Parasite (8): I like you so much

Tan Xiao stood still, but he instinctively shouted, “Don’t come over!”  

After all, he was human. When faced with terrifying creatures that were unknown to him, it was only natural to feel immense fear. Moreover, the image of Wen Yi eating raw meat was too shocking.  

In the dead of night, in a cold, icy freezer, raw meat with blood oozing out from a gash on the floor was more terrifying than the scariest part of a horror movie. If it had been a stranger, the fear level would have been at 100%. But since it was the person who shared his bed day and night, the fear level skyrocketed to 100000%.  

In fact, Tan Xiao didn’t immediately turn around and run away. Instead, he told Wen Yi not to come any closer, which already showed how deeply he loved him.  

Could a normal person get up in the middle of the night to do such bloody and savage things? Thinking back to the afternoon, when that player named Wang Mingming had mentioned something about a parasite, Tan Xiao’s first reaction was that Wen Yi had been parasitized.  

He made Wen Yi stay still to see if the other still had any rationality left. After all, if the parasite were discovered, its first reaction would likely be to eliminate the person who found it. Yet, Wen Yi in front of him said he wanted to give him a chance to explain.  

Although Wen Yi was anxious, he managed to hold back from rushing over directly. Listening to Tan Xiao talk, he even took two steps back and said, “See? I’m being very obedient. Don’t be scared.”  

Tan Xiao watched as Wen Yi took two small steps back, which together didn’t even measure fifty centimeters. The corner of his mouth twitched slightly, and his heart, which had been shaken by the terrifying scene, calmed down a bit. Perhaps things weren’t as he had imagined. Maybe Wen Yi had some peculiar form of pica.  

After all, some forms of pica not only involved eating raw meat but also eating soil, wood, and sand. At least Wen Yi was still eating meat.  

Tan Xiao took a closer look and discovered that the frozen piece of meat on the ground was clearly a half-eaten chicken. The warehouse was also piled with many other dismembered pieces of meat, including chickens, ducks, cows, sheep, and frozen tuna. The chickens and ducks had been plucked but not skinned. Fortunately, although it was a bit bizarre, at least they weren’t eating humans, which meant his partner wasn’t some kind of twisted murderer.  

He thought this to himself and also voiced this guess. Wen Yi quickly followed his lead and agreed, “Yes, yes, yes, it’s pica. I was afraid you’d find out and dislike me, so I hid away secretly. I didn’t mean to keep it from you.”  

Tan Xiao looked at the other person with a face that seemed to still have this excuse and immediately said in a bad mood, “Do you think I believe you? I’ll give you a reason to explain. If you still want to lie to me at this time and don’t tell me the truth, we’ll break up.”  

He wasn’t actually sure if his threat of breaking up would work, but if the other person continued to hide the truth, there would be no trust left between them. Once their feelings for each other had a deep rift, it would be impossible to restore them to their original state.  

Although thinking about parting made his chest feel empty and hollow, as if a piece had been taken out, a long pain was worse than a short one.  

“Don’t break up! I absolutely don’t want to break up!”  

Wen Yi had always concealed Tan Xiao about the fact that he was not human, precisely because he was afraid of hearing those two words.  

At this moment, he didn’t care about keeping his distance from Tan Xiao anymore. In a flash, he rushed forward and firmly grabbed the latter’s arm. His gray eyes, filled with a sense of melancholy, seemed to be pouring down like a torrential rain, heartbreakingly sad and painful: “No, I would rather die than break up. If you want to break up, then just kill me!”  

For the first time, he was grateful for his immortal trait; this way, they couldn’t kill him, so they would never part ways like this!  

Tan Xiao saw madness and obsession in Wen Yi’s eyes. In his previous imagination, his lover might not be good-looking or gentle enough, but he would definitely be a normal person. But Wen Yi was clearly different; he was not only love-struck but also a bit crazy.  

To say it was a bit of a modesty, Wen Yi was clearly quite mad.  

