The Uninvited Guest
"Blood...?"
A faint smear of it stained the ground beside the man sprawled there. At the sight I snatched out my phone and dialed 119.
"There's someone collapsed out here. I don't know what happened, but he's bleeding... Yes, yes. Please just get here as fast as you can."
The call done, I turned to Yubu, standing over the groaning man.
"How did this happen?"
Yubu thrust his beak forward as if he meant to peck the man to pieces on the spot, wings lifted, body puffed enormous.
"This one is a thief! He crept in while you were away from the house, and we drove him off!"
"...A thief?"
"Eek!"
At the word, Noona startled and ducked behind my back. The man groaning on the ground hardly looked worth fearing, but I soothed her all the same, and once she had settled I asked Yubu exactly what had happened.
"It was not long ago, I tell you. This man suddenly came over the wall and into the house. Thereafter he set about trying to break the door. Certain he was a thief, we joined our strength and drove him off!"
"...And how did you drive him off, to leave him looking like this?"
"It began with that monster of a cat. He raked the face just as it was. When the man sought to kick the monster cat, I hindered him, and straightaway Maru rammed him with her body and knocked him flat. After that, we simply trampled him as a group."
He announced the mob beating with such pride that I stood there, mouth hanging open, unable to get a word out. I recovered a moment later and hurriedly dialed 112. A thief had broken in, I told them, and was injured; they said they would send someone at once.
"S-Suhwan... what if he runs?"
Noona, still at my back, looked at me with real worry. However thoroughly the animals had mobbed him, he was human, and she figured he might grit through the pain and flee. I couldn't disagree, so I thought for a moment about what to do.
"Hanmu! Come over here a second!"
I called to Hanmu, who hadn't so much as twitched near the front gate. He came toward me at a crawl—slow, and slower still—then craned his neck out to peer at me, as if asking why I'd summoned him.
"Mind sitting on this guy? Don't hurt him. Just don't let him get away."
Hanmu didn't answer. He blinked both eyes and climbed up onto the thief.
"Gyaaagh!"
Pinned under Hanmu, who weighed close to a hundred kilograms, the thief let out a grotesque noise and groaned all over again. I had no intention of considering the circumstances of a man who had come to rob our house. Reassured by the sight of him thrashing and still utterly unable to escape, I took Noona inside.
The yard was a little torn up. The grass had been trampled, and there were marks as if something had rolled across the ground—a track, in particular, as if something had been dragged.
I followed it and found Daepodong and Sopodong straining to haul a Boston bag off toward a corner of the yard.
"...What are you two doing."
"They saw us! Scram!"
Caught in my stare, the pair glanced around for a beat, abandoned the bag, and bolted. I didn't bother chasing them. I looked instead at the bag they'd ditched on the way—neither mine nor Noona's. I'd never seen it before.
"A planned crime, through and through."
I flung it open. Inside it was packed with tools, from screwdrivers and hammers down to saws you could swing one-handed. I swore then that I would not let the thief pinned under Hanmu outside the gate off easy. There was no knife among the tools, but a saw could serve as a weapon every bit as well as a blade, and coming uninvited into a house where not only Noona and I but the animals lived, carrying something like that, was not a thing I could brush aside.
From quite a distance a siren rose, faint at first and then louder, until a hard light washed over the front of the house.
"Police! Is the person who called here?"
They were calling for me from outside. I went out with Noona, who still wouldn't leave my side for worry, into the wash of flashing red and blue that flooded the front of the house.
Stepping through the gate, I found two officers staring at the thief pinned under Hanmu. I could feel, plain as anything, that they were trying to work out how to get the tortoise off him.
"I'm the one who called... huh?"
Something about them was familiar. Thinking it over, I realized they were the officers I'd seen when that entitled woman pulled her parking stunt.
"We meet again?"
The officer gave an awkward little laugh.
"Ah. You remember."
He seemed, in his own way, still nettled that he hadn't been able to help back then.
"So... the man under the tortoise. He's the thief?"
"Yes. We came home from being out, and he was sprawled there after our animals attacked him."
"...The animals attacked him?"
"He came over the wall, and apparently he tried to break the door. I guess they got startled."
"Then... the tortoise...?"
The question all but asked why the tortoise was sitting on the thief. I shrugged.
"Must've taken a liking to him."
