“No, Blaine, are you out of your mind?! Do you have any idea where you’re trying to go all by yourself!?”
Panthiana’s sharp voice sliced through the air, and her expression was as if she’d just heard someone declare their dream of becoming the first bee in the world to swim across the Pacific Ocean with nothing but their bare hands. But Blaine didn’t even flinch. Honestly, better he did cross an ocean—because this was pure madness. This was suicide.
“Blaine, maybe you’re just clueless, but there’s no way I’m letting you go! I’m not heartless enough to stand by and watch my friend walk into death!”
“Pansy, I’m sorry. I really don’t have time to explain right now. Ah, where are my shoes…?”
“When someone’s talking, the least you could do is listen!”
Even in anger, the beautiful butterfly looked radiant, though her furrowed brows and puffed cheeks betrayed her fury. She seized Blaine’s thick arm and yanked him upright. The childhood friend who’d always seemed calm was now more anxious than she’d ever seen, and every creature who looked at her wore the same pained expression.
“Pansy, Hurel could be dying right now. I have to get to him immediately!”
“Didn’t I just overhear that you two broke up? So what the hell are you risking your life for?!”
“That was… there was a misunderstanding. Ah… I need to apologize too. Yeah. I need to say I’m sorry. That it was a mistake… that I misjudged him…”
The honeybee rambled with blank, dazed eyes as he hurriedly packed. Panthiana brought a hand to her head in disbelief. Good grief. What the hell had happened over the past few months to completely fry the brain of her friend—who, up until now, had been nothing more than strong and slightly dimwitted, but not reckless?
“I said I won’t let you go!”
“Pansy, try to understand. If you were in my shoes, you’d feel the same. Just imagine if Bertie had been taken by the wasps.”
Blaine swallowed hard, despite the urgency boiling inside him, and tried to reason with her calmly. Whether it was his words or the sheer desperation in his tone, Panthiana’s beautifully curved brows drooped just slightly.
“I’m not going to save him.”
“……”
Blaine, defeated in the argument, shut his mouth and went back to packing.
“I’m not joking, Blaine! Running into a burning fire just because your friend is in danger is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. The living need to stay alive!”
Why? Why go this far? For what? Blaine, caught off guard by the question, froze in place, deep in thought. Yeah… why was he doing this? He wasn’t a kid anymore. He should know better. Why did he feel like he was going to explode if he didn’t go right now?
So much had happened—it felt like a long time—but truthfully, he hadn’t known Hurel for more than a few months. And yet, his lips were dry. He slowly licked his lower lip to moisten them.
“…Sleep…”
“What?”
“I can’t… sleep. Not without him beside me…”
How could he have been so wrong? Hurel wasn’t a liar. Everything he said had come true. That Blaine wouldn’t be able to sleep without him, that he’d get addicted to his soft touches and strokes, that he’d be driven insane with pleasure. Every word had been true.
“Blaine…”
Panthiana, staring at him in silence, finally let out a deep sigh and shook her head, her blue hair swaying gently. She gave up.
“Alright, alright. But you’re not going like that, completely unprepared, are you?”
***
Why are all the creatures around me so damn stubborn, never listening to reason no matter how hard I try? Panthiana was on the verge of spiraling into a deep existential crisis over her fate when she snapped herself out of it and focused her attention on the root of the problem.
“There’s no point trying to stop you now, you won’t listen anyway… but isn’t this all too sudden?”
“It’s already too late. If I don’t go now, Hurel might really—”
“Alright, alright! Fine, you damn mule…”
Blaine, finally shouldering the backpack Panthiana had packed for him overnight, gave her a faint smile.
“Panthiana, I’ve always thought… Bertie’s not good enough for you.”
“I know.”
She snapped back coyly, blinking away the tears in her sapphire eyes before throwing herself into his broad, sturdy chest and hugging him tightly.
“You have to come back safe, you hear me? If something happens to you, I’ll kill you myself.” Her delicate voice trembled with emotion, and Blaine couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle.
But the smile didn’t last.
“Um… could you… let go now…?”
“Blaaaaaiiine…! Waaaahhh!!”
“I—I can’t breathe! Air… I need air…!”
Face flushed red, gasping for breath, he finally pried her arms off his waist. There was a perfect round blotch of tears on the chest of his shirt. As he stood there awkwardly, Blaine noticed the large figure hunched awkwardly in a corner, trying to hide behind his own massive size.
“General.”
“I’m sorry, Blaine. I, uh… I’ve got a family, you know? If it were just three or four of them, of course I’d go with you. But ten? That’s a bit much…”
“Mm, of course. I get it.”
The hulking rhinoceros beetle began sobbing, wiping his eyes with one thick arm while his shoulders trembled. The tiny room, barely bigger than an ant’s eyeball, was filled with his cries. Blaine felt a bit overwhelmed.
***
But despite leaving behind the two sobbing wrecks, Blaine now found himself completely stuck.
It wasn’t the steep cliff towering over him like some infernal demon’s fortress, nor the creepy wasp base built atop it like a villain’s stronghold that was the problem. That part was easy—Blaine had scored top marks in flight training, after all.
The problem was the two guards standing before the thick iron gates. One glance at their faces and any creature under the age of seven would burst into tears and run. Piercings and slash scars ran through their eyebrows, and their sharp jawlines could probably cut through wood. Their tank tops looked like they were one flex away from ripping apart, and their skin-tight leather pants were stretched to their limits by their thigh muscles.
Blaine had never seen a creature taller, broader, and more muscular than himself. His heart pounded with nerves. This really was a crazy plan. He felt doubt creep in—but he couldn’t back down now.
He clenched his sweat-drenched fists. The memory of watching all 25 wasp documentaries at night, trembling with fear, gave him a small jolt of courage. While his peers skimmed the one-minute previews and copied the synopsis for their assignments, Blaine had earnestly studied every episode. Living life with sincerity always paid off in the end.
“Wh-Who the hell are you?!”
The wasps, lazily leaning and kicking at the dirt, straightened with alarm at the sound of his approach, their faces instantly hostile. It was terrifying—he nearly collapsed on the spot—but Blaine steeled himself. Fortunately, the tension only made his face look more intimidating.
“You punks don’t recognize your senior? What, got too soft to even remember a proper wasp when you see one?”
He had meant to sound rougher, more threatening, but the words came out far smaller and shakier than he’d intended. Gritting his teeth, Blaine puffed out his chest and tried to make himself look as big as possible.
“Senior? What kind of bull is that?! I’ve never seen your ugly mug before!”
“How old are you two? I was part of the previous generation’s swarming division. Don’t they teach you kids anything in orientation these days?”
“S-Swarming…?”
It was a desperate gamble—gatekeeping roles were usually given to younger, low-ranking wasps. Blaine clenched his jaw, praying his bluff would work and that he wouldn’t have to resort to Plan B. The two wasps exchanged confused glances, clearly unsure.
“Hah… looks like today’s wasps have gotten soft. Back in my day, we didn’t even dare look our seniors in the eye. Guess I’ll just have to report this to the boss myself.”
According to Episode 7 of Hunter Bees: The Savage Predator – Life in a Wasp Colony, higher-ranking wasps were notoriously old-school and hierarchical. Blaine prayed this wasn’t the moment his blood ran cold, when suddenly…
The two massive wasps snapped to attention, bowing so deeply their noses nearly touched their knees, and shouted in booming voices.
