The parasites arrived with the summer floods.

Below is an original, complete short story. Penny Park was a graveyard of joy. Its rusted gates still bore the gilded name from 1978, when the city had money and the Ferris wheel turned against a clean sky. Now, the wheel stood frozen mid-rotation, a skeletal halo over cracked asphalt. Families stopped coming years ago. Instead, the park housed those who had nowhere else to go: the working poor, the evicted, the invisible.

“It’s a parasite,” she said. “But not just one. They share a mind. They’re building something.”

For three days, the family was rich. They sat on the roof of the maintenance shed and drank cheap beer, watching the parasites writhe in the lagoon below. “We won,” Ha-yeon whispered.

Waiting for the next family to make a deal. If you meant a about a real place called "Penny Park" with parasitic infestations (ecological, social, or financial), please clarify the location or context, and I’ll gladly provide that instead.

“We don’t kill them,” Seo-jun told his family. “We just aim them.”

“They said we could stay,” his father whispered. “If we become part of them. No more rent. No more running. Just one big family.”