Ch.205Prequel Chapter 10. Why Him of All People

“When is this guy going to wake up? Ugh. It’s so frustrating, seriously.”

“Meooow.”

“……”

Irritating voices and irritating meowing.

Ash pretended to be asleep, not daring to open his eyes.

“How can someone faint at the sight of a cat?”

“Don’t be so hard on him, Jin. Anyone might be startled if a cat jumps out when they’re already tense in the darkness.”

“Right. An extreme coward could definitely react that way. I guess my lack of sensitivity toward scaredy-cats made it hard for me to understand.”

That crazy woman.

By now, Ash suspected she knew he was awake and was deliberately mocking him to his face.

He had planned to open his eyes at the right moment once Jin quieted down, but somehow she kept spitting insults without even pausing to breathe.

Ash reluctantly decided to give up and open his eyes.

“Oh! Or maybe Ash has a cat allergy? Maybe his body’s danger detection system is so excellent that he passes out and nearly dies just from cat hair entering his field of vision!”

“Ugh. So I just fainted for a bit?”

“Oh. He’s awake.”

“Meow.”

Opening his eyes, Ash pretended to be assessing the situation by looking around.

Of course, after keeping his eyes closed for over ten minutes while enduring Jin’s verbal assault, he had a pretty good idea of what was going on.

That cat in Jin’s arms must have been the troublemaker.

It must have triggered the alarm in the cargo hold and caused all this commotion.

“Ash! Ash! Did you see the monster before you fainted? There was something huge like an alien, but Knight beat it up and threw it out into space. Phew, that was a close call, right?”

“Uh, umm……”

Ash squeezed his eyes shut again.

Apparently, the mockery wasn’t over yet.

Finally, Gus, unable to watch any longer, unfolded his arms and stepped forward.

“Stop teasing him. What was in the cargo hold was just that cat, Ash. It seems to be a lab cat from the OK Ship that somehow crawled into the cargo hold while we weren’t looking.”

“What? A fugitive from the OK Ship? Then……”

The gazes of Gus, Ash, and Allen converged.

After exchanging glances, the three realized they were all thinking the same thing.

“What? Why are you three exchanging meaningful glances like the intro to some gay threesome porn?”

“Jin. Hand over that cat. I’m worried about its health after being in the cargo hold for so long.”

“Wow. Ash, you can treat cats too? That’s awesome……”

“Allen. Gus. Restrain Jin.”

“Huh?”

Allen and Gus had already moved behind Jin.

By the time Jin handed over the cat with a dumbfounded expression, her limbs were each held by Allen and Gustav, leaving her unable to move.

“What, what is this? A kidnapping? I understand tensions build up during days of communal living, but handling three at once is a bit……”

“Hold her tight.”

“Huh? Ash? Where are you taking it? That’s the operating room! Hey? Ash!”

Jin, apparently not completely clueless, quickly sensed danger and began shouting.

Her intuition was correct.

Ash immediately grabbed the cat by the scruff of its neck and injected it with anesthetic.

Of course, since it was medicine meant for humans, he neither knew nor cared what dose would be lethal for a cat.

Soon the cat went limp, and Ash ignored the screams from behind—which sounded like an alien monster howling—as he put on his mask and gloves.

“Nooooo! Our Pesil-chan! Don’t touch my Pesil-chaaan!”

“Pesil…? You’ve already named it? Why Pesil?”

“Damn it! Allen, why is your name Allen?”

“Well, my parents……”

“Exactly! You probably saw some random stray dog’s name and thought it was pretty! That’s how it is with our Pesil-chan too! Anyway, Ash, I swear! If you cut open Pesil’s head! I won’t let you get away with it! I said I won’t let you! Ahhh! What’s that saw sound? Ash!!!”

Krkrkrkrk.

As the chilling sound came from the operating room, Jin nearly lost her mind.

About five minutes later, Ash emerged slowly from the room in blood-stained surgical scrubs, looking nervous.

When he removed his mask, his anxious expression was revealed as he couldn’t keep his lips still.

“Um…… Jin. You see. This was necessary. You know that animals from the OK Ship might…… be infected with parasites. But we don’t have any non-destructive scanning equipment on board, so…… I had no choice but to split open its head to check directly, but……”

“You, bastard! I can tell from how long-winded you’re getting that you didn’t find anything!!!”

