A Happy Home [Insectoid]

An anthology of insectoid stories set in the same world, featuring multiple couples. Characters from different stories may be connected. A self-indulgent work for readers with unusual tastes.

Story One: A seemingly pure, secretly cunning mentor who turns out to be innocent x a straight human man who transmigrates and comes around

After reaching adulthood, every female insect has the right to apply for a mentor through the Happy Home. That year, 25-year-old Isai Elvado passed the application thanks to his outstanding military record and became Lord Alcia's fourth student.

Story Two: A canary top with an unhealthy dependence on his older brother x a sunny, comfort-dog bottom

Goldwin is an androgyne. He has a female insect lover.

Fortunately, the insects around them don't look at them strangely. Instead, they wish the loving couple well as they enter the halls of marriage.

At the wedding, Goldwin's older brother interrupts their vows, opens Goldwin's wedding clothes, and shows everyone the two hideous, jagged scars on his back.

Goldwin has deceived everyone. He isn't an androgyne, but a disabled male insect with no wings and no mental power.

Story Three:

Everyone else transmigrates into a book and gets reborn as the Dragon Proudly Dominating Heaven, gathering a harem and reaching the pinnacle of life. Why the hell did I transmigrate into a book as a frail weakling who can't lift a thing, only for all these men to want to sleep with me? I'm a straight male insect who hates men!

Story Four: An innocent, low-class male insect top x a noble, ungrateful bottom

Lesso finds a dying female insect on the Mandi Wasteland, one taller, stronger, and more handsome than all his students.

Kindhearted Lesso cares for the insect by his bedside day and night, buys him the best medicine, and spends almost all his savings.

Once recovered, the female insect reaches out and invites Lesso to return with him to his homeland, promising him a life of lasting happiness in that beautiful, prosperous place.

Lesso turns down his offer. He still has ties he can't abandon on this desolate planet: his friends and his students, for one. Besides, he'd just planted seeds in the vegetable patch by his house. If he left, who would look after it?

The female insect graciously understands his predicament.

From that day on, misfortune befalls Lesso. His students suffer freak accidents and die one after another.

Story Five:

Aeriselle's female insect partner never hesitates to tell him how much she loves him.

Auld is handsome, wealthy, and devoted, the perfect partner with no fault to find.

On countless tender nights, Aeriselle lies in the female insect's arms and listens to her repeat her promise again and again: "It's only a political marriage. Neither of us has feelings for the other, Aeris. You know that..."

"You're the only one I love."

Aeriselle believes her without a doubt. On the eve of the female insect's wedding, he boards a spaceship headed for her private planet, willing to be Auld's lover for the rest of his life.

The ship crashes, and Aeriselle falls onto a barren planet, where a crude, ill-mannered, illiterate female insect finds him. Everything here is awful: no fresh oxygen, no fine food, no well-fitting clothes... not even a decent place to live.

Three months later, Auld finds the pet he lost. But Aeriselle isn't as miserable and filthy as he imagined, nor has he suffered because of poverty.

Nor has he come back to Auld's cage, won over by a single word from him as Auld had expected.

"I don't believe you anymore, Auld."

His male insect hides in the arms of a towering stranger, making no attempt to hide the dependence and affection in his eyes. He rejects the only love Auld has to offer without a trace of mercy.

Theme: Break free of your shackles.