Land God Successor

“SELENA COLLINS! WHERE ARE THE DOCUMENTS?!”

The walls of Vermillion Cyberspace trembled like they'd heard the voice of the apocalypse. An apocalypse wearing a black suit, brooding intensity, and enough passive-aggressive rage to power a small country.

Inside his glass-walled office, CEO Theo van Gogh. Yes, that van Gogh—no, not the painter, but equally dramatic. He stood like an avenging spirit of corporate efficiency.

Papers rustled in fear. Coffee machines in the break room paused mid-brew. Somewhere on the 11th floor, an intern dropped his mug and whispered, “He’s summoning her again.”

Cue the flustered arrival of Selena Collins—overworked, underpaid, and currently balancing exactly nine folders, two iced coffees, and the crushing weight of capitalism on her narrow shoulders.

“I—I’ve got them!” she gasped, bursting through the doors like a tornado of paper cuts and caffeine. A folder instantly betrayed her, exploding in a blizzard of quarterly reports across the polished marble floor. One page fluttered directly onto Theo’s pristinely shined shoes.

He didn’t move.

He didn’t have to.

His eyebrow twitched.

In the hallway outside, Ericka and Nezumi, Selena's only two friends and emotional support gossip gremlins, peeked around the corner like spies on a reality show.

“Oh, she’s done,” Nezumi murmured, already planning Selena's memorial slideshow. “We’ll need sad music. Maybe something with violins and rain.”

“I swear,” Ericka hissed, fanning herself with a stolen HR brochure. “Theo only made her his secretary to punish her for rejecting his love.”

“Right?” Nezumi whispered back. “Like, what possessed her to say no to a man who looks like he was sculpted during a thunderstorm by lonely gods?”

“She’s built like a gasoline tank discarded in the '80s,” Ericka continued solemnly, “and he’s a tragic anime protagonist dipped in silk and unresolved trauma.”

Back inside the office, Selena scrambled to pick up the documents, muttering apologies while mentally composing her resignation letter, her eulogy, and possibly her escape plan to Tibet.

Theo finally moved, slowly bending to pick up a single paper, holding it like it offended his bloodline.

“You labeled this,” he said, monotone, “as Monthly Financial Summary.”

Selena smiled weakly. “Yes, sir.”

“It’s a restaurant menu.”

She blinked. “Oh. That… That might be mine.”

Theo stared at her for a long, soul-sucking moment. The kind of silence that made even the potted plant by the window question its existence. Then, ever so slowly, he turned his gaze toward the city skyline like he was mentally debating whether divine intervention or gravity would be more efficient in ending this conversation.

“So,” he finally said, voice low and clipped, “where are the documents I told you to place on my desk before I arrive?”

Selena blinked. Then casually raised a perfectly disheveled stack of papers like a sacrificial offering. “Here.”

His gaze flicked down. “And why aren’t they on my table?”

Selena drew a slow, theatrical breath. “Because you, your ominous broodingness, are technically thirty minutes early,” she said, dropping the documents onto his desk with the elegance of someone who had mentally quit three times already this week. “There. On your table. Anything else? Shall I sing you a hymn?”

Theo’s jaw ticked. “Are you mocking me, Miss Wang?”

“Definitely not, your highness sir," Selena replied, smiling with all the warmth of a passive-aggressive toaster. “How could I possibly mock my beloved CEO? What a crime. How dare me. I live in constant awe of your moody magnificence.”

His eyes narrowed dangerously. “If you’re under the illusion that I’m being lenient just because I once confessed my feelings for you—”

“Ohhh, let’s pretend that never happened,” Selena interrupted, holding up a hand like a traffic cop stopping an incoming emotional landslide. “Besides, I’m well aware you’ve got a thing for petite women with tragic back stories and eyeliner sharper than your personality, so—”

“How insolent of you!” Theo snapped, slamming a hand on the desk like the final act of a tragic opera. The documents flinched. One ghost—yes, there was absolutely a ghost floating near the printer—ducked behind the copier for safety.

Selena didn’t flinch. She was too used to this. Although she couldn't really see them well, she felt their presence. She was basically the queen of surviving emotionally unstable workplace environments and men with god complexes.

“Please,” Selena said, arms crossed and eyebrows arched. “If I had a penny for every time you declared your authority dramatically, I could afford my own espresso machine and stop drinking the brown sorrow water in the break room.”

Theo didn’t even blink. “You can’t afford your own rentals. Why are you dreaming about appliances?”

Selena gave a majestic shrug. “Well, if you and your blessed-by-generational-wealth company actually paid me what I’m worth, I could afford two espresso machines. One for home, one for emotional support.”

Theo fell silent.

Because unfortunately… she had a point.

