It Seems Like Nobody Here Is Very Bright

The setting is entirely fictional and unrelated to reality. Please don't draw parallels with real life.

"I say, an insect's life is long and winding~ The world is hard and unkind~ A human-core male is no simple thing, everyone who sees one likes him~"

That's how Karl summed up the first half of his life.

But the second half was a very different story.

Karl was a human-core male insect, but one who had truly decided to lie flat. He wasn't into H/C, groveling exes, or rescuing fallen women. He wasn't into livestreaming, variety shows, copying novels, or any kind of gender reform, political posturing, or veiled commentary. He was a simple freeloader who planned to eat, sleep, and wait for death. The only worthwhile thing he ever did was graduate with perfect scores in every subject, becoming the best graduate in the history of the Male Insect Academy and showing the locals just what a transmigrator could do.

After graduation, he took his Male Insect Academy diploma and his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees, then began a twenty-year life as a shut-in leeching off his parents.

His adoptive male parent, Stalin Romanov, was widely considered the strongest male insect alive. The name might make a transmigrator give him a bewildered look, but that was just a minor detail. Stalin was undoubtedly an insect supreme who had drawn the protagonist's golden ticket. He had 108 sworn brothers, no, female insects as his harem, and was also the chairman of the Male Insect Protection Association. His overflowing sense of justice shone like a twenty-thousand-watt light bulb in that position, and he made immeasurable contributions to male insects.

But even this insect supreme had his troubles. The female insects in his household were always nagging him to find a partner for his adoptive son, an older bachelor. Stalin, too, felt that his kid couldn't lie around forever. So he picked the perfect moment to have a serious talk with him.

Stalin dug Karl out of bed and had barely explained why he'd come, to persuade his kid to go on a blind date, when Karl took his adoptive father's hand with a tender expression and said softly, "Actually, I... I've always been deeply in love with you, Father. The only reason I don't go out to work is so I can stay as close to you as possible and look at you every day."

Stalin was unmoved.

His eyes remained full of fatherly affection for Karl. Even when the boy made that outrageous declaration of forbidden love, Stalin didn't think to teach him a lesson. Instead, he seized the opportunity and said, "In that case, why not come work at the Male Insect Protection Association, Karl? The vice-chair position has been vacant for years. We need fresh blood like you."

And so Karl, who had only pretended to be into men to put his adoptive father off the idea, never expected his father's heart to be so big!

Personally selected by Stalin to be the association's vice-chair, he was forced into the job. He said goodbye to his carefree life and became a working male insect.

The chairman and vice-chairman of the Male Insect Protection Association had completely different duties. Now that Karl had started working, he saw his "true love, Father Stalin" even less often. The chairman mainly dealt with issues concerning male insects and problems male insects faced from outside. In short, he was constantly rushing around. The vice-chairman, meanwhile, handled internal issues among male insects, such as temporarily acting as a therapist to treat their hidden psychological disorders.

In his previous life, Karl had no relevant knowledge. He'd only ever played around with memes, but he brought that same love of messing around into this world.

"Vice-chairman, I feel like life is meaningless and my future is bleak."

"Because you're in love with your female parent."

"Vice-chairman, I've achieved everything a male insect can achieve, but I still can't feel happy."

"Because you're in love with your female parent."

"Vice-chairman, I have a problem I can't talk about... I... I'm impotent."

"Because you're in love with your female parent."

"Oh, so impotence is related to having a thing for your female parent?"

"Wait, no. You're impotent, so what the hell are you doing here for psychological counseling? Shouldn't you be asking the hospital next door?"

The male insect on the examination couch looked troubled. "That's true, but Melvin, the top specialist in male insect medicine, isn't seeing patients today. Word is, he's being treated here by you, Vice-chairman."

At the mention of a certain male insect's name, Karl turned off his recorder, stood up with a smile, gathered all of this "patient's" records, and then...

"Get out!!!"

Melvin was a medical prodigy, the likes of whom appeared only once in a thousand years.

His female parent had been the director of the Federation's First Hospital for over two hundred years. His male parent was the deputy director, who had dressed up as a female in an attempt to replace his female parent. But female insects naturally lived longer than male insects. Though he was over a hundred years younger, the deputy director knew he wouldn't outlive his rival. He began a secret romance in the operating room with the director, and after she had three children in a year and went off work, he was forced into retirement.

Their youngest child, Melvin, was a male insect, but he showed extraordinary medical talent from childhood. He successfully performed surgery as lead surgeon at twelve, invented a new surgical technique at sixteen, worked his way up to department chief at thirty, then deputy director at forty-five. At sixty, he finally became the next generation who knocked his own male parent off the throne, earning the position of director of the Federation's First Hospital for his outstanding contributions.

The only problem was that this male insect was a workaholic. He ate, dressed, and slept at the hospital, and had never shown any interest in a female insect.

Melvin's two former directors, his male and female parents, discussed it. "Oh no, could our baby be into men?"

If the remark reached Melvin, who could perform surgery for 140 hours straight, he would probably explode: "Absurd! Absurd!"

But life is unpredictable.

Ever since Melvin took up his post, the rate of mental illness among the medical staff at the Federation's First Hospital had risen exponentially.

One day, a group of doctors who had been dragged along by workaholic Melvin and made to work for seventy-two hours straight went mad. They tied Melvin up and took him straight to Karl's office, strapping him to the examination couch.

Melvin had done his homework ahead of time. He knew that at the vice-chairman's office, as long as you said things that made sense to a normal insect, you wouldn't be forcibly placed on file and made to undergo twelve courses of psychological treatment. But before he could say more than a couple of words, Karl stamped his file.

Karl, who had seen all kinds of storms, pulled out a "photograph" and asked, "Director Melvin, do you recognize these insects?"

"Of course!"

Melvin declared with absolute certainty, "They're my female husband, my female consorts, and my female insect children!"

"What the hell! That's this year's military's announcement poster for the marshal candidates! You're a famous bachelor male insect. Where did you get a female husband, female consorts, and children?"

And so, from that day on, the hardworking Director Melvin had to sacrifice four precious hours of work every week to come to Vice-chairman Karl's office for psychological treatment.

Melvin couldn't understand why Karl, who had never passed the relevant licensing exams and whose degree was in engineering, could work as a therapist. He felt an instinctive hostility toward Karl, like a real doctor toward a quack.

But no matter what he thought, he still had to attend these mandatory therapy sessions.

And as he kept going, things started to feel wrong.

A guide to male insect survival that was off course from the very start.

Male-male switches.

[This story is not suitable for readers who need content warnings.]

[Assume I write your squicks. If you get traumatized, I'm not responsible.]

Theme: While there's still time.