Parasited Penny Park < 2025-2027 >

That night, the parasites came for them anyway.

So Seo-jun made a deal with the parasites. parasited penny park

Below is an original, complete short story. Penny Park was a graveyard of joy. Its rusted gates still bore the gilded name from 1978, when the city had money and the Ferris wheel turned against a clean sky. Now, the wheel stood frozen mid-rotation, a skeletal halo over cracked asphalt. Families stopped coming years ago. Instead, the park housed those who had nowhere else to go: the working poor, the evicted, the invisible. That night, the parasites came for them anyway

But sometimes, late at night, Seo-jun feels something move beneath his skin. A small, deliberate twitch in his forearm. A warmth in his chest that isn’t his own. And he remembers the last thing his father said, just before the tendrils closed over his lips: Penny Park was a graveyard of joy

“You think you aimed them. But they were always aiming you.”