Chapter 5
We start with an extensive biology lesson, lol. I must admit, I find all these biology tangents highly interesting. Also that Shion does too, seeing that he isn’t freaked out in the slightest at looking what came there crawling out of his neck.
Interesting side bit here is also that they use the German loanword for petri dish (“Schale”), another one from the medical field (I remember Roentgen was also another one). メス is apparently from Dutch/Flemish mes.
Bees and Wasps
I wonder how big these wasps are (I assume they are wasps, not bees), maybe I read over their description, I just remember they were black. Looking up parasitoid wasps, they’re much smaller and more slender than the typical yellowjacket you would imagine. Some are even pretty useful for decimating house pests like flour moths. Killing an entire human seems a little bit overkill (literally!) for those.
寄生バチは仲間を救ったりしない。
Maybe parasitoid wasps do not, but I saw some videos about bee-attacking hornets and it seems that if you trap them, they release pheromones that attract some of their buddies to come and help them out. There was a video of a Japanese bee keeper tantalizing these little aggressors by trapping them on mouse glue traps. Once one was trapped, the system worked by itself, attracting other hornets that subsequently got stuck as well. From the viewpoint that these are quite the threat to the honeybees it was somewhat satisfying to watch, but also pretty gruesome.
In my country there are just friendly hornets that go at most after other insects, so they’re just scary, but not really threatening or annoying (unlike those yellowjackets, those can piss right off).
Killer cells
That resurfaced some very distant memories of my immune biology classes.
I remember that they were lymphatic cells that recognize infected cells. Once activated, they may induce apoptosis (cell death) of the affected cell. In case of viruses, the virus does not have any independent metabolism and relies on utilizing the host cell’s infrastructure to proliferate. By destroying the cell, they hinder the proliferation through a bit of collateral damage. I wonder if the “collateral damage” does apply here as well, if we really try to liken Shion to a virus.
Usage of pronouns
For the sake of language learning, I was trying to take note of which pronouns were used, Shion uses 僕・きみ and Nezumi uses 俺・あんた which does seem to fit their characters quite well, giving Shion a youthful, kinda academic vibe and Nezumi a more rough persona.
Afterword
I love the little tangents the author does here, I totally get that having to write an afterword is kind of annoying and it does sometimes feel like the compulsory sucking up to the editorial staff and of course readers.
Also does this mean Nezumi can only control the robot mice or do the regular mice listen to him as well?