Parasite in Love c8-9

The snow covering the town gradually melted, and beside the lingering snow dirtied by mud, fuki plants showed their faces, signaling the arrival of a new season. The cheerfulness of spring filled the air, and a sweet floral smell drifted through the residential district. People took off their thick coats to wear jackets, savoring a sense of liberation that had been missing for some time.

The cherry trees in this town bloomed at the end of April. Depending on the year, their optimal viewing time could be as late as Golden Week. As a result, cherry blossoms weren’t symbols of meetings and farewells to the townspeople. Instead, they were like flowers that, after completing a change of environment and taking a breath, appeared to suggest the future.

It was the first day of a three-day weekend. Kousaka lazily walked the long hilly road through the residential district.

There was construction being done in several places around town. Some buildings were being constructed, whereas other buildings were being dismantled. There were areas with road repair work, and areas with power line work. It’s like the whole town is being reborn, Kousaka thought.

“Kousaka, when were you going to move, again?”, asked a girl walking beside him.

“Next week,” he replied.

“Then do you eat lots of raw fish?”

“I had an acquaintance who knows all about that kind of thing. I’m just repeating it from her.”

“Oh, is that it.” Matsuo nodded, then asked to dig deeper, “An acquaintance? Is she a friend?”

“No, a little different from a friend.”

“Then what? A girlfriend?”

“About five months ago, I had a part-time babysitting job. I heard it from her.”

“Babysitting…” Matsuo looked increasingly suspicious. “Kousaka, you don’t seem like you’d be great with children.”

“Yeah. But there were reasons I had to take the job.”

“I… see,” Matsuo affirmed ambiguously. “Even so, isn’t it rather rare to find a child who’d tell you about Anisakis?”

“I guess so,” Kousaka said. “I’ve only met the one, myself.”

*

In less than four months since he started taking the deworming medicine, Kousaka experienced such great changes that you might as well say he was reborn.

First, his germaphobia was cured. The disorder that was so firmly rooted in the person Kengo Kousaka was gone like it never existed a month after treatment started. It really was instant. Like a stomachache or mouth ulcer: you can think of nothing else before it’s cured, but once it’s gone, you can hardly remember what it was like.

When he paid attention, he realized he was using the same towels for several days, and was fine going from getting home straight into bed. He didn’t think anything of being shoulder to shoulder with other people, and could grab onto straps on the train if necessary.

Once the bottleneck of his germaphobia was cured, the rest proceeded steadily. He easily settled upon a new job. Looking through a site geared for people who were trying to get back to work after rehabilitation, as if by coincidence, his eyes went straight to a highly favorable job offer. It was a recruitment for web programmers at a web design company, and the programming languages listed as requirements were all ones he was an expert in. Kousaka took the offer, submitted some of his code, and left the rest to flow. He didn’t have any hopes at all, but by next month, he was a full-time employee at the company. Things moved so smoothly as to make him worried someone was stringing him along.

As he noticed once he began working, Kousaka spending his free time making malware really helped develop his programming skills. It wasn’t that he learned the specific knowledge, but rather that he established the right thought process for programming. He became valued at his workplace. It certainly wasn’t the easiest job, but having found a solid place to be gave him great joy.

Kousaka slowly but surely regained confidence, to a level appropriate for his age. People around Kousaka mistook his calmness that stemmed from resignation as composure from rich life experiences, and were convinced he was a superb person. They saw his frequent job changes as proof of his faith in his own abilities. Every element miraculously worked as a positive. Just a month after joining the company, he’d made friends to have a drink with after work, and himself nearly forgot that until a few months ago, he was completely unfit for society.

And yet sometimes, he suddenly felt a boundless void within himself. Said void was in the shape of a girl. When he dozed off at his desk, when he walked the same roads he had once walked with her, when he saw things he associated with her - headphones, blue earrings, oil lighters. At any such opportunity, Kousaka was made to recall Hijiri Sanagi.

But that was all over. Sanagi had surely long forgotten the days they spent together, and had started on her own true life.

That was probably something to be celebrated, Kousaka thought.

“Kousaka?”

He was brought back to his senses, and nearly dropped the glass in his right hand. What was I doing again?, Kousaka wondered. Right, I remember. I was drinking with Matsuo. We were walking through town together and decided to go into an Irish pub we spotted. I must have been nodding off from drunkness and fatigue.

“Ahh, sorry. I was spacing out.” Kousaka firmly rubbed his brow.

“You were doing that for a pretty long time,” Matsuo said with a laugh. “It looks like it’s almost closing time. Do you want another drink, or not?”

