Aegyo Training (2)
"All right. First, a demonstration from our seasoned trainer, Namcat."
I waved a hand at him at once. Namcat, who had been standing ramrod straight with his nose in the air, lowered his haunches and sat in one smooth motion. I waved again, and he rose.
"That's sit, and that's stand. The most basic commands there are."
I squeezed out a little Churu for him as a reward for following so well, then ran the others through the same drill. Aside from Namcat, the seven animals sat and stood over and over at my cue, earning a tiny treat each time. I started them on a few pieces of kibble and worked up to Churu, and maybe that was why they caught on so fast. A word to sit and a slight downward wave of my hand, and all eight dropped into place. A word to stand, and they were up again.
"Wow. That training really does go fast..."
Noona stared, openly impressed that I had settled sit and stand with nothing more than a few words. I caught my shoulders before they could hitch up in a smug little shrug and moved on to the rest of the aegyo.
I taught them all kinds of behaviors, including little tricks they could use to play off people. Curl your middle finger and thumb into a circle, and they were to poke a jet-black nose through the gap. Spread two fingers in a V, and they rested their chin across them. Wave a finger, and they spun in place.
"Jjamong, nose!"
Noona had been watching everything I taught them. All at once she curled her fingers into a ring and held them out to Jjamong.
"Woof!"
She wasn't the sort to forget a lesson she'd just learned. Jjamong gave a small bark and put it to use at once, thrusting her jet-black nose straight through the circle of Noona's fingers.
"Ahaha!"
Noona burst out laughing and scrubbed Jjamong all over, utterly delighted.
"Hey—you're supposed to be filming!"
I scooped up the phone she had quietly set down and started recording the two of them. If she didn't want to be in the video, I could always cut her out or mosaic her face later.
"Ah, sorry!"
Noona, who had been petting Jjamong hard enough to broadcast her happiness with her whole body, caught sight of me and looked apologetic. Even so, she made no move to take the phone back.
She went on to demand the same tricks from Maru, Sulppang, and Natae. Maru and Sulppang performed exactly as she wanted, just as Jjamong had.
"Natae, nose! Natae! Just once, pleeease!"
Kim Natae, of course—the professional sloth, the final boss of not bothering—did not so much as react to the pleading. She lay sprawled on the floor, and the only acknowledgment she offered when her name was called was a single lazy flick of her tail.
That thing isn't a dog. What is she, a koala? A sloth?
Her build was unmistakably Shih Tzu, but the way she behaved made me doubt the species entirely. While I was busy questioning her taxonomy, Noona seemed to give up on getting any aegyo out of Natae and took the phone back.
"Natae's okay, right...?"
She had abandoned any hope of seeing the trick, and now she was worried instead. In her mind, a normal puppy was supposed to tear around in every direction. With Maru, Jjamong, and Sulppang bouncing with endless energy right beside her, the contrast was impossible to miss.
If Noona had the same superpower I did, though—if she could hear the tiny mutter coming out of Natae right now—she would have changed her mind.
"Isn't there some way to live without breathing? Even breathing is such a pain..."
People always asked the professionally lazy whether breathing ever got tiresome. Natae was the one who would actually say yes. I shook my head and answered.
"She's fine. She's really just that lazy. Right now she's complaining that even breathing is too much work."
"...At that point, I'm not sure she is fine."
I only shrugged. What was I supposed to do when she was dying of not wanting to do anything? Forcing someone who refused to move wasn't going to make a good video. That didn't mean I intended to teach her nothing at all.
"Natae. Want me to show you something good?"
"…………………………What is it?"
"Would you look at that response time. Anyway. You don't want to move yourself, right?"
"………That's right."
Interest must have sparked, because the answer came back a little faster than usual.
"Then there's only one way. You get someone else to pick you up and carry you where you want to go."
"…………Oh! How does one do that?"
"Simple. You plant yourself in someone's path. Most people will step around you, but somebody's going to pick you up. And once they do, you demand whatever you want from the person holding you."
