Chapter 11: It firmly believed it had basically mastered human social etiquette.
It was the middle of the night when she returned to her apartment.
Cough, cough… Cheng Ming leaned over the sink, blood frothing from her mouth and nose, spattering the white porcelain surface like spray paint.
Without time to clean up, she gasped for breath and urgently injected herself with an inhibitor.
As the blood flowed, she could even feel new cells merging into her body, fusing with the “native” ones, triggering an acute rejection reaction from her immune system. Pain began to spread everywhere, and her nerves and muscles lost control.
Her fingers spasmed, her vision blurred. A red mark was pressed into her abdomen. A strand of hair, tangled into a tentacle, gently supported her wrist, helping her press the switch on the injector.
It was a very considerate gesture, but it did nothing to defuse the explosive emotions of its host.
“What the hell are you doing?” The drug took effect, slowing the fusion process. The dizziness subsided slightly. Cheng Ming suppressed her gasps and stared fiercely at her reflection in the mirror, for the first time displaying such undisguised anger and hostility. “Are you collaborating with it to murder me?”
Tonight’s unexpected encounter was a reenactment of history.
Prey and hunter reversed, all technological means cast aside, a primitive, naked struggle between creatures of nature. The difference was, this time the opponent seemed to be in its reproductive stage, its spores scattering everywhere, attempting to take root in flesh and blood, to occupy this delicious new body.
With previous experience, although she was in a sorry state, Cheng Ming managed to avoid being entangled by the mycelia. Unfortunately, her mask was torn off, and the spore powder was inhaled into her respiratory tract. Her throat felt like it was filled with sand, and as she coughed, she tasted a strong metallic flavor mixed with the stench of the sea, as if she had chewed a mouthful of seabed sand filled with the decaying corpses of countless plants and animals.
The enemy was more difficult to deal with, but her own support was offline. The parasite was as good as gone.
At such a critical moment, it played deaf and dumb, remaining motionless until Cheng Ming, unable to bear it any longer, shouted, “Xiao Ming!”
She didn’t know if it had responded.
The fungal spores opened their tendrils in her airway. She was like a fish thrown onto the shore, her internal organs crushed by the air pressure. Breathing became increasingly difficult, her brain was dizzy from lack of oxygen, and colored spots overlapped in her vision.
What happened next, she wasn’t sure if the Fish-Fungus inside her had finally intervened, or if it was a primal survival instinct triggered by being pushed to the limit, her adrenaline surging… In any case, she had counter-attacked and devoured the opponent.
Fortunately, the one she encountered this time seemed to be only a part of the separated mycelia, far less powerful than the main body.
The next thing she knew, she was falling heavily from the ventilation shaft into the bathroom. There was a thin layer of water on the floor. The dual stimulation of cold and pain made her stumble to her feet and search for the medicine.
She didn’t know how many enemies she was facing. If the Fish-Fungus decided to stir up trouble now, she really didn’t know what would happen to her.
The most terrifying part was that she couldn’t figure out its thoughts. Did this creature even have “thoughts”? Or did it act purely on instinct?
“If I wanted to harm you, I wouldn’t have warned you in the first place.” Faced with her questioning, its voice was calm as it defended itself, sounding quite logical.
But to Cheng Ming at this moment, it was completely unconvincing.
Who knew if it was because it hadn’t recognized the other party’s origin at first?
She gritted her teeth, her words coming faster. “Then what were you waiting for later? For me to die?”
If it weren’t for the fact that current technology couldn’t keep a brainless person alive, she really wanted to take out her brain, give it a good rinse, and flush this clumsy, obstructive, and unloving Fish-Fungus down the drain!
“Your death would do me no good.” Being repeatedly suspected, Xiao Ming finally became angry and flustered. “I just didn’t want to be discovered by it, and I especially didn’t want to eat it, do you understand? It smells disgusting, a reeking male!”
To put it in a common, even vulgar, human phrase, it saw the other as food, but the other wanted to hit on it.
It all sounded too absurd.
So much so that when the last word fell, besides the dripping of the sink, there was complete silence—the suddenly agitated parasite had startled the already agitated Cheng Ming. And so, she strangely calmed down.
“…” She opened and closed her mouth several times, and finally, raised her voice in disbelief, “You’re female?”
“You are female, so of course I am female!”
No, shouldn’t you be hermaphroditic or have multiple gender modes… wait, its other half is a fish… Cheng Ming felt her mind was in a mess.
