I Let a Greek God Move In
So, yeah. Story time: I ended up serving Zeus.
The moment I fell asleep, that insufferable nightmare began again, right on schedule.
Except this time, unlike my usual dreams where everything was smudged and blurry at the edges, the world around me was razor-sharp.
A dreamscape thick with fog. Across the span of an endless river stood an old man in white funeral garb, leaning on a walking staff.
I'd never seen his face before in my life, but that benevolent smile, the vibe radiating off his whole getup — he looked exactly like the classic ancestor who shows up on holidays just to collect his offering table.
Then it happened.
The gently standing ancestor suddenly flung his staff to the ground, collapsed where he sat, and began wailing like a child.
"You fool—! Do not go there! You must not! That place is wicked and profane! How dare you take a worthless western false god as your patron! Accept me, your ancestor, at once!"
At my ancestor's piteous, desperate cry, my shallow little heart began to waver hard.
Well — honestly, he was blood kin. Surely your own ancestor wouldn't try to hurt his own descendant, right?
And there he was, an old man with a head full of white hair, weeping mournfully across the river. The Confucian dragon asleep in some corner of my chest woke up, and a guilt I hadn't even earned came creeping up on me.
Come to think of it, I really had lost my mind earlier that day. Thoroughly.
One troll post in the gallery and I'd gone blind — offered up a single can of beer rolling around in my fridge, of all things, not even leftover chicken, and started shouting about Lord Brother Zeus. What kind of sane person does that? This is Korea, for crying out loud. The land ruled by school ties, regional ties, and blood ties — the ultimate cartel that chews up everything else.
However mighty the King of the Greek gods was supposed to be, would that guy really cut any slack to some foreigner's situation on the opposite side of the planet?
No, my own ancestor would understand me best.
Truly, blood is thicker than water.
"Grandfather?"
Looking at his face up close, though, he was nothing like my paternal grandfather.
The beard stretched all the way down to his chest — if anything, he looked far older than my grandfather ever did.
"Um... ancestor? You don't seem to be my paternal grandfather, so... great-grandfather? Or great-great? Or great-great-great? Exactly how many generations back are you?"
"...What?"
The old man's face, moments ago wringing out tears in sorrowful wailing, went slack with disbelief in an instant.
"Well, you're a blood ancestor, so I have to get the generational count right before I can serve you with peace of mind! When I set out your holiday offering table, I need to give you a proper bow!"
"You — you lunatic...! Just call me 'Ancestor'! What does generational counting matter at a moment this urgent?!"
My ancestor bellowed, utterly flabbergasted.
"You can't call yourself the eldest son of the main family line if you're not diligent about the genealogy! And last I heard, ours is a true yangban lineage — not one of those bought registries!"
"That is not the point, you fool!!"
"Okay, okay, fine! We'll sort out what to call you later with the family registry book — so what do I need to do right now?"
My ancestor heaved great sighs, forcing his anger back down. Then, with a trembling finger, he pointed at my right hand.
"Look at your wrist."
I followed his gaze downward. A single thin red thread was wound around my right wrist. Its far end stretched away into the fog-drowned void, vanishing somewhere impossibly distant.
"Sever that wicked red thread and cross this river at once! Do so, and you will live!"
"Oh, I just need to cut this one thread? That's super easy."
Without hesitation I moved to snap the thread off my wrist.
I tried flicking it hard, yanking it between both hands, and even giving it a merciless chew with my front teeth.
But the slender red thread didn't lose so much as a single strand — it didn't even scratch.
"Uh, Ancestor! This thing won't cut?! It's insanely tough?!"
"Bah, what a tiresome boy! If it won't cut, then leave it on your wrist and cross the river, quickly! Hurry! There is no time!"
Blue veins stood out alarmingly on my ancestor's neck, and his voice was drenched in desperate urgency.
"You wretched fool! Stop wasting time and cross the river already!!"
The benevolent expression of my white-robed ancestor had vanished without a trace — his face now contorted and savage as a demon of hell.
"Yes, yes! Going, going! What's with all the rushing...?"
Harried by his repeated urging, red thread still wound around my wrist, I had just set my foot into the river when—
—KRAKOOOOOM!!!
Everything flashed blinding white.
A thunderclap split my eardrums, and a house-sized bolt of lightning came crashing down out of a clear sky.
Precisely onto the crown of my ancestor's head, his hand still outstretched toward me across the river.
"GWAAAAGH—!!"
Struck dead-on by the bolt, my ancestor let out a horrific scream as his whole body began to char black.
"Gah! Ancestor!!"
Unable to contain my horror, I jabbed a finger at the sky and roared.
"Whoever the hell you are, get down here right now! Did you decide you're going to ruin my whole family line?! We're a respectable family with a proper genealogy! If you fry my ancestor into an electric rotisserie chicken, who am I supposed to hold rites for?! Who?! WHO?!"
Then—
Kuuuguugung—!
