You curled up alone beside an empty limewashed wall, your round eyes fixed on the swarm of insects outside the window.
Your brothers and sisters had all flown elsewhere, and your mother had left too. Only you remained here... until a gigantic insect crawled into the house.
It slowly crawled toward the corner where you were huddled. When it reached your side, it sniffed at your scent—it seemed to mistake you for its own child, so it carried you onto its wings.
A few hours later, the giant locust beat its wings and left Mandalay Island with the swarm that blotted out the sky, flying toward places on Glamour Star where food could still be found.
At one year old, because of the giant locust, you reached a region beyond the isolated island. Perhaps because you shared the same blood as them, these locusts did not attack you... at least, not before the food ran out...
But the giant locust soon realized that you were not its child, so it abandoned you in a small town called Samoa-do.
This town lay in the north of Glamour Star, surrounded by dense pine forests, marshes, and fishponds. People grew wheat crops in the relatively warm valleys, hunted in the mountains, and fished from the rivers whenever they had not frozen over.
The locusts did not like the damp, cold environment here and normally would not approach this region. Thus, in the early days of the locust plague, the residents of Samoa-do Town were unaffected.
But as time passed, food in the warmer regions was depleted, and vast numbers of refugees flooded in from the south. Living conditions in Samoa-do Town worsened by the day.
After the refugees and locust plague arrived, supplies here were rapidly consumed. The town, once self-sufficient, began relying