Chapter 318 Su Wei and Qiao, the bees in the bookstore (asking for monthly tickets)
It was already late at night when Big Bee Hou Qiao took off from his hive on the nameless island, spreading a pair of hexagonal wings. He flapped his wings and soared into the sky, then flew all the way towards Osaka, Japan.
Shortly after that, Su Wei's bookstore welcomed a customer.
Su Wei was slightly stunned, raised her head, squinted her eyes, and looked at the entrance of the bookstore from behind her glasses.
From the dim street, a long, sharp tail suddenly "stepped" over the threshold, as if greeting him.
And two seconds later, the strange creature finally walked into the bookstore.
Su Wei looked at the other person silently, and what appeared in his pupils was a half-human, half-bee creature.
He had a long, slender tail, his entire body was dark, his facial features were human-like, and his pupils, set high and erect, emitted a terrifying golden light. Behind him grew two pairs of hexagonal wings, each wing resembling a honeycomb.
Bee Queen? Su Wei thought.
"What a rare visitor..." he murmured.
"This is the only bookstore that's open late at night." Joe walked in slowly and stopped in front of the bookshelf.
"I see. I was wondering why you chose a small shop like mine." Su Wei said, "After all, mine is the only bookstore open so late at night."
Joe reached out his palm, took a book from the shelf, and then gently scratched the protective film with his claws. He sat down directly, crossed his legs, and silently turned the pages.
Su Wei didn't attack him either. She just took a sip of coffee and glanced at the time on the wall.
It was three in the morning. Even though the streets of Osaka were deserted at this hour, his bookstore was already visited by a photo-eating bee. If he hadn't been afraid of offending it, he would have taken out his camera to take a picture.
After a moment, Joe suddenly said, "You're not a mutant. I've eaten mutants before, and you taste different. But I can see... you're very strong."
Su Wei adjusted her glasses and smiled, "Praise from a foreign race? This really doesn't make me happy."
"You didn't attack me right away. Were you waiting for your companions?" Joe asked while reading a book with his eyes lowered.
"No, I welcome everyone who comes to read in the store, as long as they don't cause trouble."
"Interesting... There are actually humans like this." Joe murmured, and then without looking up, he said, "I can smell it too. You really don't have any hostility towards me."
"Can you smell it?" Su Wei said, "The nose of the light-eating bee is really unusual."
"Lower organisms should not try to understand the structure of higher organisms." Joe said sarcastically.
"Are you interested in human knowledge?" Su Wei asked casually after putting down his coffee cup.
"Actually, I'm not very interested."
"Haha, you don't look uninterested. You suddenly flew across dozens of kilometers in the middle of the night from that nameless island just to find a bookstore to read."
"I just want to seek meaning... Most creatures like us only know how to reproduce and kill, but what is the meaning of reproduction and killing?" Joe said slowly. "Humans have existed for far longer than us, the light-eating bees, so I think I can gain some inspiration from their knowledge."
"I see." Su Wei said, "Then there are still many things you can learn."
"Really? I don't deny that."
"I thought queen bees were supposed to be arrogant creatures. After all, the next generation of queen bees will be born from among you," Su Wei said with a sigh. "But it seems the reality is quite different from what I thought."
"I have no interest in becoming king," Qiao said, suddenly turning to look at Su Wei. "But you... do you really understand your situation? I eat humans, but it's better to say that only humans can meet our nutritional needs and allow us to evolve further."
Su Wei raised her head in silence, meeting Qiao's gaze. The eyes of this inhuman creature were hollow and cold, the golden light in their pupils threatening to burst out, like a beast selecting its prey.
"You know..." Su Wei suddenly took off his glasses and took out a pair of glasses case from the drawer.
"What do you want to say?" Joe asked.
Su Wei squinted her eyes, took out a glasses cloth from the box, and quietly wiped her frameless glasses.
"People eat people too." He said softly, his voice still calm.
Qiao was silent for a moment, quietly looking at Su Wei's expression for a while, and then suddenly put his hand to his chin, "I understand. You want to use the conflict between our tribe and those people with special abilities to achieve a certain goal."
"You're quite perceptive." Su Wei was stunned for a moment, then put on his glasses and asked with a smile, "Is this a supernatural power? Or does every light-eating bee have a sense of smell as sharp as yours?"
"No, it was just a test from me." Joe sneered, "and you fell for it."
Su Wei raised his eyebrows and said in surprise, "Wow, I just didn't think a bug could have such wisdom."
"I hope you have self-awareness. When bugs are generally stronger than humans, in our eyes, humans are the bugs."
Su Wei chuckled, seemingly not intending to argue with him. "Now that you understand my purpose, we can sit down and read quietly."
"If I'm not mistaken, you killed more than a hundred of our light-eating bees in the basement." Joe said expressionlessly.
Su Wei was stunned.
He thought that Joe was chatting with him so calmly because he didn't know what happened in the basement, but now it seems that he was wrong.
