Don't Bite Me

Tall and skinny as a Kanto, Gregg had messy hair and round-framed glasses. At school, his hobby of collecting insects made everyone see him as a freak. Timid by nature, he always avoided people's eyes.

Even the school bullies had no interest in picking on someone who spent all day around filthy bugs.

Late at night, Gregg returned home in a black tuxedo, feeling miserable.

He still hadn't found the courage to attend the dance. He had nearly reached the school before turning back.

Recently, he had accidentally left one of the containers holding his precious insects open, and they had bitten his sleeping face full of red welts.

He couldn't go to the dance looking like this and let the person who haunted his dreams see him.

In the brightly lit living room.

Smack!

"Is this why you've been cooped up in your room all day, Gregg?"

When she saw her son return, Gregg's mother wore an ugly expression as she flung a stack of photographs and several videotapes onto the couch.

They were candid photos of his classmate Lana taken from every angle—during the day, at night, on her way home... They looked exactly like something a pervert would take. The videotapes contained much the same thing.

"You can't enter my room without my permission!"

Gregg shouted furiously, panicking as he hurriedly gathered up his treasured belongings.

"How could you do this? Lana's aunt Niall and I belong to the same club. My son spends all day secretly photographing her niece. How am I supposed to face her?"

The more Gregg's mother spoke, the more emotional she became, nearly bursting into tears.

"I can't let you keep doing this."

She had been too negligent. She had respected her son's privacy too much and rarely asked about what he did, allowing him to become like this.

Secretly photographing female classmates, raising bugs in his room all day, growing more and more withdrawn, never associating with anyone.

"Tomorrow morning, I'm calling Clemont Military Academy."

If this continued, she didn't dare imagine what her son would become.

"Absolutely not! If I leave, what will happen to my bugs?"

"You should have gotten rid of that strange obsession long ago. Tomorrow, I'll throw out every bug in your room." Seeing her son yell at her so rudely over those insects only made her more agitated.

Bang!

She hurried back to her room and slammed the door shut.

Gregg looked at the butterflies, beetles, spiders, and other creatures collected in those jars. His expression calmed as he spoke with an obsessive tenderness, almost as if addressing a lover.

"You're all so beautiful. No one will hurt you. I'll take you somewhere safe."

The Soil in the jars where the insects lived gave off a beautiful pale green glow.

He had discovered meteorite one night some time ago, crushed it up, and added it to every jar. It glowed in the darkness, making them even more beautiful.

He had even sent glowing butterflies to the person he secretly loved as a gift.

"I wonder what Lana's expression was when she received the gift. Too bad I didn't get a picture."

After packing everything up, Gregg once again wore that insect-like look of obsession.

He loaded all the jars from his room into his car, intending to take the bugs to the abandoned treehouse from his childhood and leave them there.

And he could hide up there too, without being sent to military school.

Click!

"Gregg, where are you going?!"

The battered little car started up, and Gregg sped onto the highway. Ignoring his mother's cries as she ran after him, he sneered and drove straight toward his childhood treehouse.

But he had not driven far when, just outside town, the car jolted over a mud pit in the road.

Crash!

Thrown by inertia, the jars holding all those insects fell to the floor and shattered.

Freed at last, the insects carrying meteorite powder swarmed through the cramped car and attacked Gregg as he drove.

"No, don't bite me!"

The needle-like pain was unbearable. Gregg jerked the steering wheel and crashed into the grass by the roadside.

The green-glowing insects bit wildly at his body.

"Arghhhh..."

Gregg's screams carried far across the deserted countryside, but eventually grew quieter as he lost consciousness.

At the school auditorium, after a terrifying scare that left everyone's legs weak and trembling.

Everyone was still shaken and soaked through, like drowned rats. The dance could no longer continue.

Someone called the police, and the town officers quickly arrived to investigate. Hearing that the children had nearly been attacked, the students' parents rushed over to take them home.

The silent night had been shattered. For a time, ambulances, police cars, and parents' vehicles nearly blocked the school entrance.

"David, Clark!"

Jonathan and Martha drove over after receiving the news, but they couldn't find either of their sons in the crowd.

"Chloe, have you seen them?"

Martha asked the young girl who had once visited their farms and left a deep impression on her.

"I don't know, Aunt Martha."

Sitting on the school steps with her father beside her and a blanket draped around her shoulders, Chloe replied, "They should be okay."

"Dad, Mom, we're over here."

As the couple searched, Clark called out.

"Clark, where did you go?" Chloe asked the question that had been bothering her for a while.

"I... David and I didn't have dance partners, so halfway through the dance, we got bored and went outside for some air."

Clark and David walked over. Seeing Chloe and Pete's parents present, Clark scratched the back of his head.

He wasn't very good at lying, and he sounded a little nervous.

But no one thought much of it. A lot of people had been terrified tonight.

"Are you two okay?"

Glancing at the fresh clothes on his younger son's body, Jonathan patted Clark's shoulder and asked both sons.

"I'm fine, Father."

David smiled at his concerned father, and Clark said he was fine as well.

Jonathan glanced around, silently signaling his worried wife not to ask any more questions yet.

The couple knew that the attacker had suddenly vanished. If nothing unexpected had happened, their eldest son was probably responsible.

And both sons had changed into clothes that should have been neatly folded in their closet at home. They must have both gone through something.

"Are you Clark Kent and David Kent?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where were you when it happened?"

"We..."

The town police came over to take statements as a routine matter. They didn't suspect Clark and David, who had left midway through the dance. Based on the eyewitness accounts, the two boys' builds were vastly different from that skinny guy's.

Besides, it had yet to be determined whether this was an attack or a prank, so there was no need to make a big deal of it for now.

Judging by how the culprit had scared everyone in the room half to death before suddenly disappearing, it was probably the latter.

"What a shame. Tonight should have been a wonderful night for the children, Jonathan."

"As long as the children are safe."

The parents exchanged a few words, then each took their children home.

"So, it really wasn't a prank?"

At home, Jonathan and Martha sat on the couch, looking at their two sons in front of them.

"A person who could generate electricity?"

The couple exchanged astonished looks.