Table Of ContentParasite in Love
Sugaru Miaki
Translated by vgperson
EPUB by Nephery
ASCII Media Works
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Prologue
Chapter 1: Poisolation
Chapter 2: Computer Worm
Chapter 3: The Lady Who Loved Insects
Chapter 4: This Wormy World
Chapter 5: Winter Wormderland
Chapter 6: So Good It Bugs Me
Chapter 7: Bed Bugs’ Bite
Chapter 8: An Epidemic of Absence
Chapter 9: Parasite in Love
Afterword
The colorful extravagance of some birds,
the deliberately excessive horns, manes, and tusks of some
mammals,
the complex courting behavior of many animals,
the very existence of sex itself -
and by extension the love songs on the radio,
and all the love-addled poems ever written -
all likely evolved because of parasites,
because all organisms must run as fast as they can
just to stay in place.
- Moises Velasquez-Manoff
“An Epidemic of Absence”
Kengo Kousaka, who joined a small local systems
development company after graduating college, decided to
quit a year after coming on for reasons that would make
anyone raise an eyebrow. From then on, this would repeat in
a similar way almost yearly, and in his rolling about between
jobs, he suddenly fell into depression. But he had no
awareness of his illness; even at the worst of times, when he
was so depressed as to find breathing a chore, even when he
suddenly found temptations of death crossing his mind,
even when he started weeping at night for no apparent
reason, he thought it was all the fault of the winter cold.
It happened in winter when he was age 27. It was a bizarre
winter, come to think of it. There were a number of
meetings, and a number of farewells. There were happy
coincidences and unhappy accidents. There were things that
changed vastly, and things that didn’t change at all.
That winter, he experienced a rather late first love. It was a
girl ten years his younger. An unemployed, depressed young
man, and a bug-loving school-skipping girl. It wasn’t proper
in any sense, but it was undeniably love.
— ◆ —
“Lifelong copulation?”, Kousaka repeated.
“Yes, lifelong,” the girl nodded. “Diplozoon paradoxum
spend half their lives fused with their partner.”
The girl produced a keychain and held it in front of
Kousaka.
“This is D. paradoxum.”
Kousaka brought his face close and looked it over. Its
design was simplified, but it appeared as if it was modeled
after a creature with two pairs of wings. The fore and rear
wings differed, the fore pair being about three times the size
of the rear pair. At a glance, it just looked like a butterfly.
“And despite how beautiful it looks, it’s a bona-fide
parasite, belonging to Platyhelminthes Monogenea.”
“Looks like a plain old butterfly.”
“Look closer. No antennae, right?”
Just as the girl said, the creature had no antennae. One
could assume they were simply omitted for convenience of
design, but the girl considered it an important distinction.
“This actually depicts two D. paradoxum conjoined in an X
shape.” The girl formed an X with her fingers.
“So since you say they do lifelong copulation,” Kousaka
said, trying to find the proper expression, “after they
conjoin, they’re constantly having sex?”
“In a sense, yes. Each one’s male sexual parts connect to
the other’s female sexual parts.”
“Each one’s…?”
“Yeah. D. paradoxum have both male and female sexual
organs. Which they call hermaphroditism. So you might
think they could self-fertilize without a partner, but for
some reason, they don’t do that. They put in the effort to
find a partner, then exchange sperm.”
Kousaka grinned bitterly. “Talk about luxurious.”
“The fact they dare to do with someone else what they
could just do alone is kind of loathsome, huh?”, the girl
agreed. “But there are things to learn from that. For instance,
D. paradoxum aren’t fussy about partners. As if treating their
love at first sight as destiny, they’ll combine with the first of
their kind they ever meet without any qualms. Also, D.
paradoxum don’t abandon their partners to the last. Once D.
paradoxum join together, they never let go of each other. If
you try to tear them apart, they’ll die.”
“That’s why it’s lifelong copulation,” Kousaka said,
impressed. “Amazing. Like a happily-wedded couple.”
“Yes. Like birds of a feather, like entwined roots,” the girl
said proudly, as if one of her relatives was being
complimented. “As a bonus, these parasites inhabit koi.”
“Koi?”
“Yes - so they’re parasites of "love.” Isn’t that such a perfect
coincidence? Even further, D. paradoxum who successfully
inhabit a koi discard its eyeballs within 24 hours. So the koi,
like love, is blind.“
"Love is blind,” he repeated out loud. “I never expected to
hear such a romantic thing out of your mouth.”
Hearing this, the girl’s eyes widened like she’d come to her
senses, and after a pause, she covered her face.
“What’s up?”
“…Now that I think about it, maybe sexual organs and
copulation and stuff aren’t things I should talk about in
public so much.” The girl’s cheeks faintly reddened. “I feel
stupid now.”
“Nah, it was interesting.” Kousaka snorted, finding the
girl’s flustering funny. “Keep talking. About parasites.”
The girl was silent for a while, but slowly began to say
more. Kousaka lent her an ear.
Chapter 1
Poisolation
The water from the faucet was piercingly cold. But there
was no time to wait around for it to warm up. Kousaka began
washing his hands. Immediately, the running water took
away all heat in his hands, and they went numb. He stopped
the faucet, soaped up his hands and washed thoroughly, then
ran the water again. Even after the bubbles were drained
away, he kept his hands in the running water. After about
two minutes, the water heater finally remembered its duty,
and the tap water began to warm up. His frozen hands had a
prickling numbness, and couldn’t tell hot from cold.
He stopped the faucet and carefully wiped the water with a
paper towel. Bringing the numb hands to his face, he closed
his eyes and sniffed. Once certain they were odorless, he
applied rubbing alcohol from the table all over his hands.
Gradually, he started to calm down.
Back in the living room, he threw himself down on the
bed. Light weakly shined through a gap in the white curtains;
it could have been early morning, or it could have been
evening. But either way, time was currently not all that
important in this man’s life.
He heard a constant stream of children’s voices outside. It
was the elementary school nearby. Hearing the children
playing and having fun would occasionally cause him
suffocating sadness. Kousaka turned on the radio by his bed,
tuned it to a random frequency, and let music play. An old
staticy song covered the shouts of the children.
After quitting his last job, Kousaka made no effort to find a
new place of employment, steadily exhausted his savings,
and spent his days lying in bed, pretending to think about
something. Of course, he wasn’t actually thinking about
anything. He was just trying to keep up appearances. I’m
storing up vitality for the time I’ll need it, he told himself.
He himself didn’t know how to give a “when” to this “time
I’ll need it.”
Once a week, he reluctantly had to go out to do shopping,
but the rest of his time was spent in his room. The reason
was simple: he had a serious case of germaphobia.
He lived in a small, neat dining-room-plus-kitchen rental
apartment within twenty minutes of the nearest train station.
It was his one and only holy space. There, he always had two
air purifiers running, and there was a faint smell of
antiseptic. The floors were so polished as to appear brand
new, and his shelves were lined with disposable latex gloves,
surgical masks, bacterial spray, wet tissues, etcetera. Most of
his clothes and furniture were white or close to it, and his
closet was stocked with new shirts still in the bags.
Kousaka washed his hands over a hundred times a day, so
they were terribly rough. His nails were neatly cut, with the
