After hearing that rare, pure-romance story from the insect race, I turned to look at Yellow Hair.
Don’t tell me this entire prison is full of pure romance!
That doesn’t fit the Zerg setting at all!
Yellow Hair moved his lips, seeming to hesitate over whether to tell me, and finally chose to speak.
“Forget it. Even if I didn’t tell you, you’d find out sooner or later… One day, I suddenly discovered that I couldn’t release pheromones anymore.”
I recalled the knowledge I’d picked up just last chapter: If you can’t do it anymore, drawing blood works too!
Perhaps he’d read the answer in my eyes, because Yellow Hair snapped, “It’s not that I can’t anymore. It’s that no method whatsoever can release pheromones.”
After the doctor ruled that there was almost no chance of a cure, his female insect filed for divorce.
An adult male insect who couldn’t provide pheromones was entitled to none of a male insect’s rights.
Yellow Hair, of course, refused. What kind of female insect asks for a divorce? Where would his male insect dignity go?
So the female insect showed up at his door with the court decree in hand. The law fully supported a female insect divorcing a male insect who could no longer secrete pheromones.
Furious, Yellow Hair simply set fire to the estate. It was his property; he could burn it if he wanted.
Then he got locked up here for arson, for destroying his female insect’s family property.
At this point Yellow Hair smiled, but every word out of his mouth was bitten off like it was meant to draw blood: “A male insect without pheromones is nothing. Male insects are nothing but tools for providing pheromones to females. Being nice to them is completely pointless. They’re all just dogs that chase after pheromones.”
A thick floral scent spread through the air, and I couldn’t help sneezing.
Kawaii skillfully put on a face mask. “Anyway, ever since he got here, his Pheromone Deficiency Syndrome was cured by Naji in the cell next door, but he still can’t control it when his emotions run high. Because he keeps refusing to serve his sentence, his term keeps getting extended, and most of the privileges a male insect normally enjoys have been revoked.”
Hold on. Serving his sentence?
“Aren’t we already serving our sentences by being here?”
Kawaii looked at me like I was an insect from outer space. “A male insect’s sentence requires drawing twenty milliliters of pheromone-laced blood every month.”
Of course, if a male insect wasn’t willing, then the blood drawn would contain no usable pheromones.
Yellow Hair wore an expression of pure world-weariness. “I told you, male insects are just containers for pheromones. All that talk of respect and ‘Your Excellency’ is just a way of luring pigs onto the scale.”
Kawaii glanced at me and shrugged helplessly.
“There are only three male insects in this prison?” I asked.
Kawaii jerked his chin toward the room next door. “There’s one more, but we don’t like to associate with him.”
The words had barely left his mouth when a plump male insect with cloudy eyes came out through that door. “I was wondering why it was as noisy as a marketplace out here. Turns out the beggar squad has picked up a newcomer.”
Yellow Hair said, “Good thing the blood draws are only for extracting pheromones. Otherwise, if they drained you dry, all they’d get is grease.”
One lick of that mouth and you’d poison yourself, wouldn’t you.
Kawaii filled me in: “He got locked up because he accidentally injured his own male child while abusing a female insect. He looks down his nose at everyone, so we don’t like playing with him. Every time he goes out to the garden, it ends up a total disaster. I just hope he gets out of here soon.”
There’s really no need for that!
Yellow Hair couldn’t be bothered with a wife-beater throwing an impotent tantrum, so he turned to me instead. “What about you? What did you get locked up for?”
“Probably because I’m the Star Pirate Boss.”
Whatever. Male insects get treated well. I wasn’t afraid of a heavy charge.
Yellow Hair and Kawaii both froze, then, in perfect unison, took a step back.
?
The wife-beater looked at me with theatrical disdain. “So you’re just another lowborn, inferior male insect.”
What are you acting smug for? You backed up two steps just now!
The wife-beater kept running his mouth, spewing pheromones all the while: “Star Pirate Boss, huh? What a way to flatter yourself. You just used your male insect status to sleep your way through every female insect in the crew you’d never met, didn’t you? Although, come to think of it, aren’t Star Pirate females supposed to be especially wild in bed?”
I glanced down at my palm, then strolled casually toward the wife-beater, two steps at a time. “I just learned a new piece of knowledge.”
Backing away with each of my steps, the wife-beater groped for something to lean on. “What knowledge?”
“A male insect can beat another male insect, and as long as the injuries are in safe spots, nothing serious comes of it.”
I deliberately targeted places that didn’t show but hurt like hell.
The wife-beater triggered his personal alarm.
And here’s one more piece of knowledge: thanks to the access control system, a prison guard needs at least a full minute to clear the door checks.
So I beat the wife-beater for one more minute, right in front of the guards.
After all, the guards only gave a token shout through the door, “No fighting!” If I’d stopped the one-sided mutual beating, wouldn’t that have been terribly rude of me?
By the time the guards finally got inside, the wife-beater was wailing like a rolling gourd, though there wasn’t much visible damage on him.
Since a male insect was involved, the guards couldn’t pass judgment on their own, so they brought out the legal statutes.
As it turned out, the law was very respectful toward male insects. It simply said the wishes of both parties were to be honored.
The wife-beater was helped to his feet, still cursing up a storm, while I fondled my own fist, feeling a little worked up.
Finally!
For once, I got to live out the standard plot of transmigrating into a male insect! Using my status advantage to teach a shameless male insect a lesson!
Fate was finally in my own hands!
In the end, the whole matter fizzled out. I received a verbal warning and a lecture, and my male insect privileges were suspended for a week.
Specifically, no ordering meals from the menu, and no essential oils when I soaked in the bathtub. That sort of thing.
Once the battle was over, Kawaii looked at me with something close to admiration, and even Yellow Hair’s face didn’t seem quite so sour anymore.
Yellow Hair said, “Beating up other male insects depends on rank. Out there, if the other party outranks you, it’s best to go along with their opinion.”
I’m the protagonist of an insect-race novel. Whose rank could possibly be higher than mine?
“So what’s your rank?”
“No idea.”
Kawaii and Yellow Hair stared at me in surprise. “No idea? How can a male insect not know his own rank?”
“I lived on a Desolate Star before I came here.”
Who knows what they imagined. Either way, their expressions now carried a trace of pity.
Kawaii said, “It’s fine. You can get tested when you have time. A high rank can even shorten your sentence.”
“Then how are pheromone ranks classified?”
“By pheromone concentration in the blood. A is the highest, F is the lowest.”
I get it now. This world is waiting for me to invent an S!
Kawaii was headed next door to see his wife, so I went along.
Time to check out how a Star Pirate contestant was living.
The moment Kawaii scanned his face from a distance, the iron gate swung open. He didn’t even have to pull it himself.
Is there anywhere in this Zerg prison that male insects can’t go?!
Maybe I should test later whether a face scan opens the main prison gate.
The female insects’ cells were completely different from the males’.
Cell doors with windows. Narrow iron beds.
The already-cramped rooms felt even more suffocating with the female insects’ large frames filling them.
Kawaii said, “The male insects get better living conditions, so these females sometimes deliberately seduce them. They don’t even spare Machi, let alone a good-looking one like you.”
Machi was the wife-beater’s name.
Wait. What do you mean the male insects get better living conditions?
Is this the kind of prison where you can just visit each other’s cells?
Kawaii nodded. “Of course. A male insect has the right to take any female insect he fancies back to his own cell. And if the female gets pregnant, his sentence can be reduced too.”
You Zerg really will stop at nothing to boost your birth rate!
