Yeongji's Naming Parlor
After filming Namcat's thoroughly rattled face for a moment, I slid the living room's floor-to-ceiling glass open a crack.
"Wh-what the hell are all these?!"
"What do you mean, these? They're family. You're going to be living with them."
The moment the door opened and he caught sight of me, Namcat flew off the handle. From the outside, though, it amounted to nothing more than a light hiss, so I scooped him up and carried him out into the yard.
"Everyone, assemble!"
Still holding him aloft, I called in the seven animals scattered across every corner of the yard. They hadn't been trained in the slightest, yet they crowded in around me all the same, as if they understood that my word was something they were meant to obey.
The reason, once I thought about it, was simple. Every one of them had been abandoned by a previous owner for one reason or another, and they were obeying out of worry—afraid their new family might throw them away all over again. It tugged at me to see them like that. Even so, I figured enough attention would soften them in time, and I set Namcat down.
"All right, say hello. This guy's Namcat. He lives here with me."
At that, all seven swarmed him. The cats, each according to their own idea of a greeting, brought their noses in close. The dogs went straight for his rear.
The two styles of hello could not have been more opposite, and Noona and I burst out laughing. Namcat himself—the one actually on the receiving end—did not laugh. He couldn't.
"The hell are you doin', you crazy bastards?!"
He laid into the seven animals piled on top of him. This was no play-fight. He dropped all seven in an instant, as if he were running some kind of commando takedown.
"Whoa..."
"Guess there's no beating a street fighter after all..."
Raised entirely by human hands, the seven of them flopped onto the ground in a daze, stammering and stunned. Even the golden retriever, easily twice Namcat's size, had curled in on herself.
"These idiots are askin' to die."
One by one, he ground a paw into the animals that had swarmed him, slow and deliberate, making certain every last one of them understood who was on top.
"Don't get cocky, you little shits."
He stomped each of them in turn—and the cats, his own kind, he bit by the scruff for good measure—and that was his warning. In that moment, Namcat became the boss of all seven.
"Man, the views on this are gonna be sweet."
"Huh? You were filming?"
"Yep. Never stopped, not since I hit record. Hehe!"
I flashed Noona the camera app, still rolling, and grinned.
Just then Namcat came over and tapped my leg.
"What are these things?"
"What do you mean, these things? They're your friends. Friends you're going to live with from now on."
"...For real? We're livin' together?"
"That's right. So don't fight too hard. Get along."
Namcat looked the seven of them over.
"My treats ain't gettin' cut 'cause of those guys, right?"
"Obviously not."
"Then we're good."
With that, he strutted haughtily back into the house. He hadn't forgotten my training, either—wipe your paws clean before coming in from the yard. He scrubbed them against the mat by the door and went inside, and Noona wasn't the only one watching. All seven animals stared after him as if they'd just seen something remarkable.
"See that? From now on, when you've been out in the yard, you wipe your paws just like that before you come inside."
I'd be cleaning often enough on account of the fur as it was. I had no desire to add paw prints to the list. As if they understood exactly how I felt, every one of them answered with a vigorous got it.
"Suhwan. I think we ought to give them new names, too... What do you want to do?"
"Names, huh..."
Noona's question left me hesitating. They each probably already had a name. Was it really all right to give them new ones? Then again, living under a name handed down by the very person who had abandoned them—wouldn't that just keep dragging the bad memories back up? In the end, I had no choice but to agree with her.
"Let's give them new ones. Call Yeongji."
"...Yeongji?"
Noona's face went distinctly uneasy. There was only one reason she'd make a face like that, even though Yeongji was my sister-in-law and her own younger cousin. Yeongji's naming sense was monstrous. You could tell just from Namcat: a male cat, so she'd taken man, tacked on cat, and called it a day. The hamster she'd kept as a kid had been named Pork, on the logic that a hamster was ham, and ham was pork.
"Weird names could be fun, don't you think? And if whoever gets one doesn't like it, we can always pick something else."
"If you say so..."
Noona nodded, but the worry didn't leave her face as she recalled Yeongji's track record. If every animal rejected the names she came up with, Yeongji herself might end up crushed.
"I wouldn't worry too much. Her names come out strange, sure, but they're not unfitting. Even that guy Namcat likes his, in his own way."
Somewhat reassured, Noona called Yeongji at once. Yeongji lived out near the downtown bustle, so it took her a while to get here—but in true Busan-taxi fashion, she arrived earlier than I'd expected.
"Unnieee! Hyeongbuuu!"
Outside the cafe, Yeongji didn't trot out bizarre titles like Boss-Unnie's-Boyfriend-Oppa. She called me Hyeongbu—brother-in-law. Inside the cafe, she insisted, it was a public space, so the form of address had to be proper. Or something to that effect.
As if that title counts as proper...
