Parasyte -the maxim-
Symbiosis
Chapter 5: Control

Yuko had all the evidence she needed.

She'd witnessed how his head had been dented by a baseball, but only seconds later, it'd reverted to its original shape, without any dent in sight. He hadn't even flinched when the ball hit him, when most people would have collapsed from the pain or the shock. He'd simply turned around with blank, dead eyes that seemed to say more than she could have learned if she'd just asked him.

She'd seen it with her own eyes. His inhumanity.

She'd watched his face turn into something different, a new face that mimicked one in a poster on the side of a building. Someone that she didn't recognize, and it certainly wasn't his. It wasn't the face that she'd seen in school every day. It was that of a celebrity. He'd gone from being someone she was used to seeing to someone who she'd never met before.

With all that she'd seen, she came to a conclusion.

There was no way that Hideo Shimada was human.

She'd been in the bathroom all morning. She'd gotten up quietly and gone to the bathroom early that morning, before she should have been awake. He could hear noises that sounded like she was vomiting, retching with awful coughing sounds. He flinched every time, but didn't move until his alarm sounded.

"Hide." He looked up from where he was packing his school bag. Kayoko, who looked extra tired, ran a hand through her hair. She had a hand wrapped around her stomach as she emerged from the bathroom. "I think I'm getting sick again. I feel awful."

He frowned, putting his hand against her forehead. "You don't feel warm."

"Maybe we should stay home today… I feel like something bad might happen," she admitted quietly. "It sounds dumb, but I just… I'm worried." She bit her lip, looking down, away from him.

Hideo gently moved his hand to rest against her cheek, causing her to look up at him. Her eyes were wide and her face was red. He could even hear her heart skip a few beats, like she was sick, but he chose not to comment on it. Instead, he gazed at her with strong, determined eyes.

"As long as I'm with you, I'll make sure nothing happens. And if I have to leave you for some reason, I'll only do so when I know you'll be safe. I promise that I won't let anything happen to you," he vowed, sounding as strong as he could.

She needed him to be strong, especially when she was such a weak, sickly girl. She was weak even for humans, who were already weak enough. But she was especially vulnerable. She would be the one in the most danger if anything were to happen. For example, if Izumi's right hand decided to go rogue, it could possibly kill her first, considering that she knew exactly what the parasites were.

For all intents and purposes, she was a danger to his kind.

But he still promised her that nothing would happen. He promised that he wouldn't let anything happen to her as long as he was standing.

She smiled wryly at him. "You can't control everything, Hide," she murmured.

"No. But I can try."

Yuko called Hideo to the Fine Arts room, a small classroom hidden away in a wing that barely anyone ever went in the mornings. She'd slipped a note in his shoe locker, asking him to come.

She didn't expect him to show up.

But when he did, the first words out of his mouth were, "What is it? Don't take too long. I have to get back to the classroom."

The girl had to summon all her bravery. If she was wrong, she'd ruined her chances with the boy that she liked. But if she was right, her life was in a lot of danger. Either way, something bad was going to happen in the next few moments.

"I know you probably never noticed me, but I noticed you from the beginning," she began, her voice shaking. "I always noticed you. And… I noticed." She trailed off for a moment, trying to collect herself. "I don't like thinking that you're different, but if you're what the rumors say… if you're something that kills and eats humans…" She didn't know how to continue, so she simply trailed off.

"If I am?" he asked slowly from behind her.

Yuko bit her lip, hesitating for the briefest of moments. "If you are… I want you to leave. I want you to leave and never come back here," she demanded, curling her shaking hands into shaking fists.

It was a weak demand.

But Yuko wasn't a strong person.

She wasn't bold like Akiho. She could never speak her mind like Satomi. And she could never bravely face her fears like Kayoko. She wasn't like any of them. But she was smart. She was good at finding the truth, even if it was hidden under layers upon layers of lies.

This was her strength, and she had to handle this herself.

"I don't want you to kill anyone!"

Hideo's eyes went wide.

"Even if you're not human, you're a better man than… than Hiroshi ever could've hoped to be."