Encountering such a crazy love-struck person, Tan Xiao should have been scared off, but he wasn’t. At this moment, he had no concept of this at all, only feeling a sour and tingling sensation in his heart, and his eyes were bulging. In fact, Tan Xiao never expected that while he didn’t date, he would turn into an incurable love-struck fool once he did.  

“Why would I kill you?” Tan Xiao’s voice sounded hoarse; he looked into Wen Yi’s eyes, “I said the condition for breaking up is that you don’t lie to me or hide things from me anymore. If you tell me everything, I won’t break up.”  

Wen Yi still didn’t let go, but his eyes were a bit brighter than before. He tentatively asked, “Really, if I tell you everything, you won’t break up with me?”  

“When have I ever lied to you?”  

“If I weren’t human, would you still break up with me?”  

Tan Xiao said, “As long as you’re not some kind of psychopathic killer.”  

Even if you’re head over heels in love, you can’t have no bottom line. If the other person was truly a twisted, psychopathic killer, Tan Xiao might still report them to the police out of a sense of justice. This was the bottom line of being human.  

It was just that if he had gone through such an experience, he probably wouldn’t fall in love with anyone again, because this relationship alone had burned him out.  

Wait, what had Wen Yi just said? Tan Xiao hesitated and repeated, “You said you’re not human?”  

Wen Yi clearly misunderstood the hesitation inTan Xiao’s words; he immediately turned into a silvery-gray liquid with a whoosh, leaving only a piece of clothing on the ground.  

Then these liquids simultaneously transformed into a bunch of Wen Yi, unlike the previous complete, fleshy, three-dimensional Wen Yi. The new Wen Yis were like paper dolls, thin and flat, just empty shells.  

So many artificial Wen Yi surrounded Tan Xiao from all sides, making it impossible for the latter to escape.  

“You said it yourself, we won’t break up! No break up, no break up, no break up!”  

Wen Yi, with a crying face, circled around while muttering to himself as he turned. His voice surrounded Tan Xiao from all directions, like 100 little bees buzzing in his ears at the same time, giving him a headache.  

“Alright, alright, stop spinning, I’m getting dizzy.”  

At this moment, there was not a trace of fear in Tan Xiao’s heart. After all, with Wen Yi’s performance, it was hard for anyone to feel scared.  

Wen Yi reluctantly stopped; he had just been spinning around on purpose, trying to make Tan Xiao dizzy so that he wouldn’t be able to think rationally. Because once the other person calmed down, they might ruthlessly abandon him!  

Tan Xiao heard the sound of a car starting in the distance. Although there were few people around the cold storage, it wasn’t completely deserted either.  

This office building was guarded by security at night. What if someone happened to patrol here in the middle of the night?  

This wasn’t exactly a secret place, so it wasn’t suitable to say these things here. Tan Xiao pressed his slightly aching temple with his long fingers and said, “Alright, hurry up and change back, put on your clothes. We can talk about it upstairs.”  

Wen Yi was just busy spinning around, completely unaware that he had transformed twice, and he was wearing no clothes at all. Tan Xiao was really worried that someone would mistake this guy for a pervert and arrest him.  

As long as Tan Xiao didn’t mention anything about breaking up, Wen Yi was still very obedient. So he silently turned back into a puddle of liquid and then slipped back into that piece of clothing.  

Tan Xiao looked at the half-eaten chicken on the freezer floor and said, “Are you still hungry? Do you want to eat some more?”  

Wen Yi shook his head like a rattle drum: “Not eating, not eating.” He didn’t want to eat a single bite of chicken, beef, lamb, fish, or anything like that.  

If he had known that he would be caught by Tan Xiao so early because of a mistake in this matter, he wouldn’t have come down to sneak a bite today.  

The two of them silently took the elevator to the top floor together. In the middle of the night, they turned on the lights in the living room, then went to the kettle to pour two cups of warm water.  

“Go ahead, tell me what secrets you’ve been keeping from me. Spill everything you can, including why you’ve suddenly decided to build these fortresses during this period.”  

