Chapter 15: Pee Right Here, Your Majesty

“Good. This spot’s perfect.”

Ella stood in the center of the abandoned storeroom, hands on her hips, scanning the space.

The room had clearly been left unused for a long time. 

Fine cracks spiderwebbed across the wooden walls, letting thin threads of sea wind slip through with faint, moaning sighs.

Thick dust coated the floor and shelves. 

The air smelled of mold mixed with rust and stale decay.

A few bundles of blackened old ropes lay piled in one corner. 

Three half-height empty wooden barrels stood against the wall. 

Rusty iron hooks were nailed in rows along the planks—once used to hang tools, now holding nothing but themselves.

Tattered spiderwebs clung to the ceiling beams, swaying gently in the moonlight that filtered through the porthole.

No footprints. No handprints. No sign of recent use.

Perfect.

Now that she had the location, it was time to…

Leave some bodily fluids.

Ella moved to the deepest corner of the storeroom, where an old workbench stood. 

Its surface was just big enough for what she needed.

She ran her fingers across the tabletop. 

A layer of dust clung to her fingertips and drifted into the air like faint fog before slowly settling again in the moonlight.

Blood was out of the question. She would die on the spot if she lost that much.

Tears and saliva were too weak; they could never grow even a palm-sized bacterial carpet.

After thinking it over, the most practical option was still…

Urine.

She took a deep breath.

“Ha… All right. Let’s get this done.”

Ella hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her pajama pants and began to pull them down. 

The white cotton fabric bunched under her fingers as she dragged it an inch lower.

Then she stopped.

Strange…

She had done this countless times before.

Back in the early days on that tiny skiff, when she was still male, she had performed the same ritual in countless dark corners on countless sleepless nights—pull down the pants, leave the fluids, wait for the bacterial carpet to slowly spread in the darkness.

It was the most primitive, clumsiest, and most reliable method of reproduction.

She had done it endless times.

So why was she hesitating now?

“Hurry up. Just get it over with,” she told herself.

“If you stay out here too long, those failures might notice. Come on, move!”

It was just taking off her underwear and peeing. Nothing more.

Get on with it.

Her thumbs hooked the edge of her panties again. She pulled harder. 

The pajama pants slid down to her knees, exposing her fair thighs and—the underwear she had not yet removed.

All that was left was to pull those down too.

Her thumb caught the waistband of the panties.

Then—

Click.

A crisp footstep sounded behind her.

Ella’s blood turned to ice from the top of her head to the soles of her feet.

“Not sleeping in the middle of the night—”

The voice drifted from behind her, lazy, teasing, and utterly unhurried, like a cat that had already cornered its mouse.

“—and you decided to come out here for some exhibitionism, Your Majesty?”

Ella spun around.

Pink hair. Pink pajamas. Those crimson pupils glowed in the darkness like two burning coals.

“You again! Dieyi!”

The words ground out between Ella’s teeth. Her hands instinctively yanked the pajama pants back up to her waist. 

The fabric made a soft friction sound against her skin.

Her gaze burned with the memory of everything that had happened in the bathroom earlier. 

The sight of Dieyi in those pink pajamas looked even more repulsive now—that impossibly beautiful face, that mocking smile, those red eyes that seemed to see straight through her.

She wanted to devour her alive.

“Angry again.”

Dieyi leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, pink hair falling over her shoulders and catching a faint glow in the moonlight.

Her feet were in fluffy pink slippers embroidered with two butterfly designs.

“Have you noticed—you’ve become really emotional lately? The smallest thing sets you off. You hiss like a cat.”

Ella’s breath hitched.

Emotional?

Only after Dieyi said it did she realize it was true.

The old her had not been like this. 

As the Insect Mother, she had been calm, rational, calculating every move without letting emotion interfere.

Expanding the swarm, cultivating individuals, planning the nest—those tasks required precise judgment, not emotional swings.

But now…

She screamed at a single word. She raged at a single glance. She short-circuited at a single touch.

What was happening?

How had she become so emotional?

“Heh.”

Dieyi let out a soft laugh, arms still crossed. She tilted her head, pink strands sliding off her shoulder to reveal a fair neck.

The way she watched the show made it impossible for Ella to read her—mockery? Pity? Something else?

“I know exactly what you’re trying to do.”

Her voice drawled, as if discussing something trivial.

“You want to pee here, leave your fluids, grow a bacterial carpet, and secretly cultivate a new swarm in secret. Before long, you’ll have another army again.”

Ella’s pupils shrank slightly.

She had seen through everything.

Completely.

“You knew…”

Ella’s fingers tightened, nails digging into her palms.

Since Dieyi knew her plan, she would obviously try to stop her—clamp a hand around her throat, stomp on her head, or drag her out of the storeroom with that toxin that had turned her tentacle into charcoal.

She had already imagined every possible next step.

However—

“I won’t stop you.”

The corners of Dieyi’s mouth curved upward. There was no hostility in that smile, only a kind of pleasure that made Ella’s skin crawl.

“Go ahead and pee.”

Ella froze.

Her brain spun once. Nothing clicked.

It spun again. Still nothing.

“But I’ll be watching.”

After saying that, Dieyi simply leaned her back against the doorframe, arms still crossed, legs crossed at the ankles, settling in like she was prepared to stand there all night.

Those crimson pupils gleamed in the darkness, fixed straight on Ella without blinking.

Ella’s lips twitched.