27 - Parasitism

Slowly but surely, I staggered towards the center of the road with an unnatural gait. I tossed out my self-restraint and leapt at the silver edge, twitching like a bug sprayed with insecticide.

That's when it finally clicked. Maybe I wasn't a failed emergence. The problem might have come earlier than that. Right. Now that I thought about it, it made sense. From the moment I was dropped into this world, everything—including my place of birth—was wrong. That was when something bad got into me. That 'something bad' had migrated from my body to my brain and now controlled its host's actions.

I was parasitized a long time ago.

The parasites that infested me thrived on the electrical signals my brain produced when I felt pain. They operated their host by stimulating my nervous system, getting me to go places where I'd get hurt. It's not a matter of love or hate. It seems like the temptation comes from my brainworms. They were what drove me now.

I was drawn towards the knife-wielding man like a praying mantis parasitized by a horsehair worm staggers towards a body of water. My difficulty walking was probably intentional; it was something that made me easier prey to eat. Birds prefer eating moving insects to unmoving ones, but if an insect moves too intentionally, it'll scare the bird away.

That's why the parasites made my movements seem weak. The reality was I was the most suitable bait around. My legs and vision are both impaired. If you released ten bugs at once, you'd expect the bird to go for the one that was missing a wing and couldn't fly very well.

"Tateha, where are you going?"

I could hear Ruri-chan's voice behind me, but it only got as far as my eardrum. It wasn't conducted to my brain, or to my heart. I was fixated on going to a source of pain.

The man was less than five meters away. His lips twisted as he spotted me. Oh, how I missed this. He made the same face Ruri-chan made when she dragged me to the bathroom for the first time.

This person's emergence almost certainly hadn’t been good, either. A hundred people had gone down this road, and me and him were the only ones who couldn't walk properly. That, more than anything, was proof.

The knife blade was more than long enough. Getting stabbed with that would definitely make it into the bone. I felt a nervous energy imagining it scraping away at my vitality.

I'm finally doing it. It's finally going to happen… No, I wasn't breaking into a cold sweat, that was just my body activating its lubricating oils.

"Stop! Tateha, stop!" A piercing voice echoed down the street. Ruri-chan stepped out in front of me and stared down the man in front of us.

"Hey you, what the hell? What… that's a… knife? Drop it! Put it down!" Her legs shook so much it was almost comical. The overwhelming fear was visible on her back. "Get down, Tateha! Someone! Someone call the police! This guy! There's a knife! He has a knife!"

With every step the man took, Ruri-chan took a step back. Everyone's eyes were fixed on the man's hand. The atmosphere was suddenly on edge, as if imitating the knife's blade. But the man didn't stop.

I understood the feeling of not being able to stop. Painfully so. It's not that he didn't want to stop, it's that he couldn't. You can't keep yourself from blinking. Consciously or not, the relief and comfort that blinking gives you is enough to awaken a desire to do it that sleeps deep inside.

You can't fight it.

—Ruri-chan's body jolted.

The man and her almost looked glued together. The night streets fell silent. It was like time had stopped.

When the man stepped back from Ruri-chan, there wasn't a knife in his hand. Ruri-chan bent to her knees. There was a red splotch spreading on her white shirt when she curled up weakly.

"Ruri-chan?" I called as I ran over to her. There was an anguished expression on her face as she clutched her side. "Ah."

There was something sticking out of Ruri-chan's stomach.

…No, not 'something'. It was the tempting silver gleam of that long, sharp knife that sprouted out of her. The red stain grew rapidly. The front of her shirt was already completely soaked.

"Tateha…" We locked eyes. Her pupils were cloudy; a light like a hanging lantern was floating away and fading. "…Were… you hurt?"

"No."

"That's… good…" Her words trailed off into irregular gasps.

I knew exactly what that breathing was. Unbearable pain paralyzes the body and makes you forget how to breathe. You gasp for oxygen despite not knowing whether you're breathing in or out. The contours of your consciousness disappear and start to mix with the pins and needles in your arms and legs.

…It made me jealous.

"Hey! Are you okay?! I'm calling an ambulance now!"

A passerby with a phone came over. It sounded like Ruri-chan was saying 'thank you very much', but the back half vanished into thin air.

A crowd was forming, and in the middle of it was Ruri-chan, curled up and clutching where the knife had stabbed her.

"Ruri-chan." I called out to her as she lay there. This was definitely my only chance. If I didn't ask now, I'd never be able to. "Does it hurt?"

