For the first time in ages, Hae Dam transformed into an animal.
He went around questioning the neighborhood's longtime resident stray cats, pigeons, sparrows, mice, and other street animals. Within a single day—twelve days after the dog had gone missing—he found it in a dog trader's warehouse. It was an enormous relief that the dog hadn't been sold yet.
He raided the warehouse while the trader was away and threw open every cage door. Looking back, he regretted handling it that way. Under the law, raising dogs for human consumption was a criminal offense, so he should have taken photographs and reported the place to the police. But he'd been young and hadn't known any better.
Hwatu had the intelligence of a four-year-old child, but they could communicate perfectly well. This was what Hwatu said.
'How can you understand us? Listen, I don't know where Grandma is. Please find Grandma for me. I can't get out of here, and I'm so worried she isn't taking her medicine properly. She always forgets, so I have to bring it to her. You're human, so go find my grandma and give her some warm water and her medicine! Then I'll give you some sweet potatoes!'
'...Where are you going to get sweet potatoes?'
'Grandma will give you some. She's never once refused when I've asked her for sweet potatoes. She obviously can't understand what I'm saying, but whenever I ask, she always says something and gives me some anyway. If you tell her Hwatu asked for sweet potatoes, she'll give you some. Please hurry and check whether Grandma's been taking her medicine every day. Make sure she takes it properly.'
Hae Dam took Hwatu back to the elderly woman.
The grandmother and Hwatu clung to each other, whimpering and crying. The grandmother whimpered, and the dog whimpered right along with her.
Hae Dam didn't accept the reward.
Determined to keep the promise, Hwatu whimpered insistently at the grandmother to give the human boy some sweet potatoes.
"Why, do you want sweet potatoes? All right, all right. That's why you're so yellow, isn't it? My Hwatu's all yellow from eating so many sweet potatoes."
That day, Hae Dam walked along the winding country road with his arms wrapped around a bag full of sweet potatoes he couldn't even eat.
And as he walked, he thought:
Humans and animals... they're exactly the same.
Love for family. The grief of losing someone you love. Tears of joy when you're reunited.
The only real differences were their appearances and the languages they spoke. And Hae Dam could take either form and communicate with both species.
Which meant that, to Hae Dam, humans and animals were the "same species."
Once he reached that conclusion, there was no longer any need to choose between living as a human or living as an animal.
After all, they were the "same species."
I'm just a weasel and a human!
For the first time since the ginseng-gathering couple had passed away, the turmoil and confusion that had plagued his heart finally settled.
Hae Dam went on to find several more missing animals from the flyers posted at the veterinary clinic.
Sadly, some had already died.
Could I have saved them if I'd made up my mind sooner?
It was impossible not to wonder.
And that was how he began this work.
In a small country town, word of Hae Dam's activities spread quickly. He had never advertised himself, yet people began seeking him out entirely through word of mouth. Within barely six months, he had to set up an official email address and a separate phone for work.
The director of the veterinary clinic helped him get the work phone activated and register his business. Everything else, however, fell to the fifteen-year-old boy alone: answering emails, consulting with clients, purchasing equipment for capturing animals, arranging transportation to and from cases, and finding places to stay in advance.
Seven years later, there wasn't a person in the industry who didn't know his name.
"Hello, Detective Hae Dam. I'm the new Gyeontam, the second person to take that name. I heard that if anyone could find this animal, it would be you..."
"Mr. Hae Dam, it's Saetam. Do you remember finding Danchu, the Siamese cat, for me two months ago? Well, there's a two-year-old Korean domestic shorthair in our neighborhood..."
Hae Dam's primary clients weren't ordinary pet owners. They were other animal detectives.
The animal-detective industry was currently enjoying such a tremendous boom that people were calling it the golden age of animal detectives. Most of its practitioners, however, made their real money not from cases themselves but through GemTube, social media, television appearances, and lectures.
Hae Dam was the expert other experts turned to for advice, the emergency rescue service of the animal-detective world.
When they had searched for a missing animal for ages without finding the slightest clue, or when no amount of observation and deduction could explain an animal's strange behavior, they sent Hae Dam requests for help.
Because he didn't make his contact information available to the general public, roughly half the emails he'd received were from other animal detectives. The remaining ordinary clients had obtained his number through personal connections.
Hae Dam's case fees were high.
With his astronomical food expenses, he had no choice but to charge accordingly.
When he accepted a case directly from an ordinary client, he set the fee according to their circumstances. Sometimes he charged as much as one million won, while on one occasion he'd accepted as little as ten thousand.
