After Being Parasiticized By A Monster - Chapter 28

Chapter 28: “Is this called saying one thing and meaning another?”

The nurse hadn’t finished her rounds when someone from the Security Department arrived again.

Qu Ying opened the door. Outside stood a young person in a standard uniform. They had short, neatly styled hair, radiating youthful energy—clearly fresh bl00d in the Investigation Division.

After just one glance, Qu Ying’s face slightly darkened.

The person outside was clearly a bit surprised too. They glanced at the situation inside the door, innocently blinked, and smiled at Qu Ying: “Then I’ll come back later.”

With that, they turned to leave.

Qu Ying stepped out of the room and gently closed the door behind her.

Click. The inside and outside of the door were now two separate worlds. Sound couldn’t pass in or out, and the hallway was silent.

She smiled, narrowing her eyes, and stared at the person’s back, enunciating every word: “221?”

Hearing this, the person’s steps halted.

Ah, exposed.

They reluctantly turned back. “I told you, I have a name…”

Qu Ying usually found enjoyment in teasing younger people—she used to call Yang Mei affectionately. But when it came to this sister who was an adult but still acted like a child, she wasn’t amused. Her reaction was cold, a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

She had always been afraid of the department assigning others to matters related to Cheng Ming. Abnormalities she could sense might not be invisible to them… Now, her biggest fear had come true.

“What are you doing here?”

Even within their already highly specialized department, this individual was a unique case, rarely participating in group activities. If only a photo were placed in front of her, Qu Ying might not recognize her.

However, due to the small number of internal members, they all knew each other to some extent. And Qu Ying happened to be the best at finding flaws and tracking down moles.

“A mission, of course,” Little Shell, still wearing someone else’s face, shrugged. “It’s a secret.”

“I don’t buy it.” Qu Ying looked at the ID badge bearing Han Xuhua’s information on her chest and gave a meaningful, cold laugh. “Investigating internal personnel is the job of the Internal Security team; you don’t have the clearance. If you’re discovered, you’ll get her fired too.”

“Huh?” The latter looked down, as if only just realizing the loophole, and tutted. “The division of labor in the Investigation Department is such a hassle.”

She seemed to concede defeat, waved goodbye, and started walking toward the exit.

However, Qu Ying was also heading that way and bypassed her in two steps.

“Where are you going?”

“Home to see Mommy, of course.”

“Calling your experimenter ‘Mommy’—you truly are an oddity,” Qu Ying pressed the elevator button, her words laced with venom.

“Better than not having a mommy at all,” Little Shell replied indifferently.

“…”

Believing the girl was mocking her, the smile on Qu Ying’s lips remained unchanged, but the curve of her eyes grew colder.

She truly had neither an experimenter nor a mother.

…

In the hospital room.

The Head Nurse exclaimed, “Your immunity is incredible. It’s the first time I’ve seen such a strange encephalitis virus—it flared up so violently, yet it’s receding so quickly.”

She wasn’t surprised by yet another new type of virus. In this front-line defense against ocean pollution, they were accustomed to seeing all manner of mutated organisms. Furthermore, this virus wasn’t transmitted through air droplets or other conventional means, which was already rare in its “good behavior.”

What amazed her was that given the critical condition Cheng Ming was in when she was admitted to the ICU, they expected recovery to take months. Even a common cold usually takes a week to clear up, but after only three days, the patient’s bl00d counts had returned to normal.

Her vital signs were stable, and the test reports showed no anomalies. Barring any surprises, she would likely be discharged after two more days of observation.

Cheng Ming smiled faintly.

But there was no joy in her eyes.

When everyone had left, the room returned to silence. Dusk settled, and the large glass windows were shrouded in the faint glow of the setting sun. It felt oppressive. She was confined to this small cubicle, unable to sleep with her eyes closed, and staring into emptiness when they were open.

Little Ming seemed to have vanished.

Earlier, when she was unconscious, she couldn’t worry about it. Later, during her brief moments of lucidity, she remembered the questions she hadn’t asked and wanted to drag it out for a confrontation. But perhaps sensing the host’s sharp emotions, it consistently played dead and remained silent.

Cheng Ming was initially angry, but with no outlet for her frustration—it was like punching cotton—she couldn’t sustain her anger.

As she calmed down, she gradually realized something was wrong.

One day without a response might be sulking, or it might be conserving energy due to her weakness, but two, three days with no movement…

It had responded to her the night she was rushed to the emergency room. Was her memory flawed, a mere hallucination?

Cheng Ming didn’t want to admit it, but she was starting to panic.

What exactly was wrong?

She raised her hand to touch her sparse, pathetic “hair.” With a gentle tug, the black strands broke off like dry grass.

The fungal threads were still unresponsive.

Looking at the tangled, algae-like strands, it didn’t look like fungal threads falling out; it felt like her heart’s bl00d was spilling out. She could finally understand the panic of those with hair loss.

When the nurse congratulated her on her imminent discharge, she wanted to say that she definitely had something else wrong—she needed more treatment because the other half of her body had disappeared… But saying such a thing would either get her immediately committed to a psychiatric hospital or apprehended on the spot by the Security Department.

So, she could only suppress a choked feeling. When she was finally alone, as the twilight faded, she raised her hand to press against her forehead, slowly quieting her mind.

Recalling the sensation of their past neurological connection, she tried to replicate it, but she couldn’t find that sense of mutual attraction and resonance, as if two planets were entwining in the cosmos.

