20
09:34
Three years passed in the blink of an eye.
On my eighteenth birthday, I opened my first bank account. I could have gotten a debit card sooner, but I couldn’t get full online banking access
until I was eighteen. And the damn System claimed it couldn’t transfer the money without it.
A billion dollars was, apparently, a lot to move.
For three years, it had given me a paltry ten thousand a month in “living expenses.” I had been practically destitute!
I had tolerated that useless System for three years. But finally, on my eighteenth birthday, I got my billion dollars.
Without a moment’s hesitation, I went straight to the zoo and found the familiar, now much younger–looking, director.
“I’m donating one hundred million dollars to this zoo,” I announced. “I have one condition: every single animal must be well–fed and well–cared for.
No one gets left behind.”
The director’s jaw dropped. “One… one… one hundred million?” he stammered.
“That’s right. And I’d also like to be the deputy director. Is that okay?”
“Okay? Ma’am, you can be my mother if you want!”
And so, became the director’s mother.
And, of course, the mother to all the animals.
Back then, Red from Monkey Mountain was still young, but his butt was already the reddest of them all. When he saw me, he froze for a moment,
and his butt flushed an even deeper crimson. Some things never change. In a world of few words, a young monkey’s red butt is a love poem.
As for Flingo, he was constantly constipated, picking at his butt and flinging whatever he could find. He was practicing. A true idol trainee in the
making.
Echo the macaw also flew over. He was just a fledgling, but he was already learning his “greetings.”
“Hello, hello, hello…” he’d chirp, hoping to charm the tourists.
I stroked his head. “That’s not right, Repeat after me: ‘Son of a bitch, son of a bitch, son of a bitch…”
The little bird cocked his head. “Tsk. How crude.”
