Hyung's Ranch YouTube Debut
Dohyeon and Kang Eunseo decided to strike while the iron was hot: they would take the camera she used for work and open an official YouTube channel for the ranch.
"What should we name the channel?"
"How about something simple — Hyung's Ranch? Same as the ranch itself."
Dohyeon had christened the homestead he meant to share with Goldie "Hyung's Ranch."
"Hmm... If this were headed for a million subscribers, Hyung's Ranch would work fine. But as the name of a channel that's only just starting out, doesn't it feel like a waste?"
After a moment's thought, Dohyeon answered.
"The content's unique, isn't it? A skeleton ranch vlog. Where else are you going to see that?"
"Ah. True enough. Heh heh."
Eunseo laughed at her own silliness, then, still fiddling with the camera, said,
"The setup's all done. You can call Goldie now."
"On it. Goldie—!"
Click-click!
From far away — though never outside Dohyeon's line of sight — Goldie, who had been romping around, clacked his teeth together and came bounding over. Lightning thundered after him.
Clomp-clomp, clomp-clomp, clomp-clomp.
"Come on, Goldie! Sit right here looking dashing and stare off that way!"
Goldie opened his mouth as though panting around a tongue he no longer had and sat at rigid attention.
Eunseo filmed him up close, then from far away, swinging the gimbal this way and that.
"Okay! On to the next scene! This time Goldie clicks twice."
Dohyeon tracked Eunseo's every movement.
"Aaand... now!"
Click-click!
At Dohyeon's signal, Goldie clacked his teeth together, and the shoot was over.
"That's really it? Even with editing, is this going to catch the algorithm?"
"We're not chasing a million or two million views," Eunseo replied as she detached the camera and packed it away. "Our content is the ordinary daily life of an extraordinary ranch either way. I'm going to cut this one short — a ranch introduction doubled as a trailer — and upload it."
"The ordinary daily life of an extraordinary ranch... I like that."
"And the introductions of the ranch's extraordinary family will run as a regular series. The next video will be Taesan — he is the second-eldest of Hyung's Ranch, after all."
"Sounds good. I'm leaving the YouTube side entirely in your hands."
That evening, the swiftly edited short video caught the algorithm and spread.
A short video cutting between footage of his past as a bouncy, bright-eyed Golden Retriever and footage of the jade-hued skeleton he had become. In the single night between its upload that evening and Eunseo's next shift, the trailer-style video titled Goldie, Eldest Brother of Hyung's Ranch had been played in the hundreds of thousands.
"...This isn't how it normally goes, right?"
"Of course it isn't. Back when I was grinding away at this, no exaggeration, every single view mattered."
The two humans, two skeletons, and one foal huddled cozily together at Hyung's Ranch to watch the piping-hot video.
True to the viewers' words, the Hyung's Ranch channel Dohyeon had created had only just crossed twenty thousand subscribers.
Snort.
Lightning pressed his lips to Dohyeon's slack cheek.
"Hey now. You're getting drool on me, Lightning. I keep telling you, no treats even if you do that. You've got that sex-hormone jelly osteoporosis thing, so you have to keep your diet managed. Treats when you're all grown up."
"It's developmental orthopedic disease, Boss. And the face-nuzzling is just Lightning's way of showing affection."
"Oh, really? He got so friendly overnight that I figured he wanted something."
The previous evening, after sending Eunseo home and returning from the Tower, Dohyeon had felt guilty about grooming only the boneys and had brushed Lightning down as well — and it seemed that had opened the horse's heart.
Dohyeon scratched the muzzle pushed against him and asked,
"Aren't horses supposed to be really timid, skittish animals, though? Is Lightning just the odd one out?"
"Lightning does have an unusually friendly temperament, that's true. But plenty of horses are more sociable than you'd think. They say the truly old breeds were full of wariness, but horses these days seem to have changed somewhat."
After sweeping her hand a few times through the affectionate Lightning's mane, Eunseo picked up the camera.
"The water's come in, so it's time to row! Next video: Taesan!"
Having knocked out the day's upload in no time, Eunseo set to the ranch work alongside Dohyeon. They cleaned wherever things had gotten dirty, inspected the stable, fed Lightning... All of it was finished before lunchtime even rolled around.
Dohyeon and Eunseo sat side by side on the ranch chairs and simply zoned out.
"...With Lightning being the only mouth I have to feed here, there's nothing to do."
"True enough."
"And since he's not being raised to race, there's no training to run, nothing to fuss over..."
"The Racing Authority is sending horses over tomorrow. You'll be busy then, Eunseo."
"Right... Oh, wait!"
Eunseo smacked her own thigh.
"You asked yesterday whether anyone needed work, remember? I told them to come by today around two. The channel blew up so hard I forgot all about it while watching. That's fine, right? Them coming at two?"
"Of course. We need to hire someone quickly to match when the horses arrive."
