Damn it… so I’m really going to die after showing every possible disgrace.
Tears blurred his vision. It was miserable. What had he done so wrong to deserve such a wretched end?
Thud .
And then, the spider who had seen Blaine’s naked body collapsed on the spot, losing consciousness exactly as he was.
……?
“Why?! Why the hell?! What’s so wrong with my naked body?!!”
Blaine howled. His nose stung—so he really was crying now. Well, considering he wasn’t bawling outright, he figured that alone made him a remarkably steadfast and courageous honeybee warrior. Seriously. The heavens couldn’t possibly be this cruel to him.
It wasn’t like he didn’t painfully realize that this thick, bulky body of his was completely un–honeybee-like. Sure, he didn’t have the round, adorable eyes honeybees prided themselves on, the plump cheeks, or the long eyelashes curled upward like everyone adored—but if he’d at least had the default soft, squishy body everyone had, smooth skin perpetually slick with honey, and a small build, it would’ve been fine.
That damn wasp he’d seen on TV during basic training—nearly 190 centimeters tall, broad-shouldered, with vicious, filthy-looking eyes, thin, sneering lips, a stiff, ugly nose like someone had shoved chalk into it, a sharp, merciless jawline, no cheek fat to speak of, and not a shred of charm. A villain through and through. Blaine, ignorant of the future awaiting him, had clenched his fists and trembled as he viciously cursed the wasp’s appearance back then. Completely unaware that he himself would spend that very future being called a wasp, mocked, misunderstood, and pelted with stones.
Blaine had grown up to look almost exactly like that wasp from the training footage. His chest was even bigger. It made no sense—he’d never done any special exercise beyond standard anti-wasp drills, and he’d even secretly dieted. And yet.
More than ten years of pent-up resentment exploded all at once, and Blaine trembled violently. He felt like tearing this spider—who’d buried his face into Blaine’s neck and was now slumped unconscious—into sixteen pieces with his bare hands. He’d never felt this kind of rage in his life.
But he couldn’t fulfill that desire. He couldn’t move at all. As the anger drained away and gloom flooded in instead, Blaine grew markedly calmer. And with that calm came a more objective assessment of the situation.
“Hm…”
A painful groan leaked near his nape. Something felt damp, too. Was he sweating? Still tightly bound, Blaine rolled his head slightly and formed a tentative thought.
Pure white hair with blackened tips. Terrifying strength. Above all, eyes that had darkened to a slick, pitch-black sheen. That spider was probably one of the notoriously infamous Whites—specifically, a Whitey. And among the already vicious and brutal tarantulas, Whiteys were especially famous for their monstrous appetites.
…So, don’t tell me… he collapsed because he was hungry?
It seemed Blaine’s misfortune wasn’t over just yet.
***
Unfortunately for Blaine, this situation was in no way welcome. Even if the spider miraculously woke up, the future still held only being eaten—and with even higher odds, the spider would never wake, slowly starving to death, while Blaine, still wrapped up tight, would starve alongside him.
Was rain his only hope? But the pale white moon glowing overhead and the perfectly cloudless sky crushed that faint optimism. Even if it did rain, there was no guarantee another predator wouldn’t show up first. Especially with him lying here like a freshly caught prize.
Rustle—
Right. Bad premonitions never miss.
The grass suddenly shook violently. Blaine, whose muscles had been tense beyond their limits, once again felt that sinking sensation—like being dropped from a great height—that he’d already experienced countless times today. The dirty-blond man striding forward on long, confident legs was unmistakably a predator, no matter how you looked at him.
He was tall, with a solid, well-built physique—slightly less bulky than Blaine’s. His eyes slanted sharply, giving him a dangerous look, but the lack of tension in them made them instead ooze sensuality. Come to think of it, just as plumpness and cuteness were the default for honeybees, someone once said that sexiness was the default for spiders.
As Blaine suspected the man might be a spider, he noticed his hair—an odd mix of brown and blond. He was sure he’d read about it somewhere. Blaine wasn’t the most knowledgeable honeybee in the world, but he genuinely enjoyed accumulating bits of knowledge. His head wasn’t full of revolutionary strategies or philosophical treatises that required twelve sleepless nights to explain—but it was packed with trivial facts. Digging through his cluttered temporal lobe, Blaine reached a conclusion.
That spider was probably a Goldeny—the one who rivaled Whiteys in terms of gluttony.
“Well, would you look at this? Prey rolling right into my lap. And two of them, no less.”
Already trembling uncontrollably, Blaine’s once dark complexion turned pale blue as he shook. He knew spiders were cruel, but to so casually refer to a collapsed fellow spider as ‘prey’? It was truly monstrous.
“But… what’s with that mess?”
The man, who’d been smacking his lips over the unexpected windfall, frowned as if he’d seen something unpleasant. Blaine realized the man’s loosened gaze was slowly sweeping from his shoulders down—until it stopped around his groin. His face burned red instantly. With his limbs stretched out and spread wide, his naked body was completely on display. He’d realized earlier that night that struggling wouldn’t even let him cover himself—not that he could move anyway.
“Perfect timing—I was just getting hungry. I’ll eat one now and take the other home as emergency rations.”
If possible, Blaine thought bitterly, I hope I’m the one you eat now. But as he’d painfully learned today, the heavens weren’t on his side. The blond man began walking toward where Whitey lay collapsed.
It was only logical. However slim the chance, taking a fellow spider who might wake up and fight back as emergency rations would be riskier than grabbing a lowly creature from the bottom of the food chain. Just how painfully and miserably am I destined to die? Blaine felt so detached that everything now seemed like someone else’s problem.
“No—wait. I’ve changed my mind.”
Why?! What for?! Blaine panicked. The golden-haired spider turned away from Whitey and headed toward him instead. A chill like death itself ran through Blaine’s body as he shuddered violently.
“I’ll eat the big one first, and take that other guy home to play with properly. That kind of face is hard to come by—really gets me going.”
The big one?! Even in the midst of terror, Blaine found himself bristling with indignation. He stared with eyes wide open in pure shock. No—wait. What the hell did that bastard just say?
“I bet the way he cries while getting pierced by my huge thing would be gorgeous. I could toy with him—tell him I’ll let him live if he sucks me well—then either cut off his limbs, or keep using him alone before finally eating him. Plenty of time for that.”
He said it flatly, absentmindedly tapping Whitey’s face with his foot as he spoke. When he pressed down on Whitey’s cheek, the unconscious spider’s brow twitched slightly, long, dense eyelashes fluttering faintly.
Listening to that casually spewed madness, Blaine’s mouth fell wide open despite being crudely gagged. What in the world was that lunatic spouting?
Even now, Blaine didn’t feel unbearable rage just because the spider intended to eat him. A fox eating a rabbit, a cat eating a mouse, a spider eating an insect—none of that was wrong.
But violating prey was a completely different matter. And rape—rape, of all things? What kind of beast was this? And against someone who looked so fragile and delicate!
“If you’re that resentful, you should blame yourself for not being born fuckable.”
Hearing that on top of everything else, Blaine finally snapped. He could practically hear the fragile thread of reason he’d been clinging to snap clean in two.
“That’s rich coming from you! I’d rather hang myself than let a piece of trash like you touch me!”
“Hah? What did you just say?”
“Just because you’ve got a mouth doesn’t mean you should say whatever you want. Do you think everyone else doesn’t have eyes? And ‘huge’—what? Are you insane? What are you even talking about?”
Blaine gave him an incredulous look, deliberately flicking his gaze down between the Goldeny’s legs. The spider’s face twisted with humiliation. Then, abruptly, his expression shifted—and he began trembling violently.
