A Fresh Makeover
Once I'd decided to put in a swimming pool, I went straight out and bought up a generous stretch of the surrounding land. Plenty of people hadn't wanted to sell, but the moment I offered to pay over the asking price, there wasn't a soul who held out. The cafe grounds more than tripled, until the place sat closer to a small zoo than a cafe.
Naturally, while the pool went in, I expanded the parking lot and the cafe walls to match the enlarged grounds. And since I was already building, I changed a great deal besides, giving a good half of the cafe a fresh makeover along the way. The biggest shift was abandoning the old arrangement—no admission, drinks priced high—for one that charged at the door and lowered the drinks. In exchange for a five-dollar entry fee, I dropped every drink by four dollars. It wasn't a full five off, because a bigger cafe meant higher upkeep.
Anyway, once I'd revised the pricing, I spruced up the facilities so the admission wouldn't feel like money wasted. On top of the pool I'd planned from the start, I built a lazy river off it like an annex, something that could stage the sight of geese drifting along and give the animals a place to cool off when the heat got to them.
"Pyahahaha!"
So-eun, mind you, took to it splendidly herself. We set a big round tube afloat, and she rode it as it bobbed down the lazy river, Cheongho paddling after her in great splashing strokes while the geese and Pe-eng showed off up ahead. The geese surrendered to the current like rubber ducks in a bathtub, and Pe-eng darted swiftly beneath the clear water.
"What's so wonderful about a little water."
For the cats, who were none too pleased about the pool, I'd prepared something else. To suit the expanded grounds, I brought in an enormous cat tower, on the scale and shape of the jungle gyms that used to stand in every elementary schoolyard when I was little.
The cats who'd gained this colossal tower arranged themselves as if broadcasting the pecking order, Namcat at the very top and Chikin-i at the very bottom. Or was it not rank at all, and just that his legs were too short to climb?
Watching him flail trying to get up there, it really doesn't seem like a hierarchy thing……
I watched Chikin-i straining with everything he had to climb from the lowest tier, then quietly turned my head. Where my gaze landed, the liveliest dogs in our household were tearing around like mad.
"……The durability on that thing's all right, isn't it."
I'd cleared away the cat wheel I'd made for the cats—which they hadn't so much as glanced at—and installed a dogs-only treadmill in its place. It had only been up a few days, and I was already worried whether it would hold. A sound no ordinary treadmill ever made, a high screaming whirr, rang out as the belt spun at a ferocious speed.
Hold a knife to that and it'd hone the edge, wouldn't it?
I shook my head at the treadmill whirling fast enough to serve as a whetstone, and looked up at the sky. In the transformed cafe, the sky was the only thing that hadn't changed.
"You dare try to shit where the Princess is?! You're a disgrace to all birdkind!"
Flocks of magpies and crows did mob passing birds from time to time, but that had been going on since long before, so I decided to let it be. I couldn't very well spend the day resting with my eyes on the sky, though. True to the remade cafe, there was far more work to do.
Most of it, admittedly, was only the old tasks in greater quantity; truly new work wasn't all that plentiful. If anything stood as the prime example of a job newly added, it was getting ready to sell Pe-eng's snacks.
"Brother-in-law! What do I do with this?"
"Oh, that. I'll handle it. Leave it."
By nature, Pe-eng preferred catching and eating live fish and the like, so the snacks we gave him had to be live fish. Selling them meant we needed a tank that could keep the fish alive, and someone had to get the fish into that tank. I lifted the bags of live fish—each a little bigger than a finger—that Yeongji had dragged over in a cart, and dumped them into the tank in a rushing pour. If a customer wanted to buy a snack for Pe-eng, a staff member on duty was to scoop a few straight out of the tank and hand them over.
"Brother-in-law."
"Yeah?"
"Can you talk to those fish, too?"
"These guys?"
I pointed at the finger-length fish flickering through the tank. Yeongji nodded hard.
"Quite a few people have been curious about that. Didn't expect you to be one of them."
"But I am curious!"
Yeongji stared straight at me with a bright, guileless face. I let out a short laugh at that look, which all but demanded an answer on the spot, and gave a small shrug.
"I don't know either."
"……You don't know? It's your Superpower."
"How should I put it. It feels a bit like we understand each other…… but not like a real conversation? They seem to be saying something, only maybe they're too small for me to hear."
Whether it came down to size, or to something else—psychological, maybe—there were quite a few animals I simply couldn't talk with. The fish packed into the tank just then were among them. I had the sense they were speaking, but their voices were so tiny they never reached me.
"Aww."
Maybe my answer hadn't been the one she'd hoped for. Looking quite let down, Yeongji headed back to the kitchen, her post and the domain of the drinks counter. I chuckled at the sight and claimed a seat, and sitting there half-sprawled, I took in the customers poking around here and there, sightseeing.
The cafe had already been fairly spacious, and now that it was wider still, with all sorts of new structures, people had started setting out in search of the animals. Every customer held a drink—coffee, or something like it—in one hand and treats the animals loved in the other, peering into every corner. Cat lovers wandered the cat tower with Churu treats in hand, and others had settled by the lazy river for a look at the geese or Cheongho.
The one commanding the most attention in the cafe just then, of course, was Pe-eng. Being the new face was part of the draw, but the bigger part was that he was the only Galapagos penguin you could see anywhere in the country.
"Whoa, he's tiny!"
"I'm a legend for coming all the way to Busan just to see one penguin. Still, it's worth the trip at least once."
"He's practically flying through the water."
"Pengy-wen…… Starting today, I'm your fan!"
"The penguin's so cute! But the inside of his beak isn't……"
The biggest crowd had ringed the pool, watching Pe-eng swim at his leisure. Some tossed in the fish they'd bought from the tank I'd stocked a little earlier, and people even clapped as they watched him snap them up.
"So cute!"
"Eek! The Princess and a penguin!"
The people who'd been watching Pe-eng bounced in place and made a huge fuss about how adorable it was when So-eun, drifting down the lazy river, floated into the pool. They cheered especially hard when he shot through the water and popped up onto the tube where she sat, droplets flying.
"Eek!"
"Why're ya just standin' there holdin' somethin' this tasty?! Hand it over!"
It wasn't entirely peaceful, though. Seizing the moment while everyone's eyes were stolen by the penguin, the raccoons threaded through the crowd and started stealing Pe-eng's snacks to eat. They alone showed not a scrap of interest in the cafe's new structures. So-eun and food were the whole of what they cared about.
Feeling that, for all that had changed, things weren't so very different from before, I rose from my seat.
"You lot. I told you not to steal snacks, didn't I?"
"R-run!"
"Don't just stand there!"
Really, the only thing that had changed was the shape of the cafe.
Once the cafe had been given its fresh makeover, even more customers came. They surged in because it was the only cafe in the country where you could see a penguin, among other reasons. It was even named among the tourist sites officially designated by the city of Busan, and foreign guests increased a great deal as well.
As the cafe grew famous, subscribers to the MyTube channel climbed just as steeply. People who couldn't visit, bound by distance or time, sought the channel out for a taste of vicarious satisfaction, and so the numbers shot upward. I uploaded the animals' everyday life at the cafe and regularly posted Pet-Dramas, filmed after I'd drilled the animals on their scripts, and before I knew it, ten million subscribers had gathered.
Naturally, having gathered those ten million, I received a glittering diamond play button from MyTube as a gift. But there was one change that couldn't begin to compare with any of that.
So-eun had grown with the passing of time, and now she could clutch one of the Tokkiz to her chest and range the length and breadth of the cafe—without a single bit of help from Cheongho, or from any of the other animals.