If it came to that, he could always owe the Management Bureau one more favor.
Dohyeon didn't mind either way.
"Huh... you give off this kind of... easygoing? languid? vibe."
Eunseo watched, fascinated, as Dohyeon slumped against his chair, sliding down it like a marshmallow left in the sun.
"Why? Never seen anyone like me?"
"Hm? No. I've never seen a Climber like you."
"Oh? You know some Climbers, then?"
"Not exactly. Just rumors drifting around?"
The world's perception of Climbers was quite different from the picture Cha Dohyeon made. Since ordinary Climbers went out day after day to fight for their lives, they carried an image of being far sharper-edged than the average civilian. And because a Climber's climbing was done for the safety of the general public, the profession sat close to a firefighter's — conviction, duty, that sort of thing.
And yet here was Dohyeon, fused to a ranch chair like a melted marshmallow.
"When you get right down to it, I'm a necromancer — the kids handle all the fighting for me. As long as I run the ranch well and get along with the good animals, they'll take care of the climbing all on their own... I was a little sharper-edged back when I cleared the tutorial, though."
"Ooh... being a necromancer sounds like a dream."
"It is. I can't speak for other necros, but I'm a rather unusual case."
Dohyeon checked the time and shot to his feet.
"It's already time! Eunseo, up you get. We have important business — the kind that would make our ranch's second-eldest weep."
Eunseo scrambled up.
"What would that be?"
"Restaurant hunting."
"Whoa— crap. Doesn't look like they're here yet. No car."
"They might have taken a taxi."
Dohyeon, Eunseo, and Goldie climbed down from Eunseo's one-ton truck and hurried helter-skelter toward the ranch. At Dohyeon's insistence — our first meal out since moving to Jeju, so it absolutely has to be a famous restaurant — the two of them had gone a fair distance to eat, and with an accident clogging the road on the way back, they had barely scraped in at two o'clock, the appointed interview time.
Aaagh!
At the scream they rushed into the ranch — and there was Taesan, threatening a man with his two-meter tusks.
"Taesan! Stop!"
Click-click?
"Hah... hah..."
The tall, striking man backed away, looking as though ten years had just been shaved off his life.
"S-Sis... what is this? You never said anything about this."
"Sis?"
When Dohyeon tilted his head, looking between the two of them, Eunseo's face crumpled like wet paper.
"You little punk... I told you to at least not let on that we're siblings until the interview was over."
"The person recommending him was your little brother?"
A strained smile surfaced on Eunseo's face.
"Haha..."
Long story short: Eunseo's younger brother, Kang Eunhyeok, would start work the very next day.
"I'm sorry, Boss... I was afraid it would look like I was shoehorning my own people in when I've only just started working here, so I told him to hide it at least until the interview was over... I'm sorry."
Eunseo bowed deep at the waist to Dohyeon.
Dohyeon waved it off.
"It's nothing. Black cat or white cat, all that matters is that it does the job well. If anything, I'm glad we could hire someone already proven. Finding good people isn't easy these days, you know."
"...Thank you."
Nothing Dohyeon said was wrong. Raised under the same parents as Eunseo, Kang Eunhyeok had come to love horses but felt no pull toward veterinary medicine, so he had gone straight to work at a horse farm after graduating high school. A career man who had been fussed over at one of Jeju's finest horse farms — exactly the talent Dohyeon, who had only just started ranching and knew nothing, needed. He must have been that good at his work, too, because his busy ranch owner had even written him a letter of recommendation for after his discharge from the military.
Dohyeon stared at the copy of the recommendation Eunhyeok had brought, dumbfounded.
He's not a high school principal helping a senior with college applications — where did he get a recommendation letter...
It was a letter proving that beyond his skill, the young man's character was every bit as fine.
"Anyway. Thank goodness we found someone before things get busy. Eunseo, just feed Lightning and head home. Tomorrow will be hectic."
Eunseo bowed once more.
"Yes. See you tomorrow, Boss."
Tower, Floor 10.
With so much chaos lately, Dohyeon had been repeat-clearing Floor 10. However much of a dog-lucky freeloader of a Climber backed by state power (for real) he might be, climbing the Tower was still a business where life and death turned on the smallest mistake. There was no particular reason to rush his ascent, he wasn't short on money, and what little debt he carried was comfortably within his means to repay.
The Tower Management Bureau had no intention of hounding its state-power-backed (for real) Climber over his loan.
Ding!
Tower Floor 10 Cleared!
Q3 2035 Cumulative Points Earned: 2,031
While Dohyeon's mind wandered, Taesan — two orcs skewered on his tusks — came plodding over.
"Whoa, whoa! Taesan, halt! I told you — you'll get blood all over your big brother!"
Dohyeon wrapped up the two orcs' carcasses with Jade Bone Crafting and stowed them away, carefully collected the cloth they'd been wearing and their pair of long blades as well, and made his exit.
"Making money is easy."