than our zoo. I nodded, congratulating myself in a way that wasn't entirely self-congratulation. It sounded like bragging, but among zoos worldwide, ours was the one where the animals suffered the least stress — and where even that little stress was carefully looked after. People said it was the influence of my superpower, but the animals' happiness showed plainly enough that the reputation wasn't undeserved.
Part of me wanted to say, Then why not just send them over? But if I didn't help, they'd obviously refuse the export. I didn't have a choice.
I spoke briefly with Noona, then looked at Grace and nodded.
"I'll accept Australia's request. I do have an additional condition, though."
"What would that be?"
"I'd like to stay three weeks and do some sightseeing as well. Is that possible? As long as the transportation is decent, I don't mind if the lodging is right in the area you're restoring."
"If that's all, don't worry. It's more than possible! We'll have transportation ready — helicopters, whatever you need!"
Grace nodded, bright-faced.
My next words caught her off guard.
"And I'd like to bring a few of the animals from our zoo."
"A-animals?"
She stammered, visibly flustered.
I knew why at once. Australia was already suffering badly from introduced species — rabbits and camels. The rabbits had multiplied into the hundreds of millions and were turning land into wasteland, and large numbers of camels were accelerating the desertification of the north.
"Don't worry. I'm not planning to turn them loose out there. I just want to bring a few — Cheongho, Bboni, Yubu, kids like that. I won't be bringing rabbits or anything of the sort, so you can relax."
"Oh! If that's all, it should be perfectly fine!"
The moment she heard I wouldn't be bringing rabbits — the animal the Australian government hated most — Grace's face brightened again.
We agreed to settle the rest of the schedule and the finer details at a formal meeting later, and Grace left looking pleased.
Noona watched her go, then threw her arms around me.
"If we're going to Australia, where should we sightsee? I hear the Gold Coast beaches are gorgeous — let's go there too!"
It was Noona who'd turned Grace's requested two weeks into a three-week stay with sightseeing built in. She liked to travel now and then, and the moment she heard Australia, she'd insisted we treat the job as a vacation too.
I let out a small laugh and gathered So-eun into my arms.
"So-eun, want to go on a trip?"
"A trip! I like it!"
She looked startled at the word, then quickly nodded.
And so the three of us abruptly started planning a vacation, combing through blogs and MyTube videos until we'd settled on where we wanted to go.