In any case, she knew Noona and I were promised to marry and already living together, so she was determined to address me correctly. Needless to say, only the title had changed. Yeongji herself had not.
"Waaaaah!"
She'd been waving both hands wildly at the two of us—and then she blew straight past and sprinted for the seven animals.
"Ehehehe!"
Yeongji threw herself at them, hauling them into her arms and bursting into a beaming laugh. She loved animals far too much to hold herself back at the sight of seven at once. She hugged the golden retriever, far too big to fit against her, then dragged the Bichon and the Shih Tzu in as well, and even that wasn't enough—she pulled the three cats who'd been watching over to herself too. In the end she toppled backward, flat on her back, buried under the pile.
"Heeheehee—hihihihi!"
And she was laughing like she couldn't have been happier about it.
"That girl, honestly..."
Noona let out a small sigh. Yeongji's dark jeans had gone patchwork with animal fur, and paw prints were stamped all over her white shirt. There was yard dirt and grass on her besides. Noona couldn't stand it any longer and hauled her upright.
"You're not a child. What are you doing rolling around on the ground?"
"But they're so cute!"
"Aigoo, is that so? I'm sure Auntie would be thrilled to see you like this."
"Ah! It's fine. I'll just wash them before Mom sees!"
Yeongji looked down at her ruined clothes, grinned sheepishly, and made it perfectly clear she wasn't worried. Noona shook her head as if a headache were coming on. I snorted a laugh, walked over to Yeongji, and pointed at the animals.
"Yeongji. Mind giving these guys some names?"
"Names?"
"Yeah."
At that, she started nodding like a madwoman—hard enough that her hair actually flapped. It was an unsettling sight. Too late to take it back now.
She immediately began staring the seven of them down. Yeongji named things according to all sorts of factors, so she was hunting for something, anything, to hang a name on.
"The golden's Maru!"
"Maru...? Why?"
"Because she's the color of hodu maru! That walnut ice cream!"
"..."
Noona and I couldn't get our mouths closed. And yet it made a certain amount of sense. The golden retriever's coat ran yellow, edging toward cream.
"Your name is Maru now! Maru!"
Yeongji scrubbed her hands all over the golden retriever who had just become Maru. Maru herself seemed to understand that this was her new name; she whipped her tail and licked Yeongji's face.
"Eek! That tickles!"
She said it tickled, but she didn't push Maru away. She only laughed, delighted, and after petting her for a little while moved straight on to the others.
The Shih Tzu lying flat on the ground, doing nothing but lazily swishing her tail, was laziness itself, and so Yeongji named her Kim Natae—Sloth Kim. Whether Kim Natae liked it or hated it, she couldn't be bothered to react. She gave her tail a halfhearted wag and left it at that.
"Her naming sense is unreal..."
It was a name that was nothing if not a perfect fit, and Noona and I found ourselves forced to see Yeongji's naming sense in a whole new light. Right up until she got to the Siamese.
"You're Twins! You're a Siamese, so like Siamese twins—Twins!"
"..."
"The Welsh corgi is Jjamong! 'Cause she's all short and stubby!"
"..."
"Hmm, the Munchkin's stubby too, though... Then this one's Chicken! Munchkin, meon-chikin—so chicken!"
"Wow..."
"And this Persian-looking one... hmm... Her fur's so incredibly full, so Poksini! I bet she'd feel all soft and fluffy!"
"Man..."
Yeongji's naming sense was truly impressive, in several senses of the word. The one mercy was that the animals, hearing what they'd been given, showed no particular dislike. Even after I translated the meanings for them, they didn't seem to mind.
The Bichon left for last seemed to know his turn had come. He wagged in front of Yeongji hard enough that his whole rear swayed side to side, practically vibrating with anticipation. She was still puzzling over a name for him when a fierce wind suddenly tore through—whoooosh—and his abundant fur blew out in every direction, as if he might be carried clean off.
"Ah!"
Seeing him like that, she lit up as if something had just clicked, pointed at the Bichon, and shouted.
"This one's Soolbbang! He looks exactly like one!"
"...This one actually fits."
Soolbbang—another name for the rice cake also called jeungpyeon, or gijeongtteok. Strictly speaking, soolbbang is an entirely different kind of bread, and the cake ought to be called sultteok. But the thing is so soft and fluffy, so much like bread, that plenty of people call it soolbbang anyway. And the Bichon with his fur streaming in the wind called nothing else to mind. A round puff of facial fur, and set in the middle of it, jet-black eyes and a nose. I couldn't shake the image of a white rice cake studded with beans.
The best name she came up with today might just be Soolbbang...
Watching him spin happy circles around Yeongji, thrilled just to have been given a name, I found myself nodding without meaning to. Her naming sense swung like a seesaw, wild highs and lows—but when she got one right, she really got it right. Noona and I committed every name she'd bestowed to memory, and counted ourselves lucky that not a single animal had turned one down.