Parasyte -the maxim-
Symbiosis
Chapter 7: Alive

The news called his kind "monsters." Everyone called him a "monster" that day. From the girl who had caused all of this to his classmates who he thought had known him to the police officers who only saw the bloodshed he'd caused.

He'd heard it so much that he was starting to believe it.

"Kayoko!" Hideo rushed forwards, pushing his broken and bleeding body. He caught her before she could topple forwards, cradling her in his own wounded arms. "Kayoko… I didn't mean to…" he sputtered, trying to contain his hatred for himself.

He'd hurt her.

He'd sworn that he'd never hurt her.

She looked up at him weakly. "I'm okay. I've been through worse," she lied. She said that he was a bad liar, but she was just as bad, if not worse.

"You're bleeding."

It was obvious, but he couldn't help it.

He was still trying to understand what he'd done. He had pierced her without even thinking about it, and now, she was lying in his arms, bleeding.

Emotions stirred within him. He struggled to place them, only half noting that feeling meant that his mind and body were both coming back under his control. It took him a few moments, but he remembered what he was feeling.

Guilt and regret.

This was his fault. And he hated himself for it.

Slowly smiling, she reached up, placing her hands on his shoulders. She pushed herself up, angling herself a certain way. "Shinichi is going to try to kill you. Can you see him? On the rooftops behind me?" she whispered in his ear.

Hideo didn't want to take his eyes off her, but he looked. He could see a small figure in the distance. There was no doubt that it was Izumi, preparing to kill him.

"You should let him kill me," he spat, his hatred for his own existence bubbling over.

Shinichi flinched, lowering his right hand, the rock feeling much heavier than it had only moments before.

"What's wrong, Shinichi?" Migi demanded. "Why didn't you throw?"

He hesitated. "Kayoko is up there. She's blocking me." He paused, squinting, focusing in on the girl and the parasite she was protecting. "She's bleeding bad. He hurt her, but she… she's protecting him."

Migi simply replied, "That's love, isn't it?"

"I won't let him kill you." Kayoko glared at him fiercely, her words strong as she held herself close to him. "If we're dying, we're dying together."

He hesitated. "It's not right… if you die," he breathed, repeating the mantra that he'd said over and over in the months that he'd known her, even though he'd had the chance to take her life so many times. It was the only reason she was alive in his eyes, although if he thought about it, it wasn't much of a reason at all.

A soft smile came over her. "Yuko did something to you in the Fine Arts room, didn't she?" He nodded.

"I can't morph back into human form." Showing her, he tried, but his face only ended up as a skin-colored blob of flesh, some of it half burned from the acidic liquid he'd been drenched in. "There are too many dead cells. They interfere with the communication to the rest of my body."

She ran her fingers down his body, feeling the bullet holes in his skin. She flinched, but did not pull away. "And those officers shot you."

He nodded again. "I don't blame them. I am a murderer." He paused. "A monster," he added quietly.

"It wasn't your fault." She smiled again, the smile he'd come to know over the course of his lifetime as a fully functional almost human. "After all, you can't control fate, right?"

"I tried."

She moved her hands back to his shoulders. Hesitating, she reached for his true face. He flinched away, thinking that she would be disgusted if she touched him. But she kept him steady. She gently touched his true face, feeling his true self for the first time.

"Does this hurt?" she murmured.

He shook his head. "No. I can barely feel anything. My cells are still dead," he confessed.

She bit her lip and grabbed at her grey skirt, ripping a large strip of fabric off of the bottom of it. "I'm going to try to rub some of the dead cells off, okay? So you can try to shift back to human form? Will that work?" He said nothing, simply lowered his head to be within her reach.

Her touch was gentle. He felt himself leaning into it, fighting to keep his eyes open. He kept one of his eyes locked on Izumi, preparing to pull Kayoko out of the way, should he attack. Another turned its gaze upon the piercing wound that his blade had caused in her side. He fought to keep from flinching at the gory sight. Hatred for his own being filled him.

"I hurt you."

She hummed. "I told you that it's okay. We'll treat it as soon as we can get you back to safety." She smiled at him, continuing to rub away with the fabric.

He could feel some sense of control coming back to him. He gently reached up, taking her hand in his, gently pulling the fabric out of her grasp. "That's enough. I'll be okay from here. I want to keep you from bleeding out." He pushed the grey strip against her side, like he'd done that first night when she'd been lying on the kitchen floor, bleeding.

"What about you? You're full of bullet holes," she protested.

He concentrated, pulling his blades back to him. He could feel his human form coming into shape again, the eyes and the hair all back where they belonged. He was Hideo Shimada again, and he was back in control of his own being.