“Aaargh! My fingers!”

“Oh shit.”

She was right.

As Jin began to rage and struggle, Allen and Gus couldn’t hold on and let go.

Breathing heavily, Jin approached the operating room door, and her pupils reflected the cat splayed out with its four legs extended.

Seeing the neatly split skull, Jin squeezed her eyes shut.

Of course, she knew.

For absolute safety, splitting open the head was the right thing to do.

Jin tried to calm herself down by repeating this internally.

“Aaaaargh! My caaaaat!!!”

Of course, her efforts bore no fruit.

“Jin. I’m really sorry about this. If you want, I could taxidermy it for you?”

“How does a doctor know how to taxidermy a cat? You’re a quack doctor!”

“So, do you want me to or not?”

“……Please do. Stuff it with cotton to make it a doll.”

Jin answered with tears in her eyes.

To love is to be together.

Forever.

Jin jumped into the operating room where droplets of blood were floating around and hugged the cat, making this vow.

“Ah. Crying made me hungry, shall we eat?”

“S-sure.”

“We’ve got cat meat now, should we eat that? Does anyone know how to cook cat meat?”

“……”

The three watching were left speechless.

***

“Damn it……”

Thud.

The man who knocked on the glass window cursed and sighed.

He had bad luck.

How could he possibly encounter pirates in the vast ocean of space?

There was nothing the man could do.

Everything happened while he was in hibernation.

By the time the hibernation device automatically woke him after detecting an explosion, the navigation room had already been taken over by pirates.

Soon after, the man’s limbs were tied, and he was confined to this hospital room surrounded by glass walls.

“Stupid fools……”

But the pirates still hadn’t properly assessed the situation.

He had warned them about the dangerous parasite, but they didn’t even pretend to listen, scattering in different directions to do their own tasks.

They had only used an electric shocker to knock out and confine a woman in the adjacent room, and that was it.

They genuinely seemed to suspect that woman was infected.

Of course, from the man’s perspective, everyone lacked an alibi equally.

“Well. They’ll learn as they die.”

The man gave up thinking and rested his head on his arm.

The situation at OK Ship when they first encountered the parasite wasn’t much different.

These pirates would eventually meet the same fate.

While some would be taking showers carefree and others would be sleeping in their rooms, it would be on the move.

It would kill people one by one, perfectly impersonating humans and throwing the ship into chaos.

The man smirked, clearly envisioning what was about to unfold.

“Surely the parasite isn’t in the next room.”

“……”

Thud thud.

When he knocked on the wall, all he heard from the other side was snoring with no other response.

The randomly selected person couldn’t possibly be the parasite.

The man desperately hoped that the host chosen by the parasite wasn’t the ditzy woman in the next room.

He prayed that the monster, which had gained experience on the OK Ship, would annihilate the pirates.

Bang……!

“Ah, what the?!”

When the lights suddenly turned on, the man squeezed his eyes shut.

Someone had turned on the lights in the isolation room.

Barely opening his eyes to look outside the glass wall, the man could make out a figure.

It was a large-bodied man.

Something was in his hand.

“Finally, someone with a brain. You want to know more about the parasite, right? Then get me out of here. I’ll tell you all about it in detail.”

“……”

After a long silence with no response, the man felt embarrassed.

He was gradually getting used to the bright light.

As he slowly raised his head to examine the man’s full figure, his eyes widened.

What the man was holding was none other than a kitchen knife.

Then the man operated a touch pad, and the glass wall of the hospital room opened wide.

“W-wait a moment!”

“……”

The large man began squeezing his big body into the hospital room.

Recognizing his face, the confined man shouted urgently.

Something was wrong.

Clearly, something was going terribly wrong.

“Ugh! Why, whyyy! Ack! Argh!”

Stab. Stab. Stab. Stab. Stab.

With each knife thrust into his chest and fat belly, the questioning man’s voice grew weaker.

His screams turned to groans, the groans to gurgling sounds, and even the gurgling faded until the man showed no reaction at all.

Just before losing consciousness, the man finally understood.

Why he was targeted first.

He realized too late why the attacker had stabbed him first, the one who was isolated and couldn’t move, and then he breathed his last.