Become My Companions!
"Dad! That's enough! The cafe is under construction right now—what do you think you're doing? Suhwan has more than enough work of his own! You promised you'd handle all of that yourself!"
Noona jabbed a finger at the lot set aside for the cafe, already packed with heavy machinery and construction workers, and unloaded her complaints on her father. She was plainly sick of me being hauled around by him and stumbling home late every night. Nearly ten years together or not, this was still our newlywed season in every way that mattered, and with her father trampling straight through the middle of it, of course the resentment had been piling up.
I cheered her on where he couldn't see, and let out a quiet breath of relief as he shambled off, thoroughly crestfallen.
Thought I was about to get dragged off again.
Get caught once, and I'd be stuck with him from morning until night. I hadn't pulled overtime like that even back when I still had an office job.
"Thanks."
Instead of answering, Noona gave my back a gentle pat. She knew perfectly well how hard it had been, trailing after her father day after day.
"We promised we'd go together today."
And we had. Today was the day Noona and I had set aside to visit a certain place—to bring a new family home.
"Then shall we head out before it gets late?"
"Let's."
At that, she sidled in close and linked her arm through mine. Ever since we'd promised to marry, she'd grown noticeably more affectionate than usual. Spring, suuuummer, fall, wiiiiiinter—summer and winter dragged on forever while the other two barely showed their faces, so the year felt less like four seasons than two and a half. Even though it was only late May, the heat was already settling in, but Noona didn't seem to mind in the slightest. I didn't think it was hot enough to object to being pressed against her, either, so I got ready to head out at her side.
"You heading out?"
It was Namcat who called after me. He'd started out as a street cat, but with the cafe shut down I couldn't very well abandon him to the road. Once I'd taken to training him and keeping him fed, the little menace had stopped even considering the idea of scrounging up his own meals.
"Yeah. We'll be back. I'm bringing your friends home, so don't smash anything. Sit tight and behave."
"Friends...? The hell. Hold on. Smash—what am I supposed to be smashing?"
"The remote I left on the table. How did you even drop it? How does a remote that solid get blown to pieces?"
"..."
Namcat turned without another word and curled himself up on the cushion tucked into the corner. Noona and I shared a quiet laugh at the sight and stepped out of the house.
The place sat in such an out-of-the-way corner of Gijang that it was practically closer to Ulsan, so getting there was a bit of a problem. That problem, surprisingly, solved itself with ease.
The Dad card... no. The Dad's-car card.
I'll buy you something even better than this later!
With that silent apology offered up to Dad, Noona and I made the trip in perfect comfort—and the place his car delivered us to was an animal shelter.
Adopting animals to actually live alongside seemed like the better choice than purchasing ones with fine bloodlines and pretty faces. Filming Mutube with creatures I'd paid money for would have felt, somehow, like an investment made purely to turn a profit.
Anyway, I parked in the shelter lot, and Noona and I went inside. The place was full of abandoned dogs, abandoned cats, and other animals besides—each of them drifted here carrying a story of their own.
"Welcome!"
A woman who seemed to be on staff greeted us with a bright, eager smile. Perhaps because we didn't look like we'd come to drop an animal off, she seemed especially glad to see us. She was clearly expecting us to take some home. She wasn't wrong, so I didn't correct her.
"You're here to adopt the little ones, aren't you?"
She looked at us with eyes that all but begged us to say yes.
"That's right. For now we're thinking dogs and cats."
"Oh—not just one?"
"No. About seven or eight, all together?"
The moment the words left my mouth, her gaze turned wary. I knew why at once. She suspected I was the sort of creep who did something shady with shelter animals.
"You don't have to be suspicious. We're not planning anything strange. What we're opening is a pet cafe. We're going to run it on a pretty large scale, so it's closer to a zoo, but still."
Noona had caught on as well, and stepped in to defend me before I could. She even pulled up my Mutube channel and laid the woman's doubts to rest. There was a brief bit of chaos when it turned out the staff member was one of my subscribers, but one way or another, it all worked out.
"This side is the dog section, and over here are the cats. If there's a little one you want, just say the word."
Noona and I began to look around at an easy pace. It seemed to be a shelter that actually kept up with its care and minded animal welfare—the dogs and cats looked happy, and the space given to each of them didn't seem wanting. But there was one problem.
"Every single one of them is staring at you."
"Yeah..."
Every animal in the place had its eyes locked on me, a silent protest that might as well have been shouting Take me home! Realistically, though, I couldn't bring them all. I did my best to ignore the stares drilling into me and picked out a handful.
Seven in all—three cats and four dogs. A Siamese with a pitch-black face and four black paws; a fluffy, rather fierce-looking cat that seemed to be a Persian mix; and a Munchkin whose legs were so stubby they barely qualified as legs. A cream-colored golden retriever warmed with yellow; a white Bichon with fur clumped here and there; a Shih Tzu whose facial markings refused to match from left to right; and a Welsh corgi that looked, at a glance, like pure mischief. Three cats and four dogs. That was the decision.
