The Return of the Calamity God

Today, the snacks went down particularly well.

He usually ate a lot, but he felt like he was eating even more because of the rain.

Crunch, crunch, the sound of the snack crumbling was followed by the increasing sound of rain.

“…Hey. Go out and clean up the alley.”

Horang, who had been sprawled out lazily, tossed the job out while tossing and turning.

Jeha, who had shaken out even the crumbs and was opening a new bag of snacks, frowned.

“So suddenly? Now?”

The rain that had been scattering thinly was now pouring like a showerhead.

Swish, swish, swish.

Horang twitched his ears at the sound of the rain pounding the world.

“Go now.”

On days when it rained heavily or the fog thickened, the ‘boundary’ became blurred in many ways.

On days when the boundary between this side and that side was blurred, there were many customers who barged in without making a reservation, like the Vajra Warriors who had come before.

It would be nice if only the dead came as usual, but most of the customers who went the wrong way were human. To be exact, it was annoying because they were ‘living humans’.

If it was just a short rain, it would be okay to postpone the cleaning, but in the rainy season like these days when it was raining continuously, it was good to take care of it whenever there was a chance.

Jeha grimaced with a reluctant expression.

“I don’t think anyone’s coming…. Can’t I do it after the rain stops? And it would be nice to oil the gate at the same time.”

Instead of saying outright that he was too lazy to do it now, Jeha mumbled excuses.

“What if they come?”

“No way.”

Horang, who had already transformed into a human, rolled the inhaled cigarette smoke around in his mouth and exhaled it.

The puffed-out smoke rose like cumulus clouds.

“If they come, no snacks for a week.”

Jeha flinched, his shoulders trembling at the terrifying condition, then glanced at the snack bag in his arms before nodding his head.

“Okay! On days like this, humans will be busy sitting in their rooms making pancakes, so they won’t be walking around.”

Jeha readily accepted the bet, wagering his precious week’s worth of snacks.

He had eyes too.

Who would come all the way here through the rain that had begun to fall like a curtain, making it difficult to see even an inch ahead?

The moment his lips curled into a smirk, there was a sound of something breaking, ‘Crack!’

Jeha’s neck shrank like a turtle’s, startled.

His eyes rolled busily, searching for the source of the sound.

“What’s that sound?”

Crack!

The sound rang out loudly again. His gaze, which had been rolling around, finally found the source of the sound.

“Huh? Huh!”

Jeha jumped up from the sofa and reached out his arm.

“Boss! That!”

Horang was also looking at the same place.

There was a hazelnut hanging in the place Jeha’s finger was pointing at.

The hazelnut hanging like a decoration above the entrance door through which customers came and went had been in the same place since this office was established.

So now it was something that they didn’t even pay attention to, like a decoration on the door.

Moreover, even though acorns and hazelnuts were originally similarly sized, the fruit hanging above the door was as big as a fist, and the cracked dry shell that was making a loud noise was very visible.

Jeha did not forget the request he had heard on the first day he was hired by ‘Sanshinne Real Estate’.

“A customer is descending from the sky!”

On his first day of work, when he asked what he would be doing here, Horang said that while exhaling the smoke he had inhaled from the long pipe, just like now.

” ‘If that fruit breaks, it means a customer is coming down from above, so let me know anytime.’ That’s right, isn’t it?”

Of course, 66 years had already passed since he heard those words, but it was as vivid as if he had heard them yesterday.

Crazy, that thing was really breaking?

Jeha scurried to the door, just in case.

The movement of the ghost, who was as big as a door and wearing a gold-patterned Aloha shirt, was cute, but it was not captured in Horang’s eyes.

Crack!

As if to attract his attention, the hazelnut opened its shell once again with a loud noise.

Horang let out a hollow laugh as he saw the fruit with its dried-up flesh.

The pupil, which looked like a yellow eye split vertically, twitched.

He bit down on the mouthpiece.

As he forcefully exhaled the cloudy smoke that filled his mouth, some of the thoughts in his head flew away with it, but they were not resolved.

Jeha chattered, marveling, “A descending guest.”

A divine spirit descending from the sky to the earth was something that even Horang, who had lived through countless years, rarely encountered.

He wondered if the spell that had been placed on the fruit had been broken, but then he realized that it couldn’t be.

“Why now of all times.”

The continuous rainy weather was a problem, but the planned relocation of the Underworld Hall was also a big deal.

Horang briefly recalled an old memory.

What was left on that fruit was an old promise to him, and a duty he had to fulfill.

It was also a rule left on this land that all beings going from the sky to the earth and from the earth to the sky would go through the mountain god.

He frowned, then nonchalantly put the pipe back in his mouth.

“I’ll have to go meet them.”

“Meet them?”

Jeha turned his head with a face that said he had misheard something.

Since opening the office, Horang had never once gone to meet a customer.

There was no way there would be such a warm welcome, even for customers who made reservations and came to visit, he would sometimes get annoyed and kick them out.

