The Return of the Calamity God

He opened his narrow eyes and checked the landing time of the plane departing from England.

It was a flight arriving a little after 7 a.m.

“That’s the last flight arriving on time.”

Jeha scratched his head.

Since all the hazelnut shells hanging on the door were peeled off, it was over regardless of where the planes landing after that came from.

“Are they really coming by plane? What if they come by boat? They might like boats.”

Even though it was a question he had asked at least once a day for four days, Jeha repeatedly checked with Horang.

“I said by plane.”

Horang muttered, narrowing his eyes.

“If they just flew around like in the old days, they’d be preserved on social media, so the international agreement is to take a plane when going in and out of other people’s land.

We’re like that, do you think it’d be any different if they came from somewhere else?”

“I guess so.”

Leaving Jeha, who had become dazed from boredom and hunger, Horang got up from the seat he had been guarding.

A sign appeared that the plane departing from Heathrow Airport had finally landed.

The ghosts, who had been gathering again, following the crowd even after he had cleaned them up, discovered them and hastily ran away.

Horang stood with Jeha in front of the arrival hall.

It was difficult to move forward because there were many people even though there were no ghosts, but it was no problem.

People flinched and stepped back as Jeha, who was towering like a totem pole and dressed like a thug, tapped his shoulders with his fingers.

Jeha clicked his tongue among the people who were holding up and waving signs with something written on them.

“Now that we’ve come to pick them up, I should have written a sign.”

“What were you going to write?”

Horang, who habitually reached for his pipe but shook his empty hand, chewed on his lips.

“Welcome, Mr. God? Something like that.”

Jeha grimaced, watching Horang’s reaction even after he had said it.

Horang chuckled and looked ahead.

He listened to all the information conveyed from the land, not what was visible.

Everything on the land that people stepped on was his eyes and ears, so he could see without looking and hear without listening.

The moment Horang’s expression frowned after listening for a long time, Jeha widened his narrowly opened eyes.

“Wow?”

It was an exclamation that could only come out like that.

“Sir, would you mind opening the window shade?”

Lee Seon involuntarily raised his head at the words coming from the other side.

The strong sunlight from the cloudless blue sky made his eyes flash.

It wasn’t enough to make tears well up, but it was still stinging, so his brow furrowed.

He looked at the seat next to him with a scowl.

He saw his boss staring outside, seemingly unaffected by the glare.

“Are you okay without sunglasses?”

Theodore nodded.

“It’s not bad. Besides, it’ll be dark soon, so I need to fill my eyes with this blue sky while I can.”

At those words, Lee Seon remembered the weather on the ground, which he had temporarily forgotten.

Unlike above the clouds, it was raining down there.

The announcement that they would be landing soon came on, so this plane would soon break through the thick clouds and descend below.

Lee Seon nodded and turned his gaze back to the screen of his work tablet.

It was the documents he had been reviewing for nearly 12 hours of flight time.

It was a list of stolen goods that Edward’s father, Theodore’s great-grandfather, had stolen from all over the world, which had been sorted out after Edward’s funeral and remained inside the mansion.

Some of the items had already entered Korea on a private plane in their stead, and the items that would be coming later would be transported through complicated procedures, so he was on edge.

Lee Seon handed Theodore the file that he had finished checking for the last time.

Theodore, who had been working throughout the flight like him, familiarly left his signature.

Theodore, who had returned the tablet, looked at the blue sky outside the window again.

As the plane began to descend, his body began to tilt, and black clouds rushed in outside the window.

Past the black and cloudy sea, as dark as the clouds covering the sky, the land came into view.

The top of the building, which had looked like a green dot, quickly became closer, and at the same time, the plane lowered its wheels onto the runway and jolted briefly.

The plane moved forward with a loud noise, as if slipping on the rain, and then stopped.

At the same time, the cabin became chaotic.

Lee Seon, who was wriggling his body and drumming his knees as if they were bruising, straightened his crumpled shirt.

“Are you feeling okay?”

Theodore shrugged his shoulders.

“Not yet.”

However, his long eyes did not easily open. He took a deep breath and caught his breath.

His body was tingling from the soles of his feet. It wasn’t a problem caused by the flight, judging by the fact that his body was reacting more violently than when he was on the plane above the clouds.

“I should have booked a hotel in front of the airport.”

“It’s the same anyway unless you’re going back to England right away.”

He would be in this state as long as he was in Korea unless he met the mountain god.

Theodore gradually moved his body with the effort of moving through tremendous water pressure in the deep sea.

In the meantime, the plane that had been running on the runway for a long time finally stopped in front of the gate.

In-flight announcements were heard alternately in English and Korean.

The huge body crumpled in the first class seat of the plane stood up straight.