Kousaka looked at his wristwatch and thought.

“I think I’ll call it for today. Or have you not had enough, Matsuo?”

“Oh, no.” Matsuo shook her head forcefully. “I’m probably too drunk as it is.”

“It does look that way,” Kousaka affirmed, seeing the faint red in her face.

“Yes, I’m drunk enough that you look a little cool, Kousaka.”

“That’s a serious illness. Better get home and rest.”

“No, I don’t really mind if you come in…”

Izumi took off his leather shoes and entered the room.

“Want some coffee?”, Kousaka asked.

Izumi continued.

“Professor Kanroji and Dr. Urizane had the same opinion about the worm causing the infected to commit suicide. They thought that once the number of worms in the host’s body passed a certain number, they couldn’t bear living in human society anymore and accepted death. Well, it was a reasonable guess. Even if it weren’t for those two, you might think so. …But there was a fatal mistake in that thinking. We were thinking with the assumption of "suicide equals abnormality.” That was the trap we fell into.

“As research continued, a number of facts came to the surface. This parasite’s final host is humans, sure, but it doesn’t seem it can infect just any human. In fact, it can’t infect most humans; even if it gets into their body, it’s quickly shut down by the immune system. But in rare cases, there’s people like you with bodies that not only don’t exterminate the worm, but firmly preserve it. Like they’re actively accepting infection.

"This is getting into my own subjectivity a little, but… maybe the worm doesn’t have any such power to make the hosts kill themselves. Sure, it isolates the host, but maybe that has nothing to do with their death. In fact, there’s one new fact Dr. Urizane’s research found. That the worm has the ability to suppress the host’s negative emotions. Anger, sadness, jealousy, hate… any negative emotions that occur in the host can be weakened by the worm. I don’t know the detailed workings, but Dr. Urizane said it might be that the worm can selectively consume the enzymes needed to create nerve signals. If that theory’s correct, then we could explain it as the worm feeding on its host’s anguish. Thus it probably isolates its host from society to provide it plenty of anguish. Guess the stress of everyday life isn’t filling enough.

"So then I came up with this hypothesis. Maybe the infected, before the worm infected them, were always people with souls prone to sickness - to be frank about it, people with a strong desire to die, or suicidal thoughts? What if the ones the worm could make into hosts were people who’d kill themselves if they were left alone?

"With that theory, a lot that hasn’t sat right before suddenly makes sense. The majority of people can’t provide enough anguish to sustain the worm’s life. Even if the worm is ignored, it’ll be weak, and die from an immune system attack. On the other hand, the bodies of people who are constantly charmed by death with more anguish than they can handle, they’ve gotta be better than the worm could ever ask for. Some ticks that infect humans eat excess sebum and keep balance in the skin, so it’s kind of like that. They eat excess anguish to keep a mental balance. …So those bodies don’t exterminate the worm, they accept it. They get incorporated like an organ to handle all that anguish that the host can’t handle alone. The host and the worm form a mutually-beneficial relationship.

"So, what happens if you try to exterminate a worm like that with medicine? All that anguish it was taking care of has nowhere to go, and the host is hit with it again all at once. They got so naive with the worm protecting them, they don’t have the strength left to endure. They lose what was letting them live longer; nothing’s left to stop their longing for death.

"We were convinced the deaths of the infected were caused by the presence of the parasites. But the reality was just the opposite. Their death was caused by the absence of parasites. That’s my conclusion.”

“…If you’re worried about that, I’m really done for.”

Izumi’s shoulders shook with a chuckle.

“So long. Get on well with that worm. Like it or don’t like it, it’s an important part of you.”

With that parting remark, he left.

“You know how when we first met, you were wearing a suit despite not having a job? I wanna see that again.”

“Sure, but why?”

Once they were tired of walking, the two sat down on a sloped lawn. And huddling up in the shade of a tree, they watched the cherry tree snowstorm, and listened to the wind.

At the bottom of the slope, they saw the lake. The water was covered with white flower petals, looking almost as if it were frozen over and covered in snow, so you could just walk across.

Then Kousaka noticed a single swan casually swimming in the lake. He looked again and again, but it was no duck, it was a swan. Maybe it had been left behind by the flock? But the swan didn’t show any sign of lonesomeness, elegantly swimming among the raft of flowers.

That unrealistic sight reminded Kousaka of a child using toys to make a doll house devoid of order. Like something from an inconsistent dream.

“Hey, Mr. Kousaka,” Sanagi said, still leaning her head on his shoulder.

“From the moment I first met you here, I knew it would turn out like this.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. …Do you remember when you first talked to me?”

