Out of all of my kin I believe that I'm the most inquisitive. Often I would ask my Paras brethren the questions that they themselves don't seek. Why do we build? Why do we dig? But, always I would be given the same answer: "It is in our nature." It puzzled me. Why would these simplistic tasks be in our nature to accomplish?
However, there was one thing that puzzled me the most; the tochukaso. The mushrooms would grow as we would and I always wondered what their true use was. Always there was a strange niggling sensation in the back of my brain, and sometimes I'd catch my body moving of its own intentions.
It... worried me. Was this the cause of that which grew upon my back? I could not give a sufficient answer to my own question.
The months passed me by in a blur of activity and a plethora of greater queries. Nothing seemed to change.
Except for the slip-ups, times when I found myself scratching at the dull walls without a reason, my mind fading to a blank canvas. Another time I discovered, after waking, that I was following in the footsteps of a large trail of many of my own kind. Each just as quiet as the last.
We had ventured from our cave and traverse onwards to scrape life from the barks of trees, before scurrying back the way we had came.
Whenever I asked why we did it, I would always get the same blank look.
The second time, fog. It spread like fire. Hurts my brain.
Hard to think. What's... happening to me...?
Mushroom's bigger. Hurts back.
Whiteness everywhere.
Blankness.
Hungry.
Need food.
... Tree. Find tree.
Dig.