"You're only a human," he finally replied, gazing down at her with his human face. "You're fragile, and I can't let you die."

She smiled, knowing what he was about to say. "Because it's not right?" she guessed, knowing what his reasoning was. He nodded again. She paused, her smile falling from her face. "Hide… we can't stay here anymore. Not after that loss of control that you had."

Looking down, he felt something stir in his gut. He could place it faster than he had before. It was remorse, where he felt such intense regret and guilt that his heart – his slowly-beating, barely-alive heart – throbbed painfully in his chest.

"I didn't mean for this to happen."

Her hand reached up to cup his face reassuringly. "I know you didn't." She smiled as his hands came to rest on her shoulders, him staring down at her, his usually blank eyes starting to show a twinkle. "But we have to have a next move. What do you want to do now?" she asked softly, letting her hands fall to rest on his chest.

"I want to live," he replied immediately. "I want to live with you."

Migi perked up. "I can feel something…" Shinichi glanced at his hand, which had moved to stare at the building. "It's strong. Much stronger than any other signal I've ever felt before," he explained, eye narrowing.

Shinichi frowned. "What's he feeling?"

"Many things at once. His thoughts are no longer disjointed, but his signal has increased. He is more powerful than he has ever been."

"Migi, what is he feeling?" the human half demanded.

Closing his eye, the parasite thought. There were many different signals that he had to sift through. "Most of them are emotions I am unfamiliar with. Love is one of them, but the others… I suppose that I can sum them up as an uncontainable desire to live," he finished, opening his eye once more.

Hesitating, Shinichi looked to the school rooftop. He saw how they were wrapped in an embrace, Kayoko's back still turned to him, angled so he could not kill Shimada. From where he stood, they looked like any other human couple.

"Can you hear his thoughts?" he finally asked.

Migi glanced at Shinichi in confusion, but nodded. "Yes. He is thinking the same thing, over and over."

"What is it?"

"He is thinking 'I want to live with Kayoko.'"

She beamed. "Then, let's run away from here. Far away, where they'll never find us!" she exclaimed.

Kayoko's smile was bright, brighter than he'd ever seen it.

Maybe it was because it was a ray of light after the darkness that had just happened. Or maybe it was all of the emotions that were flooding into his body at once. Or maybe it was the way that he felt so human, more than ever.

Or maybe it was because he realized that his way of living was not living. It was just surviving.

It had none of the happiness or laughter that existed within human lives. It was empty and cold and lonely, and Hideo was tired of living that way. He wanted to do more than just survive. He wanted to live.

I want to live with Kayoko.

Perhaps it was a bit much to presume that it was the emotion that humans called "love." He had yet to experience anything like it, and that emotion was a powerful thing. It was the driving force behind many human stories. Many people used love as a way to motivate them, drive the decisions that shaped their entire lives.

A monster like him could never feel love. He didn't deserve it.

"Hide? Did you hear me?"

He heard her.

Slowly, he pushed the corners of his lips up in a gentle smile, softening his gaze as he stared at her. She didn't show the shock if she felt any. She just returned his smile, her beaming smile growing smaller, until hers mirrored his.

"Yes. Let's run away."

Even if he wasn't human, even if he would never fully be human, he would get close if he was with Kayoko. He could become something similar to Izumi. He could become an inhuman being that was caught between the lines of human and not.

"Let's go somewhere far."

And even if he wasn't human, even if he thought he didn't deserve to feel love, he figured that, maybe, just maybe, he deserved to feel happiness.

After all, every human deserved happiness. Why didn't he?

"As long as I am with you, I think that things will be fine."

His tone of voice didn't change. He still had the emotionless way of speaking, but that didn't bother him. It wasn't his tone that mattered to him. It was the message that he said, the words that he carefully selected in order to let Kayoko know how important to him she was.

She clearly understood, as she reached forwards, hugging him. She locked her arms around his neck, holding him close. "I'm okay if it's with you. You saved my life more than once, Hide. I want to help you, now."

"You do," he replied softly, returning the hug as best he could. He was sure that it was awkward, but it was all he could do. "You make me feel more human. I understand how you said 'love makes people do crazy things.'" She flushed, but he continued. "I can feel the way you can now. And it's because you taught me how to do so."

Kayoko was crying, but she was still smiling. "These are happy tears," she assured him. "I'm just… so glad that you're alive."

In the end, Shinichi never threw the rock.

He couldn't bring himself to murder someone who was still human. Especially not someone who he'd nearly killed with his carelessness and anger. Not someone he cared about.

