After Being Parasiticized By A Monster - Chapter 62
Chapter 62: “Sisters Are All Liars.”
The Price of Discovery
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Cheng Ming carefully set aside the hazardous syringe and examined Yan Rong.
What a comprehensive setup. Fortunately, the plunger was clipped, preventing an accidental injection. If Yan Rong had died, it would have been a catastrophic, black-comedy level disaster.
“Just the needle prick,” Yan Rong said, sounding deeply wronged. “And I’m sore from the fall.”
Little Ming’s handiwork. Cheng Ming felt irritated, embarrassed, and guilty. She looked away at the mess and regretted going so far just to scare her.
“What about the wheelchair?” she asked, sighing at the scattered components.
“You’ll have to take me to get a new one tomorrow,” Yan Rong replied with an innocent smile. “Remember to ask for the day off.”
Cheng Ming: “…”
Yan Rong giggled. “Just kidding. The parts are all here. It can be fixed.”
Watching her sister amuse herself, Cheng Ming suddenly recalled a memory from Yan Li: the wheelchair mysteriously broke once, a screw went missing, and Yan Li was forced to take a day off. She paused, feeling she’d touched on a deeper truth.
Kneeling before her, Cheng Ming said softly, “She loved you very much. Emotionally, I may not be able to replace her, but I can stay and care for you, just as she did.”
Yan Rong fell silent.
“You’re wrong,” she finally said, laughing oddly, a complex light of sarcasm, grief, and even slight malice surfacing in her eyes. “She actually hated me, resented me… always did, since we were children.”
“She always wanted to get rid of me, but her pathetic conscience never let her,” Yan Rong continued, the emotions blending like smoke. “Now she’s finally free. She dumped me on you. She’s free.”
A dog doesn’t bite its owner for love; it’s a habit learned from mutual harm. Yan Li resented that her sister’s poor health had stolen their mother’s attention and burdened their family. Yan Rong resented that her sister was healthy and seemed born to privilege, even getting a military education while their family struggled.
Their mother’s dying words, holding Yan Li’s hand, were: You must be well. You absolutely, absolutely must not abandon your sister.
Yan Rong was Yan Li’s shackle, the heavy blanket of their mother’s love that was a warm comfort in winter but a stifling burden in summer.
Yan Li was a model sister, but the sensitive younger sister could always sense the resentment. Yan Rong responded by trying desperately to please her, until she couldn’t fake it anymore and had to lash out with the only weapon she had: her teeth.
As they grew older and “more mature”—or perhaps, more guarded—their relationship improved. They learned to perform an act of care and affection for each other, turning pretense into something that, perhaps, contained a spark of genuine feeling. They were, after all, family.
But long-term burden chips away at everything, even the deepest bl00d ties. The one bearing the responsibility becomes slowly poisoned. Yan Rong knew her sister needed to feel useful to stay sane, and Yan Li needed her dependency to stave off guilt.
So why did you abandon me, Sister? You broke your promise. Yan Rong was laughing and weeping at once.
“You’re wrong, Rongrong. Before she died, she wasn’t relieved; she was only worried… deeply, deeply worried about you.” Cheng Ming gently wiped a tear from her eye, her voice a soft, long-delayed lullaby. “She was just a person. A normal, mortal person who got tired. But there’s no doubt that she loved you.”
As she spoke, the image of Yan Li faded in her mind, replaced by another figure: Cheng Ran. Mother. Sixteen years of love, creation, upbringing, and teaching—how could she not have loved her?
Perhaps Mother was just tired too.
Cheng Ming, still a child desperate for her own mother, comforted another child, finding a strange solace in the act.
After a moment, Yan Rong spoke, her voice still thick with tears: “Once you find the truth, what do you plan to do?”
Cheng Ming paused. “Revenge the grievances and settle the scores, like any normal person would.” She smiled, finding the phrasing absurd herself. She wasn’t born human; she only knew to follow her mother’s plan, to make Cheng Ran happy, to become the person Cheng Ran wanted her to be—it was an ingrained instinct.
Yan Rong lowered her eyelids and leaned her head against Cheng Ming’s shoulder. Cheng Ming stayed still, sensing her need for comfort.
But after only a couple of seconds, Yan Rong suddenly turned and bit her savagely on the neck.
The attack was too sudden. Cheng Ming gasped, recoiled two steps, and touched the fresh tooth marks, unsure if she was bleeding. Was this child a dog?
“You said you’d be like Sister,” Yan Rong said, sitting on the edge of the bed with a completely innocent look.
The angle and force were clearly retaliatory. Cheng Ming hissed, pressing the throbbing vein in her neck, which was numb. “You can bite anywhere but the neck, do you understand?”
“You’re a monster, you’re not afraid, are you?” Yan Rong tilted her head.
Cheng Ming had to force herself to lower her hand. She then decisively sent Yan Rong away. “Go back to sleep.” She efficiently returned Yan Rong to her own bed, tucked her in, and said goodnight, finally ending the prolonged evening.
With a biologist’s deep-seated aversion to germs, Cheng Ming immediately went to the bathroom, washing the wound with running water.
Little Ming, silent until now, finally acted. As she cleaned, the hyphae stretched out, rubbing violently against the bite mark like a steel wool pad, quickly leaving a large new red abrasion on her white neck.
Cheng Ming cried out, “That hurts!”
“Can I parasitize her? Do you like her body? If I parasitize her, can I hug you and bite you like she did?” The rapid-fire questions showed the extent of its pent-up emotion. The hyphae didn’t let up, desperate to cover the rival’s marks with its own.
Cheng Ming snapped: “Get out!”
…
The Confidante
Back in her room, Yan Rong lay flat on her bed. The footsteps faded, the door clicked shut, and the room, sealed from the outside world, was a still, temperature-controlled tomb. She stared at the ceiling, her eyes wide open until the window turned from dark to light, and the world regained its noise.
A new day had arrived. She closed her eyes. Her pillow was still damp, but she had no tears left.
After a while, estimating Cheng Ming would be waking up soon, Yan Rong sat up, reached for her laptop, and opened it.
“Confirmed. No major issues, just some strangeness due to amnesia. You can delay her next assignment. I will monitor her progress for you.”
The black screen was lit by fluorescent green text. Yan Rong, her deep eyes illuminated, quickly translated the encrypted message, added her signature symbol at the end, and hit Enter.
…
Cheng Ming had barely slept. She was too hot, then too cold. The hyphae, opportunistic, had draped themselves over her, trying to provide comfort, but she shivered anyway.
She had a high fever. A potent combination of Little Ming’s ingestion of the neurotoxin-wielding sea-snake chimera and Yan Rong’s subsequent deployment of neural-acting drugs had triggered a profound, body-shaking “evolution” in her already highly fused system.
The sun was fully up. Yan Rong, who had been waiting, knocked. Thump, thump, thump. Cheng Ming heard it, but she was too dizzy and weak to move.
She opened her eyes and vaguely saw a shadow enter. Recognizing her, she closed her eyes in relief and pushed her wristband toward her. She spoke in a weak whisper:
“Rongrong, please call in sick for me… And for lunch—no, forget that. For lunch, I want porridge, or yesterday’s stew would be nice too.”
Yan Rong: “…”
Since her wheelchair wasn’t fixed, Yan Rong had to hobble out with her cane. She muttered loudly enough for Cheng Ming to hear:
“Sisters are all liars. Last night she said she’d take care of me, and now it’s already the other way around.”
Cheng Ming coughed weakly under her blanket. Her sister, after her true nature was exposed, wasn’t holding back at all.