The fog cloaking the sky split apart, and bathed in brilliant lightning, a colossal figure revealed itself.
A jawline sharp as a razor blade. Shoulders wide as the Pacific, a neck like a tree trunk, and ostentatious muscle mass that would make professional bodybuilders weep with envy.
...Huh? Why does that look so familiar?
It was the exact GigaChad-style Zeus illustration I'd googled and taped to my wall while praying earlier. The moment I saw those absurdly perfect muscles, I knew exactly who he was.
"Z...Zeus?!"
I thrust my finger at the still-charring ancestor and yelled until my throat burned.
"Hey!! You think being King of the Greek gods means anything goes?! Just because you're king of the gods, you get to deep-fry somebody's ancestor with a lightning bolt?! Answer me, you gangster bastard!"
At that, the giant wreathed in brilliant lightning exhaled a deep sigh. That single breath alone raised a mighty tremor, shaking the entire dream world to its roots.
"Foolish child. Restrain your hasty rage, and look closely at the true nature of the one you called ancestor."
"What? Look at what... huh?"
Perplexed by Zeus's words, I turned my head back across the river. And the moment I looked, my pointing finger froze solid.
My ancestor, charred black by the bolt. The old man who had looked so benevolent was grotesquely swelling up — like a thin sheet of plastic on a griddle — before smoothly melting away.
Skeeee—!
A nauseating stench rose up. And from beneath the mud-like sludge of the melted human skin burst a shape that was monstrous beyond all description — a thing as far from my kindly ancestor as anything could be.
A hunched, shrunken frame. Skin rotting a corpse-blue. A skeletal body with a bloated, protruding belly that didn't belong on it, and between its gaping jaws, beast-like fangs bared as it shrieked an inhuman wail.
"...Uh? What is that?"
"An evil spirit that sought to deceive you and steal your body. Had you been lured across that river, it would have taken your soul and reduced you to its puppet."
The blasted spirit let out one last wretched scream, then crumbled apart and scattered into a handful of ash.
"Oh, so that's why he dodged when I asked what generation he was... He wasn't my ancestor after all!"
Slyly, I lowered the finger I'd raised at the sky while sizing up Zeus, and reverently pressed both hands together at my chest.
At the speed of light, I pivoted my stance as if my earlier tirade had never happened.
"My lord Zeus, it truly is you! I nearly fell for that hideous evil spirit and stamped my name on a slave contract! You are the light itself! All hail Olympus!"
At the shameless flattery, Zeus gave a "hmph hmph" of a cough and squared his chest proudly.
"Hm! I heard the... ass-kiss— ahem, the earnest prayer you offered, and have descended here in person!"
...Pretty sure he almost said "ass-kissing ritual" just now.
"For some rootless mongrel to covet my one and only... ahem, my treasured believer! The crime of defiling the master of Olympus demands that its soul be burned to nothing!"
His true feelings definitely slipped out with that "one and only," but I decided to let it slide.
His voice carried the full majesty of a king of gods — and yet, somewhere underneath, it reeked heavily of an RPG veteran panicking at the thought of losing the newbie he'd found for the first time in thousands of years.
Anyway...
I studied the divine form of Zeus looming over me with careful attention.
"By the way, Lord Zeus. Why does your appearance look... exactly, and I mean perfectly, like that GigaZeus picture I printed off the internet and stuck on my wall?"
At the question, Zeus ran a finger along his razor-sharp jawline and laughed boisterously, thoroughly pleased with himself.
"Hahaha! I merely borrowed the form of the sacred image my believer raised up in my honor! And I find it quite agreeable. This keen jaw, these explosive muscles... is this not a magnificent visage befitting the King of the Gods?!"
He even raised both arms into a double-biceps pose like a bodybuilder, which threw me off a little — but the fact remained that those muscles and that lightning bolt had saved my life.
And above all, the vicious headaches and the whispers in my ears that had been tormenting me half to death for the past several months were gone, washed away clean, as if they'd never existed.
It felt like ten years of indigestion lifting all at once.
"...Wow. So this stuff actually works."
It had been an act of pure desperation. To escape the predatory bosses who'd force me to sign slave contracts, I'd grabbed some western god with no connection to me whatsoever, offered a can of beer, and groveled on the floor. I never dreamed that a prayer thrown up in a spirit of whatever-happens-happens would actually reach the master of Olympus.
Wait. Hold on a second.
Just as I was basking in the gratitude, a chill ran down my spine.
Driving out the evil spirit — great. The possession symptoms vanishing — also great.
But I was currently communicating with Zeus, directly and in perfect clarity, inside a dream, wasn't I?
And the guy clearly doted on me like I was his one and only believer.
...Oh, wait a minute. Doesn't this mean I just received Zeus's divine possession?!
After fighting tooth and nail to avoid becoming a shaman, I had gone and become a rootless, lineage-free Western shaman — serving the King of the Greek gods himself.