It hadn't even been a week since Kayoko spoke those words to him. It had only been a few hours since he resolved to never kill or harm another human. It'd only been a few minutes since the only person, besides Izumi, who knew what he was smiled at him.

And now, this girl threatened to take away all of that.

He looked down. "Did you tell anyone what you found?" he asked slowly.

She didn't answer his question. "Do you really kill people?" She replied with her own.

For a moment, Hideo paused, as if he was debating answering her at all. "I used to. But I decided recently that I wouldn't anymore." He looked at the short-haired girl coldly, his gaze piercing her as he spoke. "I figured it'd make Kayoko sad. She hates the idea of me hurting anyone. So, in favor of me not hurting you, answer me… did you tell anyone else?"

"No, I didn't," she replied shakily, her eyes widening as she took tentative steps back. "But, Shimada, are you saying… are you saying that Kayoko knew… all along?"

Not good.

"How could she… She knew? She knew what you were… and she didn't say anything? She got close to you like that and-and… and she let you live without telling anyone? How… how is that… Is she… even human?"

Hideo's eyes narrowed into a glare. His face darkened completely, his apathetic, emotionless expression from only moments prior completely gone. He aimed his glare at the girl, who shivered under his dark look. He could feel something negative bubbling up inside him.

Hate. Anger.

You hate her. You're angry at her.

Kill her.

His instincts told him that in order for him to survive, the girl needed to die. She knew too much about him, about his kind. She was a danger to his way of life. Yet something else entirely told her that what she was saying about Kayoko was unacceptable. What she was saying about Kayoko was bad. It was wrong. She didn't need to die because she was a threat. She needed to die to atone for the horrible thoughts she had about Kayoko.

This girl in front of him didn't deserve to live.

"Why are you talking about her that way?" he demanded softly, his voice quiet, but carrying all his anger.

The girl backed up a little, her entire body shaking. She was afraid, just like human beings would be. They should all fear him. "Be-because! She knew, and she didn't say anything! How could she side with something that kills and eats humans?" The girl's eyes darted around, searching for an escape route.

"Because she is better than the rest of you. She sees our similarities, not our differences." He advanced, causing her to shrink back even further. "Will you be telling anyone about this?"

She shook even more, and Hideo knew. She would tell everyone if he let her walk away. If he let her go, if she told, his life as he knew it would be over. He would be captured or killed, taken to be experimented on. Either way, he'd be taken away from the only human who was worth protecting.

They're all the same… I thought there would be others like her. I thought we could coexist. Tamura said… that it was possible. But their response to fear is hatred, anger, and violence. We cannot live in harmony.

He couldn't allow them to take him from her.

His face split apart in an instant, his skin turning into the blades that had taken the lives of many before her. His blades were sharp enough to kill her, and he knew it. He would not allow her to live, not after what she said. Not after what she could possibly do. He couldn't allow any of it. Not a single thing.

As she struggled to find breath to even scream, Hideo struck.

He barely missed. She'd managed to gather herself just in time to dodge his strikes. He cursed his slow reaction time. He wasn't used to having his targets resist him. In the time it mattered most, his natural abilities as a killer were failing him.

But her dodge caused her to fall to the floor. He advanced, knowing that there was no way that she could escape him. As he raised his blade, preparing to deliver the final blow, she tossed something at him, high into the air.

He struck whatever it was with his blade, hearing glass shatter above him, but something poured down upon him. Liquid seeped into his skin, burning the soft tissue like it was paper. Whatever it was, it was like acid to him, and he couldn't help his shriek of pain as it hit his most sensitive skin. His true self curled into a ball, not knowing what to do. It didn't know how to react to this liquid that was killing his cells, forcing him back from his own body.

It was like he was having an out of body experience.

All he could hear were his own thoughts. They were screaming at him in pain and desperation, but he couldn't force himself to respond. The pain was too much for him to bear.

Hurts was the only word that he could muster.

