Parasitic Child: Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Parasite

Everyone, I am not a parasite.

At the moment, I am indeed residing in the body of a human boy, and his body now completely belongs to me. I am more than willing to explain how this came to be.

Our species is like this. Simply put, we “reside” in other organisms to sustain our existence. Their bodies become our living spaces.

However, there is a fundamental difference between our species and parasites. We are intelligent and make every effort to avoid harming our hosts—after all, who wants to constantly move around and cause trouble? If our living space has a long lifespan, everyone is happy. A certain elder of our species suggested that it would be more appropriate to call our way of life “symbiosis.”

But the higher intelligent life forms were enraged by this.

Since our existence was discovered, they have despised us. The reason is that they suspect we seize control of our hosts’ bodies. An ancient, civilized planet called this “possession ¹.” They question our way of life and have, for thousands of years, classified us as a top-level dangerous species, subjecting us to large-scale extermination. It wasn’t until the rise of equality movements in the past century that our species’ right to exist was begrudgingly acknowledged.

Now, all our activities must comply with the law.

The law strictly prohibits us from residing in intelligent life forms. As for what constitutes an intelligent life form, the law is clear. So, for a long time, we tactfully resided in ordinary animals. But in recent years, the protests from animal protection organizations have grown louder. They believe that our reasonable way of life infringes on the rights of those cute animals, even though those animals spend their days thinking about nothing but eating and reproducing.

Under these circumstances, it has become extremely difficult for our species to live openly. Previously, some of my kin and I were neurotically oppressed by local Homo Sapien authorities in a certain star system, where they even banned us from residing in animals. Of course, we wanted to leave, but we didn’t have enough money to buy tickets to emigrate.

We couldn’t reside in animals, nor in intelligent life forms, so we had no choice but to parasitize Homo Sapien corpses.

Although the corpses had lost their original life, our species could use the existing tissues to barely generate energy and reside for a period of time. I must admit, the quality of life would be terrible, and we couldn’t stop the corpses from decaying.

After dozens of days and nights, our group of corpses managed to successfully enrage the local residents. To them, it was probably like a zombie siege, with the undead wandering around every day. On the bright side, we did succeed in destroying the local tourism industry.

One of my fellow kin said he just wanted to go shopping. When he pushed the door open, all the customers inside started freaking out, crying, and crashing into walls or jumping out of windows. Homo Sapien life forms really have no manners. I actually wanted to remind him to tuck his dangling eyeball back in, straighten his head, and shove some of his innards back into his stomach.

After repeatedly grossing out the local human residents and getting shot in the head multiple times, we courteously informed them that we weren’t zombies, that we didn’t eat intelligent life forms, and that we had no interest in Homo Sapien brains. We also told them that shooting us in the head didn’t really affect us, but the only response we got was another gunshot to the head.

By the time the residents finally figured out what we were, all the tourists had already been scared away by the “zombies.” Yes, encountering zombie-like passersby every day is indeed upsetting, even though we repeatedly assured them that we had no interest in their brains. As a result, the local tourism industry never recovered, and the property values plummeted—after all, no one wants to live in a place with corpses wandering around. Eventually, the authorities ran out of patience with us.

So, we were completely expelled.

I was relieved; I was fed up with living in a corpse. Cleaning maggots off myself every day was such a hassle, so getting a free transport to another suitable location was more than welcome.

But the way the authorities expelled us was anything but friendly. They forcibly extracted my fragile self from the corpse and stuffed me into a specially designed bottle. I had no choice but to uncomfortably adjust my semi-transparent tentacles inside the bottle, hoping to reach my destination soon.

I hoped that the new place wouldn’t discriminate against us as much, and that I could soon merge with a healthy life form. Oh, don’t worry, I swear I really won’t harm my host because moving is just too, too annoying.

The spaceship encountered an accident during the journey.

I don’t know exactly what happened, but the crew started screaming in panic. At least they remembered to eject us before fleeing into the escape pods.

After that, all I recall is intense spinning and collisions. We all exchanged anxious brainwaves, mostly consisting of meaningless exclamations like “What do we do?” “What do we do?” “We’re going to die!” The pod shell exploded in midair, and I was thrown out.

I pushed open the cap of the containment bottle, wrapped my tentacles around it, and expanded them to form a parachute-like shape, spinning along with the air currents.

