A Transfer Student Has Arrived
"I'll head back to the cafe, then. Train this bunch and bring them over, will you? Actually—think you can finish today?"
"Hmm... I think I can get it done today? The bathroom especially. They'll have to use the one at the cafe, so I need to take them over there anyway."
"Yeah? Then I'll see you in a bit."
"Yeah."
Leaving the cafe empty must have worried her a little, because Noona hurried back. She used to wander off without a second thought when it was her own place, leaving the whole thing in Yeongji's hands—but the cafe had grown so much larger that the anxiety was plain.
"All of you, get over here."
I called the animals together at once. Five rabbits, eight geese, two raccoons, and one tortoise—sixteen in all—came swarming in, and the space around me turned crowded in a heartbeat. The geese, in particular, were on another level. They were nothing like the rabbits, huddled in a clump with nothing but their nostrils fluttering, or the raccoons, who only glanced around, or the tortoise, blinking as if it hadn't a thought in its head. The geese were as loud as a traditional market in some famous tourist town. Not a single one of them was keeping quiet.
"Where are we?"
"Give us some water!"
"That tortoise shell looks like it's begging to be pecked."
"I'm hungry."
"Are we living here now?"
"I believe I can fly! I believe I can touch the sky!"
"Please tell us to stop again!"
"That thing we just ate was good. Is there any more?"
The geese were far too loud. If I hadn't possessed the Superpower to talk with animals, all that honking—quack, quack, quack, quack, quack—would surely have split my head.
"Quiet!"
"He says be quiet!"
"You be quiet too!"
"You're the loudest one!"
"Hoooonk!"
"I said be quiet!"
"Shut up!"
"But why do we have to be quiet?"
"I want to eat flowers!"
Unlike 'Stop!' (Meomchwo!), "quiet" did nothing at all. I'd shouted with everything I had, and it might as well have been silence. One of them even took the order to be quiet as its cue to scream louder.
"Hah..."
Just the thought of training this lot already felt hopeless. Should I go get Namcat? I considered it for a moment, but the picture of eight geese tumbling across the ground made me shake my head before I knew it. An education that came with violence never produced real results. Even so, I had to shut these noisy things up first, which left me no choice but drastic measures.
'Stop!' (Meomchwo!)
One by one, I caught their beaks so they couldn't open them and cast the command. Only then, unable to part their bills, did they finally go quiet.
"Heh heh heh. Quiet sure is a fine thing..."
The tortoise, watching, nodded as if thoroughly pleased. Its movements were unhurried, and—true to a tortoise whose leisurely life had stretched even its lifespan—the way it spoke was pure old man.
I looked at it for a moment, then went straight into the lesson. First came the rule that they were not to attack people at the cafe. They'd come from the zoo, so I figured they wouldn't have much aversion to humans, which was why I started there. I told them they must not attack anyone or do them harm, and that whenever they didn't want people's attention, they were to hang a Do Not Approach sign on themselves and go about their business.
"Understand?"
"People are good-sha!"
"If they give us food, that's good-sha!"
"We understand-sha!"
The rabbits said they understood. Tacking "-sha" onto the ends of their words felt a little strange, but next to the geese, who were chatter itself, they were practically refined.
"Hey now! You just trust us!"
"I'll melt them humans' hearts for you, nice and easy, I will!"
The raccoons thumped their chests and told me to leave it all to them. Maybe it was because they kept reminding me of that internet meme, Raccoon Man, but I found myself oddly inclined to believe them.
And the tortoise...
"Heh heh... Understood, I have."
Whether it was actually nodding, or simply lifting a head that gravity had dragged down, it bobbed that head with absolute leisure. It looked as though it had understood well enough, though, so at last I turned to the problem geese. They still hadn't shaken off my 'Stop!', so they couldn't move their beaks. Even so, they seemed determined to answer the question, gurgling away with their bills clamped shut.
"Glrrk-glurrk-glurk!"
"..."
I couldn't make out a single word. Even my Superpower, it seemed, couldn't translate a situation like this. In the end, I let them open their beaks.
"Damn—! I thought I was gonna die from wanting to talk!"
"We understood!"
"Does biting clothes count as attacking?"
"What about snatching people's food?"
The moment their beaks were free, the geese poured out everything they'd been holding back, as if they'd been saving it all up. Their chatter battered my eardrums all over again, and I itched to use 'Stop!'. But what they'd actually said snagged me worse than the noise, so I shook my head and spoke.
"Biting people's clothes is not allowed either. Neither is stealing their food."