His body was not his own. He couldn't control what he was doing. Something about that liquid had cut off his mind from his body, separated the rational side from the animal. He wanted to force his face to return to its human state, but it wouldn't listen to him.

Instead, the blades shot out the window, following the annoying girl who had burned him. They struck blindly, trying to pierce her, slice her, kill her. His body wanted her dead, even though his mind just wanted to gather itself.

He was not one whole being anymore.

He was fragmented.

He was not in control.

Kayoko's eyes were trained on the classroom door. Her hands were clasped together over her lap. She was barely listening to the teacher as she stared at the door, hoping that Hideo would come back through it. He'd been missing since before class started.

"Hey, Kayoko," Satomi whispered to her. Eyes wide, she looked to her friend. "You're distracted. Are you okay?"

Biting her lip, she hesitated. Satomi deserved to know, especially since Shinichi was bound to get involved if Hideo was in trouble. But she deserved to hear it from Shinichi, not from Kayoko.

She shook her head. "No. Just worried about Hide," she replied.

Satomi's face softened into a smile. She giggled, her eyes crinkling in a smile. "You really love Shimada, don't you?" Her words pierced Kayoko, whose eyes went even wider and face flushed a deep, dark red.

She looked down at her book, where she'd copied down whatever was on the board on two separate pages. One was for Hideo, so he could review whatever he missed when he returned. She'd thought of him, even if she didn't realize that she was. She'd put him as a priority, even though she wasn't paying much attention to the class.

"I guess… I guess I do."

Return to normal. Find Kayoko. Get her. Get out.

Those were the only thoughts that Hideo could understand, and they were the only goals he wanted to accomplish. He needed to get out of the school, maybe out of the town. He needed to leave, before that girl could tell the authorities what he was and before they could find him.

I don't want to die.

When had his thoughts turned to death? When had it become so important for him not to die? When had living become his priority?

When had he become so… human?

Kayoko would assure him that "it's not a bad thing" if he told her his thoughts. She would tell him that feeling human wasn't bad. She would tell him that it was good, because it meant that they weren't so different after all.

I don't want to die here.

Not like this.

He wanted to live just a little longer.

If he needed to run, he would. He could live on the run. He could survive as long as he needed to.

Kayoko.

He struggled along, trying to force his true self back, trying to bring his human face forwards so he could at least seem somewhat normal.

Go to class 3… She's there.

This thought travelled throughout his body, forcing his feet along. It seemed like the only thing that unified his disjointed thoughts was the idea of seeing her again. She was the only thing that mattered to his broken, fragmented self. He needed to be in control, but he wasn't the one who currently was.

She was the one who controlled him.

He smirked internally at this realization. Perhaps she had always controlled him, and perhaps that was why he didn't think much of his slow transformation. He'd become less and less like his kind and more and more like her.

His kind may have been ahead in strength and intelligence, but for some reason, he was always running to catch up to her.

She was three steps ahead of him. She would always stop, look back, and wait for him to catch up, but whenever he did, she took another three steps, and was ahead of him again. No matter how long she waited, he would never be able to be on the same wavelength as her, but he could at least try.

He had been trying, unconsciously. He'd forced himself to unlock the parts of him that his kind had sealed away. The parts that his kind had deemed as weaknesses. The parts that she saw as strengths.

Emotions. Happiness. Remorse. Sympathy. Forgiveness. Trust.

Love.

"Love makes people do crazy things."

He was doing something crazy right now. He was abandoning something that his own kind had told him to do. He was abandoning his life as he knew it for safety. But he didn't want to abandon her.

He could have just run the instant that the girl revealed what she knew. Instead, he tried to reason with her. He tried to explain things in the way that Kayoko had explained them to him. He tried to make her see that he was different than the rest of his kind.

"You're just like a human. Your kind can't be so different, can they?"

That was what she was trying to tell him that day.

They were more alike than they were different. If his kind only opened themselves up a little bit more, let themselves feel the way humans did, then perhaps they truly could coexist. Perhaps they could find harmony together. If his kind wanted to, they could practically become human. They could stop feasting on human flesh and start eating the way that humans did.

If only.