Under Yamato’s tense gaze and Kaido’s expectant one, Luke spoke. "What I want to say is simple. Even if you refuse to admit it, you’re still respected and hold status within the Beast Pirates. That’s why they call you Young Master and don’t dare lay a hand on you."
Luke loaded the ore he had mined into a cart and continued, "And deep down, subconsciously, you know your own status too. That’s why you naturally scolded that alpaca guy. You knew that once you spoke, he wouldn’t dare pursue the matter any further."
Yamato froze. She had never expected that simply helping Luke out on impulse would somehow lead him into dragging up such a troublesome topic.
But people were like that. Once someone pointed something out, you could not help thinking about it. Yamato instinctively recalled what she had just said.
"Don’t lay a hand on my friend!"
That sentence had ended the conflict. There seemed to be some unspoken premise behind it.
Why had she assumed that once she declared Luke to be her friend, the alpaca man should no longer be allowed to hurt him?
Without realizing it, she had placed herself in a position high enough to order the alpaca man around. But she was Kozuki Oden. She should not have been able to command a Beast Pirates overseer.
"N-No, that’s not it. I wasn’t thinking that much at the time. I just didn’t want to see Brother Luke get hurt. Of course I’d get angry when I saw him disrespecting my friend and trying to hurt him."
Yamato said it, but her gaze lacked conviction. There was a faint trace of self-doubt in it.
Seeing that, Luke did not press the issue. He understood that Yamato’s actions had two sides to them. Even if she were not Kaido’s daughter, she would still have stepped in and said roughly the same thing.
After all, Yamato genuinely valued him—the first friend she had made in sixteen years. Her actions could be explained simply as anger on his behalf.
"Hearing you say that makes me happy, Yamato. But while we were mining just now, another question occurred to me."
Luke smiled.
The moment Yamato heard the word "question" come out of Luke’s mouth, she shuddered. With a bitter smile, she said, "Brother Luke, can’t we just mine quietly? Or you could tell me stories about the outside world. Just don’t ask any more questions."
Seeing how strongly Yamato resisted, Luke could only soothe her. "I’ve already thought of it, so let me say it. Once I’m done, I’ll tell you a story—a myth from my homeland this time."
When she heard there would be a story, and one about the myths and legends of her friend’s homeland at that, Yamato became very interested. She nodded. "All right, Brother Luke. Go ahead."
Luke thought Yamato was pretty easy to coax. After all, she was only a sixteen-year-old girl. He said, "You told me before that ever since you started challenging Kaido, every time you lost, you were thrown into prison. Most of the time, you were locked up here. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but I feel Kaido might be granting your wish."
"Huh? Kaido is granting my wish? What are you talking about, Brother Luke?"
Yamato’s face was full of question marks. This time, she was certain Luke could not possibly make her doubt herself again.
"Didn’t you tell me about your idol’s exploits before? After Kozuki Oden made mistakes at ten years old, he was locked in a quarry. Later, he even became the master stoneworker. Isn’t this giving you a chance to reenact your idol’s path? After all, you call yourself Kozuki Oden."
Luke said with a smile.
"Huh? You can look at it that way?"
Yamato blanked out, then came back to herself. "That’s right! How did I never think of that before? I’m Kozuki Oden. I should become the master stoneworker here! How can I just keep mining ore!?"
Clearly, what her thought process had identified as wrong was that she had not been following Kozuki Oden’s behavioral pattern. She was deeply regretful.
At that moment, Kaido, who was watching the broadcast on Onigashima, wore an odd expression. "That wasn’t what I was thinking..."
He had sent Yamato to Udon Prison purely because Wano only had two prisons. One was in the capital, and if he wanted to lock her up there, he might as well have kept her imprisoned on Onigashima.
Out of sight, out of mind. And since the quarry could put her through hard labor, Udon Prison had practically become Kaido’s only option. He had never meant for his daughter to recreate her idol’s path.
"What you were thinking isn’t important. What matters is what Yamato thinks right now."
Black Maria smiled beside him. "I have a feeling Yamato is about to fall into another pit."
Kaido’s brain did not turn that fast. To avoid exposing his own lack of insight, he could only shut up and keep watching.
Back in Udon Prison, Luke said, "Maybe I’m overthinking it. But objectively speaking, Kaido really has been cooperating with your role-playing game, and he’s put in considerable effort. I just think it’s led you farther down the wrong path."
