The Proposal
The last gate still standing between me and everything that came after was nothing more, and nothing less, than a proposal.
I'd already asked Noona to marry me, and she'd already said yes, but I still couldn't shake the feeling that I owed her a proper proposal.
If it weren't for that hyung of mine, the thought of proposing never would've crossed my mind.
What had put the idea in my head was the married life of one of my acquaintances.
He was an older guy I'd met as a kid in taekwondo class, and we'd kept in touch ever since. Watching how his marriage went, I became dead certain: I had to propose.
He was about five years into married life, and whenever a TV show or a movie showed someone staging a grand romantic gesture, he grew profoundly uncomfortable. It happened so reliably you could have called it always, because the woman who'd become my sister-in-law never stopped grilling him over it. I'd seen it with my own two eyes — her sighing with envy, murmuring that that person had gotten a proposal like that.
He endured it and endured it until he couldn't endure it anymore, and in the end he scraped together a modest little proposal-style surprise to put the matter to rest. Even so, I hear she still takes a jab at him now and then.
Noona didn't strike me as the type to fixate on things like that. Even so, it was a once-in-a-lifetime occasion, and it seemed only right to see it done. I had no desire to skip it on a careless assumption and spend the rest of my life getting raked over the coals for it.
All of that aside — how was I supposed to do it?
I started turning it over, wondering what sort of proposal Noona would actually like. If I wanted to leave her a memory she'd never forget, it needed something special about it, so I scoured the internet and worried at the problem from every angle.
But no matter how I searched, nothing I found satisfied me.
It felt as if there ought to be some spark of originality, yet the results were almost all the same. Candles laid out in the shape of a heart. A handful of flowers, or a ring. That was the whole of it.
"Ugh. What am I supposed to do……."
With not a single good idea coming to me no matter how hard I thought, I simply folded forward onto the desk. The keyboard and mouse skittered away with a small clatter.
"The hell you doin'?"
"Is aught amiss?"
Drawn by the noise, Namcat and Yubu came looking. Namcat sauntered up with his tail swaying in that particular feline prowl, while Yubu strode over on his long legs, one deliberate step after another.
Whether it was because they were forever hunting for an excuse to trade blows, the two of them kept each other company more often than you'd expect. They drifted around me now, plainly curious why I was sprawled out like a corpse.
"Nah, I've just got something on my mind……. Wait a second."
I'd been about to wave them off and say it was nothing, but halfway through the sentence I stopped and looked at them.
"Yeah. If I've got you two, this'll work."
I'd decided how I was going to propose.
What good was holding on to a Superpower if I didn't use it now? This was exactly the moment for it. Done this way, I was certain I could give Noona a memory she'd carry for the rest of her life.
"What kinda stunt you plannin' this time?"
"Is there aught I might do to aid you?"
Their reactions couldn't have been more different, but I only looked at the two of them and smiled, soft and easy.
Having decided to propose to Noona by putting my power to use, I set about the preparations at once.
I meant to do it at the cafe, which was already in shape to open for business, so there wasn't much to arrange. All that remained was training the animals who would help me.
"Yubu. Hold this in your beak — and don't tear it."
"Whaffor you tellin' me t'hold thish?"
He asked it back with the little envelope already clamped in his beak, and thanks to that a corner of the letter tore and a hole opened through it in an instant. The moment that sharp beak moved to form words, the frail paper didn't stand a chance.
A few rounds of practice later, though, Yubu had become a first-rate mailman. He could cut through the sky at speed and still leave the letter in his beak without a single mark on it. I'd only meant for him to imitate a character from the movies, but whether he'd had a hidden talent for the part or not, he carried it off splendidly.
"And why, pray, must I do such a thing? The ways of humankind are beyond my understanding."
He grumbled a little, but the moment I tossed him a thick cut of fresh beef he tore into it with happy little snaps, thoroughly pleased.
Leaving Yubu to the meat, I turned my attention to the three dogs.
Maru sat quietly, tail sweeping back and forth. Sulppang kept cocking that round head, over and over. And Natae, as ever, lay sprawled flat on the floor, well within my line of sight.
"All set?"
"Yes!"
Maru answered with gusto and sprang to her feet, and Sulppang rose to follow. Natae, of course, was still flat on the floor.
But once Maru and Sulppang started moving, something changed. In time with the two of them, Natae — who had been lying on the ground — began to glide smoothly along.
"…………………This is comfortable."
Sprawled on the little sled hitched to Maru and Sulppang's harnesses, Natae declared the arrangement unbearably pleasant and looked entirely content.