I neatly left out the part where I'd told him to. It was thanks to advice I'd heard from Byeong-jin more than once: if something won't come out on its own and might work against you, just hide it.
"Hmm. For now we'll take the suspect in coordination with the paramedics. He looks a bit injured."
Muttering as they set their weight against Hanmu, the two officers started trying to shove him off.
"Otherwise these criminal bastards pitch a damn fit."
"Gyaaaaaah!"
"Huff—huff! Heavy as hell!"
They did everything they could to push Hanmu aside and haul the thief away, but even with both of them latched on, he didn't budge. He'd eaten so well at the cafe and grown so much that he was heavier now than when we'd brought him from the zoo. Police or not—and physical fitness was part of the hiring standard—they couldn't easily shove him off.
"Sir. The tortoise, if you would..."
In the end they asked me to move him.
"Hanmu. Mind getting off now?"
Hanmu only blinked again, then slowly shifted his bulk. Only then did the officers bind the newly freed thief once more, and they didn't forget to read him his rights.
I never thought I'd watch someone actually say those words. The right to remain silent, a lawyer of his own choosing—seeing it happen right in front of me struck me as strangely marvelous, and in the middle of that marvel I remembered what I'd forgotten.
"Ah—one moment!"
I went back through the gate into the yard and fetched the bag lying on the ground. It was heavy with all those tools, but I was used to bearing the weight of animals climbing into my arms, and it wasn't more than I could lift.
"I think the thief brought this. It's full of tools."
"Wow. This guy looks like a repeat offender."
The officer who checked the contents clicked his tongue and cinched the cuffs already biting the thief's wrists even tighter. At that same moment another siren rose. An ambulance, this time. I'd called 119 first, but the fire station sat farther off than the police substation near the house, so it couldn't be helped. The paramedics who climbed out looked briefly thrown at the sight of police cuffing an injured man, then soon fell into talk with the officers.
"Sir. He'll be taken to the emergency room first—disinfected, the bleeding stopped—and then questioned in detail. We'll need a separate statement from you, though. Would tomorrow work?"
"I'll come by on my own tomorrow."
The officer said that was fine, told me where to go, and drove off. Right on the police car's heels, the ambulance carrying the thief vanished just as quickly.
I watched the flashing lights fade, and when they were gone entirely I went back inside.
"Suhwan, what happened?"
Noona stood ringed by the animals as if they were shielding her, and looked at me. She had seen the thief break in and seen him collapsed with her own eyes, so she was all the more worried.
"He left in the ambulance. The kids made a complete wreck of him. His face, especially."
The thief's face was, quite literally, a disaster—not because he was ugly, but because Namcat had raked him and the other cats had each taken a swipe. Scratch marks lay across it just like something out of a cartoon.
"We'll be all right, won't we?"
"Don't worry. We've got them. They already beat one guy to a pulp. Even if another one shows up, they'll look after us."
At that, Noona stroked the animals gently. I watched for a moment, then called up to Yubu on the wall, turning his head this way and that as if keeping watch.
"Could you call all the crows and magpies and ask them to watch the house?"
"Hmm. If you provide food, there is nothing we cannot do. My subordinates say they sleep at night, but if some of them take turns guarding the house, there will be no trouble."
I promised them even more food than last time and asked him to bring the magpies and crows. He flapped off at once toward the hill behind the house. I felt a little bad, knowing he'd be rousing birds who were sleeping soundly, but it couldn't be helped.
I didn't wait long. The sky, already black, grew blacker still as well over a hundred birds came swarming back around the house.
"I have summoned every one of my subordinates. This place is your house, yet it may also be called my nest. My subordinates and I shall guard it without fail, so worry not!"
The magpies and crows settled along the wall and began watching the surroundings. Some of them, of course, looked ready to sleep right where they perched, but others craned their heads about and kept a diligent watch. Seeing that, Noona finally looked truly at ease. With the birds covering the whole perimeter without a gap, she could relax.
Only then did the two of us go inside. There were marks where the thief had tried to damage the door, but the animals had beaten him to a pulp before he managed it, so opening the door was no trouble at all. I left Noona getting ready for bed and started looking things up—private security companies. And while I was searching, one photograph caught my eye.
"A German Shepherd..."
There he stood, proud and imposing beside a guard from a private security firm, and the sight seized me completely.