The Observation Camera
After closing the cafe, eating dinner, and sprawling across the sofa, I was bored out of my mind. It was a weekday, and unless I put on a VOD there wasn't a single variety show worth watching, which only made it worse. So-eun, who might otherwise have kept me company, had fallen into a deep, snoring sleep, and Noona was leisurely reading a book at her side.
In the end I pulled out my phone and started a Mutube livestream. If there was no one at home to play with, I could always find someone online.
"Hello, everyone!"
It had been a while since I'd gone live. I put on a bright smile and waved wildly at the lens.
The viewers who flooded in the moment I went live wanted So-eun, not me. Fair enough. She is cute. But I had no intention of indulging them. Right now she was taking an adorable nap.
"So-eun's asleep, so no. Babies have to sleep well if they're going to grow up pretty."
"Thank you, SoeunGrowWell, for the three-million-won donation. But everything's already top of the line. Hehe. So I'll put this to good use myself."
It was a huge sum, but I didn't so much as blink. I didn't stream every day, and every time I did I churned out all sorts of unbelievable footage, so massive donations popped more often than you'd think.
They didn't scold me for casually pocketing a fortune. There was already plenty of precedent, and the general feeling was that this guy was simply like that. The viewer who had sent it, though, was no amateur.
"……."
For a moment the words died in my throat.
I knew something was off, but I couldn't bring myself to refuse the refund. There was a chance, however slim, that it was true, and that the money might start a fight at home. In the end I tasted defeat and had no choice but to send it back.
They had a grand time at my expense.
"……Yes. Sincerely."
It genuinely felt like I'd lost 2,999,000 won. Damn it. I soothed the sting in my gut and forced the conversation elsewhere.
"Anyway, the reason I turned the stream on today is…… I had nothing to do."
They tore into me like they couldn't believe their ears. These were the same people who let a three-million-won free meal slide — why wouldn't they let this go? I scrambled for something, anything, that could pass as today's content.
"Anyway! So I thought about it for a second, and today I've decided to do an observation camera."
"Sadly, I have no plans to observe So-eun. That one's for my eyes only. You don't know this, but sometimes when she's asleep she works her mouth like she's dreaming about food, and it is ridiculously cute."
They immediately erupted, demanding I show her. I had no intention of filming a child sleeping soundly, so I brushed the requests aside and slowly got moving.
"The subject of this observation camera is Namcat. For the next hour or two, I'm going to follow him around and see what he gets up to."
The people who'd been howling for So-eun began to change their tune, one by one. These were animals you could see if you came to the cafe, but you couldn't help wondering what they did with the rest of their day.
"Secret private life? Isn't that wording a little much?"
At their urging I set out at once to find Namcat. It wasn't difficult. A few questions to the animals tucked into every corner of the house, and I had him.
"What are you doing up there?"
"None of your damn business."
Namcat, draped lazily along the top of the wall, gave his tail a single slow swish as he looked at me. In his own way, that was a greeting.
"Hey. From now on I'm gonna watch what you do, all right? Don't mind me. Just do what you normally do."
"……You eat somethin' rotten?"
"Eat something rotten? No — forget it. Don't worry about it. Just do your thing."
I waved him off and aimed the lens at him. He seemed to notice me silently shoving the phone in his face. For a very brief moment.
The viewers laughed as that flicker of attention vanished in seconds. I paid them no mind and stubbornly kept the phone on him. Another few dozen seconds passed, and Namcat got up.
On his feet, Namcat strolled along the top of the wall and then thrashed a magpie that had been perched there, surveying the yard like a living security camera.
"Wh-what do you think you're doing!"
"This is my spot."
"Y-you monster of a cat…… Ptooey! You're filthy. I'm leaving!"
The magpie Namcat had struck kicked hard off the ground and took to the air. I interpreted their brief exchange in a very small voice, and the chat immediately praised him as a true cat thug, as expected. I couldn't just stand there enjoying the reactions, though. Having beaten the magpie off "his spot," Namcat went over the wall and out of the house.
If you were going to leave anyway, why chase the magpie off?
Unable to make sense of him, I shook my head and hurried outside in pursuit.
Once he was out, Namcat headed straight for somewhere, and I followed at once. He was fairly quick, but walking Maru had conditioned me, and keeping up wasn't hard. After we'd gone more than a few dozen meters from the house, he slipped into an even more secluded stretch. There was already nothing around, and it was dark — without the phone's light I wouldn't have been able to see a thing.
A creepy line made me flinch, but I didn't stop. A little farther on, we reached the low hill behind the house. It had been too dark to tell, but I'd come around and ended up at the back hill.
"What did he come here for?"
There was truly nothing on that hill, so I followed him a little farther, puzzled. I'd ended up hiking in the middle of the night, but as I doggedly trailed after him, I soon understood. There was exactly one reason Namcat had come all this way.
"Hnnnnrgh — I'm blasting off!"
"……You came all the way out here to get high?"
However it had come to grow here, a thick patch of catnip covered the slope. He dove into it and rubbed his whole body against the leaves.
The viewers who saw it burst out laughing. But Namcat hadn't come all this way simply to huff the catnip…… no, to enjoy the scent of it. After rubbing himself against the patch to his heart's content, he took off at a run for home.
I followed him back, and once we arrived I understood the whole performance.
"That smell…… it's so, so good."
What greeted me was Poksini rubbing herself against Namcat, who was pointlessly flexing.
"You went out to spray on pheromone cologne?"
I couldn't close my mouth from the sheer absurdity of it, and as he slowly led Poksini off toward some secluded corner, the viewers couldn't manage a single message for a while either. Right. Even if Poksini was already smitten with him, you had to keep yourself presentable if you wanted to stay loved.
I watched the spot where the two of them had vanished for a moment, then turned and went back inside.
"We'll end the Namcat observation camera here and move on to the Natae observation camera. Since this is an observation camera in the literal sense, I'll set it up and go to bed. Everyone have a good night!"
I shoved the phone toward Natae, who was sprawled on the floor without so much as a twitch. He wasn't the sort to react to that, so I mounted the phone on a tripod and went to sleep. Of course, until I collected it the next morning, Natae never moved once.
Most of the recorded chat, in fact, was people insisting the screen had frozen, or asking whether something was wrong with Mutube.
"All right, we'll end the observation camera here. Thanks to everyone who held out until morning. See you next time!"
I gave a light laugh at the mountain of messages and ended the livestream.
"Suhwan! Time to go!"
At Noona's call from the entryway, I scooped up Natae and headed for the cafe.