14
14. Raccoon
“I’m back.”
“You’re back?”
When I returned home, I saw Jeongmin brushing his teeth while wearing a headband.
“Did everyone go to work?”
“Yeah. More importantly, Mina, you made it back safely too.”
“Why does Oppa look like he’s getting bigger?”
“I keep working out whenever I have the time.”
Unless Jeongmin was filming a broadcast or going out, he usually survived on beef and sweet potatoes for his meals.
He didn’t manage his body with absolute strictness, but unless there was something special going on, he didn’t really change his diet either.
“I’m going to sleep a little longer.”
“Of course. You’ve been up since dawn, so you must be tired. What about you, Mina?”
“I’m going to sleep a little longer too. I’m tired from getting up so early. Did you clean my room?”
“Mom cleaned it yesterday.”
Since Mina had also taken the first flight to Saskatchewan Airport, she might even have had to wake up earlier than I did.
“Oh, right. Shinyong.”
“What?”
“Emma said she wanted to have dinner with us tonight.”
“She must have stopped by this morning?”
“Yeah. She said she wants to eat dak-galbi today.”
“Dak-galbi. Then we should marinate it now.”
“I already marinated it, so just go inside and sleep.”
Emma liked chicken.
It was said that most Americans didn’t particularly like chicken thighs, but there were actually quite a lot of people who did.
Emma especially didn’t like chicken breast very much, so she liked dishes made with chicken thighs.
“How long are you two going to keep talking? Can I go inside and sleep first?”
“Go ahead and sleep.”
Mina eventually went into her room first, unable to wait for our conversation to end.
“I’m going upstairs too.”
“Yeah. I need to wash up and start working too, so go upstairs.”
Jeongmin also seemed to have just woken up after working until late last night, but apparently his work still wasn’t finished.
‘That guy lives a busy life too.’
Thinking that everyone lived busy lives, whether in places others could see or places they couldn’t, I went up to my room.
“Yaaawn.....”
Thud.
The moment I lay down on the bed, my mind began to grow hazy.
Perhaps because I had gulped down a ton of coffee on an empty stomach, or perhaps simply because I hadn’t slept, sleepiness came rushing over me the moment I lay down.
“Grrrrrr...... Zzzzz......”
“.....Mina must have been tired too.”
Since Mina’s room was nearby, I could continuously hear her snoring.
---
When I woke up, quite a lot of time had passed.
“Is it three in the afternoon.....? Ugh. I didn’t sleep as much as I thought.”
Since I had gone to sleep late in the morning, I figured I had slept for about five hours.
I had expected to sleep longer because I was so exhausted, but perhaps the rough snoring coming from somewhere in the distance had disturbed my sleep.
“Grrrrrr...... Zzzzz......”
“......She’s still sleeping.”
Normally, it would have stopped at some point, but the snoring continued.
She must have been extremely tired.
“Yaaawn......”
I moved my stiff body and went down to the living room.
‘No one’s here.....’
It wasn’t time for Emma to arrive yet, so there was no one in the living room.
‘Should I eat something?’
We were planning to have dak-galbi for dinner anyway, but there was still some time until then, so I thought I’d eat something simple.
‘Is Jeongmin still working?’
I considered going to his room, but I might disturb him, so I decided to eat by myself.
‘Ramen would be..... too much since I’m going to eat a lot of dak-galbi.’
I simply grabbed a spicy snack and plopped down onto the living room sofa.
“No matter how much I stretch, my body still feels stiff.”
Perhaps because I had driven for so long and immediately gone to sleep, my body felt sluggish.
I absentmindedly ate the snacks while staring at the wooden ceiling.
‘......It’s been a while since I’ve just sat around like this.’
I had spent time blankly staring at nature before, but it had been a long time since I had done nothing but stare at the ceiling for a long while.
‘Time is moving slowly.....’
I could watch television or look at my phone to kill time.
No, I was certain I could make much better use of this meaningless time by doing that.
Even so, I didn’t leave this moment.
‘Let’s empty my mind.’
There was one anxious thought sitting in my heart right now.
Ever since the huge yet perhaps trivial concern of returning to my original mindset had lodged itself in my head, I honestly couldn’t think of anything else.
What should I do?
What should I choose?
Which option would be the best?
Nothing was coming to me.
‘Does a life..... really need the value called money?’
Did I really need a life where I had to make money?
Honestly, the life I was living right now suited me best, and my wish was simply to continue living like this.
‘There are no complicated relationships, and there are no complicated financial ties.’
This life wasn’t perfect.
It certainly had its disadvantages, but I was satisfied enough to overlook all of them.
‘Do I really have to..... return to my original mindset?’
Couldn’t I just be satisfied with the life I had now?
Couldn’t I simply live the way I was already living?
“.....I can’t do that.”
I had tried to give everything up, but eventually I remembered the things I had to carry.
‘.....My family.’
Ever since my father had been taken to the hospital, we had thrown ourselves into work without taking a single day off.
At the time, Hyerin was still too young to work part-time, and Mom was getting older, so she couldn’t push herself too hard.
‘I have to work.....’
Without realizing it, I smiled at myself for thinking the exact opposite of how I had thought when I first came here.