The ones I'd chosen rubbed against one another in high spirits, throwing themselves a private little celebration. The ones I hadn't, by contrast, looked a little forlorn. The sight sat badly with me, and I had no choice but to comfort them.
"You'll meet owners who love you soon enough. I'll make sure of it."
Even with the cafe closed and her father dragging me around, my Mutube channel had been growing steadily. I was already close to earning a Silver Play Button, so finding homes for these guys shouldn't be difficult. The staff member must have overheard, because she saw us off beaming as we led the seven animals away—no, she even helped them climb up into the car.
"We're going home, so stay right where you are and don't move. Fidget around and you could get hurt. And no peeing in the car."
At that, the animals packed from the folded-down back seat all the way into the trunk each piped up with something of their own. Seven voices tangled together, and I couldn't make out much of it, but most of them were saying they understood. I eased the car into motion and headed for home, where construction was in full swing right next door.
"You know, it amazes me every time. To me it's just meow-meow, woof-woof, but you hear it like people actually talking, right?"
"That's right. Want me to tell you something even stranger?"
"Something stranger?"
Noona's eyes lit up, bright with curiosity.
"To those guys, everything people say—anyone but me—sounds like animals making noise. We think we're speaking a language and holding a conversation, but to them it's just cries."
"Whoa..."
"That's why training goes better when you pair the words with actions, instead of only giving orders out loud. The same cry, the same motion, over and over, and they start reading it like body language. That's the best way I can put it."
"Really? I never once thought of it that way. That's incredible..."
"Right? Though the ones I've trained a little do understand other people to some extent. Not the language itself—more like individual words. Think of Namcat. He does what you or Yeongji tell him, doesn't he?"
"Oh. You're right."
Marveling, Noona turned to look at the animals sitting quietly in the back. Cats with cats, dogs with dogs, all of them settled so neatly—it was unbearably cute. Thanks to them sitting so still, I drove home in perfect comfort. The inside of the car, on the other hand, was anything but comfortable, on account of all the fur they'd shed.
I'll just drop it at a car wash. Yeah.
I had absolutely no intention of brushing it out myself. Wouldn't filming one more video and uploading it be the more economical use of that time? The thought did cross my mind.
Anyway, I opened the garage with the remote, pulled all the way in, and popped the trunk at once. With a soft hiss the gas struts took the weight and lifted it on their own, and the seven animals set their first paws inside our home. They climbed out one by one, craning their necks with curious eyes, yet none of them strayed far from me. They were a little on guard.
"This is where you'll be staying for a while."
"For a while, you say?"
The one who answered was the golden retriever, the biggest of the bunch I'd brought home. A proper large breed, he dwarfed every one of the others.
"It's noisy out there right now, isn't it? We're building... I guess you'd call it the house where you'll live? Anyway, something like that. Once it's finished, you'll move over there."
"Then... does that mean we'll have to be apart from you, Master...?"
His tail and ears drooped, and he looked thoroughly pitiful. I gave his head a light pat.
"I'll put in a separate passage so you can come and go whenever you want. I'm not going to abandon you the way your old owners did, so don't worry."
Whether my words reassured him or not, the drooping ears and tail perked right back up. The others, as if their own worries had been settled too, slowly began to let their curiosity show. The Bichon was already spraying a corner of the yard, staking the place as its territory, and the cats—wherever the butterfly had come from—were chasing its fluttering wings all over the grass. But the Shih Tzu... why was it just sprawled in the middle of the yard, not moving at all?
Well. Guess it feels like it.
I decided not to think too hard about it. There were already cat delinquents in the world who carried themselves like street thugs. One lazy animal was hardly anything strange.
"A yard really is better with animals in it. A house with a yard was already a dream of mine, and with animals on top of that, it's perfect."
Noona, who had always loved animals, broke into a soft, beaming smile as she watched the seven of them romping through the yard. I smiled back at her.
"Pfft!"
Right up until I caught sight of Namcat through the lower edge of the living-room window.
"What are you— pfft-hah!"
Noona must have spotted him through the glass as well, because she burst out laughing. Namcat, having just laid eyes on the seven animals tearing around the yard, was a sight beyond ridiculous. Frozen stiff with his mouth hanging wide open, he was enough to crack anyone up. Even the tail that had been swishing had stopped dead, so it looked for all the world as if a question mark were floating behind him.
Ting!
It was too good a sight to keep to myself, so I didn't hold back. I started filming.
This one's going to pull some views, right?
Every last little action looking like a view count... somewhere along the way, it seemed a Mutuber's mindset had taken root in me.