The Marriage Registration
"Just how rich would you have to be to keep a rhinoceros at home?"
Once I'd finished sorting through the emails, a sudden curiosity took hold of me. How much money would a person actually need before they could raise a rhinoceros of their own?
"Why? You want to raise one?"
"No. Not the dangerous ones, anyway. I was just wondering."
Noona let out a light laugh at that. She must have been curious herself, though, because she started searching.
"It says they eat twenty to thirty kilograms a day? Wow. They really put it away."
True to its nature as a massive herbivore, a rhinoceros ate an enormous amount of food. Set beside an elephant, which put away close to a hundred kilograms a day, it wasn't all that much—but it was hardly a modest appetite either. Even if you fed it nothing but cheap hay, the feed alone would run upwards of forty dollars a day.
And that was before the rest of it. You'd need enough space for the animal to live in reasonable comfort, and a fence sturdy enough to ring the whole of that space and hold if the rhino decided to throw a fit. Even setting the feed aside, that part alone demanded a staggering sum of money.
"Still... for rich people, this is nothing. If it weren't for the legal problems, they could keep one, couldn't they? It doesn't seem like that rare a pet."
"You don't think you're going to start getting buried in calls from rich people in the Middle East, asking you to train their animals?"
"So you'd actually do it?"
I gave a small nod.
"If the pay's right, no reason I couldn't. Dangerous predators excepted, of course. Take one Nyangnyang Punch from a tiger or a lion and you're on a one-way trip to the afterlife."
Even the occasional Nyangnyang Punch from Namcat had started, lately, to sting a little. A punch thrown not by a house cat but by one of the great predators of the cat family was never going to end at a bit of soreness.
"Good. That's the right call. No matter how much money they offer, it's better not to take on anything dangerous."
Saying I'd done well, Noona wrapped her arms around me from behind. A warm ache rose in my chest along with the heat of her body, and the corners of my mouth curled up before I could stop them.
I rested a hand for a moment on the smooth arms she'd looped lightly around my neck and chest, and something I'd forgotten came back to me.
"Oh, right. Noona."
"Hm?"
"What are we going to do about the wedding?"
"...You bring that up now, out of nowhere?"
Noona shot me a sidelong look and pinched my cheek.
"You never said a word, so I figured we were going to do it after the baby was born."
"I didn't stay quiet because I was thinking that. I forgot, what with that entitled customer. Running the cafe, filming for Mutube—we had plenty to do. It just sort of slid by."
At that, Noona pressed a firm fingertip into the cheek she'd been tugging.
"So. What do you want to do?"
"Me? I'll go with whatever's easiest for you. People say both halves of a couple are the stars of a wedding, but the one who actually gets all the attention is the bride. So shouldn't the bride be the one to decide?"
When I handed her the choice, Noona looked faintly thoughtful. She kneaded and poked at my cheek as if it were some kind of toy, turning it over, and then, as though she'd reached a decision, she spoke.
"Next year... or sometime after that."
"That late?"
"What choice do we have? Even if we start preparing now, it takes quite a while, and by then my belly will be showing. And I've always wanted, if I got married, to do it in May."
I nodded lightly and accepted it. It wasn't as if she had no reason, and if that was the time she hoped for, I had no grounds to refuse.
"But why bring up the wedding all of a sudden?"
"Ah. Because of this."
I pulled out a sheet of paper I'd prepared ahead of time and kept hidden, and held it out to her.
"This is..."
Noona looked a little startled at the paper I'd offered. Small wonder—what I'd handed her was a marriage registration form.
"I was originally going to fill it out after the wedding. But now that there's a baby, I figured putting it off wouldn't be a good idea."
Noona gazed at the form for a moment and, seeming to feel there was no need to think it over, picked up a pen from the desk and started entering her information at once. My sections were already filled in completely, so she wrote hers to match what I'd written.
"Suhwan. What are we doing about the witnesses here? Your friends?"
"No, let's just ask our parents. They all know we decided to get married, but they don't know about the baby yet."
When I added that we might as well tell them everything while we were at it, Noona nodded. She'd been wondering herself when would be the right time to share the news of her pregnancy.
The two of us called our parents right away and set a date—dinner, two evenings from now, where we'd talk it through. Both sets of parents were already retired, so finding a day wasn't difficult. If my dad hadn't gone off fishing, we might even have seen them tomorrow night.
"Well, I'll be! If it isn't my in-law!"