After calming down, Tan Xiao thought about it over and over again. Although he hadn’t spent much time with Wen Yi, the other person shouldn’t have been parasitized by that creature.  

But the next second, Wen Yi said, “Actually, I’m a parasitic species.”  

The glass in front of Tan Xiao was knocked over onto the tea table, warm water spilling all over, dripping down the edge of the table and wetting Tan Xiao’s pants.  

He quickly grabbed a tissue to wipe the water stains off the table, but no matter how much he wiped, it never seemed to be enough.  

In a flurry, Tan Xiao managed to set the cup upright: “The paper can’t soak up all this water. I’ll go grab a cloth from the kitchen.”  

He had been overwhelmed by too many shocks today and was really feeling a bit dazed.  

Wen Yi quickly transformed into a little tail and followed, grabbing a towel with his hand: “I’ll help you wipe.”  

Tan Xiao looked at the parasitic species in front of him, staring intently into its eyes: “You parasitized Wen Yi, so where is Wen Yi?”  

Wen Yi said in confusion, “I am Wen Yi.”  

Tan Xiao realized he had misunderstood something: “Didn’t you say you were a parasite?”  

Could it be that when he first met Wen Yi, the other person had already been parasitized?  

This point was also valid, after all, Wen Yi hadn’t changed much before.  

“No, I haven’t parasitized any organisms; it’s just that my species is parasitic, growing by absorbing energy parasitically.”  

Wen Yi said, “Do you remember the documentary I showed you a couple of days ago? Mistletoe wraps around big trees. What I mean is, I exist like mistletoe, but I am whole. I don’t parasitize others.”  

Wen Yi continued, “When parasitizing on a human, if I were to leave the human body, the body would still exist as a shell. But look, there’s only one piece of clothing on the ground. This appearance of mine is my mimicry.”  

In order to better explain his situation, Wen Yi slid out of his clothes again.  

Tan Xiao saw him turning part of his body into a silvery-gray liquid, then transformed it back, and on his unblocked body, he conjured clothes identical to those on the sofa…  

“The way I look now is just mimicry; I’m very timid, and I don’t like eating people.”  

“Then you were eating that raw meat in the freezer…” Tan Xiao hesitated to continue.  

“Those are freshly slaughtered and quick-frozen raw meats, just air-freighted over today. They were slaughtered less than 12 hours ago, so the energy loss isn’t that fast. If I eat them, I can replenish my energy.”  

Wen Yi then explained the way of consuming food: “The things I usually eat are enough to keep my body functioning normally, but for my kind, it’s just too weak.”  

He took out his tablet, found the news report that had aired a few days ago, and pointed with his pale finger at the fossils in the news: “These are my kind, they have already awakened.”  

Tan Xiao was clearly greatly impacted. He sat on the sofa, leaning back against the soft cushions, his long, raven-like eyelashes drooping, casting a small shadow on his flawless porcelain-like face.  

“Are these creatures really that terrifying?”  

Wen Yi said with distress, “The memories I received from the past are indeed like that.”  

“What about you? Are you the only one in your clan who loves peace and can control your hunger, while the others can’t?”  

According to Wen Yi, as a parasite living independently for reasons unknown, he had already lived in the human world for twenty-seven years.  

Perhaps Wen Yi had been devoured by the parasitic species in infancy, creating this illusion.  

“You can rely on eating to survive, but other parasites can’t?”  

Wen Yi shook his head: “No, and I eat less because I am too weak. The more I eat, the more I crave energy, and I will be driven by instinct.”  

Most people are unwilling to admit their weaknesses in front of their partners, but Wen Yi was not human.  

Moreover, before, Tan Xiao had said that if he lied again, they would break up. Wen Yi didn’t want to break up, so he didn’t dare to lie about such details.  

“What I’m saying is based on my understanding, but it’s also possible that the erased racial memories deceived me, or perhaps they have fatal weaknesses.”  