What lived inside that open wound? What kind of color will a bloodless body settle on? Is your heart pounding? Can you feel your body getting colder? Did it feel good to get stabbed without seeing it coming? How does it feel like one of those anime heroines we saw when we were little, when they were trapped with no escape and waited for rescue with an anguished expression?

"What’s the pain like? Where does it hurt? On a scale of one to ten, how bad does it hurt? Please, tell me."

Ruri-chan's response was slow to come. I shook her shoulders, and the people around me started getting angry. But I had to have an answer. I'd spent my whole life wondering. And here, now, the spectacle I had always dreamed about since I was little was happening before my very eye. Obviously, I wasn't the one who was stabbed, but I wanted to taste as much of that pain as I could.

"Maybe… about a ten… it's crazy… how much this hurts…" she heroically replied.

"So it is like that! I–It’s like I thought, it's the most painful thing that can happen!"

I couldn't keep my excitement down. While the pain of getting hit or crushed had merit, unsurprisingly the worst pain a person could feel was the sensation of their nerves and muscles getting severed with a sharp stab.

"Are you able to put up with it? Is the pain unbearable?"

Assuming it was unbearable, I wondered what would happen next. Where would that unendurable pain, impossible to handle and given free rein, take someone? I'm guessing it's death, right?

"…I can deal with it." Ruri-chan flashed a fearless smile and looked at me. "After all, it's the same thing I did… no, what I did was worse… so I have to go through with this."

Her hand reached out for me. Those bloodstained fingertips brushed my right eye.

"Getting stabbed… like this… it really hurts, huh?"

She gave the wrong answer. That's not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to know about the ultimate form of the thing I was always after. I liked getting hurt. I didn't feel satisfied unless I felt pain. I didn't have an interest in anything else.

Pain pain pain pain pain pain pain.

The parasites infesting me were running riot.

"Tateha…" That finger… That warmth… She gently touched my windhole. "I did… awful stuff… I'm… sorry… okay…?"

Tears fell from her eyes. The instant they did, a sharp pain shot through my heart. An intense white light spread through my field of view, as if cleansing my brain—my consciousness.

What the? What is this? It hurt. My chest hurt, and I couldn't stand it. It was the strongest pain I'd ever felt. The intense pain that gnawed away at my heart couldn't be expressed on a scale of one to ten.

"……Tateha?"

"Th-This hurts…"

I couldn't stand it. There's no way I could stand it. I couldn't escape the crazy intense pain attacking me. It was worse than the mechanical pencil stabbing me, worse than when my wounds were cauterized, worse than when my earring got torn out... the pain was a way, way, way worse than any of those.

So there was a pain like this. Pain could hurt this much. A mere knife wasn't a match. This exact thing was the worst pain a person could experience. And yet, despite that, it didn't feel good.

Not in the slightest.

"Ruri-chan."

I hated it. I hated this pain.

Why? Even though it was painful, even though it felt like my body was about to totally disintegrate and my nerves were burning away, it was so repulsive it made me want to tear my heart out. Why?

"You're not going to die, are you?"

I couldn't tell whether she was still bleeding or not because her shirt was covered in bright red.

"…I don't know…"

Ruri-chan's lightless eyes stared into empty space. The number of people in the crowd growing concerned for her condition was increasing. One person reached to pull the knife out of her stomach.

"Don't pull it out!"

I was surprised by how loud my voice was. If the knife was pulled out, she'd lose all of her blood. It was the thing keeping the blood dammed back. If it got pulled out, Ruri-chan would…

I could hear the sound of distant sirens.

The sharp pain that weighed on my chest made it feel like I was barfing my heart onto the ground when I spoke.

"Don't die."

Ruri-chan smiled for some reason as she reached out to me. She placed a hand on my cheek and tried to caress it. The fluid that had accumulated in my lightless right eye was gushing out. She scooped up some of it with a finger. The teardrop that floated on her fingertip reflected the lights like the stars and planets in the night sky.

That teardrop, those tears… they were like the ultimate proof that a bug’s wings were spreading and taking to the sky. My syrupy, melted body contained plenty of memories, experiences, desires, and instincts, and they would form my flesh and blood.

My eye, my nose, my ears. Ruri-chan's voice flowed through me, rinsing away the contaminants that filled my body. The things that had been wriggling around in the cavity that would become my flesh and blood were no longer there.

The ambulance arrived and Ruri-chan was carried away on a stretcher. My breathing mixed with sobs as the sirens grew further away.

Dead parasites laid lifelessly in the mix of puke and Ruri-chan's blood.