"Then... why are you so angry?"
The Insect Queen didn't dare look up at me. She kept her head lowered, glanced at me from beneath her lashes, then quickly looked down again.
"I was just thinking about something else..."
I shook my head. I wasn't actually angry; I just thought things might get complicated if this kept up.
Thinking of that, I glanced at the Insect Queen.
"You didn't do anything wrong. If I were you, I'd probably have made the same choice."
I lowered my head in thought, then looked at the Insect Queen again.
"Even though you care deeply about your children, the Insect race has killed a lot of humans too. It was the same in Chang'an back then..."
The Insect Queen nodded without arguing. She couldn't deny that.
"All of that is fine. You can be sad, and you can be angry, but I hope you won't make it so obvious when you're among humans."
"Why?"
By now, the Insect Queen seemed to have understood the seriousness in my voice. The cutesy look in her eyes gradually faded, replaced by
the stern expression of the ruler of hundreds of millions of insects.
"Because if ambitious people find out about you, it could very well spark a war between the Insect race and humanity. And then... humanity might be wiped out."
"Are you worried about humanity?"
"I guess so. At least, I'm still human for now, even though my body has changed a lot."
My appearance wasn't much different, but the structure inside my body—especially my muscles and bones—was completely unlike that of an ordinary person.
"Why? Humans are nothing but a lower life form. They've only been evolving for 130 million years, while the Insect race has been evolving for 350 million. Humans gained intelligence first,