There there.

After the Father had died, Daichi always thought that he was next. Mrs. Atsuo worked from home, so she always had 'quality' time with him.

The mother continued writing Kuni's romance novels and leeching off his legacy. Daichi hated that his mother was sitting at home all day because he never had a break. At first as a child, she didn't lay her hands on him. She simply verbally abused him. As years went on, she moved from words to physical punishment.

She made sure that his defences and self-confidence were utterly broken down. Any form of resistance was eradicated. This was so that Daichi could never leave her.

As he progressed through school, she had a brilliant idea that perhaps her son one day can write the novels. Like father, like son. Her son was to graduate from high school and get a degree in creative writing just like her Father.

Upon seeing that his mother has returned with a pestle in hand, he started having a seizure. Eriko was bewildered. She thought that Daichi was acting crazy because half the reason was for venting his feelings and the other half to garner sympathy so that he would not get punished.

She got mad when she thought this.

'You think you can fool me!'

She pinned his stomach to the floor and struck.

"Looks like you can't go to swimming anymore!" she laughed. However, he was still spasming. Looking at his idiotic tantrum, she laid a hit and another. One of them battered his rib. Dark purple bruises popped almost instantly but other than that there wasn't much of a reaction. Irritated, she dropped the pestle and went off again.

One of the reasons he chose swimming was that he can regularly show off his body to the public. This way, he hoped that his mother would pay attention and hit him less.

Often, she hit him during long breaks. Other times she had done her research and would hit him without leaving a bruise or in places where it wouldn't show. There were many other methods of torturing someone without leaving a bruise like tasering.

Still, he believed that being a part of the swimming club reduced the number of times he got beat up and the severity of that.

It was also why he chose to be part of the student council, so he could stay afterschool more often.

***

The parasite had tightly wrapped itself around Daichi's brainstem and tapped into his brain. Little skin yellow tendrils slowly propagated over his brain and blood vessels in his neck.

Inside Daichi's mental world, the worm was swimming in a sinusoidal motion. Reels of memories were projected in floating screens in its peripheral vision. Memories of the present, past and dreams of the future. The worm swam with impish glee as hosts with traumatic memories were easiest to take over.

It swam and swam and finally saw Daichi sitting and hugging his chin on his kneecaps. The worm enlarged to human size and flew around Daichi before resting his head end on his shoulder.

"There. There. You can rest now." The parasite spoke in a cooing male voice.

Daichi shivered when he felt its tail wrap around his abdomen.

"No! I'm going to survive and get out of here!" He exclaimed.

The worm looked at his facial expressions from the side and grinned.

"If you really wanted to, you could have left by now, but you were too weak."

Daichi's eyebrows rose in shock of self-realisation.

"There's no way I could leave now but if I'm patient, an opportunity will arise. My father died to save me!"

"Wait and wait. That's what you keep telling yourself."

A screen floated in front of Daichi. It was playing a compilation of all the times he was tortured and there afterwards, the mantra he told himself.

'I'll get out of here! I promise I will!' Daichi vowed while being whipped by his mother.

"Hehehehe!" The worm's human sized body was wiggling as it cackled. "You could never run away; you were a coward. That's why your father died. Haha!"

"No! There was nothing I could do!"

"You could have killed your mother. Spending a couple years in juvie and you could have got out by now."

"I would never kill anyone!"

"But you want to. I know how badly you wanted to kill your mom."

"No! That's a lie!"

A floating screen appeared.

"If my mother weren't here. My life would be so free. No. Don't think like that."

Another screen appeared.

"I wish she were dead!"

Another

"Die…"

Another

"I want to kill her"

"Die"

Countless screens flew and circled around him

"Should I do it with a gun?"

"Die!"

"I'm going to f-ing kill HER!"

"No, a knife, I want to feeel it cut deep inside"

"Kill, kill, kill,"

"I should slit her throat in her sleep!

"Die! I HATE YOU"

"Noo!" Daichi clutched onto his hair and covered his face with two hands as he wailed. The screens stopped.

"I won't kill her! I won't." He pledged.

In the real world, Eriko had returned with a pepper spray and pinched his eyes till his eyeballs popped out. A screen streamed the incident to Daichi. Immense pain came down in torrents as pepper spray juice foamed in reaction to his eye fluids. Daichi writhed on the ground bawling.

"Shhh, it's okay. You don't have to struggle anymore." The parasite coddled him. "I'll make your wish come true. Leave it to me. You go see your dad now."

A figure appeared out of a mirage far away in the horizon. Daichi looked up in disbelief.

"Dad?" he cried out. His father opened his arms and smiled gingerly at him. Daichi got up and ran into his father's embrace. Tears flung from the impact.

"Dad…" Countless words stuck at his throat but only one came out. What he wanted to say the most.

"I missed you."

"I missed you too Son."

Daichi and the apparition slowly sunk into the bottom as his heart melted. His walls torn down. The parasite grinned as skin yellow tendrils sprung from every direction. The bright mental world of Daichi turned dark red…