“I remember it well.” Kousaka squinted as if honing his senses. “I thought you were a really unsociable girl.”

“I couldn’t help that. I’m shy.”

Sanagi pouted, then tilted her head a little and looked up.

“When we met, it was under this mistletoe.”

Soon, Sanagi fell asleep in Kousaka’s lap. She must have been tired. Maybe the worm was still recovering in her, and wasn’t able to fully process the anguish she had.

Kousaka ran his hand through her soft hair. The blue earring hidden on her ear glinted. Even after her hair went back to black, it seemed she still kept her earring on.

Thinking about it, this was his first time seeing her in a spring-like outfit. He hadn’t noticed when she was dressed in winter wear, but looking at her body up close, he identified signs that she’d attempted more than just taking sleeping pills. There were some things that looked ancient, and some things that looked recent. Each one of them saddened Kousaka.

I hope she won’t have bad dreams, Kousaka prayed.

Cherry petals continued to fall in the park. As they sat in the tree shade, the petals slowly piled upon them.

Before long, the sun descended slightly, and the two were illuminated by dim light coming through the trees. Careful not to wake Sanagi, Kousaka lied down and closed his eyes, and took a breath of the rich spring air, filled with the smell of grass and cherry trees.

I won’t be able to experience nature without worry for long. Before too long, my germaphobia will resurge, and I’ll hole up in my room again. That thought depressed me a little. But when I think about how this tender feeling I feel when I’m with Sanagi was brought about by the worm, I can’t bring myself to hate that parasite of love.

In the end, it had become hazy whether or not we could have fallen in love without depending on the worm. But at this point, I can feel like that’s not such a big issue.

Because the worms are an indispensable part of our bodies. We can’t think about anything separating ourselves from them. With the inclusion of the worm, I can call myself “me” for the first time.

People don’t just fall in love with their heads. They can love with their eyes, love with their ears, love with their fingertips. So then there’s nothing strange about how I loved with the worm.

No one can complain about that.

*

By the time the sky was turning gray, the two left Mizushina Park. They bought food at the supermarket, returned to the apartment, and Kousaka made them a basic meal. After their rather late lunch and post-meal coffee, it was 4 PM.

They were sweating, so they took showers one after the other. Changing into inside wear, they sat together on the bed and looked through the encyclopedia they bought at the bookstore. The shortwave radio on the table placed a foreign news program, but the volume was low, so they couldn’t make anything out.

Pale light came through a crack in the curtains. The lights weren’t on, so the room was dim like being deep in the forest. Listening close, children could be heard playing in the distance.

After looking through the encyclopedia and closing it, Sanagi spoke.

“I felt like something was missing. But now I know what it was.”

“There’s no disinfectant smell.”

Kousaka blinked.

“Oh, I guess so. Because I haven’t been nervously cleaning lately.”

“You adore the smell of disinfectant?”

Sanagi nodded.

So Kousaka took some disinfectant spray out of a cardboard box, and like he had done daily until a few months ago, he disinfected everything in the room. Sanagi sat on the bed and enjoyed the scene unfolding before her like it were someone putting up Christmas decorations.

Soon, the room was filled with a thick ethanol smell, and Sanagi lied on the bed with a look of satisfaction.

“Yep, it’s your room.”

“I think most people would say "I hate it, it’s like a hospital.”“

“I guess so. But I think I’m exhausted.”

Less than five minutes later, she fell asleep.

Kousaka pulled the blanket over Sanagi, and after some hesitation, got in beside her. And he watched her sleep, never tiring of it. At this distance, he could identify each one of her long eyelashes.

It was a fleeting look she had on her face. A look like she’d never once felt her nervousness go away her entire life. Sleeping in the dim afternoon, she seemed unusually brittle and easily-hurt.

First thing in the morning, I’ll contact work to cancel my move, Kousaka thought.

I’ll unpack these boxes, and with Sanagi, get this room back to how it was.

I’ll stay in this town.

And I’ll live with her.

While the 5 PM announcement echoed through town, Kousaka slowly closed his eyes.

*

When Sanagi woke up, Kousaka’s face was in front of her. She reflexively jumped back in surprise, eventually realized the situation, took two or three breaths, and lied down again. Her pulse didn’t settle down for a while.

The sun had mostly set. She couldn’t hear children outside anymore. A warm wind blew through the window, rustling the curtains. Mixing with the disinfectant smell, for a brief moment, it made for a chest-tightening nostalgic smell. She pondered that nostalgia for a while, but before she could identify it, she forgot the smell.

Oh well, Sanagi quietly mumbled. Knowing wouldn’t do anything for me.