“When I first came here, I thought people who didn’t work were trash..... Now I’ve become the opposite.”
After learning what freedom felt like and discovering the joy of simply playing around, I didn’t want to return to that life where I was exhausted from working.
“Returning to my original mindset..... is an incredibly difficult choice for me.”
Right now, my income wasn’t particularly high.
Seven months had already passed since my novel was completed.
I was still receiving a steady income from the works I had written, and I was also earning money by continuing to work in the fields.
‘All the income from my novels is being sent to Mom..... and while I’m here, Jeongmin’s parents cover most of my food expenses.’
In return, I worked hard for them.
There wasn’t much for me to spend money on here, aside from snacks for the children and food needed for filming my Vlog.
‘Sitting around doing nothing makes all kinds of thoughts come to mind..... Still, it’s probably good to keep thinking about things like this.’
The choice to return to the beginning.
I still wasn’t sure whether it was the right choice.
This wasn’t someone else’s problem. It was something directly related to me, so I wanted to make absolutely certain.
Ding-dong!
As I was sitting there lost in thought, someone rang the doorbell.
‘Emma?’
I hadn’t realized how quickly time had passed while I was sitting there blankly.
Since it was around the time Emma usually came back, I didn’t think much of it and went outside.
“Emma, you’re ba..... What is that?”
“I found it on the way.”
“Kyahng?”
Emma was holding a raccoon in her hands.
---
Raccoons were as common in Canada as stray cats.
Saskatchewan was no different, but perhaps because they had natural predators, they weren’t something I saw very often.
‘I even brought one home after getting drunk once..... I have no idea how I managed to bring it home, though.’
Considering that Canada was also home to many wild animals such as bears, thinking about it now, that had been an incredibly dangerous thing to do.
Anyway, raccoons were absolutely not gentle animals.
‘They look like little angels, but.....’
They were chubby and adorable, so they might look harmless, but every raccoon had a different personality.
Since they rummaged through discarded garbage, they weren’t particularly well regarded by the locals.
“Kyahng.....”
“......What is this?”
Jeongmin, who must have come downstairs around the time Emma arrived after finishing his work, also looked bewildered when he saw the baby raccoon inside the box.
“It’s a raccoon.”
“I know that, but..... why is there a baby here?”
“Emma found it.”
“.....Why did she bring it here?”
At Jeongmin’s question, Emma fidgeted with her fingers and muttered,
“It was on the street..... I felt sorry for it......”
“Haa.....”
Caring about a living creature at such a young age was certainly something worth praising.
However, in the case of animals like foxes and raccoons, which were known to carry diseases, bringing them home could actually put everyone in the household at risk.
‘Well..... It doesn’t seem to have rabies.’
I didn’t know how the baby raccoon had become separated from its mother, but since it was quietly staying there out of fear, it didn’t seem to have rabies.
Even so, raising it in our house was impossible.
“Raccoons are really curious and cause a lot of trouble.”
Every raccoon had a different personality, but there was no way to guarantee that this one was gentle.
“But still.....”
“No means no.”
One firm sentence from Jeongmin made Emma’s face fall.
‘Even if it were a cat, I’d hesitate to bring it home. A raccoon is a completely different matter.’
It wasn’t as though we were going to abandon it, but I thought we should contact a wildlife protection organization and take it to a shelter.
“Yaaawn!”
Just as we were discussing what to do with the baby raccoon,
Mina, who had been sleeping upstairs, came down to the first floor while scratching her messy hair.
“What are you guys doing?”
“.....What happened to your appearance?”
“What? Why?”
“I’m not telling you to dress up since you’re at home, but can’t you at least look presentable when Shinyong is here?”
“Oh. Right. Shinyong Oppa was here too?”
“.....”
Perhaps because she had just woken up, her clothes were rumpled all over.
“Anyway, what’s that? Is it a raccoon?”
“Yeah. Emma found it.”
“Emma..... Ah. That kid?”
“Yeah.”
Since we were speaking in Korean, Emma looked at Mina with a puzzled expression.
“Who’s that woman?”
“Oh. Jeongmin’s younger sister.”
“Aha.”
Perhaps she had heard before that Jeongmin had a younger sister, because Emma quickly nodded in understanding.
“Oh my? How cute..... Was it Emma? You’re so adorable.”
Emma did look cute, but right now, deciding what to do with the baby raccoon was the priority.
“Isn’t that the problem right now? What are we going to do with that thing?”
“Why not just raise it? What’s the problem?”
“Raise it.....?”
Raising a living creature ultimately meant taking responsibility for it.
We were already raising a horse, so there simply wasn’t enough time to take responsibility for something else.
“Raise it in the yard. Just give it some food and let it sleep outside. It’ll leave on its own eventually.”
“......That makes sense.”
Come to think of it, it was a wild animal to begin with, so it would probably survive just fine outside.
Even though it was still a baby, the only thing we could really do for it was give it food.
Since it could leave whenever it wanted, this was probably the best option for now.
“Then..... can I film this?”
I had been thinking about filming a video of us eating dak-galbi today, but I thought filming this raccoon would be more interesting.
‘It’s cute, too.’
Although I had said we should get rid of it, the truth was that it was incredibly cute.