"Oh! Jeong Jaehyeok! How long has it been!"
Meeting at a well-known restaurant over in Haeundae, my dad and Noona's father threw their arms around each other as if they'd just run into their closest friend. And it wasn't only the two fathers—the two mothers were just as close. Unlike the fathers, who were the same age, the mothers were a year apart, and they clasped hands, fussing over each other like sisters.
Noona and I had already been together for close to ten years, so our parents were more than well acquainted. Well enough, in fact, to meet on their own even when the two of us weren't around.
We barely managed to calm them and get them into their seats—the fathers, still locked in an embrace and already making plans to go fishing next time, and the mothers, holding hands and debating whose had gotten rougher.
"Well then, Shin, my boy. What'd you call us out for today? We already gave our blessing on the marriage."
"That's right. What was so important that you had to gather both sets of in-laws like this?"
The moment they sat down, the mothers wanted to know why we'd summoned them. There was nothing on the table but the place settings, and already we had to start talking.
I looked across at Noona, seated opposite me. The look asked her to decide which of us would be the one to speak. Catching my gaze, she flicked an eyebrow, as if telling me to go ahead.
"Well... Noona's pregnant."
A brief silence settled over what I'd said. It didn't last.
"What! You little shit! My daughter—ghk!"
Noona's father, who'd shot up out of his seat, took an elbow to the ribs from her mother beside him and hunched in on himself.
"You mean it? She's with child?"
"Ha-eun. Are you really pregnant?"
The mothers stared at Noona, thoroughly astonished. Unlike them, my dad looked thoroughly unimpressed. A spirited couple in their twenties living together—he had clearly decided that what was bound to happen had simply happened.
At any rate, Noona and I nodded and answered them.
"The truth is, we only found out a little while ago."
"Have you been to the hospital?"
"Yes. It's about four weeks now."
At Noona's words, Mom nodded and suddenly started hammering away at her phone. She was obviously hunting down things that were good for a pregnant woman, meaning to buy them as gifts. And with that, I ceased to exist as far as she was concerned. It would have been nice if she'd spared a little interest for the son sitting right beside her, but there was nothing to be done.
Mom and Noona's mother both lavished enormous attention on Noona. Questions poured over her like a rainstorm—was she uncomfortable anywhere, what were they going to do about the wedding, was it all right for a pregnant woman to live with all those animals. Noona answered them one by one, wearing an awkward smile. Partway through she sent me a look begging for rescue, but since no one besides her was paying me any attention, there was nothing I could do to help.
In the end, she had no choice but to endure the mothers until the food arrived. She nearly kept enduring them even while we ate, but when Dad announced he was going to get indigestion, the mothers went quiet.
True to a famous restaurant, the food itself was excellent, and the plating was nothing to complain about, so the meal was a pleasure. Noona, too, ate with a bright, open smile, as if she'd already forgotten being put through the wringer a moment before.
And once the meal was over, before the mothers could start pelting Noona with questions all over again, I held out the paper.
"A marriage registration? You want us to sign as witnesses, don't you."
"Yeah. Better to have our own family stand as witnesses than anyone else."
At that, the two mothers snatched the form and set about filling in the sections the witnesses had to complete. Dad showed some interest, but Mom, as if she would not stand for it, smacked the back of his hand—thwack—and finished the writing herself.
"You're truly becoming husband and wife in the eyes of the law now, so look out for each other. Don't fight over nothing, and live well."
Mom offered the advice as if it were nothing in particular, and handed the form back to me.
"Getting married is easy. Getting divorced is hard. Don't even think about splitting up—just live well."
"Is that really something you say in front of children who are about to get married?"
Dad had tossed in a remark of his own and earned a glare from Mom for it, but in his own way he was looking out for us. Seeing my parents like that, Noona's mother and father naturally offered blessings of their own—though her father's blessing was closer to a threat than a blessing.
Once we'd heard well-wishes from all four of them, satisfied that we'd done what we came for—getting the witnesses' signatures on the marriage registration, and telling them about the pregnancy—we made a swift escape. The two mothers looked as if they regretted not getting to say everything they still had left, but we, for our part, were only relieved.
Having fled like that, we took a taxi straight home. The house, though, didn't look the way it usually did. Or rather than different, it looked as if there were a bit of a problem.
"Ugh... uuugh...!"
"Hello? Are you all right?"
Some man lay sprawled on the ground, groaning, and crowded all around him were the troublemaking animals of our house.