The Sports Festival (1)
While I was in Australia I hardly streamed at all, so people had been steadily filling my inbox with DMs begging me to go live. I was still filming clips here and there and sending them off to the editing team, which meant the MyTube uploads never actually stopped—but a live broadcast was another matter. I hadn't gone simply to sightsee; I'd gone to work. And by the end I'd put the weight on resting and was, quite literally, resting, which was why the streams had dried up.
Feeling, all too clearly, that I'd let the break run a little long, I switched the broadcast on right then and there.
The moment the stream came on, viewers poured in and dumped every kind of chat imaginable. Some were simply glad to see me after so long. Others skipped the hello and went straight to badgering me to show them the animals.
"It's been a while, hasn't it? Things have been a little busy lately, so I haven't had the time to stream."
"No, I'm not making it up. I really have been busy."
I shook my head at the viewer's donation and flipped the camera that had been pointed at my face. What it landed on was the sketch I'd been drawing over our zoo's guide map.
"I'm in the middle of sketching out how the construction ought to go."
At the word construction, and at the sketch in front of them, people were plainly thrown. It was my first stream since coming home, and out of nowhere I was talking about building something—of course the viewers were baffled.
But I had a reason.
"A lot of you already know this, but we brought platypuses in this time, and that's caused a bit of a problem. We don't have many aquatic animals as it is, so there isn't really a proper place for these guys to live."
I got up as I talked and headed straight for where the platypuses were.
The mother and her three babies were sharing the turtles' enclosure—the pool where the aquatic and semi-aquatic turtles lived. We'd dressed the place with all kinds of wood and plants so they could settle in and actually live there, and claiming a spot wasn't the trouble. The trouble was that claiming a spot was the only thing that wasn't trouble. To an animal that had lived in the wild, even a space this carefully done up was bound to feel cramped.
"Well, they're getting along with the turtles just fine, more or less…… The truth is, though, these guys really don't have enough room."
Once I'd made the lack of space plain, I moved on to how I meant to build.
"For a start, I'm thinking of a canal that wraps the entire zoo, following the viewing paths. I'll make it fairly wide, set bridges along it so people can watch from up on top, and then build habitats for the aquatic animals all through the canal."
The moment I showed them the sketch and walked them through it, viewers started lining up to swear that when the work was finished they would come see it—definitely, absolutely, no matter what. I hadn't so much as broken ground. All I'd done was sketch a picture that still lived mostly in my head, and even so the anticipation was running high.
"We'll be starting the work section by section, so we won't be restricting admission."
Plenty of people said that was a relief. It sounds like bragging, but a lot of visitors came all the way to Busan for our zoo and nothing else.
One viewer sent a donation that seemed to be summoning the hive mind. I couldn't tell whether they simply wanted in on the construction no matter what, but I didn't think it was a bad idea—and because I ended up roaming every corner of the zoo and gathering all sorts of opinions, what came out of it was better than I'd expected. With a crowd that large, there were even specialists on the building side scattered through the viewers. Thanks to them, I was able to break ground sooner than I'd planned.
Grrrnnn—
A massive excavator hauled its heavy body around and tore into a stretch of the viewing path, digging out the ground that would become the canal wrapping those paths. I'd been watching for a little while when something slid up and gave my leg a few taps.
"Boss! Boss!"
What had come to me was a Golden Retriever nearly the color of cream. Maru. I dropped into a slight crouch and stroked her gently.
"What is it? Too loud?"
I asked because I thought the construction noise might be stressing her out, but Maru gave her head a small shake. Somewhere along the way she'd started copying the rest of us, shaking her head the way we did when we meant no.
"I wanna run, but it's all blocked. When's that blocked part gonna open up?"
"Ah……."
It wasn't the noise that had brought her. The construction had cut off her running route. Well, of course it bothered her. She was a dog who spent the whole day running hundreds of laps around the zoo—there was no way she'd be pleased to find the middle of that route suddenly walled off.
"Just give it a few days."
Even so, I couldn't very well halt the construction I'd already set in motion just for Maru's sake. Sorry as I was, all I could do was ask her to tough it out. She took it with a glum, nothing-for-it look and went trotting off, and watching her go left me feeling needlessly guilty.
But little by little, more of them started making their displeasure known. The camels, whose view of the visitors had shifted so they could no longer plunder carrots. The Pudgies, put out that the crawl-hole they used for sneaking into the tiger enclosure had been sealed off by the work. Even the red fox, run ragged because her endlessly curious pups kept trying to wander onto the site.
One animal after another looked stressed, and I turned it over and over. I had to find some way to take that strain off them.
In the middle of it, something came to me. When you're stressed, nothing beats moving—and for animals whose whole lives hang on how much they move, that goes double. One good, bracing bout of exercise and a fair share of the stress would surely burn off. I still had to think about how they ought to move, but that worry didn't last. The answer popped into my head at once.
Partly to ease the animals' stress, I held a kind of sports festival. Getting them moving under that name was one reason. The other was that I wanted a clearer, more accurate look at what their bodies could actually do.
I did consider letting other people's pets enter, then decided against it. Noona, right there beside me, pointed out that it would only turn into a contest for second place, and reminded me the whole idea was pointless.
At any rate, once I'd settled on holding it I made my preparations, then looked out over the great crowd of visitors and viewers and greeted them.
"Then we'll begin the First World's Greatest Animal Sports Festival!"
I'd barely finished before applause broke from the visitors around me, mixed with the chime of donations rolling in.
I made a little light conversation to mark the start, then went straight into the festival. First up, just like the athletes' parade when the Olympics open, came the animals' entrance.
"Here they are—today's participants!"
Out in front, Soeun came dashing through with a flag bearing our channel's icon, and behind her followed a whole procession of animals. They appeared swaying their heads left and right, almost as if they were greeting the visitors around them, circled once around the empty lot the construction had opened up, and filed right back out again. They were clearing the ground that would soon be the festival's main stage.
"Now then…… let's start the first event. Event number one is a race! Contestants, come on out!"
The moment I called, some of the animals that had shown themselves on the lot and withdrawn came back out.
Five of them in all. Most belonged to our zoo, but one was an animal we were boarding hotel-style—entered, of course, only after we'd gotten the owner's permission. Answering my call came a kangaroo, Ilgito, Bboni, and Maru, and with them a cheetah patterned in spots from nose to tail. They took their places on the open ground and put on what looked, for all the world, like a greeting for the crowd. Ilgito came bounce-bounce-bouncing; Bboni whipped her tail back and forth; the kangaroo put a little spring into those coiled legs; Maru sat politely and lifted a single front paw. The cheetah, still a little awkward about it, swished its tail as if showing off that long sleek frame. Every one of them had the visitors' eyes hooked.
I gave the crowd a moment to take them in, then moved straight into starting the race. The lot had already been set up for the festival, so the staff led the animals onto the waiting track one by one.
Everyone who'd come to the zoo—and the viewers watching on MyTube, too—reacted like they could hardly wait. These were animals that boasted real speed, and Maru in particular loved to run and ran so well she'd earned the nickname Generator Dog. Every so often I'd even catch people arguing over who would win if Maru and the cheetah raced.
Their excitement for the main event, a showdown between Maru and the cheetah, was climbing, and I started the race to meet it.