Then she gently extended her hand and put her fingers between Kousaka’s.

I’ll always remember this sensation, Sanagi thought.

Considering how much time she had left, that wouldn’t be difficult.

It was always this way. I was so scared to live, I couldn’t bear it. If I didn’t take something, I became afraid I would never get it my entire life. If I did take something, I became afraid I would lose it someday.

The scariest thing was that I would never love anyone, and no one would ever love me. If I was going to live a life like that, I thought it would be better to just die as soon as possible. But now that I have learned about love, now I’m more scared than anything to lose it. If I’ll have to continue on with this fear, I think it’s best to die as soon as possible.

A trend toward death. A self-destructive program. In the end, however things fell, my destination was the same. Happiness and unhappiness are two sides of the same coin, and especially to a coward like me, they have almost the same meaning. Everything serves as an argument to entrust myself to death. That’s the person I am.

So I at least want to end it all while the coin is facing up. There’s nothing to win from dying at the proper time. I’m already exhausted from getting sad and getting happy.

So I’m sure I’ll put a period on my life soon. Then the curtain will fall on the history of my life. It’ll never be written to again. There could be no better time to quit while I’m ahead.

Sanagi remembered. The day they first met. The day he first let her touch him. The day they first kissed. The day he let her hug him.

Leaving Kousaka is my only regret. I really feel bad for him. What I’m about to do will mean betraying him. I couldn’t ever apologize enough. I won’t try to ask his forgiveness. If he hates me for it, I guess I’ll just have to accept his anger. That’s my natural reward.

…But if I can, I want Kousaka to think this.

The two of us should have been dead before we even met. Guided by our sick souls, we should have long since taken our lives. By the power of the worm, that was temporarily postponed, we were given a chance to fall in love, and one of us will even miraculously survive.

If he can take it like that, then while this may not be the ideal result, surely he won’t think it’s the worst.

If it weren’t for the worm, we wouldn’t have even met.

And it’s not all sad. Because there’s one fact that my death will prove. One fact that only my death could prove.

The death of the host is brought about by being released from the worm’s influence. And the love between the two, formed by the Cupid-like assistance of the worms, should fall apart just by one of the hosts losing that influence. Thus, because I’m thinking about Kousaka just before I die, and Kousaka is thinking about me, that means our love could exist even taking the worms out of it.

We were able to love each other without depending on the worms.

That was something that could never have been proven if I hadn’t lost them.

“No, it’s not that. In fact, I can’t help but be happy.”

“Huh. I’m relieved.” Kousaka narrowed his eyes. “Those must be the right kind of tears, then.”

He always he such a weird way of consolation, Sanagi thought and laughed.

“…Hey, Mr. Kousaka. Should I tell you something nice?”

“Nice?” Kousaka’s eyes widened a little.

“Yes, nice,” Sanagi nodded. Then she put on a special smile. “Um, I love you, Mr. Kousaka.”

“Yeah. I know that.”

“Not like that, I really do love you.”

“Hmm.” Kousaka thought about it, then sighed. “I don’t really get it, but I’m happy.”

“Right?”

The two laughed together. Before long, Kousaka should realize what I really meant by that, Sanagi thought. Though by then, it would all be too late.

Suddenly, she noticed her tears were making a stain on the pillow, and had a look like she’d done something wrong.

“Sorry. I’m going to make the pillow dirty at this rate.”

Sanagi was about to get up, but Kousaka’s arm blocked her.

“Well, we can just do this.”

With that, Kousaka held Sanagi against his chest.

His shirt absorbed Sanagi’s tears.

“You can cry as much as you want. I think you haven’t cried for yourself enough before now.”

“…Yeah. I’ll do that.”

Sanagi kept crying in his arms. For all that came before, and all that would follow.

If my previous books, The Place You Called From and The Place I Called From, were a story of physical defects, then Parasite in Love is a story of mental defects. In that sense, perhaps you could say the two stories have opposing structures. I had the idea of “the sickness of absence” in early spring 2014, but I had practically zero knowledge of parasites at the time. Miraculously, around that same time, the Japanese translation of Moises Velasquez-Manoff’s An Epidemic of Absence was released by Bungeishunju, though I didn’t learn of this until 2016. It was a deeply interesting book that I got very engrossed in, forgetting I was reading it for reference, so if reading this book gave you any interest in parasites, perhaps you might want to give it a try?

Also, the title of this book, Parasite in Love, was taken directly from Dr. Koichiro Fujita’s book Parasite in Love (Kodansha). I’d like to deeply thank Dr. Fujita for generously allowing me to copy his title.

Chapter end