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Gotou was surprisingly neat, as if he realized the importance of this moment to Hirokawa and wanted to do things properly. The mayor (was he still mayor?) knew better than that by now though – Gotou was neat because he had to be careful. Before, he had only ever eaten at the site of the kill, had never bothered to cut anything up, take pieces with him. You couldn’t walk down the street, covered in blood and carrying body parts, especially not a month after a massive military intervention in East Fukuyama that potentially involved aliens, or at least something not entirely human that the press was unable to explain. And so Gotou was careful about blood on his clothing, careful about wrapping that one leftover piece up and packing it into a shopping bag before returning to Hirokawa with it.
And Hirokawa waited. He had had funds put away. It was not difficult to get an apartment out here in the country, using Gotou’s old human ID card and papers. A name nobody was looking for and a name nobody used. It was merely convenient. As was this, what was about to take place. Convenient. Logical. The next step. The parasite had suggested it first – had made a casual remark on how Hirokawa could never return to his past life, at least not anytime soon, with the parasite community as fragile and damaged as it was. Too many of them had been killed, and with Tamura gone, they would have to form a new cabal elsewhere. Hirokawa would be confronted by new parasites, ones more leery of humans, ones far more likely to eat him than they would be to join him. He would have to make himself more like them to gain trust.
He would have to eat humans.
When the parasite lay the package on the kitchen counter and quickly slid out of his coat and scarf (good for covering any unexpected blood spots), Hirokawa immediately unwrapped it. An arm. He had told Gotou to bring back whatever he didn’t eat. If Gotou had been a human, he would have chosen sometime symbolic, the heart or liver, but no. He chose something neutral, devoid of meaning, not to make things easier for Hirokawa; he only choose something easy to transport without damage. Even the hand was gone, neatly cut at the wrist, not to minimize the humanity, but because much of it would have been inedible for a human. Everything about it was neat, practical, cold, perfect.
He was aware that for most, it would be easier if the meat on the table remained faceless. But this would be easy regardless, wouldn’t it? He wasn’t one of them, not entirely. “Who was it?” He asked before he could stop himself.
Gotou would have shrugged had he known to. Instead he only stared. “We don’t ask.”
“We.” He didn’t mean parasites. Hirokawa remembered Miki’s bad habit of collecting wallets of prey. Sitting around the office, flipping through family photos and membership cards, delighted whenever he found a key tucked away to match the address on the driver’s license. Gotou didn’t do things like that. Gotou didn’t care about the identity of any human other than Hirokawa. And he expected that Hirokawa be the same. Or accepted. That “we”. The human smiled faintly then. He was always grateful for that, for Gotou’s fluid acceptance of his desire to be considered one of them.
“Do you know how to prepare it?” He paced the kitchen as he spoke, pulling at his tie, debating on whether or not to return to his parasite form for the night. He spent more and more time in his own body these days. But tonight… he would never ask Hirokawa of it, never hint that he thought about it, but he suspected this was a night that the human didn’t need to be reminded that he was different.
“Yes.” He slid a knife out of the cutlery block and studied his reflection in the blade.
ooo
Gotou lounged around the kitchen, watching him cook, opening four eyes, then six, then eight, only to close all of them again and yawn, displaying two rows of teeth for only a moment. He still looked human enough on the surface to stand in front of the window, but it was Hirokawa’s appearance he was more interested in now. Even in the dead of winter, rarely leaving the house until he knew exactly what he was going to do, he dressed well, combed and slicked back his hair, carefully smoothed his thick eyebrows. Appearances were important for a politician, for someone who wore a human suit, and Gotou knew that as far as appearances went, Hirokawa was impeccable. The parasite liked watching him, enjoyed merely looking at him. Miki used to joke about it, referring to Hirokawa as “His Human”, a pet, amusement, but Gotou knew better than that. Hirokawa wasn’t human. He was more. Shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal traces of scars along his thin arms – his whole body was covered in them by now, though most were faint enough that another human wouldn’t notice them immediately. Gotou knew them all, remembered making every single one.
“Do you think humans will evolve?” Hirokawa asked suddenly. Slicing burdock root.
“Because we hunt them?”
“Once, I read a book by an Englishman about the future of the human race. They became mean, simple, selfish…” He punctuated each word with a movement of the knife. “Not only with one another but with the planet. The author believed that they couldn’t move beyond that, couldn’t transcend their self-absorption and stupidity, until something greater came. A predator. Force them to evolve into something more.”
“Or destroy them.” He wondered how much this book had affected him. Once. He had never heard him mention his youth before. Even now, when it was clear what he was referring to, he skirted the topic.
