Boy, you better learn.

On their homeworld, brain slugs mated their hosts and bred domesticated strains. In this way, they slowly conquered their environment, and formed the World Hive. Attempts to spread beyond their home planet were met with resistance; the brain slugs on Earth are descendants of those brain slugs sent out to explore and conquer the universe.
Given the opportunity, they will do the same here as they did on their homeworld.
—Brain Slug Infestation: Cause and Avoidance, Chapter 7

The morning's first module was about personal grooming standards. Mel scratched at his chin. He hadn't shaved since he had moved into his new apartment, and four days of growth made him scruffy. While Ha-Yoon hadn't mentioned it yet, definitely something to address.

"You're going to work the counter with Soong this afternoon," Ha-Yoon told him.

"Soong?" he asked.

"The girl that comes in with you and Carmichael," she said.

A gear turned in Mel's brain. Soong. Spicy Slug. Of course. Antonio had never given her full name, and the uniforms lacked name badges. Ha-Yoon seemed to realize the issue immediately.

"You never asked your coworkers what their names are," she said. A statement, not a question. She sighed and rose.

In the impromptu employee introduction conference that followed, Mel Arkwright formally met Jenny Soong, as well as the three other brain slug hosts on duty: a tall Black woman with a shaved head in her thirties named Blair MacKnight; a pale, androgynous mixed-race tomboy with dark hair, epicanthic folds, an abundance of freckles, and the puckered scars of old lip and eyebrow piercings in her late teens named Tomie Thompson; and a somewhat overweight brunette with braces in her twenties called Bobbie O'Neil.

They stared at him, no words, no sign of recognition. Jordan slid her hand into Soong's, who slid hers into Blair's, and so on with Tomie and Bobbie. The chain of them looked at Mel, and he was suddenly aware of the green-black translucent heads of their brain slugs poking out from behind their necks. Mel waved, nervous.

Ha-Yoon clapped her hands to break the tension. Everyone went back to work.

The afternoon was spent with Ha-Yoon showing Mel how to run the register. The till was pretty simple; cash wasn't common in most businesses these days, but they got a fair amount of street traffic which meant minor purchases, giving change, how to deal with the difference between U.S. and Canadian currency—again, not a huge issue, but Ha-Yoon showed him how to set the unfamiliar coins in a separate part of the till and to give them out first when making change. The screen was actually pretty helpful in that regard; the program had been designed for users who needed visual aids or weren't literate.

As they were ready to clock out, Ha-Yoon approached Mel again:

"It's Thursday. Normally, you'll be getting your direct deposit on Fridays, straight into your account, all taxes already taken out. Pay stub will be emailed to your address. Since you didn't work a full week, you'll get your first deposit next week. You going to be able to eat until then?" she asked.

"Yeah. Basic universal income comes through monthly. Been meaning to try out different flavors of ramen, anyway," Mel said it with a smile, keenly aware that his account was barely in three digits. Then he asked a question: "By the way, why are all the brain slug hosts women?"

Ha-Yoon's lips drew into a tight, hard line. She stared at him as if trying to decide if he was serious, and then finally said:

"They aren't. Not everyone you met today is biologically female. Is that a problem?"

"No!" Mel said quickly, as he tried to process that. The uniforms for the Cosmic Fill-Up were unisex, but all of his co-workers had what he'd taken to be breasts...though now that he thought of it, some of their features were definitely androgynous. "No problem at all. I just didn't know."

Ha-Yoon wasn't smiling.

"Boy, you better learn."

They swung by the grocery store on the way home. The Cosmic Fill-Up sold razors and blades, but the prices were ridiculous; Mel could pick up a generic plastic razor for way less here, as well as a case of pre-packaged dried ramen noodle cups, which dropped his account into double-digits, but should carry him through next week.

There was no kettle or coffee pot with which to boil water, so Mel carefully read the microwave instructions and followed them. Jordan seemed to content herself with crunching her way through a handful of unwashed carrots. They sat on the couch together and watched a program about the Rub' al Khali, the Empty Quarter of Arabia. There were long sequences of sunlit sand dunes, the wind blowing the golden dust, string instruments playing long drawn-out notes. It was the kind of scene that might have made Mel lonely, if Jordan wasn't there next to him, crunching away like a particularly single-minded cartoon rabbit at her veggie feast.

Jordan brushed her teeth. Mel waited for her to finish, then went in and did the same. After he rinsed and set his toothbrush in the wall-mounted holder with the little holes—opposite side from hers—he broke out the new razor. A little water and a scrub with the block of yellow soap made a decent enough lather, and in a few moments he'd scraped off the stubble and rinsed the blade.

He stared at himself in the mirror, fresh-faced. The soft brown hair, the softer brown eyes. Without any facial hair, he always looked younger than his eighteen years. If he drank, he'd probably be carded every single time. Mel shook his head and spent a minute cleaning up the sink, not wanting to leave any little hairs around for Jordan. Neither of them had made a serious effort at cleaning since they had started living together, but he noticed that she seemed to clean up after herself as soon as she made any kind of mess, and Mel determined to at least do the same.

It was when he left the bathroom that Mel realized Jordan wasn't on the couch.

And the door to his bedroom was open. The light on.

Heart suddenly pounding, Mel looked inside.

Jordan stood by his bed. The copy of Slug Fucker Monthly he had lifted in her hands. Her eyes scanned the page, then turned it. He stared at her as she read, or appeared to read, with a speed that astonished him. Pale hands turned glossy pages, took in the sexually-explicit images of women, and the often filthier words that accompanied them. She did not look up, did not seem to know he was there, and as Mel's mind raced through excuses and explanations, his eyes focused on the alien being attached to her neck.

In this light, this close, he could see how the edges of the brain slug were nearly transparent, darkening toward the core and tip that he thought of as the head of the thing, which was greenish-black. Through the gelatinous layers, he could see not the skin of her neck, but beneath it. The bone of her vertebrae. Translucent veins through which blood or other fluids flowed. Dense striated muscle. It was like staring through a glass-bottomed boat into a murky sea.

When Jordan dropped the magazine onto the bed where Mel had stupidly left it this morning, he was shaken out of his reverie. As she looked at him, with that same placid expression as always, his cheeks burned in utter embarrassment.

"I, uh. I don't know much about brain slugs," he said, not sure how else to explain. "I got a book out of the library, but it seems pretty biased. I was throwing stuff out yesterday and the magazine was on top so I thought—I mean I don't—I didn't think about—not trying to—"

None of the words came out right. Jordan stepped forward. Mel stepped back to let her exit the room. She didn't brush past him. Didn't even seem to see him. Just walked to her bedroom and shut the door.

"Fuck my life," Mel said to himself, as he switched off the TV and the lights. First, the whole cum-tissue thing, and now this.