Natae looked at me as if this were fascinating. She was still lying flat on the floor. I scooped her up without any effort. She wasn't a stuffed toy, and yet aside from her tail she didn't so much as twitch, exactly like one.
"So when someone picks you up like this, you lift one front paw. Toward wherever you want to go. Give their arm a little tap while you're at it. Try it."
Natae went quiet for a moment, as if she were working through what I'd said. Then she tapped my arm and slowly extended her right front paw. The tip of it pointed at the sofa where she had been lying only a moment ago.
"...Of course."
It was the most Natae thing imaginable. I shook my head and set her down on the sofa. The final boss of laziness herself burrowed into the crease between the cushions and settled in with perfect comfort.
"Fine. You just stay there and keep doing that."
I decided to let her live up to her name. There was no point dragging around an animal who would only lie there and refuse to train properly.
"What about Natae?"
"She says even breathing is a hassle. I'll just leave her be. It's fun to have one like that around, don't you think?"
"That's true."
Noona nodded in agreement and let out a soft, sheepish laugh. Better to have a few odd ones like Natae than a lineup where every animal overflowed with charm. People's tastes varied wildly, after all.
With that settled, I went on teaching the animals behaviors that counted as aegyo. Playing dead, for one—gasping out a last breath and collapsing the way people did in movies. I also trained them to rub against someone in thanks when they were given food, and to roll onto their backs and flail their paws in the air.
The result was a Noona who looked ready to die of happiness. I had run the test not through myself, who could understand them, but through Noona, who couldn't. And the outcome matched the woman in front of me, who was beside herself with joy.
"Ahahahaha! They're too cute! What do I do!"
Watching the animals move in perfect unison at every flick of her hand, she stamped her feet in delight. Then, unable to hold back any longer, she shoved the phone at me again and threw herself into hugging and nuzzling them without restraint.
It was so much like Yeongji that I figured the reason Yeongji acted that way had to be something inherited down the maternal line. No—I was certain of it.
If Noona and I ever have a daughter, won't she turn out exactly like Noona and Yeongji?
I let out a small sigh, caught somewhere between anticipation and dread.
"Noona, get up already. Keep that up and you'll be rolling around on the ground like Yeongji."
"Okay."
She gave the animals one last reluctant pet and got to her feet. She wasn't caked in dirt and grass the way Yeongji would have been, but her clothes had gone patchwork with fur all the same.
"Anyone who saw you would think you and Yeongji were sisters, not cousins."
"Hehe."
Noona answered with a sheepish little smile, as if she had no intention of arguing. She had been hearing, ever since Yeongji was small, that the girl took after her. React like that, and there was nothing left for me to say. I brushed the fur off her clothes, and we headed inside together.
The moment we were in, I gave the footage a light cut and uploaded it to MewTube. Maybe because the video showed the animals following their training with ridiculous ease and pulling off all kinds of aegyo, the view count exploded all over again. Thanks to that—if thanks was the right word—I had reached the point where I could apply for the Silver Button that MewTube awarded once a channel gathered a certain number of subscribers.
"Heheh. Later I'll collect one of every kind of button and put them all on display."
"You like it that much?"
"Of course I do! They don't just hand these out to anyone. And I bet almost nobody's gotten a Silver Button this fast. Maybe famous celebrities' channels, and that's about it."
Noona looked as if she couldn't quite follow what I was saying, but if I was happy, she was happy, and she gave me a light little laugh. I smiled back and started the application.
Sometimes there were problems and people couldn't claim theirs right away, but I didn't have any of those, so it went quickly. I entered the channel name to be engraved on the button, translated the shipping address and the rest into English, and that was the application done. An email landed in the address linked to my MewTube account, confirming that the Silver Button request had gone through and that it would take some time.
After reading it, I started picking out a spot to display a Silver Button that hadn't even been made yet. I was still wavering—here, or over there?—when another unread email caught my eye.