“Would you have all of humanity wiped out?”
Gotou didn’t answer immediately, only flicked two fingers into blades and pointed towards the carrots. “I prefer keeping some alive to eat.”
Hirokawa nodded. “They’ll grow wiser eventually. They’ll have to. They have no choice. Not now.” A glimmer of mania in his eyes, now distant, that caused Gotou to narrow his own. Not now that he was eating them as well, as if he believed his own predation on humans was something divine, something greater than the parasites themselves being born on this earth solely to keep the greed of the human race in check. The parasite was silent, and after a few seconds that look had faded. He was serene again.
Kinpara. Spinach. Rice. Lightly seasoned human flesh. Regular side dishes he threw together at least once a week. Hirokawa had considered something more ceremonious. Something symbolic, even if only for an appetizer. Tazukuri, a favorite snack of Gotou’s. Hope for an abundant future harvest. But in the end he had decided simple was better. Ceremony was too…human. He never saw Gotou paying any attention to that sort of thing. There was nothing special about this meal.
“Are you still hungry?” he paused before reaching into the cabinet. Yes, serene. Gotou couldn’t decide which Hirokawa he preferred.
“Always.”
Hirokawa shrugged. True. The only time Gotou had ever turned down food in his presence was when he had stumbled upon artichokes in a restaurant. He hadn’t commented on why he left them on the plate, and when Hirokawa laughed about it, he had only growled. But this was human flesh, something Gotou would never refuse. He filled two bowls, more kinpara in one (his) than the other, and sat down.
Fingers clicking chopsticks together for a long moment as Hirokawa stared, furrowed his brow, sipped his wine. You think too much about how you shouldn’t think, Gotou wanted to say, but he stayed silent. No need to draw attention to the fact that he was far more aware of Hirokawa’s insecurities than the human realized. So he said nothing and began to eat. Cooked meat was strange in texture, but he knew that the man across from him wouldn’t survive eating it raw. The man finally raising something to his lips.
The flavor almost disappointed him. It was…ordinary, similar to pork, like something he might eat any day of the week without a moment’s thought. A moment like this, eating another…no, eating a human being, should be momentous, no? But it wasn’t. Just as the meat was only an arm, not a heart or a brain or a liver, the meat was only food. Nothing symbolic. Nothing dramatic. As it should be, he realized as he chewed it. Because this is nothing, he told himself. This is just meat on the table, food for sustenance, food for entertainment, dinner in with his partner. Gotou didn’t think twice about it when he killed this individual, when he ate them. There was no need for Hirokawa to. He swallowed. Gotou studied him from across the table, face unreadable. Only two eyes but a thousand teeth.
It was easy, after the first bite. Easy to keep cutting pieces off, slipping them into his mouth, chewing, swallowing. No different than eating anything else. Just another human taking up space on the planet, killing and hoarding needlessly, now serving a purpose to satiate his appetite. He smiled faintly then as it hit him. No, this was different, but not different because he was eating something important. It was because he was eating something that, for once, deserved it. Yes, this was unique, an exquisite moment. I am doing something for the world.
He finished what he had, drank down the wine, raised his empty glass as he leaned back in his chair. Gotou mimicked him. He was smiling his crooked, imperfect smile now, making an effort to show him how he felt. He knew then, knew what Hirokawa had truly been asking then. He hadn’t been asking if those people out there would evolve.
The human-that-was-not grinned back, baring his own teeth in a way he rarely did. He felt strangely elated, not unlike, he realized, the first time he had been with Gotou. I have transcended this mortal flesh. I am one of them now.
The parasite couldn’t remember when he had first considered hunting with Hirokawa. He was his partner in bed and in life, he knew that much, but a hunting partner…that was something else, something far more intimate than what he was now, what with the parasites being solitary predators by nature. Hunting was one of the few things that came naturally to his specie, perhaps even the only thing that came naturally to his specie, and to share it with someone, even Hirokawa, was something he would not have considered possible until recently. He’d never been comfortable with anyone hunting with him before. It was far more than simply eating together like this, even if what they were eating was something Gotou had killed, but he still found himself saying it. That grin. It was time. “Next time I go—”
“I’ll come with you.” Hirokawa cut him off, waving his hand as if to end the conversation, then stopped suddenly. When he spoke again, it was slowly, softly. The same eerily calm voice, at once so human and so supremely inhuman, that had first caught Gotou’s attention, what seemed like a lifetime ago now. “From now on…”
When he trailed off and raised an eyebrow, Gotou understood, caught it with ease. “We hunt together.”