Monster's Nest (1)
As winter settled in for good, a great many things changed at our zoo.
The animals that molted had shed their coats and fluffed their fur out thick to see them through the cold, while the cold-blooded creatures, and those that made their homes in the tropics, began to huddle in little clusters around the heaters and the warming lamps.
"Sweetheart. Playing with the Tokkiz again?"
"How'd you know!"
"Want me to take a look at your tummy?"
"Ah!"
Soeun startled at the rabbit fur plastered all over her belly and frantically brushed it off. Every pat sent hundreds of strands drifting down onto the living room floor.
Whirrr—
And at once, several robot vacuums kicked on. The air purifier spun up as well, gathering the fur adrift in the air.
"I tell you, the second winter rolls around, my urge to buy more robot vacuums shoots straight up."
Watching the little machines scuttle around the living room—around Soeun, if I'm being precise—cleaning with all their might, the urge to buy a few more welled up something fierce. Every animal that passed through our house was a shedder, and the floor was never without fur. My superpower kept their coats from falling out easily, true enough, but just after molting season, like now, there was no help for it. Let the animals churn through the place even once, and the floor lay heaped with hair.
There was so much of it that Noona had taken to brushing out the rabbits' fur and spinning it into yarn, purely as a hobby.
"Ta-da! Well? Pretty, right?"
"What's this?"
"Mommy made earmuffs for our Soeun. Out of fur from the Tokkiz."
And that hobby of hers had gone so far as earmuffs—a headband with plump puffs of fur at either end. The animals were shedding enough to make things like that.
But that wasn't the whole of it. The biggest change of all was this: the number of people strolling the grounds had fallen off sharply.
The cold was to blame, or rather the animals were. With the weather turned, they'd begun seeking the insides of buildings and anywhere warm. The only ones still outside were the creatures living in the canal, where the temperature never dropped, and the ones who could bear the chill by bundling up in fur or clothes. It had gotten to the point where some visitors did nothing but roam the outdoor grounds.
"Eek! The monkey's wearing a puffer!"
"...Pretty sure that's the same as mine. Why does it look better on him."
Wonsungi, doing balloon art out in the cold, had a down jacket on.
"Is that a tiger or a pig."
"A piger?"
We'd increased their rations as usual, braced for raids, but the cold meant no one came raiding, and so the tigers had filled out plump.
"That thing it's wearing isn't armor, right?"
"Nah. I think it's just clothes that look like armor."
The rhinos, come all the way from Africa, had been wrapped head to toe in outfits like iron plate, in deference to the cold. Plenty of other animals wore all sorts of clothes besides, and people said there was a real pleasure in going around to hunt them down.
But there was a change greater still. No—one so important that all the others put together couldn't match it.
"Is there a baby in Mommy's tummy?"
"Mm-hmm. By next autumn, you'll get to meet your little sibling."
"When the baby comes, Soeun has to look after them. Can you do that?"
"Uh-huh! I can!"
Noona was pregnant with our second.
We hadn't known for long, so her belly hadn't rounded out or anything of the kind, and still, for our family, it was an enormous change. Soeun most of all. I'd thought she didn't want a sibling, the way she kept interrupting us, but the news that one was on the way had her overjoyed.
"Jiyeoni has a little sibling too! Now I have one too!"
Her very best friend had a little sibling, she said, and now she did too, and so she clung to her mother every single day.
The animals were a little wistful at that. Soeun, who used to stick to them and play all day long, was only ever at her mother's side now, and they felt the lack of her.
The cold, and the animals seeking the indoors, were part of the reason. But with Soeun hardly appearing, the visitors had dropped in a way you truly couldn't miss. People still came to our zoo every day. It just wasn't packed the way it used to be.
"Hmm. What am I going to do."
The noticeable thinning of the crowds had me worrying, just a little. The zoo didn't bring in more than Mytube, not really, but fewer visitors still nagged at me.
"Not a soul to behold my magnificent technique and marvel! If this goes on, I'm going to want to mate!"
Bbwoobbwoo, attention hound that he was, had been sulking over it, which only worried me more. And remembering how he'd acted back when I was testing my superpower made it worse still—the way he'd thrown a tantrum, sham heat and all, insisting he wanted to mate because there was no one there to watch him.
I'd been sitting on the sofa, staring into nothing and turning over what to do, when Soeun crept up on me.
"Kyah!"
"Waaah!"
She'd appeared out of nowhere and leapt clean off the floor, and I jumped in spite of myself.