While he was the CEO, technically, his salary decisions still went through one man... his father. And Daddy Van Gogh, who believed employees should earn raises only through blood oaths and corporate soul-binding rituals, denied every single salary increase like it personally offended his ancestors.

So Theo did what all powerful-yet-powerless executives do in times of confrontation, he dodged accountability with style.

“Go get me more coffee,” he said instead, his voice dropping an octave and his eyes narrowing into supernatural slits of disapproval.

For a moment, Selena could’ve sworn the lights dimmed. Or maybe her soul just briefly left her body from the sheer force of his drama.

“You know,” she muttered, grabbing the mug, “one day you’ll say that and poof, I’ll never return. I’ll run away. To Prague. Or Cebu. Or even the other side of the office. The side with natural light.”

Theo ignored her entirely, straightening the already perfect alignment of his Montblanc pens as if her presence was static interfering with his aesthetic balance.

To be fair, Theo did have a certain aesthetic—that of a vampire prince moonlighting as a CEO.

Despite coming from a polished European family, he’d apparently absorbed none of their beach side genes and all of his formidable Chinese grandmother’s legacy: piercing dark eyes, tall as a tree, 6'3" of quiet menace, and bone structure sharp enough to file contracts on.

If he stood next to an actual ghost, there was a good chance someone would point at Theo and say, “Wow. That one’s definitely dead.”

It wasn’t just his looks, it was the pale skin. The eerie silence when he moved, and that unblinking way he stared at people as if calculating both their productivity and their soul's market value.

Honestly, Selena had started placing talismans in her drawer just in case.

She glanced back at him from the door. “You want your coffee with cream, sugar, or a drop of my slowly draining will to live?”

He didn’t answer. Just gave her a withering look that could wither actual plants.

“Right,” she muttered. “Emotionally constipated brew it is.”

And with that, she marched off, head high and sarcasm intact.

Behind her, Theo adjusted his tie and whispered to no one in particular, “Why her, of all people…”

But fate… and a very ancient contract buried under centuries of spiritual red tape… had already made that decision.

Unfortunately, no one told Selena.

The moment she stepped into the dimly lit Vermillion Cafeteria, a place that smelled faintly of burnt coffee, existential dread, and someone’s forgotten tuna sandwich, she shivered.

“Ugh,” she muttered, rubbing her arms. “That man probably cursed me. With corporate misery or hair loss.”

She marched toward the coffee machine like a woman on the brink—on a mission for caffeine, sanity, and a single moment of peace. But peace was not part of the divine plan.

Just as her hand reached for the stack of flimsy disposable cups, a cold ripple passed through her.

She froze.

Not the kind of cold from overworked air conditioning. No. This was spectral cold. An aura. It slithered through her spine, across her skin, and into the back of her mind like static on an old television.

Her jaw clenched. "Nope. Nope. Not today."

Because lately, very lately, things had gotten visually terrifying. The ghosts, the figures, half-formed whispers standing near the vending machine. And lately… they were getting bolder. Clearer. Solid, even.

“Maybe it’s Theo’s fault,” she muttered, clutching a cup like a weapon. “This is definitely stress-induced hallucinations due to being underpaid."

But what she didn’t notice, because she was too busy bargaining with the coffee machine, was the tall figure leaning casually by the cafeteria’s glass door frame.

Yin Sakamoto.

Technically an intern. Spiritually a celestial enigma.

He was tall, nearly as tall as Theo, but less funeral gloom and more ethereal dream. He had albinism, giving him a snow-pale complexion and a strange, unworldly glow under the terrible cafeteria lighting.

His hair was silvery white and soft-looking enough to be shampoo commercial-worthy. His blue eyes were too blue. Like glacier water or ancient sky temples or the kind of blue that made poets spiral, swoon, or twerk aggressively. It depends honestly.

Everything about him screamed “gentle soul” or “possible sword-wielding oracle.” He wore the company intern lanyard like a joke, because he was not, in any universe, a regular intern.

Yin tilted his head slightly, his smile curling like he’d just read a plot twist before the rest of the audience.

“Hmm… so the wind god was right,” he said quietly, mostly to himself. His eyes flicked to Selena, specifically to the faint glowing yellow sigil blooming on her chest.

Not visible to mortals, of course. Only to divine eyes.

“She really is the successor,” he mused, grinning with just enough mischief to hint he knew way too much.

Selena, still unaware she was being observed like the subject of a celestial scavenger hunt, finally succeeded in brewing what looked like suspiciously oily coffee. She took one sip and gagged.

“This tastes like betrayal,” she muttered.

Yin watched her with faint amusement, already reaching for his phone. “Gotta tell the wind god. The land god messed up big time.”

But before he could hit send, Selena turned around, her instincts firing off like a squirrel in a thunderstorm, and locked eyes with him.

They stared.

He smiled, all calm and holy serenity.