Even if it vanished, it owed her an explanation.

Coming when it pleased, leaving when it pleased—did it think she was a hotel?

Opening her eyes, Cheng Ming’s expression slowly returned to an undisturbed calm.

She turned and saw the fruit knife on the bedside table. She strained to reach over, her fingers touching the handle, then gripping it.

Looking at the IV catheter obstructing her movement, she expressionlessly pulled out the soft tube and threw off the blanket to get out of bed.

Her feet felt unsteady when they touched the floor. Her knees were weak. She quickly regained control of her limbs and walked step by step into the bathroom, stopping in front of the mirror.

Perhaps for the patient’s psychological comfort, the overhead light was very soft.

The light and shadow interwoven, hazy like mist or silk. She meticulously scrutinized “herself.” She raised the knife. The metal blade flashed with a cold light in the quiet room.

In this second, it was as if she were back in the initial stages of the parasitism.

Except back then, her greatest wish was to drive it out of her body. Now, it was to confirm if it was still inside her.

The heart, or the brain?

She calmly gripped the fruit knife, contemplating where to strike.

Cheng Ming knew she might be insane.

If a medical professional pushed the door open and saw her now, they would surely let out a piercing scream that would echo throughout the entire building.

She had to test whether her self-healing ability still existed.

And she had to make the potential parasitic organism feel a mortal threat.

The knife tip rested against her chest, pressing against the layer of cotton, followed by skin, bl00d vessels, and bone… A few centimeters deeper, thump, thump, her heart, beating faster, as if a living thing that could sense danger was nested there. The heart sounds overlapped and echoed.

The hospital gown was in the way, making it inconvenient.

She remembered Little Ming’s reluctance to see her bare body, even though it later said it respected her rights… She wasn’t an exhibitionist.

Cheng Ming ultimately abandoned the option of undoing the buttons. She also didn’t want to stain the gown.

She moved the knife to her forehead. The metal flickered with a silver-white glint. She stared straight into the mirror, acting less like a sick person committing self-harm and more like she was conducting a solemn experiment.

No, to her, it was an experiment.

Even if it looked utterly mad.

Applying a little force, the tip of the knife created a shallow indentation on the surface of her skin.

“Cheng Ming.”

The reaction came without warning. She paused. The blade hovered, not even having caused any substantial injury yet.

Bl00d flow was briefly blocked by the pressure. The small area looked pale. As she moved the sharp object away, the skin rebounded, and the bl00d vessels relaxed.

A red mark remained, perhaps with a slight seepage of bl00d, perfectly centered on her forehead, like a beauty spot.

In the mirror, the light naturally veiled everything. It contrasted with her indifferent, un-sad and un-happy expression, making her look like a white jade statue revered in some religious sanctuary.

But the calmness was an illusion; the surging, peeling thoughts were the reality.

In that brief second before striking, she inappropriately thought: if it truly didn’t appear, and the fungal threads died, and her self-healing failed, and the location was, coincidentally, a hospital… it would be a perfect model for diagnosing a hallucination in a schizophrenic patient.

It asked, “What are you doing?”

Cheng Ming put down the knife with a light clank on the sink. She slightly frowned. “What’s wrong with you?”

Its tone was unprecedentedly weak, so much so that she once again forgot her intention to interrogate it.

It was strange. They were conversing in her mind, yet she could clearly sense its faintness of breath.

It no longer had the excess energy to manipulate her body.

“The fish egg carried a virus. It is invading the fungus. They are damaging your cells—” It paused, then corrected itself, “No, our cells.”

“Virus? Hasn’t it been cleared?” Cheng Ming was stunned.

“No. They multiply too quickly. I have isolated them to a small area,” it confessed.

If it hadn’t done this, Cheng Ming might not have survived that night, as the doctors would never have suspected the lesion was not in the human cells but in the fungal part within her.

Little Ming explained, “Cheng Ming, I have to use all my strength to suppress the virus’s spread, otherwise, they will continue to harm you.”

This implied that it would be unable to appear or respond to her calls for a very long time.

Cheng Ming listened, her breathing slightly heavier. Her heart hammered in her chest, thump, thump, thump, like an urgent drumbeat, hollow and muffled.

She didn’t doubt the truth of its words.

She had personally witnessed the fungal threads withering. This was the price of the rapid recovery.

“Can you fix it?” she asked.

“I’m trying,” it softly said. “During this time, I hope you maintain good nutritional intake.”

The essence of many drug treatments is to strengthen the body’s immune system—colloquially, to tough it out.

“That sounds like you’re going through hell for my safety,” she intentionally emphasized the words “you” and “my,” staring unblinkingly at the reflection of herself and it in the mirror.

“Of course. It’s for our sake,” Little Ming was always honest. “If you die, I won’t survive.”

But in this moment, this second, this honesty still seemed to carry some other meaning.

So, after it spoke, both she and it fell silent, unprompted, for a short, strange while.

The light outlined the twin images in the mirror, like flowers reflecting in water. Their gazes couldn’t truly meet, but their souls had always been connected.

“You sound… a bit sad.” This was the peculiarity of cohabitation—she couldn’t hide anything from it.

Its choice of words was somewhat novel, somewhat awkward. The creature, usually accustomed to blunt honesty, now revealed a subtle sense of “I don’t know if I should say this”:

“Is this emotion called reluctance to part?”

“No,” Cheng Ming quickly replied, without blinking. “I’m worried about my body.”

“Is this called saying one thing and meaning another?”

“Shut up.”