"Hehehe, did I scare you, Daddy?"
"...Yeah. You scared me, Soeun."
"Hehehehe!"
So pleased that I'd been startled, she flashed a sunny grin and shot off.
I was dumbfounded for all of a moment. Then something came to me.
I called together, at once, the people you could call the zoo's executives. It was still a weekday, still working hours, so gathering them wasn't hard.
Noona, who oversaw the zoo's finances, and Ko Gil-hwi, who still kept the elephants and stood as representative of every keeper on the grounds, came into the conference room with several others.
"You called, Suhwan?"
"What's our boss want, calling us in?"
"Visitor numbers have dipped a bit lately, haven't they?"
"Mm... It's winter, that's all. The season when the world outside your blankets is a dangerous place. Fewer visitors is only natural."
"That's right. Even before you took the place over, boss, the numbers always fell in the winter season."
At that, the executives told me it was only to be expected. Nothing to worry about.
But that wasn't what mattered to me just then.
"Actually, the drop in visitors isn't the main reason I brought you together. I called because a new business idea came to me."
"A new business idea?"
"We don't run separate night hours, do we? I was thinking of doing something different with that time."
"Something different—what exactly would that be?"
I grinned at them and rapped the table.
"Kyaaaaah!"
Noona, taking the signal, slammed her palms down and shot to her feet—scream and all.
"Aaaaaaaah!"
"Huuuurgh!"
"Kweeeeeek!"
"What! What is iiiit!"
At her sudden outburst, the executives around her jumped. No—they were terrified.
I burst out laughing, and by the time they'd settled they were glaring at me. It was written all over their faces. He's the boss. Not a thing we can do.
"The different sort of business I've come up with could pass for a haunted house, if you look at it a certain way. You break through the zoo after dark has fallen. With all kinds of animals let loose. The weather's cold anyway, so we could even put them in ghost costumes. Dress the dogs in outfits with spider legs, say...?"
They nodded, as if to say it wasn't a bad thought. They'd been badly startled a moment ago, but turning that into an attraction didn't seem like a poor choice.
"But what if the visitors get so scared they attack the animals?"
"We simply leave out any Awakened Individual whose ability could be turned to combat and the like. You don't actually think an ordinary person could attack the animals in our zoo, do you?"
Rather than hand him a plain answer, I put a question back. And the question was answer enough.
"...Shouldn't be a problem."
He nodded before long.
Every animal in our zoo could fairly be called a monster. Even the lizards, the smallest of the small creatures, could move at speeds a person couldn't easily close on. The Tokkiz in particular, who'd been with me a good long while, had the skill to land a hind-leg kick on a person.
"All right, then. The haunted house... no. The House of Animals, as I'm calling it for now. If you've got ideas, let's have them. As many as you like."
At that, the executives, after a moment's thought, began offering opinions one by one. With those opinions gathered, and with help besides from Byeong-jin—a lawyer of mine, these days competing as a dog agility world champion—we were able to open for business. I didn't forget to train the animals beforehand, of course.
It was winter, not summer—the season you might call the season for a test of courage—but the promotion had been sweeping enough that on the evening we opened, a long line stretched out in front of the zoo.
By morning it was the Nest of the Shinsoo, a peaceful zoo. After the sun went down it became Monster's Nest, built on the notion of monsters seething through the dark. And before that zoo the line ran long. So many people you would never have thought it a winter night.
"I've been through Thrill Maze. Just trust me and follow."
"Honey. Just trust me. I'll take care of every last monster."
"Hello, everyone. Today I've come to experience the Shinsoo's zoo! No—Monster's Nest!"
"It wasn't like this when I saw it in the daytime. Isn't it already a little eerie, right from the entrance?"
Some had come alone, and plenty had come in groups, but every one of them waited on the opening with a face full of anticipation, or of fear.
I went up to the person standing at the very front and held out a sheet of paper.
"If you'd like to enter, would you sign this?"
A few simple lines were written on it. Boiled down, they came to two. One was a pledge not to attack the animals. The other stated that if they were startled badly enough to have a heart attack, they would hold no one responsible.
"It's that scary?"
"Mm... A lawyer I know tried it as a tester and grabbed me by the collar. That line got added after."
At that, the first challenger, who'd looked surprised, soon put on a confident face and scrawled his signature.
He finished in a hurry and strode straight for the entrance.
Three minutes. That was all it took before he let out a tremendous scream and came back out on a stretcher.