The Vending Machine Guy (1)
Film a vlog of the animals going about their day, upload it, give the building under construction a token once-over while pretending to care, then take the dogs for a walk and keel over afterward — do all that, and a day vanished in a blink.
Time raced on because of it, and Saturday arrived: the day of the subscriber house visit. Noona and I got ready to film. Getting ready, such as it was, meant nothing more than putting on something neat and picking up the action cam we'd just bought.
"All right. Today we're heading to the home of a subscriber who sent me their story."
The moment we started rolling, I launched straight into the lines I'd prepared. This wasn't a simple animal vlog like usual, and the awkwardness was unbearable.
"Hhk— hup..."
Noona must have found my stiff delivery just as funny; she was huffing and puffing, doing everything she could not to laugh.
I pointedly ignored her and pressed on.
"And what kind of story, you ask, is worth me coming in person? A puppy that barks the second it sees Dad."
"A puppy that only barks when it sees its dad?"
Noona cut in halfway through the script. All of it planned in advance, of course — otherwise there was no way she'd be talking like that, like a robot.
"Right. Apparently it didn't used to, but for a while now the dog barks so much whenever it sees the owner's father that it's become a real source of stress. Enough that the neighbors have started filing complaints."
"Wow. So it must be barking pretty badly?"
"It is. The owner sent a video she filmed herself, and it was honestly something else."
I gave a light shake of my head and went on.
"It only barks at the father, and it's gotten to the point where even he says he's starting to dislike the dog. If the behavior isn't corrected, she may have no choice but to part with him."
"That's heartbreaking."
"It is. From what I hear, both the owner and her father are under a tremendous amount of stress."
"Then we'd better fix it quickly. Shall we head over?"
I nodded along with Noona's line, and with that, the opening shoot was done.
"Ugh...! I could die of how awkward that was!"
Noona lowered the action cam and gave a full-body shiver.
That finally broke me. I'd already been fighting not to laugh the whole time, watching her recite those lines into the action cam with that painfully awkward face.
"D-don't laugh!"
She came at me like she was being cute about it and shook me back and forth.
Did she not realize that only made it funnier?
We got a little affectionate, and before I knew it, it was nearly time to leave. Any later and we'd miss the time we'd promised to arrive.
"Let's get moving. We're gonna be late."
At that, Noona glanced at the clock, a flicker of surprise crossing her face, and snatched up her bag in a hurry.
"Let's go!"
One minute she was hounding me not to laugh, and the next she was rushing me out the door. I let another laugh slip and headed for the car parked in the yard.
Dad's car, of course.
This time, though, Dad's reaction was different. Far from annoyed, he was downright pleasant.
That was what you got for bringing the car back last time with a full tank and a thorough cleaning, inside and out. Whatever else, with gas as expensive as it was these days, filling the tank was the surest way to his heart.
"We're heading out, so don't cause any trouble, and watch the house properly."
"Have a good trip, Master!"
"Churu. On the way back."
"Fear not. I myself shall guard thy residence to absolute perfection!"
Noona and I stepped out, left behind the send-off of the animals who'd come tumbling after us, and eased the car slowly on its way.
"Noona. Should we just buy a car of our own?"
"A car?"
"We can't keep borrowing Dad's forever. If we want to get around comfortably, we ought to have at least one."
Noona nodded. Taking the bus or a taxi every time we needed to go somewhere was its own kind of ordeal. The house sat where it sat — the stop was a long way off, and it was the sort of area even a called taxi wasn't eager to come out to.
"Mm. Transit is a little inconvenient out here."
Noona and I, especially, had lived somewhere you could step outside and reach a bus stop in a few strides, so the way things were now was nothing short of miserable.
"Then should we get two? One for me, one for you."
She looked briefly startled, then shook her head.
"Two? What for. You know I can't drive."
I'd forgotten for a moment that Noona drove like shit — badly enough that her father, who'd tried to teach her, got so pissed he cut her license in half.
"Oh. Right..."
"Just buy whatever you want."
"Really? Whatever I want?"
"Yeah. With what you earn, what couldn't you buy? It's not like you're into sports cars or anything."
At her words, the dream cars I'd always carried around unspooled through my head one after another.
Dream cars in name only — really just vehicles I'd wanted to try sometime. And since, as Noona said, I wasn't the sports-car type, what came to mind was a handful of SUVs.
Once, they were the sort of cars I might have considered buying in my mid-thirties at the earliest. Now, with Mutube revenue exploding, she was right: there was nothing I couldn't buy. Save even a few months of earnings, and a premium SUV might be within reach.
But that whole train of thought vanished clean at the navigation voice.
It wasn't just anyone riding with me. It was Noona — the woman I got to call my wife — so my driving had turned careful, and I followed the nav exactly where it led.
