:V

Fungi mate in the most interesting of ways. They don't limit themselves to the confines of "males" and "females," but rather have a great many different mating types, any two of which can reproduce. And when they mate, they don't merely pass a few gamete cells between individuals like plants or animals do; instead, they fuse their bodies to become one and then exchange their nuclei. After fusing, many mating pairs remain fused for some time (a mushroom is basically two fused fungi getting it on), and the sexual act can thus last for weeks or months at a time. Eventually, the nuclei fuse and recombine, and "genetic sex" finally takes place. After making millions of offspring, the exhausted fungi disintegrate their combined bodies and never text each other again.

I, knowing that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, waited carefully for the lab director to be deep in conversation with someone else on the other side of the laboratory. And then I took my chance.

Test tubes, as it turns out, are really bad as shot glasses. Their shape turns any liquid inside into a stream, so you really can't knock it back quickly - it takes a couple seconds. Additionally, the best way I can describe the taste of virus concentrate was "sterile rot". A very unique kind of bad! Made worse by the test tube's inefficiency as a shot glass.

(by the way we were studying bacteriophages, not animal viruses. these viruses are too specialized on attacking prokaryotes to even recognize our cells as targets at all, according to studies.)

(but also like. if the viruses managed to successfully switch hosts and killed me with a violent infection, itd still be worth it.)

i think they did confirm it by naming it this

and drawing it like this

also guess what its japanese name literally translates to

"SING FOR ME!"