Horang nodded, still looking at the broken fruit hanging above the door.

“Yes. Meet them.”

Jeha blinked his eyes a few times before opening his mouth.

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember, but when did we start offering a customer pickup service?”

“From now on.”

If the person who paid his salary said so, then that was it.

Jeha tentatively said he understood and confirmed the specific location.

“So, where do I have to go to pick up this customer?”

Horang’s head tilted slightly as he exhaled a long stream of cigarette smoke.

“Incheon?”

Jeha’s head tilted in response.

“Incheon… Ah! That Chamsungdan on Manisan Mountain in Ganghwa Island?

Are they telling us to come there? They have very classical tastes.”

Through the fog-like smoke, yellow eyes blinked with annoyance.

“Chamsungdan isn’t there.”

“Then where is it?”

“Incheon Airport.”

“Huh?”

Hee hee hee hee.

A faint, sticky laughter clung to his ear.

“Why is it so chilly?”

The woman, who had pulled up the strap of her bag on her shoulder, rubbed her arm.

White smoke rose from her skin like a heat haze. The smoke soon took shape. It was a hand dangling below her elbow.

Sharply curved fingernails gripped the woman’s neck.

The fingernails repeatedly missed the woman’s skin, just brushing past her in the air. But the hand continued to move.

“Cough.”

Each time, the woman coughed roughly and hunched over.

Then the laughter grew a little louder.

Hic! Hic! Hic! Hic!

Die.

The fingernails scraped at the woman’s face and neck, endlessly clawing at the air.

Just as the woman’s face, distorted with pain, was about to turn increasingly pale, the sound of footsteps walking nearby stopped.

“Excuse me. I’ll be passing by.”

The woman with a face distorted by pain raised her head.

A thug-like man wearing sunglasses that looked like they had been sprinkled with rainbow glitter stared at the air before lowering his gaze.

The woman quickly straightened her body, which she had been bending over. The pain was painful, and the fear was scary.

The man raised his gaze, which he had briefly lowered, and walked away, shuffling his feet.

That was all, but suddenly something that had been pressing down on his whole body disappeared as if it had become lighter.

His tightly constricted breath also cleared, and his headache and chills disappeared.

“What is it?”

He didn’t know why, but he was glad that his body had recovered even now.

The woman massaged her shoulders, which had become lighter, and looked for the escalator to the upper floor.

Caw-deuk.

The woman’s gaze turned to the man who had just passed by her at the jarring, sharp sound.

His cheeks were already bulging, as if he was chewing on something.

Jeha whistled loudly.

“It’s like a buffet.”

As many ghosts as there were people crowded around him quickly hid from his gaze.

Jeha crunched on the finger bone that had entered his mouth and returned to Horang’s side with a troubled face.

Then even the ghosts who had been watching from a distance, keeping a proper distance, were terrified and ran further away.

Jeha, who was thrilled with the feeling of being like a walking landmine, put his hands in his pockets and threatened the ghosts in a bent posture. Of course, that was only for a moment.

Jeha, who was standing in front of Horang, politely put his hands together.

“I think the cleanup is mostly done, should I do more?”

Horang blinked with a bored face.

The commotion of the ghosts who had been mindlessly clinging to and running away from the vitality exuded by the people had subsided appropriately.

“That’s enough.”

Horang stopped letting Jeha, who was stronger than any other ghost, loose in the airport.

The number of ghosts who had clung to people to get their revenge and disappeared into Jeha’s stomach had already exceeded ten fingers, so it was time to stop.

He tilted his head slightly and raised it slightly.

A blue monitor was visible above the immigration doors, which were divided into several sections.

Inside the lined squares, the list of arriving planes was constantly being announced in English, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

People poured into the arrival hall non-stop, following the letters that changed with a rattling sound.

“Boss, our customer. They’re coming to Incheon Airport, right?”

Jeha asked, looking at the immigration doors that opened and closed every few seconds.

“No, I was wondering if it might be Gimpo.”

It had already been four days since he had put everything else aside and stayed at Incheon Airport.

The shell of the hazelnut hanging on the door was now completely peeled off, leaving only the kernel.

Once the shell was completely peeled off, there would be no need to hang a new fruit, so today was the last day.

Horang tilted his head with a nonchalant face.

“…It’s here.”

“The plane doesn’t only have direct flights, they could come via Japan.”

“They’ve closed the doors except for Incheon, so they can’t come that way even if they want to.

Only someone who wants to die would come that way.”

“…Is there a possibility that they are suicidal?”

Ignoring Jeha’s nonsense, Horang stared ahead.

He was here because it was something he had to do and there was no one else to do it, but he didn’t particularly expect anyone to come.

This place, which had deviated from the great flow and stagnated, was a land that even the gods had abandoned and left long ago, and was more suited to farewells than welcomes.

Thanks to that, he only felt a sense of relief that the long-standing promise was over.