We traded this and that as we drove another thirty minutes or so, and then we arrived.
"Oh... Looks like they do pretty well for themselves."
It wasn't on the level of the house we'd just bought, but it was still a detached home with a modest yard. I pressed the doorbell set into the side of the large, slightly old-fashioned front gate.
A strange, warbling chime spilled out of it. A moment later, a voice came through.
"Kyaaaa! It's Sinsuuu!"
"Ha, haha..."
What came through the intercom was too full of a young girl's feeling — and a little too baby-faced — to quite call the speaker a woman.
"Must be nice, Suhwan. You've already got a girl fan."
"Heh. Feel free to be proud you get a man like this for a husband."
I puffed up for no good reason, and Noona let out a snort — then, right on cue, the gate unlocked with a squeak, and she pushed it open and stepped inside.
"Sinsuuuu! Helloooooo!"
We went through the gate, and the door of the house inside the wall flew open as a small girl burst out, calling my name at a ridiculously high energy. Cradled in her arms was a tiny Pomeranian, its lovely orange coat grown out soft and fluffy.
Is that the one? The dog that barks the moment it sees its dad.
I studied the Pomeranian for a moment. Even with an outsider like me standing there, it showed no particular wariness — hardly what you'd call a problem dog. But the evidence in the video the girl had sent made it impossible to think she'd made the story up. In that footage, the Pomeranian had been barking like mad at some middle-aged man.
"I'm Sehee! Kim Sehee! Sixteen — a sweet sixteen in full bloom! You're older than me, Sinsu, so just call me Sehee! And this is Sebok. He's a Pomeranian, a little over one. And he's the problem child. These days he just goes off the second he sees Dad, can you believe it? I can't tell you how relieved I was when you said you could fix it. Dad keeps saying every single day that he's going to take Sebok and dump him. He didn't used to — at first he adored him too — but lately he gets annoyed the moment he looks at him. And Sebok is so cute!"
The girl, Sehee, was a chatterbox of staggering proportions. I still hadn't gotten a single word in, and she was already prattling on all by herself.
Did a ghost who died mid-sentence latch onto her...?
Even Noona, who liked a good chat in her own way, was reduced to shaking her head.
"Sehee! What are you doing, leaving the guests standing out there?"
"Oh, right! Sinsu, come on in!"
Sehee's monologue ended at the man's voice from inside the house. At last we could go in, and there in the spacious living room we came face to face with a middle-aged man seated on the sofa that occupied one side of it.
"Snack! Snack! Snack! Snack!"
The instant he laid eyes on the man, Sebok — the Pomeranian still held in Sehee's arms — started barking like he'd lost his mind. Snack.
An owner haunted by a ghost who died mid-sentence, and a dog haunted by a ghost who died mid-snack...?
Thanks to my ability to translate what animals said, I'd already known from the video that the Pomeranian was barking "snack." Hearing it in person was still a real shock.
The barking didn't last, though. The moment Sehee saw her father's eyebrow twitch and his glare turn sharp, she scurried off to her room in a flurry — and since she'd fled with Sebok still in her arms, he stopped barking too.
"Hoo... Well. First things first — pleased to meet you. I'm Sehee's father. I've heard a lot about you from her."
He held out his hand as if asking for a handshake.
I took it, gave it a light shake, and introduced Noona and myself.
"But can you really correct that Sebok's behavior?"
"It shouldn't be impossible."
"That's a relief," Sehee's father murmured, staring hard at the room she'd disappeared into.
"Mr. Kim? If you don't mind, I was thinking we could start filming now. Would that be all right?"
"Ah, the filming. Yes, that's fine. A Supreme Rank Awakened Individual is going out of his way to help us — how could I refuse something as small as being on camera?"
He nodded readily, his eyes on the action cam Noona was raising.
I went right into the shoot, trading this and that with him. Most of it was questions along the lines of when this had started, and whether he had any idea why.
"Honestly, I don't really know why that Sebok acts the way he does. My daughter loves him, so I came to like him too, but at some point he started barking like a maniac the second he saw me. The stress is no joke. Even when I try to spend time with my daughter, he goes off the moment he sees me, so the time I get with her keeps shrinking."
Setting everything else aside, what Sehee's father regretted was not getting to spend time with her because of Sebok.
After hearing him out, I went straight to Sehee's room and started listening to Sebok's side of it. As a rule, something like this had to be heard from both parties.
And once I had heard both sides, I could only look at Sehee's father with a deeply awkward smile.
"So you know why he barks like that only when he sees me?"
"Well, the thing is..."
I couldn't wipe the awkward smile off my face. I had no choice but to tell him the truth.