From now on, Wen Yi decided to habitually separate himself from the Yan race, resolutely cutting ties with his former kind. After all, he was different from those greedy kin who only knew how to eat and destroy; he could control his own desires.  

Wen Yi said, “You have to believe me, I really haven’t eaten anyone! I’m not some kind of perverted killer!”  

In a calm tone Tan Xiao said, “I believe you.”  

According to Wen Yi, humans were the most natural delicacy for his race. Being in a high position, even if he committed the most heinous acts, he could easily cover them up.  

But Wen Yi looked into his eyes and said no, and Tan Xiao still chose to unconditionally trust the other person.  

The speed at which he accepted reality with a smile was obviously quick: “So why did you suddenly go eat those things?”  

Wen Yi said, “I’m too weak, I can’t protect you from other parasites. I don’t want you to be parasitized.”  

“Once parasitized, your brain will be quickly eaten away, and then you’ll become like a parasitic species.”  

This was why parasitic species were so difficult to detect. The host appeared normal, but their brain had actually taken on the shape of the parasite. If you aimed for the host’s forehead and waited patiently for a while, you could see the parasite feeding.  

The parasites could maintain their mimicry for a long time. When they encountered a crisis while they were weak, they would sustain their mimicry for an extended period to remain hidden. The human eye couldn’t distinguish between the brain fluid of the parasite in mimicry and that of a human.  

This meant killing the person who was parasitized, but you had no idea whether they were actually parasitized or not. Humans would never open the heads of their own kind just to verify this guess.  

“If that’s really the case, isn’t there no difference in appearance whether it’s parasitized or not?”  

“Different,” Wen Yi said. “In the early stages of parasitism, it looks the same on the surface, but once it develops enough strength, the prey will be consumed quickly. This development doesn’t take long.”  

He also said, “Yan is a creature that thrives in groups. The characteristic of a group is that if one becomes stronger, those close to it will collectively become stronger.”  

This point was like a locust; a single locust was grass-green, non-toxic, could be eaten directly when caught, and wasn’t very aggressive.  

However, when locusts gathered into a swarm, not only did their bodies turn yellow, they also grew larger, developed toxicity, and became more aggressive than before.  

Tan Xiao felt that the characteristics of such creatures were indeed too domineering and outrageous: “Then wouldn’t these creatures be invincible in the universe?”  

Wen Yi said, “Once they have eaten everything they can, they will gradually shrink and then enter a dormant state after losing energy. To grow stronger, they need more energy to maintain their body, so without sufficient energy, they will quickly shrink.”  

From one perspective, this kind of matter still adhered to the law of conservation of energy.  

“I secretly went to eat meat, not because I wanted to, but because I just wanted to become a bit stronger, to drive away those parasites, to protect you.”  

Tan Xiao sighed deeply and said, “This sounds really terrible.”  

“Did you inform the government?”  

Wen Yi said, “I wrote them a letter, but the leader seemed to take it as a joke.”  

In a light-hearted tone, Tan Xiao said, “If you hadn’t transformed in front of me, I would have thought this was a joke.”  

Most people wouldn’t be willing to believe such things. The reason he was willing to believe was because it was Wen Yi who said it.  

“If what you say is true, maybe it’s better that everyone knows nothing.”  

This was no different from a comet directly hitting the blue planet or a meteor shower from the sky; both were devastating blows.  

Since this parasitic species had no weaknesses and all life on this planet was going to be consumed, why bother struggling? Just lie down and wait to die.  

Perhaps ignorance was also a kind of happiness. If everyone knew nothing, at least they wouldn’t be anxious when they died, and they wouldn’t cause social unrest out of fear of death.  

If the parasitic species weren’t actually this strong, many innocent people would surely die at the hands of desperate humans.  

“If you say you’ve gotten stronger, then your desire to eat will increase.”  

Tan Xiao said, “After eating so much raw meat, has your craving for human flesh increased?”  

There were no outsiders here, but Tan Xiao considered himself a person.  

He extended his arm, testing in front of Wen Yi to see if the other person would lose their mind because of it.  

