Episode 23: Dragon and Tiger? No—Cat versus Owl
"Haaah... huff...! I'm dying, hrk—!"
I sprawled across the floor, hauling in air like a madman. There was exactly one reason for it. Of the four dogs in the house, I had just taken the three who were obsessed with walks out for a walk.
Maru the Golden Retriever, Sulppang the Bichon, and Jjamong the Welsh Corgi. What I'd come back from was no walk at all. From the first step to the last, it had been a matter of being dragged along by animals determined to sprint at full speed the entire way.
Mungchi's story was still fresh enough that I hadn't dared let them off the leash, and the three of them, as if they'd decided that meant they got to tow me instead, had hauled me all over the place.
The calendar insisted it was spring, but the weather felt nothing like spring and everything like summer. I'd even waited until the sun was going down and the air had cooled before heading out, and I was still soaked through with sweat. Get up, I thought, and I'd leave a perfect print of myself behind in it.
"Master! One more tiiime!"
Flat on the floor as I was, Jjamong—the liveliest of the three who had gone out—was already demanding we go again.
"...You think I can?"
I was about two breaths from keeling over, and she wanted another walk? Absolutely not. That wasn't a walk. It was a race with my life staked on the finish.
I pushed Jjamong off. She looked briefly disappointed, then tore around the yard like something unhinged, and Maru and Sulppang, who had been sneaking glances our way, tangled in with her and ran too.
That building needs to be finished, and soon.
Watching them, I felt a little guilty. For a dog who wanted to run that desperately, our yard was starting to seem small. There was room enough to park three or four cars with space to spare, but it wasn't enough to contain that damn maniac tearing around like she'd lost her mind.
The building going up for the cafe had been planned with plenty of space for the animals to run, so once it was finished, she wouldn't lack for room.
Walks would get easier then, too. Burn all that energy off over there first, and a walk afterward would actually be a walk.
Forget animal welfare. If I wanted to stay alive, that building had to be done soon. Keep on like this, and I might just end up gracing a news headline.
Or it would be something even more ridiculous.
"Good work."
Noona, once she'd confirmed that I had come back from leading the three dogs on a walk—no, from whatever that had been—held out a glass of ice water.
It was no different from the water of life itself. My eyes practically rolled back in my head. I shot upright as if I'd been launched and dumped the whole thing straight into my mouth.
Crunch. Crunch-crunch. Ice or no ice, I chewed all of it and swallowed. The cold from the water and the ice spread from my gut out through the rest of me, and only then did I feel as if I might actually live.
"Whew, look at that sweat. You're washing up first, right?"
"Yeah. I don't think I can do anything until I get clean."
Sweat-soaked clothes peeling and sticking to skin was about as unpleasant as a feeling could get. Lift an arm, twist at the waist, and I couldn't stand the way the fabric wrapped itself around me.
"...............I'm the best, aren't I?"
Natae, who had been watching me for a while, tossed the comment in while lying flat on the floor, exactly the way I'd been before the water.
"...No, you're not, you little shit. You need to move."
The other three might have blown past energetic and landed somewhere near unhinged, but never moving at all, the way he did, was a problem of its own. I caught myself thinking that if I could give those three a dose of the laziness Natae was named for, and shave a little of their energy off to hand to him, everyone would be happier. The three of them were only a bit livelier than average. Natae, though, was single-handedly capable of dragging his entire species' average through the roof. Put a laziness index on a graph, one animal at a time, and this one would force you to redraw the limit of the y-axis.
"...............Moving is suuuch a booother."
Even bringing a sentence to a proper end seemed to have become too much work. He just let the tail of his words trail off. I shook my head at him and headed for the bathroom to wash. I got as far as taking hold of the handle. I did not get as far as opening the door.
A cat's yowl came ringing out of the yard.
"You damn bird-brain! Fine—today I'm killing you, no matter what!"
Noona and Yeongji couldn't really tell the cats' cries apart, but each of them sounded different to me, and that voice belonged to Namcat. I bolted for the yard. I caught a glimpse of Noona, as if she meant to call after me, and I ran without even registering how disgusting I felt.
I burst into the yard to find Namcat looking ready for a fight, and the owl I had met the night before.
"Stop!"
A fight was a breath away from breaking out between Namcat and the owl, so I spat out the halt-command we'd agreed on.
Stop!
Equipment halted. Targets frozen.
I could have sworn a voice in my head announced that the equipment was halting, and in that same instant both of them seized up. Namcat locked stiff and toppled flat. The owl, still posed mid-takeoff, dropped into the yard like a paper airplane catching the wind and settling gently to the ground.
"Whew......"
With the sound of Noona's relief beside me, I strode over and grabbed the both of them.
"Who said you could fight? You little bastards."
"It's that bird-brain's fault."
"The fault lies with that monstrous cat."
The command had stopped their bodies for a moment. It had not stopped their mouths. The second I spoke, the two of them blamed each other, neither one waiting to go first.
Wow. You two would be incredible at team games. ...No. That is not the point.
"Why the hell were you fighting? Owl, you little—I gave you chicken breast just yesterday, and this is how you stab me in the back? Namcat, I told you this morning. There's no need to fight."