When other animal detectives hired him, however, his minimum fee was fixed at 500,000 won. For particularly difficult cases, he sometimes charged several million.
Even so, requests poured in every single day.
I should deal with the most urgent ones first.
Hae Dam read through the emails one by one.
A cat named Ajji had darted outside two days earlier while the door was left open for movers and hadn't returned.
A dog named Tori, whose owner usually walked it without a leash, had been startled by a car horn and disappeared.
And the more emails he read, the clearer it became that not a single case could be considered unimportant.
Situations that might have been put off briefly in summer became extremely dangerous in the depths of winter, with temperatures dropping below minus ten degrees Celsius.
For now, Hae Dam forwarded the emails he'd received directly from ordinary clients to the animal detectives responsible for their respective areas. As for the requests from other detectives, he decided to accept every one.
If a case had reached him, it meant the other detectives had already exhausted their options. Those were the emergencies.
He first called Gyeontam, who was searching for Tori.
"Hey, it's Hae Dam. Where are you right now? ...Oh, you're at the scene? I'll head over right away."
He had barely arrived home before getting straight back into a car, without even changing his clothes.
Because his profession required him to travel all over the country, he'd obtained his driver's license as soon as he was old enough.
He had driven everything from bicycles and scooters to motorcycles, compact cars, midsize sedans... even trucks.
Today, he chose an SUV.
He arrived in Dogok-ri, Namyangju, where Tori had gone missing, and within thirty minutes found the dog trembling in a frozen drainage channel.
Next, he headed to Chungju, where he found a cat that had disappeared two days earlier and returned it to its owner's arms in just three hours.
In a small neighborhood in Yeongju, he tracked down a cat that had run away through an open window. In Daejeon, he found a dog that had leaped out of a pet stroller.
He didn't make it home that night.
Or the next.
Every time he resolved one case, new requests were already piling up.
Hae Dam was a detective without an assigned territory, traveling all across the country. Spending nights away from home was common in winter. The previous winter, too, he'd spent more time on the road than at home.
On the third night away, he found a cat that had been missing for a week.
"Han Chorong! Why on earth did you run away from home? Have you been eating? What did you do when you got hungry? Weren't you cold? Why did you leave? I was so worried about you! Why did you run away? I swear, you're going to be the death of me. I can't take this anymore. I really can't..."
"Waaaaah..."
The owner was sobbing uncontrollably in front of the black cat, which had hidden beneath the bed.
After spending an entire week sick with worry, it was understandable that she'd be crying her heart out.
The cat, noticeably thinner than before, lay flattened against the floor and stared at her for a moment before letting out a small meow.
What Hae Dam heard, however, was something quite different.
'Ugh, there are way too many humans. Better stay hidden. I'll let my big sister hold me once all these humans are gone. When are they going to leave? Hey, you! The smart human who can understand me! Hurry up and take them away.'
Fortunately, the cat was in good spirits.
"I'm going to get going, then."
"Oh, hang on a second. I'm going to have a word with Hae Dam. Can you take care of the filming?"
"Sure."
Nyantam, a detective who specialized in finding cats, handed the camera to her assistant and stepped outside with Hae Dam.
"Where are you off to now? If you've got time, let's grab something to eat."
"I have to head straight up to Seoul."
"You could at least eat before you go."
"I've got work to do. Sorry."
"Nothing to apologize for. Bank transfer or cash?"
"Either's fine."
"Hey, you know I'm paying you out of my own pocket on top of the measly 300,000 won I got for this case, right? I've basically been doing volunteer work. Worse, I've been paying for the privilege."
With Hae Dam's minimum case fee set at 500,000 won, situations like today's weren't uncommon.
Sometimes the animal detective who had accepted the original case ended up earning nothing, while Hae Dam walked away with all the money.
When even an exhaustive investigation failed to turn up so much as a single strand of fur, bringing Hae Dam in could produce dramatic footage of a missing animal finally being found. Those videos attracted plenty of views, so detectives sometimes hired him even if it meant taking a financial loss.
"But you make money from GemTube, don't you? Just make sure you blur my face properly and disguise my voice."
"Don't worry. Didn't you see the last video? I covered you up so thoroughly that people are practically begging me to make a mistake. They're desperate to get a look at Haetam's face."
Grumbling, Nyantam transferred the money to Hae Dam's account.
"But seriously, why are you so against showing your face? If I looked like you, I'd plaster my face on my profile, my thumbnails, my business cards—anywhere I could fit it. What, are you secretly training to be an idol or something?"