Training (2)
"......Mister. Haven't you thought about entering a competition with Mungchi?"
Watching him clear the obstacles at that outrageous speed, I couldn't keep the suggestion to myself.
"A competition?"
"You've seen one at least once, haven't you? Dog agility. Dogs taking obstacles in time with their owner's lead."
The man grew serious at that. He'd just watched Mungchi sprinting around like he'd lost his mind; of course he'd think it was worth considering.
"Do you think I could manage it?"
"Don't worry. I'll help. Why not give it a try? You've got to correct the way he barrels into people anyway."
"Then... I'd be grateful."
He inclined his head, just slightly. Everything else aside, there was no reason to turn me down when I was offering to train his own dog.
"I don't actually know the detailed rules, all right? For now I'll only be copying what I've seen in videos."
"That's quite all right. I'll look into the particulars myself, in due course."
I left him nodding and turned to Mungchi, whose tail was whipping in circles like he was about to take off all over again.
"Mungchi. When I signal, you run the way I signal. Got it?"
"Yes!"
"Finger up like this means get ready to run. A flick of the finger means sprint. One sweep of the hand means take the obstacle. An open palm means stop."
"Ready! Run! Through! Stop!"
"That's right."
Mungchi reacted as if he'd gotten every word. To check, I raised a single finger, and he immediately sank his weight into his hind legs, set to run. Coiled to bolt at any second, eyes locked on my hand—the sight pulled a short laugh out of me.
The laugh had barely left me before I burst forward and swept my hand. First I fluttered it toward the slalom ahead, the signal to go through, and Mungchi kinked his body like a snake and shot the weaves at a tremendous clip.
"Wooooow!"
Clap, clap, clap—applause broke out, and a cheer exploded behind me. The customers who'd been watching what I was doing had seen Mungchi move, and they were gasping.
All that attention sent an uninvited little thrill through my shoulders. I pointed to the next obstacle at once, though this time the direction was different. Agility is nothing but paths that knot and double back on themselves, so I decided to knot this one too. Not the box sitting just past the slalom—I signaled the A-frame ramp instead.
Mungchi skimmed past the box and took the ramp clean.
"Last one!"
Over the ramp at my signal, and then, following the shout and the gesture, he hopped the box as if it were nothing.
"Whoa!"
"That's seriously impressive. I heard that stuff is really hard to teach."
"Lord Shinsoo is amazing and all, but that dog is no joke either. Look at the speed. I think he's faster than Maru at agility."
The onlookers cheered and marveled, each in their own way. I grinned at the praise and scratched Mungchi's head—and of course I didn't forget the reward. The treat must have tasted good. He demolished it in a greedy, crunching rush.
"Mister. Want to give it a try yourself this time?"
"Hmm... all right."
I hadn't been running at Mungchi's level, but I hadn't been standing still either, and maybe that was why the man hesitated a moment before he nodded. He slipped off the jacket he was wearing, loosened his tie, and stepped in close to the dog.
He must have been watching my hands, because he copied the signals. They looked a little rough around the edges, but for Mungchi they were plenty. Panting hard, the dog dropped into a stance that said he could launch at any second.
"Mungchi, run!"
The man shouted for him to run—and then took off first himself. Before even a second had passed, the picture had flipped, and he was the one chasing Mungchi.
"Huff—huff!"
Late forties, with fifty not far off. His stamina was a sorry thing. Mungchi had only gone back and forth over the obstacles three or four times, and already the man was fighting to catch his breath. Even so, wheezing, he scrubbed the dog all over with enthusiastic hands.
"I love Master!"
Mungchi liked the petting so much he plastered himself against the man and licked his face without mercy.
"Mister, seriously—think about a competition. I think you'd do just fine."
"Then I suppose I ought to give it some real thought."
He gently pushed away a Mungchi who was licking him hard enough to eat his face, and nodded. A light gesture was already enough to make the dog follow; there was no reason not to enter. Saying he'd practice a few more times, he flicked signals this way and that and sent Mungchi running.