Too much of a mess.
She needed a moment.
Her previous teasing was only because she had never regarded it as an independent individual, had never seen it as an equal in human terms—a parasite, what “independence,” what “individual”?
But now, suddenly knowing its gender, knowing that it could also be called “she,” knowing that it had a temper, a personality, seemingly just like her, with no difference… Cheng Ming felt an inexplicable sense of discomfort.
Even the “hair” hanging on her arm felt like a different kind of touch.
A tendon in her hand twitched. She moved her fingers and shook off the strand of mycelia.
She looked up at the mirror again, paused, and just as she was about to speak—
“I’m sorry.”
Xiao Ming had spoken first.
“It’s a good supplement, but the smell is too awful. I didn’t want to get close.”
Cheng Ming: “…”
Why did that sound like she was going to eat garbage, and it had tried to stop her but failed, so it had to let her have an extra meal?
Everything was fine a moment ago, but now she felt a little nauseous.
She couldn’t help but cover her mouth and cough a few times. The mottled blood spots stained her pale fingertips a faint red.
This seemed to be a bug in the distribution of mutated cells. The skin, which was an external barrier, and the internal organs, which maintained internal balance, could both trigger the body’s attention when injured, causing rapid division of new cells to compensate. However, the respiratory and digestive tracts, which were seemingly part of the internal environment but were actually classified as external, healed a bit slowly.
“I’m sorry I let you get hurt.”
Another apology.
It was so sudden that the indescribable strange feeling in Cheng Ming’s heart was like ants gnawing at it… Its human-like behavior was a bit too much for her to handle.
“I can help you heal.”
Huh?
Cheng Ming asked, “How are you going to—”
She couldn’t finish the question.
Not because she didn’t want to, but because she never expected it to be so unreasonable.
The strand of mycelia she had just shaken off crawled back up her forearm, and in the blink of an eye, it passed her neck and slipped to her chin. Before she could react, it darted into her slightly parted lips.
An itchy sensation brushed over her teeth and tongue, deep into her mouth and down her throat.
Cheng Ming had never had an endoscopy, but from what she had heard others describe, the level of pain was probably about the same as what she was experiencing now.
“Mmph…” Her body uncontrollably curled up and spasmed. The tip of the mycelia swelled into an appressorium, secreting mucus to aid its movement, firmly adhering to and covering the mucosal wound. The sensation of a foreign object invading was overwhelming wherever it passed.
“Cough, cough, cough!” She arched her back, trying to spit it out, but only managed to make herself look more pathetic. Physiological tears streamed down her face, and the corners of her eyes were a large patch of red.
When the “treatment” was finally over and the mycelia withdrew, Cheng Ming felt like she had died and come back to life. She leaned on the sink for support, gasping for breath in front of the mirror, fogging it up.
Whoosh. The faucet was turned on. Xiao Ming washed the mucus off its tendrils and then considerately wrapped a wet wipe around them to wipe her face.
She tried to turn her head away, but the mycelia forced it back—her entire head of beautiful hair was an extension of Xiao Ming’s claws and fangs, where could she hide? And because of her violent struggle, her lips and tongue were scratched, and she could taste the distinct sweet, metallic taste and stinging pain.
It was called treatment, but this rough “doctor” had given her countless new wounds.
Although these minor injuries healed quickly, they couldn’t erase the psychological trauma they had caused her.
She was wrong. What human-like behavior?
This was just a stupid, selfish, and willful monster!
“Isn’t it much better?” It was even asking for credit.
Indeed, her throat didn’t hurt as much when she spoke, but the feeling of a foreign object was still there when she swallowed, and her voice was even hoarser than before. Cheng Ming listened to its earnest concern, and the friendly greeting of “what the hell is wrong with you” was stuck in her throat.
“Thank you so much…” she gritted her teeth, raised her trembling left hand, and squeezed the tip of the hair that was about to retreat.
But besides pulling her own scalp painfully, it couldn’t cause any substantial damage to the other party.
“You’re welcome,” Xiao Ming said politely.
It even tried hard to wag the end of its mycelia—although the movement was small and didn’t shake.
It thought Cheng Ming was shaking its hand.
It firmly believed it had basically mastered human social etiquette.
“…” Cheng Ming relaxed her palm, closed her eyes dizzily, and murmured weakly, “If only you were human…”
That way, she could at least use physical force to persuade it.