Even if it meant taking out one of the inhuman creatures that he hated so much, he didn't want to lose what made him human. He wasn't yet ready to give up his humanity just so he could fulfil the angry hole in his heart. He wasn't even sure if killing Shimada would fill that hole.

Somewhere inside him, he was glad he didn't kill both of them.

He was glad that they had disappeared before the police reinforcements arrived at the rooftop. He had turned away for a moment, and they were gone. He was glad that he had even given them that chance. He was glad that the police, when they had stormed Kayoko's house, where she had once lived with her parents, they only found the house void of all personal belongings.

After all, she was never legally living at Hiroshi's house.

"Shinichi, where are we going?" Migi asked as they walked down the empty streets. "I thought you wanted to never see Shimada again."

He smiled dryly. "It's not Shimada I want to see. It's Kayoko."

"You'll see both of them. They are practically inseparable now." He ignored Migi, choosing to believe that this was the final time he'd get to see Kayoko, his old friend who he'd nearly killed.

He wanted to ask for forgiveness, even though he was sure that she'd tell him that there was no need to. To him, there was. He had pushed her away, called her a traitor. He tried to make it up to her by not giving away her location, the place she truly lived with Shimada.

The apartment building was hidden away in the corner of the street. He found the address, the one Kayoko had given him during the funeral, and knocked on the door.

A pair of unfamiliar eyes met his as someone opened the door.

Shinichi's eyes went wide, seeing the familiar face with all new features. "Shimada…?" he practically breathed, shock seeping into every part of his body.

"Hello, Izumi. Migi."

The parasite had changed completely within the week. He no longer had neatly-kept, brown hair. Instead, his hair was a messy black. His eyes were no longer those blank, emotionless eyes that every parasite had. Instead, they sparkled with something akin to life.

"I don't understand," Migi murmured. "How could this be? Your signal is strong now that I know it's you, but… I didn't recognize that it was you at all."

Shimada managed the smallest of smiles. He didn't seem threatening at all. In fact, he seemed like less of a threat than Migi, and Shinichi actually trusted Migi. "It's because I let myself feel. Emotions make us human, and being human makes us less of… whatever it is that we are," he replied easily. He opened the door wider, gesturing for them to come in. "I knew you were coming. Kayoko's getting some snacks ready with the food we have left."

Shinichi slowly entered the apartment. It was barren. There was nothing decorating the walls or the hallway. There was nothing to show who lived in the apartment, or even that it'd been inhabited at all. No photos or paintings, nothing of the sort. There was barely anything, save for a few suitcases that sat by the door. They were all closed, stacked one on top of the other.

"Are you… going somewhere?"

Nodding, the parasite closed the door behind Shinichi. "Yes. We're leaving. We're going to try to get a fresh start in a new city. Maybe a new country if that's what we have to do." He paused, looking to his former rival. "I know that we can't live here anymore. I feel bad for taking her away from her friends, but… well, it was her idea." He chuckled.

"Her idea to do what?"

"Run away, of course." Shimada softened as the conversation shifted to Kayoko. "We're both ready. There is barely anything left for either of us here."

Shinichi shook his head, slowly trying to digest everything that Shimada had just dropped onto him. "Why… what made you decide to go?" he asked almost disbelievingly.

The now black-haired boy hesitated, bowing his head. "After… after I came to my senses, I felt regret. I hated myself for what I'd done. The day before it happened, I swore I'd never harm another human being. But I wanted to protect the secret that Kayoko and I held. If it came down to it, I would have let you kill me," explained Shimada.

The two walked into the living area together, one that was connected to both the dining area and the kitchen, which were the same.

"What changed your mind?" Shinichi was genuinely curious now.

Glancing towards the dining area, Shimada nodded towards the girl whose hair was in a neat bun atop her head as she wrapped a boxed lunch in a blue cloth. "She did. She was ready to die alongside me. When I saw that, the only thing I could think was… I want to live." He glanced to the human, a small smile on his face. "Haven't you ever felt that way?" he asked quietly, his tone sounding like it was begging Shinichi to verify his feelings.

Shinichi slowly nodded. "Yes. I have," he murmured.

"Then you know exactly what I mean. I've come to understand something within the past few days, Izumi." He looked directly at Shinichi, his eyes sparkling with the life that a parasite should never have been able to show. "Living is something that humans do. Surviving is what every other species does. I want to live. I want to be alive."

Slowly realizing what the other boy meant, Shinichi nodded. He understood. He knew why Shimada and Kayoko were leaving.

"Run as far away as you can, Shimada. And don't look back for anything."

Shimada slowly smiled once more. "I can't promise that. If Kayoko lags behind, then I'm going to look back and wait for her. She is the one keeping me alive, after all."