The Whale Tour
Thanks to the animals, of course, and to the countless people who had come volunteering after hearing about the restoration of the land, the saplings were all in the ground in no time. What had started around lunch was finished before the sun went down.
With so many of them set out at even intervals all around us, the place felt utterly different from the day we had first arrived. They were still smaller than Soeun, so there was nothing lush about them yet, but it was nothing like the barren emptiness of before. What had been an ashen world that looked as if it could never hold a single living thing now felt like the very moment life begins to take root.
Green, and the warm brown of wood, had overtaken the gray, and everyone around us looked radiant for it. Grace was beaming as she took it in, snapping photo after photo. I left the celebrating crowd—some of them hugging and bouncing for joy—and headed back toward the lodging.
"You gotta grow lots and lots!"
As I drew near, I spotted Soeun by the entrance, holding hands with a kangaroo and hopping along. More precisely, the two of them were tamping the soil so the roots of a freshly planted tree would hold firm. I walked over to Noona, who seemed to be filming them as they bounced hand in hand with the little sapling between them.
"You planted one here too?"
"Yeah. Soeun said she wanted to try it herself. She even said she'd give it a name, so I told her to do it right around here."
By the time I looked over, Soeun had stopped hopping and was fastening a little sign to the thickest part of the sapling. In her signature wobbly handwriting, it read:
A little laugh escaped me as I walked over, and I found her stroking the sapling and sprinkling it with water.
"Soeun's Tree?"
"Uh-huh! Mine!"
She pointed proudly at the sign she had worked so hard on, and I ruffled her hair.
"If it's Soeun's Tree, it's going to grow up wonderfully. Right?"
"Thiiis big!"
She flung her arms out as wide as they would go and hopped into the air, and another laugh spilled out of me before I could stop it. I scooped her up and went inside with Noona. The sun was already sinking into dusk, so there was no reason to stay out any longer, and the volunteers and the workers who had come for the job were leaving one by one.
We had just come in and were about to start on dinner when Grace arrived. She had seen the volunteers and workers off, then come to find us.
"Thank you so much, Druid."
The moment she walked in, she launched straight into her thanks. Paid work or not, she said, restoring nature like this meant the world to her.
"We've been trying to restore this place for ages, and we never made any real progress.... Thanks to you, Druid, we're already planting saplings. And the seeds are actually sprouting, too."
She added that before, any seeds they scattered had rotted almost at once, and the look on her face was deeply moved. I brushed it off as nothing special and invited her to stay for dinner. Noona smiled gently and told her she was more than welcome to eat before she went.
"I hate to impose, but... I'll take you up on that."
Perhaps she felt awkward just sitting there, because Grace pitched in and helped Noona with dinner. Thanks to that, we ate a little earlier than usual, finished the meal in no time, and settled into a light teatime.
"Druid, have you already settled on plans for tomorrow?"
Knowing that a day's work meant it was time to rest, Grace asked about the next day's schedule.
"We were thinking of going shopping. Why?"
I had been planning the day around Noona, who even had a shopping list titled Things You Absolutely Must Buy in Australia. Wool quilts and all sorts of other things were on it.
"Would you perhaps consider a whale tour tomorrow?"
"A whale tour?"
"Among Australia's whales, the humpbacks are the famous ones. This is a regular stop for humpbacks traveling to and from Antarctica. Migaloo, the albino humpback, is the most famous of all."
Grace quickly pulled out her phone, showed us a photo of a pure-white whale, and went on.
"They spotted a pod off the coast of Sydney today. The odds of seeing whales on the Sydney side tomorrow are very high, so what do you think? Since it's Sydney, you could go shopping afterward, once the tour is done. And I'll arrange a large yacht privately, so only your family can use it!"
She was recommending it with everything she had, so I looked at Noona. She was the one who had been looking forward to tomorrow's shopping the most. Noona thought it over for a moment, then nodded. If there would still be plenty of time to shop afterward, it seemed fine to her—and I had a feeling the chance to ride a yacht had swayed her more than a little.
"Then I'll come by tomorrow morning. I'll have everything essential ready, so please don't worry. See you in the morning!"
Grace left a whale-tour pamphlet for us to look over and headed out. The moment she was gone, Noona picked it up and started skimming it from top to bottom.
"Whoa! Suhwan, look at this. It says we can see dolphins too, not just whales."
"Dolphins!"
At that, Soeun latched onto Noona and peered at the pamphlet with her. I leaned in for a look and saw photos of dolphins and whales leaping clear of the water. The two of them looked thoroughly excited—Soeun especially, since she had already seen a dolphin show at Beach World and even met dolphins face to face. Mother and daughter looked exactly alike, only different in size, and watching them shove their faces at the pamphlet as if they might climb inside it, I couldn't help but laugh.
"Yawt!"
Grace had come for us first thing in the morning, and when we arrived at a yacht marina in Sydney, a massive yacht was waiting. It was so large that an ordinary yacht couldn't even be compared to it, and Grace led us aboard.