"Hey... I thought I could hide it from you. After all, we just moved here, and seeing bugs in the basement would make everyone want to clean it up." Su Wei scratched his head and said with a headache, "So what are you going to do? Fight with me?"
Joe was silent for a moment.
"No, they were the ones who offended," he said. "Human, I apologize to you and them on their behalf. You are a reasonable person. There is no regret in killing them."
Su Wei was also silent for a while. "I never thought there would be an outlier like you among the light-eating bees."
"Each other," Joe said coldly. "Before I entered the bookstore, I had in mind that if the manager panicked and started yelling because of my arrival, I would kill him and eat him as a side dish for my reading."
"I see. I was wondering why you stood there for two seconds with your tail stretched out."
"Say that again... and I'll kill you."
"Okay, okay." Su Wei smiled.
The man and the bee sat down and read silently for a while. The bookstore was completely silent, with only the hum of the fan. Joe seemed to find the fan too noisy, so he reached over and pressed the off button. The fan blades stopped spinning.
"If you want to learn about philosophy, I don't recommend you to read the book you have on hand. I suggest you put it back and take the fifth book on the second row of the bookshelf. That is a more systematic and sophisticated book for beginners." Su Wei suddenly said.
"Human, don't teach me to read..."
Qiao said this coldly, but after a moment, he used his slender tail to take down the book that Su Wei mentioned.
"There's also the seventh book on the third row of the bookshelf. That book introduces the history of the development of philosophy and is relatively more interesting." Su Wei continued disapprovingly.
Joe was silent, and used his tail to hook the book off the shelf and put it beside his legs.
"Let me ask you, what is the meaning of your life?" Joe asked.
"I would have died a long time ago."
"What's the meaning?"
Su Wei smiled and said, "When I heard the news of my daughter's death, my heart was already dead. Now I am just a walking corpse struggling to survive. But if I can't give my daughter an explanation, I can't close my eyes and rest."
"Revenge..."
Joe had a blank expression on his face. He pondered for a long time and found this word from human concepts.
"Yes, you bees probably can't understand the pain of the death of someone you care about, right?"
"Don't be so arrogant," Joe said as he flipped through the pages of the book. "Our emotions aren't as complex as yours in the short term. But as long as we devour and evolve, in the future, both our emotions and rational thinking will far surpass yours..."
"At least you have to admit that, so far, compared to humans, you are just babies learning to walk in Handan. Even if you have powerful abilities, you are just children playing around with a rocket launcher." Su Wei said lightly.
Qiao ignored his sarcasm and suddenly closed the book in his hand. "Looks like... I should go."
"It seems that you are quite self-aware, so there is no need for me to chase you away." Su Wei said.
He had just received a notification from the Exorcist Association, stating that the Psychic Association had reported that a large wasp queen of light-eating bees had suddenly invaded a human city in the middle of the night. However, the equipment they had built in such a short time was unable to detect the queen's location.
Therefore, the Japanese authorities have already dispatched a group of psychics, and they are searching the city for the location of the Bee Marquis.
It wouldn't be long before the fact that Joe was reading in this bookstore would be exposed. The light-eating bee didn't want to cause any trouble to the bookstore, so it got up and left.
"Human, I'll take these books with me." Joe turned his head and said expressionlessly.
"If it were a bookstore in China, I would have asked you to write an IOU. After all, running a bookstore is not easy." Su Wei said, "But this bookstore was given to me by someone, so it doesn't matter. You can just take whatever books you want."
Qiao glanced at Su Wei, as if to confirm whether he was lying.
After a moment, Joe stood up silently, wrapped his tail around the three introductory philosophy books piled on the ground, and then hooked them up.
"Joe, this is my name. I'll come here again next time." He said as he walked out of the bookstore.
"Su Wei." Su Wei replied without raising his head, and lowered his head to sip a cup of coffee.
Joe scoffed indifferently and walked out of the bookstore. In the thick night, he unfolded his enormous hexagonal wings, then flapped them, soaring upward with a loud roar and disappearing into the night.
Su Wei stood up from the counter, walked silently to the door of the store, and pulled down the gate. After closing the store, he walked towards the corridor and glanced at Gu Zhuoan who was standing at the stairs.
Gu Zhuoan looked solemn, his eyes still fixed on the direction of the store entrance.
"Is it necessary to be so nervous?" Su Wei asked.
"Father-in-law, I'm just worried that the bug will attack you." Gu Zhuoan hugged his shoulders and muttered, "Is this the light-eating bee? It doesn't seem like what I imagined."
"Indeed, for a bug, it's quite polite." Su Wei smiled indifferently and patted his shoulder. "I have things to do tomorrow, go to bed early tonight."
After saying that, Su Wei passed by Gu Zhuo's desk and went upstairs first. His figure was swallowed by the shadow of the corridor on the second floor.
(End of this chapter)
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