And somewhere in that practice, we landed on something I'd call a pretty fine result. When Mungchi went to charge a person, simply opening a palm was now enough to stop him. It wasn't as effective as me shouting Stop!, but even if he did make contact, it was no longer the kind of impact that sent someone tumbling across the ground.
"Hahaha! Thank you, truly!"
He was overjoyed that a hand signal alone could now control Mungchi, that walking bundle of trouble. The man usually spoke in a soft, measured way; hearing him burst out laughing like that, I could tell exactly how happy he was.
Full of that joy, he went home with Mungchi, and he did not take my advice lightly.
Two weeks after the two of them left, a link to an article arrived from him.
The piece he'd sent carried a photo of him beaming, certificate and medal in hand, while Mungchi licked that radiant face.
"......No way. He actually did it?"
I was startled once that he hadn't let my words slide and had really entered, and startled again that the competition he'd entered had ended with first place. But the surprises weren't finished with me.
"I knew he was ridiculously fast. He broke the record too?"
That Mungchi had rewritten the national record was genuinely astonishing. Then I remembered him blasting through those obstacles at that absurd speed, and it made sense. There was still one more astonishing line left, though.
Farther down, my name was being mentioned. And beneath even that, someone—I had no idea who—had published a photo of me directing Mungchi over the makeshift obstacles.
"Look at that. He's even doing the publicity for me."
It had gone out without my consent, but I figured it had worked out for the better. My name was getting around one way or another, and for someone who more or less lived on attention, that counted as a win.
I was still reading the article when Noona came over.
"Suhwan. Emails are suddenly pouring in?"
"Huh? Email?"
After I'd nearly ignored a casting request from Animal Farm, I'd started sharing my inbox with Noona, so that whichever of us happened to check would catch anything important. Today she'd been the one to look, and the sudden flood had startled her into coming to find me.
Between what she said and the article the man had sent, I understood at once. He'd gone public that I was the one who'd trained Mungchi, so of course inquiry mail about the training was swarming in.
Sure enough, when we opened the inbox together, messages about training were stacked in a line. One was from some zoo asking me to train their animals. Another was a private owner wanting their dog trained. But the message that snagged the eye was written in squiggly script. Middle Eastern or Southeast Asian, I couldn't tell—the whole thing was letters I had no way to decipher.
"Let's run it through a translator!"
Neither of us could look away. Then Noona, unable to stand it any longer, opened the mail, copied the entire thing, and fed it to a translator. What came back was fairly shocking.
"So this is what a Middle Eastern oil tycoon calls lifestyle...?"
"Right? How does a private person even keep a pet rhinoceros? The money that must cost is no joke."
Middle Eastern money really was on another level. I'd heard the usual stories about tough Arab men keeping tigers or lions. A man who kept a rhinoceros was a first.
Anyway, the sender of that looping script was some wealthy Arab, and he owned a rhino. He'd written because he wanted to handle it. In a word, he was asking me to train a rhinoceros.
"You're not thinking of training a rhino too, are you?"
"Absolutely not. Why would I do something that dangerous? I'm not about to leave my pregnant wife and go train a rhinoceros."
Noona looked rather touched by that, and nodded.
Honestly, it wasn't that I had no interest. But if a rhinoceros said hello with a single charge, I'd be dead where I stood. I had a superpower, sure. That did not mean I had two lives.
After that, requests to train all sorts of animals kept coming in, and I turned every one of them down. Too many were things I had neither need nor reason to do—trifles on the order of potty training. And when they weren't that, they were asks to train big predators like tigers and lions, which I couldn't accept either. A beast "playing around" could give me one little tap and I'd drop dead with a croak. Let their just-a-taste, one-bite chance trigger, and that could kill me too.
Still, I might be able to turn any of it into Mytube content someday, one way or another. I didn't delete the emails. I sorted them off into their own pile.