Calling the interior luxurious would have been fair. There was a pool up by the deck, small but there, and at the bow and the stern, netting had been strung up like trampolines. Inside, every kind of food had been laid out—steak, lobster, and other expensive, delicious dishes, and, as if in consideration of our Korean family, even Korean food.
"Oh..."
Mealtime wasn't far off, so the spread was a welcome sight, and the Korean dishes—bulgogi and the rest—made it all the more so. Unlike me, won over by the food, Noona and Soeun launched into a tour of the yacht itself.
They looked around from the deck, climbed onto the trampoline-like nets at the bow and stern, and generally explored the whole vessel. They seemed especially delighted to lie flat on the bow net and watch the seawater surge and break beneath them.
"You like it that much?"
"Yeah!"
"Uh-huh!"
The two lookalikes answered in perfect unison, and I burst out laughing as I dropped into a nearby chair. I watched them rolling around on the net, and before I knew it the boat was moving. The yacht pulled away smoothly, left the city behind in an instant, and headed out toward the open sea.
"We'll sail for a little while, then arrive at an area where whales often appear. It'll take some time, so please make yourselves comfortable."
At Grace's words I stretched out in the chair, and the sound of Noona and Soeun chattering and playing drifted over. The breeze was a little cool, the sunlight pleasant, and before I knew it sleep came crashing down on me.
I drifted for a while in that state where you can't tell dream from waking, until someone shook me.
"Daddy! Whale!"
"Huh...?"
"Whale!"
"A whale?"
"Whale!"
For a second I couldn't make sense of what Soeun was saying as she shook me, but then I remembered we were on a yacht for a whale tour. She grabbed my hand and tugged as if to say follow me, and I let her pull me to the edge. There, unlike the ordinary waves, the water was breaking apart.
"Krruuuooong—!"
A moment later a whale with an enormous body surged up out of that spot, and a sound unique to whales—something like their high, keening call—rang out across the water. The pamphlet Grace had left yesterday said humpbacks sometimes sing, and it seemed that was true. The creature's cry really did sound like a person humming a tune.
"Hi, whale!"
While I was lost in that thought, Soeun was waving her hands wildly at the whale. And then, right away, something extraordinary happened. Nothing more than this: the humpback that had been launching its massive body up to crash against the surface began slowly approaching our yacht, blasting water like a fountain from the blowhole on what passed for its back.
"If someone calls, you go! That's just the way of the world!"
The whale drew up alongside the yacht, raised half its body above the water, and looked at Soeun. Then, seeing her wave, it started to copy her—rolling onto its side, lifting its right fin clear of the surface, and waving it back.
"I'm saying I'm happy to see you too!"
The humpback, which had a strangely cheerful air about it, flapped its fin and offered Soeun a greeting.
"Daddy! It said hi!"
"It's saying it's happy to see you too, Soeun."
"Hehe, hiiiiii!"
Soeun broke into a bright, innocent laugh and waved at the humpback with both hands. And that cuteness seemed to land just fine with the whale.
"Hey, neighborhood whales, get over here! There's a ridiculously cute human!"
The humpback took one look at Soeun and promptly called its kin. They couldn't have been far, because in an instant several humpbacks swarmed in around our yacht. Enormous tails slapped the surface, and fountain-like jets of water shot up all around us.
"...I've never seen anything like this."
Even Grace, who worked for the Australian Tourism Board and had seen plenty of whales, was marveling that this was a first for her. It was a sight brought about by my superpower, and by Soeun's on top of it. Dolphins from who-knew-where had even slipped in to join them, all of them gazing at Soeun.
"Our daughter's superpower really doesn't care whether it's a zoo or the wild."
Noona shook her head as she watched alongside me. Even so, it was still an amazing sight, and she was snapping photos like mad.
"So... Grace. Is a whale tour really just looking at whales?"
The whales showing off was novel for a minute, but watching them go on and on got a little boring. Them leaping from the water, putting on fountain shows, crying out in voices like songs—the wonder of it didn't last.
"...Yes. Normally you sail for quite a while, enjoy the voyage itself for a bit, see the whales, and that's the tour."
She added that she had never imagined they would run into so many whales so quickly. I shrugged and headed off to eat the food that had been prepared on the yacht.
There was just one problem. The whales, utterly smitten with Soeun, kept gathering one after another and blocking our return. With the propeller and all, the whales blanketing the water around us could easily get hurt.
"Hey! You lot, get out here! Move it—get out of the way!"
"You get out here! I can't see the cute human!"
In the end, if we were ever going to make it back, I had no choice but to plant myself at the bow and yell at the whales. As if they had never heard the word cooperation, they blew me off entirely, and only after I had spent ages bellowing at the top of my lungs—bellowing whale-loud at a pod of whales—could we finally turn back toward where we had started.
A great many of them came tagging along behind us, and part of the coast grew noisy with the fuss, but my throat was scratchy and sore, and I didn't care. I ought to have a warm cup of tea before we go shopping. All my head had room for was something—anything—that would give my stinging throat a rest.