Who's there?

I feel stronger, faster and more energetic. When I walked up the stairs to my bedroom, I didn't feel any exertion on my legs. I could walk up the stairs a hundred times and not break a sweat.

Knock

Knock

Father?

It's a bit early for father to come home from visiting mother. He'd normally come home with the smell of alcohol and cigarettes late at night.

Earlier I had made blood on my shirt disappear with my hands like a magician, but it was torn. I changed my ripped shirt into a clean one.

Before opening the door, I looked through the peephole and saw a face I vaguely remembered as one of the neighbours I had seen when I moved in. He was around the same age as my father and had a wife and son. I opened the door and greeted him.

"Good afternoon or good evening?" I said as I remembered the time was close to six when I was in my bedroom.

He froze for a moment.

"Good evening" He said.

"My name is Hikaru, nice to meet you." I smiled at him. The kind of smile that would wipe a girl off her feet.

"Hikaru... My name is Genkei… nice to meet you." He said and smiled back. It only seemed that his lips moved but his eyes stared blankly.

This is quite strange as I've never had this reaction before. It's as if this person was completely deaf to charisma and lacked any himself.

"..."

"You must be my neighbour Genkei-san"

"Hikaru-kun… I heard a scream." He said in an apathetic voice.

It made me feel uncomfortable that he was still smiling as he said that.

"Ahh, I'm sorry you had to hear that Genkei-san. In fact, my classmate was here to confess her feelings to me, when I rejected her politely, she was heartbroken and ran away." I frowned.

"Did you awaken just then?"

"Ah, awaken? I came home from school not long ago" I said sounding puzzled. What an odd question to ask.

"Do you need help cleaning up?"

"Eh? Clean... No, thank you -"

Suddenly, he placed his right hand on my shoulder with his thumb touching the skin of my neck. That moment I felt a shock where his thumb touched me. I took a step back from him.

"You are indeed one of us. Although you are a different type from me."

The shock was probably my skin cells telling me that the skin cells on his thumb weren't human. I felt my heartrate go up to 110 bpm in an instant. The feeling of invincibility I felt a moment before was gone. Up against another monster I was just another regular guy. I had no idea of our combat capabilities. I wasn't entirely surprised that there were others. If you spot one cockroach, its usually not alone.

He didn't seem like he would attack me since he thought I was the parasite that had invaded my body not long before. Then his questions made sense to me. I had awakened just then in this body. Then he was asking if I needed help to clean up the bodies. He asked that because he heard a scream, but is it a normal thing? Meaning, did all the parasites that acquire new host bodies get so hungry that they eat the person next to them?

"When did you take over your body?" I asked.

He stopped smiling and his eyeballs had twisted to his upper right corner. It looked like his eyes would pop out.

He looked back at me.

"About 20 minutes ago." He said blankly.

I just realised, but could he be a bit slow? It's as if he's a 90s pc still booting up from a floppy disk. He did say that I was a different type. Am I better? Or maybe he specialises in combat?

"Did you eat someone?" I asked. From the way he talks, parasites didn't care about manners.

"No. This was the only one home. I ate meat in the fridge. Do you need help cleaning up?"

So that's why he asked if I needed help. Pft, freeloader. Then again, I was starving before. It seemed the food in the fridge didn't fill his appetite. I guess if we're comrades who arrived on the frontlines then its fine to help each other out.

"Sorry. There isn't any leftover." I said.

There wasn't any change in expression on his face, but I felt like he got more miserable after that. Should I have said it solemnly? I didn't think man-eating parasites would have feelings. Then I remembered the parasite I had took over. Apart from what it looked like; it didn't seem any different from a person emotionally. If I compared it to myself, didn't it seem like it was more human than me?

***

Hikaru didn't realise it, but he felt a bit sad when he thought that. Although if he realised that he became sad, would he be happy that he could feel after all? Even if just a little.

***

After a moment of silence, he began to walk back to his house next door.

"Wait"

Genkei turned to face me.

"You said I was a different type."

"..."

Genkei didn't reply. Was he not answering the question because he was upset, he didn't eat or was it that he lacked understanding of the human language and didn't register that statement as a prompt to reply? I thought it might be the latter, so I asked again.

"How did you know that?"

"I sensed that you weren't made of the same type of cells as mine."

"Do you know what I am?"

"I don't know. I only remember the basics of our directives." Genkei said. He paused for a moment.

"Wave controllers and officers. Wave controllers are a different species, but officers are highly intelligent members of any species because they remember their directives and abilities. I feel there's a lot more, but I don't remember much."

He stared at me after he said that…

"Ahh, I don't remember more than what you said." I replied.

He's still staring at me.

"You don't seem to be in the higher ranks although your cell type is different. I'm the lowest species sent here. You're supposed to remember more… the stronger your species are. You're probably one of the few that didn't get processed well."

He turned around and walked away while he said that as if there was no need to bother with me.

Hmph, how rude.

So, there's a hierarchy ordered by species and intelligence. Every parasite sent here was processed by a mastermind or some organisation. For what purpose? Obviously for malevolent reasons.

I should ask him… Later or maybe another parasite. For now, I don't seem to be in danger since they recognise me as one of their own. However, now I'm involved in some sort of scheme. Any war that's going to happen later could get me killed. I need to uncover my combat capabilities first before I could get some real answers.

I closed the door and headed back to my bedroom.