Wen Yi nodded and then shook his head.  

Tan Xiao asked him, “What do you mean?”  

A certain parasite, looking bashful, said, “I told you I’m different. I can get by without that kind of energy. Another type of feeding can satisfy me even more.”  

The reason why the Yan had no restrictions on their expansion was that hunger was an instinct ingrained in their heritage. They would do everything possible to eat, and only when they had consumed enough energy to digest would their souls and bodies be satisfied.  

Wen Yi said he was different because he would find others smelly and didn’t want to parasitize on them at all.  

This kind of aversion encapsulated his instinct to eat; for him, Tan Xiao was the only thing that felt delightful.  

But compared to parasitizing Tan Xiao, devouring and sticking to him could truly bring him genuine satisfaction.  

Licking away the other person’s tears and sweat, absorbing their life essence, could bring him unparalleled excitement and pleasure. The love and desire for a warm Tan Xiao had replaced his appetite, even far surpassing it.  

Hearing this, the smile on Tan Xiao’s face became somewhat subtle: “Is this why you told me you liked me?”  

It wasn’t him who was liked, but just his body. Thinking about this really made him a bit uncomfortable.  

“Of course not, even if we don’t do that kind of thing, I still like you, I like you so much, so much!” It’s just that having a deeper conversation could make him feel happier.  

Wen Yi presented a compelling reason that could convince Tan Xiao: “If I were only after your body, I could easily lock you up without needing to date you. You know, although I’m not some kind of perverted killer, I’m not human either, so I don’t really care about human ethics and morals.”  

Indeed, as the heir of the CS Group, forcing someone into marriage, locking them up, and taking them by force wasn’t a difficult task.  

The huge disparity in their social status at this moment instead became proof that Wen Yi’s love for him was absolutely genuine.  

Tan Xiao suddenly fell silent, and they maintained a long silence.  

Wen Yi couldn’t help but lean in again, hesitantly saying, “You promised me before, if I tell you the truth, you wouldn’t break up with me. Let’s not break up, okay?”  

Tan Xiao suddenly had a sense of speechlessness, not knowing what to say: “According to what you’re saying, the world is about to end. Why do you even care about breaking up or not?”  

What a terrifying love-struck brain, of course, he himself wasn’t any better.  

Tan Xiao lamented “If only love-struck brains were contagious.”  

Turning all the members of this race into love-struck individuals would restore peace to the world. Unfortunately, even if experts could develop a love-struck virus, there wouldn’t be enough time.  

Wen Yi pouted, “I’m not some love-struck fool; I just like you.”  

“And I’m one of a kind; those parasites with their minds full of eating are nothing like me.”  

He felt that Tan Xiao was avoiding his question and insisted that the latter give a definite answer: “Are you breaking up or not? Hurry up and tell me you’re not!”  

Tan Xiao said, “No breakup, no breakup, no breakup, we’ll never break up even if we die, okay?”  

Wen Yi said terrifying words in a calm tone: “Even if you’re just brushing me off, I’ll take it seriously. Liars will be locked up. In a small dark room.”  

“Yeah, I’m not just saying that to be polite, I mean it.”  

After realizing that Wen Yi was not human, Tan Xiao accepted this reality very calmly after the initial shock. Watching the other person turn into liquid, he did not feel any disgust, resistance, or fear.  

If it had really been like that, when Wen Yi came over, he would have been stiff all over, every pore telling a silent story of resistance. But in reality, when Wen Yi’s soft body pressed against him, he still felt just as happy as before.  

What did it mean to say Wen Yi? He himself didn’t seem to be doing much better.  

If it weren’t some parasitic apocalypse that brought the end of the world, but instead a zombie virus, and Wen Yi unfortunately turned into a zombie, Tan Xiao doubted he would still be willing to take care of his lover.  

Love-struck brain was really hopeless, he cursed himself.  

With an incredibly serious tone, he said to Wen Yi with a smile, “If this world had no other humans left and it was just me, then before the other parasites get to me, please eat me.”