Countless streaks of light flashed by rapidly, and it seemed as if I was being sucked into a vortex. Brilliant lights exploded behind me as I continued to spin and drift.

I don’t know how long it took, but I finally managed to control my drifting speed. Beneath my tentacles lay an endless expanse of green, a cerulean green so beautiful that it made me stop thinking. Above my tentacles was a pale blue sky, with a sharp white light appearing at the edge of the horizon.

I loved this planet. In that instant, I fell in love with it.

Everyone, I am willing to explain the current situation.

Yes, I am currently parasitizing—oh no, residing in the body of a human boy. But I swear by the stars, this was absolutely, completely an accident.

I swear I had no intention of deliberately occupying this fresh young intelligent life form.

It was just an accident.

When I regained consciousness, I had already entered the boy’s body. And this body had already experienced brain death.

His body was still functioning, but there was no activity in his brain. Then I found out that I couldn’t leave this body.

Yes, I couldn’t leave.

So, parasitizing—no, residing in this body was purely an accident.

At that moment, the boy’s body was being held by a woman who was crying her heart out. She was “my” mother, and when I opened my eyes using the boy’s body, her tear-filled eyes lit up: “Thank goodness… Xiao Zhen, you finally woke up.”

Language is a truly fascinating thing. The moment I accessed the boy’s brain, I became fluent in the language here. From just these few words, I could feel the pure love the woman had for the boy. This is the most wonderful emotion in intelligent life forms. A man standing behind the woman looked at me with joy; he was “my” father.

They loved this child, and the boy loved them too. Even though his brain was already dead, my body still rejoiced in the embrace of its parents.

If I were to leave this child’s body, the child in their eyes would be truly gone. That’s why this body instinctively prevented me from leaving.

Our parasitic species doesn’t have social relationships like parents, and we don’t really understand parental love, but now, I—or rather, my body—felt sorrow because of it.

This is one of the reasons I decided to reside in this body.

By the afternoon, another reason made me decide to formally reside in this body: this planet’s civilization has not yet developed interstellar communication. Well, to put it bluntly, there’s no one to regulate me.

This is an independent planet, inhabited by Homo Sapiens, with little contact with galactic civilization. There are no Galactic Animal Protection Associations, no equality organizations, no wretched committees, no suffocating Supervisory Eye, and very few visits from extraterrestrial beings. I breathed a great sigh of relief at this discovery.

I stood in front of the mirror, looking at myself. This body was about 14 years old, with soft hair and a fair, delicate face. By human standards, it was undoubtedly cute. I spoke to the child in the mirror:

“Hello, Yan Zhen.”

And so, my journey as the human Yan Zhen began.

—

The author has something to say:

Dear new readers, please take note of the following:

The storyline of the protagonist’s parents from the previous generation is just a small part of the suspense in the story. It is not a love story; it is a suspense story, a suspense story, a suspense story (emphasizing this three times).

While reading the early chapters, you might have questions about the protagonist’s father’s “first love” from his high school days or certain descriptions. You can choose to exit at any time. However, if you continue reading, there’s a high chance that in the middle to later parts of the story, you’ll find an answer completely different from what you initially expected. I hope this answer will surprise and intrigue you.

(Additionally, the protagonist’s parents’ storyline has about 5 chapters before the paywall, and 3 chapters after, making up roughly 0.03% of the total content.)

Notes:

1. The protagonist will grow up later in the story (only the first chapter is in the first person; the rest are all in the third person).

2. The setting is in a modern, alternate universe.

TN:

Disclaimer 1: I’m an MTLER! As such, I do not promise accurate output from this site. There might be awkward-sounding texts that might bring about confusion. Be warned. The most I can promise is to edit enough to make it readable. If you spot any discrepancies in the sentence structure or flow e.g. random name changes, wrong pronouns etc., kindly inform me. HELP ME HELP YOU! I’ve already said it so if it ends up being a bit too much to handle all the errors and mistakes, it’s okay to stop reading until hopefully a human translator picks up the story in future. I accept productive criticism just don’t be harsh and make me feel like sh*t about it. I’m doing this for fun and it’s not fun being dissed.

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Translator Notes

1. grong vjug [夺舍]- transfer of soul from one body to another just vacated by death[↩]