At that, both of them slowly turned their heads aside and launched into excuses that barely deserved the name.
"That bird-brain's being a disgusting little shit."
"I meant to withhold my attack, that I might keep my pact with you. Yet the monstrous cat provoked me first."
They made their excuses in the same breath, then locked eyes and growled. Namcat, I could allow. But owl—how exactly are you growling?
"Ha......"
If I hadn't been holding them, they would have been swinging at each other that very second. I let out a small sigh. At the root of it, these two could never get along. They seemed to loathe each other down at the level of their genes, and no amount of talking was going to fix creatures like that.
In a moment like this, there was only one answer. Let them fight, but make certain nobody got hurt. I couldn't stop the fight, so keeping them from injuring each other was the best I could do.
"Fine. Fight. Go on and fight."
The words were barely out of my mouth before the two of them raised their claws and flared with hostility. But I wasn't finished.
"On one condition! While you're at it—whether it's one of you, or some other animal who gets dragged into it—nobody gets hurt. If anyone does, I won't let either of you off."
They looked faintly cowed by the promise that I wouldn't let it go. I made up my mind, then and there, to fix things so they could never fight hard enough to actually injure each other.
"You get hurt out there? Then you, Namcat—no more Churu. Ever. I'm switching your food to the tasteless stuff, too. As for you, owl......"
I'd been with Namcat long enough to know his weakness for certain. The owl, though, I had known for less than twenty-four hours, and I had no feel at all for what would work on him. I still couldn't scare him with something he wouldn't actually fear. I stared at him for a moment, thinking.
"Oh. Right. Those pointy feathers on top of your head? I'm plucking them. Pull those, and nobody will even be able to tell whether you're an eagle owl or just some ordinary owl. And I won't be feeding you anymore, either. There isn't much to eat around here, is there? You'll starve down to nothing."
At that, a good deal of the hostility between them died.
"If it's for Churu...... not hurting some worthless bird-brain is nothing......"
"That monstrous wretch does not please me. But I have a pact with you, and I shall keep it without fail. So leave my precious feathers be!"
Food-mad as he was, Namcat swore it. So did the owl, who seemed fiercely attached to the pointed feathers crowning his head. I listened to the both of them vow they would never injure each other, and I set them down on the ground. The instant they left my hands, they slammed together.
"You bird-brain!"
"Do not make me laugh, you monster!"
They crashed with a furious pap-pap-pap-pak, a collision in the most literal sense. They hadn't forgotten the promise from a moment ago, though. Neither threw anything that would do real harm, and whenever things started to look dangerous, they hesitated and their movements went sluggish.
"Is that... actually okay?"
"Yeah. Look close and they're stopping a little, aren't they? I told them not to hurt each other. The second it looks like someone might get hurt, they hold themselves back."
"...That's them holding back?"
"They're sort of... like siblings. They've got the genes to loathe each other, but they can't quite bring themselves to hit hard enough to really do damage. Something like that."
Noona still wore a look that said none of it made sense. Aside from her cousin, she was an only daughter, and this was beyond her. Of course, I was an only child myself, so I didn't really understand it either.
At any rate, once I'd put her worry to rest, I pulled out my phone on the spot. A fight between a cat and an owl? There was no way I was letting that go. I got the two of them in frame and started recording.
The owl dropped out of the sky with his talons clenched tight and threw a kick. Namcat slipped it on that light, cat-quick footwork of his, then immediately started tearing into the owl with a Nyangnyang Punch. His paws fired several times in a single second, and every last blow was caught on the wings the owl beat in the empty air.
"A pity. I had thought to shut that impudent mouth."
"Hah. You think a bird-brain like you can shut my mouth?"
They provoked each other the way fighters do before a bout, a round of trash talk, and once each of them had landed a line, they crashed together again.
This time Namcat took the first move. He compressed himself like a spring and exploded outward, driving his whole body at the owl. But the owl was a winged thing, and he surged hard into the air and slipped the body blow. That, as it turned out, was exactly what Namcat had been aiming for. The moment the owl lifted off, Namcat—I have no idea how—flipped himself over and punted him away with his hind legs.
"Krgh!"
"That was nothing."
The owl took the hind-leg kick and tumbled across the ground, and Namcat stared down at him as if the whole display were laughable. Even so, neither of them had forgotten my order not to truly hurt each other. The owl beat his way back into the air and came at Namcat again.
They traded blow for blow like that, and when roughly three minutes had passed, the fight reached its verdict.
"Don't get cocky from now on. You hear me?"
"Kkh...... How vexing. This humiliation I shall repay a hundredfold—nay, a thousandfold!"
"Hah. If you think you can, be my guest."
Namcat, who had been standing over the flattened owl, seemed to lose interest. Nose in the air, he strutted into the house. I thought back to his first meeting with the other seven animals. All seven of them beaten flat in an instant—that had been no joke.
Maru. I'm sorry. I said it was weird that you were scared of something smaller than you.
Namcat, pinning an owl that reigned at the top of the food chain, hadn't looked like a cat at all. He had looked like a tiger. It was no wonder Maru was afraid.