Unlike other travelers, the gazes of others briefly touched them, who were only carrying a briefcase, and then quickly fell away.

Lee Seon turned his head several times to check on Theodore and then exited the cabin first.

As soon as he came out of the passage connected to the plane, people with black hair moved as if they were racing down the long corridor leading to the immigration checkpoint.

Lee Seon’s body twitched as he watched the movement.

He grimly stared at something hazy attached to the back of the person walking in front of him.

It seemed that the unique trait he had inherited through his bloodline was still working well.

Lee Seon frowned, closed his eyes, and opened them again. That didn’t make what he saw suddenly disappear.

“I had some hope, but it seems it’s the same here.”

“There’s no way there’s a constitution that only sees ghosts in England.”

Theodore laughed at the crushing of his secretary’s hope.

Even laughing like that momentarily forgot the pressure that felt like his soul was being crushed.

“Still, I didn’t expect to see them from the gate entering the airport. They weren’t on the plane.”

Theodore scoffed.

He started moving again, having stopped. His shadow, which was stretched out long on the ground, flickered for a moment.

At the same time, a male ghost with half his head split and his tongue sticking out, who was standing a short distance away, was shocked and hurriedly ran away.

The same was true of the female ghost who was jumping in place behind him and continuing to hit a woman’s head.

Lee Seon clicked his tongue at the frantic movements, like herbivores facing a natural enemy, and quickly stuck close to Theodore.

Where people gather, things that aren’t people gather too.

He was already sick of the eerie feeling that emanated from the things that weren’t alive.

Lee Seon rolled his eyes and glanced here and there.

The places his gaze reached were mainly walls where there were no people or gaps in the floor of the escalator rolling along a long passage.

Lee Seon frowned as he looked at the grotesque ghost without a shape stuck underneath and opened his mouth.

‘Damn it.’

Theodore indifferently scanned the soul who was startled by his energy and ran away.

Lee Seon shuddered with a terrible face, but it wasn’t a bad sight for him.

Theodore, who was walking leisurely, took another breath.

Strangely, it became easier to breathe and move his body the more he went outside.

Had he already adapted?

That couldn’t be.

He thought of his shell. This vessel was only outwardly intact, it was no different from a cracked plate and couldn’t withstand this much pressure.

Regardless of his doubts, it was certainly a good thing that the pressure was reduced.

After the sound of wheels scraping against the floor and the sound of shoe soles pushing against the floor as if tired of waiting passed by several times in a row, Theodore passed through the final gate and received his passport back.

Lee Seon, who scoffed as he looked at the black background with a gold-plated lion and unicorn, shoved his passport into his bag and looked for the exit.

Most of their luggage had arrived in Korea before them, so there was no luggage to find separately.

After passing the crowd gathered around the conveyor belt, they were finally outside.

Theodore tilted his head at the air, which was gradually becoming lighter as he went there.

There was no way this land would welcome him.

But he felt like something very gentle was welcoming him and waving his hand.

As soon as he stepped out of the open door, a buzzing sound soared to the height of the ceiling, and a flea market-like scene unfolded.

In the hands of people who had leaned their upper bodies over the fence, the names of the people they were looking for were written in various languages. Lee Seon quickly spotted the person he needed to find.

“It’s that way.”

Theodore also cast his gaze in the same direction, but the person he saw was not the person who had come to pick them up.

Unlike the dark ink-like color on the top of his head, a lean man with very light gray hair and clear yellow irises with long vertical pupils was standing there.

Theodore’s steps stopped.

The eyes of a large and beautiful beast, enough to make his spine stiffen and tense, were staring at him.

It was a feeling he hadn’t encountered in a long time.

He felt like he would be bewitched if he kept making eye contact.

Theodore stared at the man without taking his eyes off his alien appearance, as if claiming he was not human.

The man moved his lips.

Even though it was a distance where he couldn’t hear what he was saying, Theodore involuntarily tilted his ear and chased after the voice.

The man’s lips twisted.

At the same time, the man’s existence was out of range as if he had been blocked.

Then, the noise that had disappeared from his ears momentarily rushed in all at once.

No longer touched by his gaze, Theodore released the breath he had been holding and relaxed his stiff body.

He looked again at the place where the man had been standing, but unfortunately he was not visible now.

“Teddy?”

Lee Seon called Theodore and glanced in the direction he had been looking.

Theodore, who didn’t usually give his attention to most people, was particularly focused on one place, so he became curious.

“Is there something… there?”

“There was an endangered species, but it disappeared.”

“…A bird or an insect?”

“No. Something too pretty to compare with that.”

Lee Seon narrowed his eyes and looked ahead again.

There was nothing particularly noticeable.