"Aww."
At that, the geese looked profoundly disappointed. How was it possible for every last one of them, not a single bird left out, to voice that regret at the exact same moment?
You lot are going on the watch list.
The geese were clearly going to need careful handling. Even so, finishing the rest of the training came first, so I moved on to the next step. Calling it a next step made it sound grander than it was. Other animals already lived here, and the newcomers simply had to get along with them. The rabbits, the geese, and the tortoise looked as if they couldn't care less. Only the raccoons were different.
"Guess we'll have to settle the pecking order, then."
"We ain't standin' for some other fella sittin' above us!"
"..."
They looked ready to sort out rank on the spot. Unlike the geese, though, they didn't worry me much. Any fight over hierarchy would obviously end with Namcat or Yubu.
"Oh, right. For the record—ranking fight or anything else, you can't hurt the other animals or the people when you fight."
"Nothin' to worry about! We ain't about to use our claws on a bunch of young'uns!"
Once they met Namcat, they'd never say that again. Still, the animals tended to remember what I told them and stick to it, so I didn't worry much. Even if Namcat pounded them flat, they wouldn't actually injure the others. There was no reason to fret.
With the basics done, I moved on to a few simple cute tricks. I taught the rabbits to sit up on their hind legs and wave their front paws. Watching all five of them do it at once, the cuteness was almost too much. I couldn't keep it off camera. I'd already installed CCTV all over the house so I could watch the animals and prepare for whatever might happen, but even that wasn't enough. I pulled out an action cam and filmed their group performance with a thoroughly pleased face.
Next I taught the geese how to greet people. Wings tucked tight against their bodies, heads lifted high, then lowered gently toward the ground, with a soft little honk to go with it. Naturally, they decided the greeting was fun and immediately started repeating it without a break. I caught a few seconds of their honk—honk—honk on camera, then looked at the tortoise.
"Uh... you can just stay as you are."
I gave up on cute-trick training for the tortoise. I had no idea what kind of charm I could possibly teach a creature that unhurried. And besides, just watching it blink at its own leisurely pace was cute enough in its own way.
"You two... right. Raccoons are good with their hands, so let's go with something that uses those."
I taught them paw tricks: waving both hands in the air to beg for food, and catching the hem of someone's pants to give it a few little tugs. As a reward for the work, I portioned out some of the feed Uncle Ko Gil-hwi had left behind. The rabbits ate their hay as neatly as they'd once made short work of the Korean melons that belonged to Noona and me. The geese ate grass that looked freshly cut. The tortoise tore into half a head of napa cabbage. The raccoons picked up their kibble one piece at a time. All of it went into the camera.
I waited until every last one of them had finished, then led them straight to the cafe. The tortoise moved at its leisure, and it was far too heavy for me, so our pace was, in the most literal sense, a tortoise's. Even so, we arrived without a single fugitive among them.
The place wasn't exactly bustling, but a fair number of people had come to see the animals, and the cafe grew noisy in an instant. Part of it was that I'd shown up myself—and behind me, more than ten animals had appeared. The enormous tortoise drew every eye, and so did the raccoon sitting on top of it. No. Why are you sitting up there? Get down, right now.
Anyway, these guys had seized everyone's attention.
"A rabbit!"
"Is that a duck? Looks like a goose."
"That tortoise is huge."
"It's Raccoon Man!"
"It's a raccoon, you idiot."
Reactions like that burst out one after another. Perfectly satisfied, I led the animals toward the lawn. The lawn was the whole reason we'd come to the cafe.
When I got there with them, most of the animals were already gathered on the grass. Aside from Jjamong, the Welsh corgi who was hopelessly in love with people, and Natae, who used people as his personal walker, every one of them was out on the lawn.
"Everyone. These are new friends. Say hello."
The animals had noticed me and were coming in close. I looked them over, then pointed back at the rabbits, the geese, the raccoons, and the tortoise. They flinched for a second, but soon enough they started taking an interest in the newcomers.
One species, however, was a problem. The two raccoons.
"Who's the boss around here!"
"Get the head honcho out here!"
At what was supposed to be a first round of introductions, the two of them went looking, out of nowhere, for the boss and the big man in charge. Watching them, a headache was already coming on. Whether my head hurt or not, Namcat—who could fairly be called the boss of every animal at our cafe—came sauntering over.
"The hell are these blotchy raccoon-dogs."
"We're raccoons, you moron!"
At their words, Namcat's face twisted, and he charged straight at the two of them.