For a second I worried they wouldn't manage even the simple thing I'd asked of them. Natae, at least, wasn't failing to do as told. Dragged up in front of me, he stealthily nudged out the little box he'd been lying on — the spitting image of some middle-aged man fishing a phone out from under his belly while lounging in bed.
The box, of course, held a ring. Not quite a wedding band so much as a ring I'd prepared for the proposal.
With Yubu and the dogs accounted for, I shifted my gaze to the three cats, who were staring at me, blank and round-eyed.
"Mm……. Right. You three will do fine."
What I'd entrusted to the cats wasn't anything difficult. All they had to do was guide Noona from the entrance to wherever I was waiting. I watched them a moment, then looked elsewhere — to where a great flock of magpies and crows had gathered.
"You can handle your part too, right?"
"Don't you worry, Big Brother!"
"Just leave it to us!"
They answered with spirit, every one of them lifting a foot as they did.
"Good. Then we do this tomorrow. No mistakes. Pull it off clean, and I'll pay you back in something tasty."
At that, every animal present answered that this sounded excellent.
Maybe it was the nerves, but after that the time slipped past quickly, and the hour to carry out the plan arrived.
"Noona, I'm stepping out to the cafe for a bit."
"The cafe?"
"Yeah. I want to run through the inspection one more time, and double-check whether anything there's going to bother the kids."
"At this hour……? Well, all right. Go on."
She nodded along with my excuse. The sun was sinking low, but she didn't seem particularly suspicious. The cafe was set to open for business tomorrow, so another round of checks was nothing strange.
Relieved, I gathered every one of the animals and headed for the cafe. I took my place at the center of the lawn I'd laid so they would have room enough to run.
I hadn't set out candles, or shaped a heart from flowers, so the spot looked a little bare. That would change before long.
"Yubu."
"At once!"
I'd left my phone at home, so I held out a letter asking her to come by the cafe for a moment. Yubu took the envelope in his beak and lifted into the sky.
I watched him slip neatly into the house, then turned at once to the three cats.
"You just have to bring Noona here. Can you do it?"
"Easy."
Namcat answered and headed for the cafe entrance with Poksini and Chikin-i in tow. If Noona came in, they would lead her all the way to where I waited.
"The rest of you, hide for now. Come out when I give the signal."
At that, the dogs and the magpies and crows vanished without a trace.
I was watching the empty lawn with some satisfaction when, far off, I heard the gate of the house open and shut. A moment later I caught sight of Noona approaching, escorted by the three cats.
"When did you teach Yubu to deliver mail? He was just like an owl out of a movie."
She waved the letter he'd brought her and smiled, bright and a little shy.
Instead of answering, I looked up at the magpies and crows watching me from the roof of the cafe. They took it for the signal, rose at once into the sky, and swept in around the two of us, releasing what they'd been clutching in their feet.
"Eek!"
Noona let out a short cry, startled by the rose petals drifting down from above. There were quite a lot of them. In no time the ground around us was carpeted in red.
Once she realized that what was falling was rose petals, she turned to me with her eyes gone perfectly round — a face that seemed to ask what on earth this was, and at the same time to hope for something more.
And in the same moment the petals began to fall, the dogs, who had set out on cue, arrived.
"Maru?"
Recognizing Maru at her side, Noona discovered the sled hitched between Maru and Sulppang, and Natae sprawled across the top of it.
"Natae, honestly……. Huh?"
She had been letting out a small sigh at the sight of Natae not moving so much as a muscle when she noticed the little box he was stealthily holding out. She looked from me to the box and back again, then slowly picked it up.
"Suhwan?"
Expectation and bewilderment were tangled all through the face she turned on me. I walked toward her, slowly, took the box from her hands, and opened it.
At my words, Noona's eyes — already wide — flew open wider still.
Aside from that, she showed no reaction at all for a moment, and a flicker of worry went through me. But as if to make a fool of that worry, she threw her arms around me. She hugged me so hard that the ring box slipped from my hand and hit the ground.
"Yes!"
Even so, watching her cry out with her arms around me, the sound of it brimful of happiness, I couldn't have cared less.
I soothed Noona as happiness finally tipped her into sniffling, picked the fallen ring up off the ground, and slid it onto her finger.
She smiled as if she had never been happier. Tear-bright at the corners of her eyes, that smile was unbearably cute, and lovely besides. Faced with it, I couldn't help myself. I leaned in and brought my face to hers.
"The ways of humankind are a marvel indeed."
"The hell? Why they stickin' their muzzles together like that?"
"Oh, I know this one! It's what humans do when they're bonding!"
"Master's greeting the mistress!"
"Human greetings sure are a funny thing. Wavin' their hands, waggin' their heads."
Their little reviews drifted in from all around us, but just then I could hardly hear a word of them.