He was quite tall—not as much as Blaine or Hurel, of course—but tall enough. If one were to exaggerate, his body was about half as thick as Blaine’s. He had a beautiful face, but the thin, monolid eyes gave him a naturally irritable look. And those very eyes were now glaring at Blaine with the kind of contempt one might show to an outlaw trespassing into their home.
It felt like he’d done all that work for nothing. The flower was swollen, looking ready to burst at the slightest touch. Blaine wasn’t particularly materialistic, but even he thought it was a shame. As he smacked his lips in regret, the moth misread his expression, scowling as he let out a sharp, aggressive voice.
“Do you even know how rare that honey is before you start drooling over it?!”
“Rare honey?”
The moth gave him a well, obviously… kind of look.
“That’s not just any honey. It’s special. A backwoods bee like you might go your whole life without seeing it once, so just be grateful you got to look at it and don’t get any ideas.”
How special could it be? Is it salty instead of sweet or something…?
Despite the stern warning not to covet it, the moth seemed unable to resist bragging now that someone had recognized its worth. He pounded his chest with a clenched fist like something was physically clogging him up and launched into a rambling explanation. Do you even know how much a single cup of that stuff costs? A honeybee like you couldn’t afford even a drop if you emptied your whole savings!
Naturally. Blaine didn’t have a single coin to his name. Why would a worker bee need money in the first place?
“Touching something that precious without thinking—I swear, if I had my way, I’d snap your wrist right here—”
“But hey,”
Blaine, who had been silently inspecting the sign stuck in the middle of the flower field, finally opened his mouth.
“You said this flower field was yours, right?”
“Huh? Yeah! So stop acting like—”
“Did you register it with the IHPA?”
“I… what?”
Now he looked confused. The moth blinked in a daze, and this time it was Blaine who got to make the well, obviously… face.
“IHPA. The International Honey and Pollen Association. If you want to own a flower field, you have to register it with them. Get it documented, and receive certification.”
No matter how he looked at it, the sign looked sketchy—just some squiggly letters reading Minchosky’s Flower Field, with no IHPA logo or seal anywhere in sight.
“So what?! Is that a problem?!”
“Well… technically, yeah. If it’s not officially registered, then legally speaking, it can’t be recognized as private property.”
“What the hell are you saying?! Talk so I can understand!”
Basically… if he hadn’t reported it to the IHPA, then this flower field wasn’t his. The moth stood there dumbfounded, as if he couldn’t wrap his head around it, then shouted like Blaine was some kind of thief trying to steal his land.
“That’s ridiculous! I was the first one to find it!”
“Even if that’s true—and we’ll set that aside for now—just finding an unclaimed flower field doesn’t make it yours. You have to follow the proper procedures…”
In a way, this was just muscle memory. Blaine had developed a tendency to explain things in painstaking detail with calm gestures and a gentle tone, even when they had nothing to do with him. It was a habit from his time in the hive, where princes and princesses often asked the most ridiculous questions about trivial matters. As a powerless worker bee, he’d had no choice but to kindly answer them all—until they either understood or gave up.
Anyway, following that habit, Blaine continued his detailed explanation. But when he saw the moth’s face had gone pale and was trembling, he finally realized he’d gone too far.
“You… you bastard! You’ve been talking nonsense from the start! Shut up and get lost already!”
The moth came at him threateningly, wings flaring with a sharp fshhh sound, and Blaine instinctively took a step back. He remembered then—moth wings could carry poison.
…Huh? That’s weird.
The moth’s outstretched wings had an unusual shape. One wing looked like it was covered in tree bark, with a big owl-eye pattern on it. But the other was much paler. The surface looked rough, uneven, and noticeably thicker. It lacked the perfect symmetry typical of most butterflies and moths.
Maybe the moth felt Blaine’s gaze because his eyes flicked to the wing Blaine had been staring at. Thinking it might’ve been rude, Blaine quickly looked away, but the moth smirked smugly and gave a proud shrug.
“Hah. For someone who looks like that, at least you’ve got some taste.”
What the hell do you mean, “like that”…?!
“If you want, you can take a closer look. Pretty cool, right?”
The moth slowly spread about two-thirds of his wings, careful not to let any poison dust scatter. Sure enough, one of the wings was definitely thicker than the other. If he flapped them, you could almost imagine the sound slicing through the air. On closer inspection, the wing was so dense, even someone as sturdy as Blaine might break a rib if he got smacked with it.
“Hmm, well…”
“What’s with that lukewarm reaction?! Do you even know how much I suffered to get these wings?!”
When his wing was torn, he’d honestly thought it was all over. But somehow—by some divine miracle—things had taken a strange turn.
These steel wings, he bragged, could even block a mantis’s forearm blades. Normally, Blaine would’ve been dazzled by a phrase like “steel wings.” But not today. He had more important things on his mind.
“Wait—what? Your wing got torn?”
“You little—are you seriously yelling at me?! You’re asking for it, you—gah!!”
He didn’t even realize how close the honeybee had gotten, but now there was a massive shadow looming over his head. Blaine had grabbed his forearm with such force that it felt like it might snap in two.
Th-this bastard… I just thought he was a regular honeybee, harvesting honey like all the others—but up close, why is he so goddamn big?!
The moth had gotten a little cocky ever since he’d gotten his new wings, but he was still the kind of guy who didn’t hesitate to bully the weak yet was full of hesitation when it came to the strong. He didn’t want Blaine to read his thoughts, so he made a show of shaking off his arm with force.
He tried, at least.
But the giant bee in front of him didn’t budge. He was like a boulder.
“What the hell are you—?!”
“Say it again. What happened to your wing?”
The look in Blaine’s eyes said he wanted to rip the moth’s wings off right now. The moth swallowed hard, trying to hide his fear, and forced himself to speak as if he wanted to talk, clinging to what little pride he had left.
So the story went back in time, to when Minchosky had just reached adulthood. It had been a flawless day—sunlight teasing the leaves, a cloudless sky, the high heavens so piercingly blue it hurt to look at. The kind of day one would call perfect. But Minchosky had felt lonely.
He’d always felt out of place in a peaceful life. What was this thing called life, anyway? Where had he come from, and where was he going? Just drifting through each meaningless day under the illusion of peace that only masked the truth…
“I said, what happened after your wing got torn?!”
“Eep—! I was sipping that honey, and then a stag beetle’s pincers… they clipped my wing…”
The pain in his shoulder felt like it had popped out of its socket. He made a pitiful face, but the wasp holding his shoulder in one massive hand didn’t seem like he was about to let go anytime soon.
He really doesn’t look like the type, but this is too much. Actually—no. Scratch that. He does look the type. He’s got that mean face—like a villain. Just because he’s got good looks, he thinks he can get away with it? He looks so damn vicious—who would even like a guy like that?
“At the time, I really thought that was the end. I was totally out of it… but when I came to, I was lying inside some little hut.”
“And someone there fixed your wing? How?”
“I-I’m getting to that. Just listen, will you?”
“Stick to the point. No, better yet—just answer my questions. That thing—did it fix your wing?!”