One of Yamato’s cheeks puffed out slightly in displeasure. "What do you mean, wrong path? Kozuki Oden was—"
"A heroic man, a great hero, right?"
Luke cut in. "A hero who abducted women by force?"
Yamato immediately choked on her words. She had thought about it all night yesterday, yet she still could not understand why her idol, Kozuki Oden, would do something so terrible. Everything an idol did was supposed to be right.
But after Luke used her father as an example, she had truly felt that it was indeed wrong—something that could even be called beastly.
"Back to the matter of this prison. Yamato, you said Kaido abused you, forcing you to hide everywhere and often go hungry. But just now, you said the food at Udon Prison is pretty good and that you often come here to mooch meals. So have you ever considered why Kaido locks you up here rather than keeping you on Onigashima to starve?"
Luke’s question struck straight at Yamato’s soul, leaving her dumbfounded once more.
She had not even figured out the previous question, and now this new one was giving her another headache.
Honestly, the hunger had only been at its worst when she had first started calling herself Kozuki Oden. Back then, her father had confined her several times and forbidden anyone from giving her food.
Later, a kind Beast Pirates member who gave her food was executed for disobeying Kaido’s order.
But after another year or so, things gradually got better. Once she turned eleven, she began challenging Kaido one after another. Every time she lost, she was locked in Udon Prison, and from then on, she was able to eat her fill.
It was also during those years that her body grew rapidly. Before long, she had become tall and strong enough to fight Kaido for longer.
"W-What are you trying to say?"
Yamato asked hesitantly. Deep down, she had already vaguely sensed the answer.
"It’s only a theory, but I think Kaido may have realized you were still growing and could not be allowed to go hungry every day. That’s why he sent you to Udon Prison. He knew that with your strength, you could eat your fill here."
Luke analyzed the matter with a serious expression.
He was not making this up out of thin air. Considering Kaido’s own life experiences, Luke felt it was entirely possible.
After all, when Kaido was eleven or twelve, he often deliberately got himself captured by the Marines because he could not get enough to eat. After filling his stomach on a warship, he would break out of prison again...
So, given how Kaido’s mind worked, it was highly possible that he had made this arrangement so Yamato could eat enough and grow.
The feeling was strange. In a normal setting, it would be a bit like a father and daughter fighting, with the daughter refusing to eat. Neither side was willing to back down in the heat of the moment, but the father still worried she would go hungry, so he secretly put extra money in her piggy bank by taking a roundabout route.
The carefree daughter refused to eat at home, but once hunger became unbearable, she went out for food. Finding more money in her piggy bank, she assumed she had saved it herself over the past few days, never realizing it was all her father’s quiet concern.
Of course, Kaido and Yamato’s situation was far more complicated and awkward, and Kaido’s way of finding food for his daughter was much more hardcore.
In Kaido’s mind, prison was probably just a restaurant. Sending his daughter there could not go wrong, since that was how he himself had eaten enough, grown up, and become strong.
On the other side, at Onigashima, Black Maria’s eyes curved with an uncontainable smile as she looked at Kaido. "Is that how it was?"
Kaido turned his head slightly, refusing to let Black Maria clearly see his expression beneath that dark face. "That kid is just imagining things. I only wanted to teach Yamato a lesson. Those are simply Udon’s rules."
"Ohhh, so he was overthinking it."
Black Maria drew out her words, her face brimming with amusement. She had not expected her Governor to have such a delicate side.
Even she, a woman so attentive to details, had never considered this before. She had simply assumed Kaido wanted to reform Yamato through hard labor.
Kaido watched the image on the screen with a dark expression, eagerly waiting to see Yamato’s reaction.
Yamato’s expression struggled. "No way... That bastard old man actually... considered something like that? I thought..."
"You thought your idol Oden’s spirit in heaven was blessing you and letting you eat your fill?"
Luke picked up the sentence, teasing her.
Yamato frowned. "I wouldn’t say something like that..."
Then she froze again. She realized that if it had been her from a few days ago, she absolutely would have said exactly that—and truly believed it.
What was happening to her? Her first instinct just now had been to refute Luke. In other words, she had refuted her idol and questioned her own identity as Kozuki Oden.
"Anyway, my father Kaido is such a crude man. There’s no way he could think things through that carefully. Treating a prison like a cafeteria so I can eat my fill... he would never use such a roundabout method to make sure I ate enough!"
Yamato said stubbornly.
"Oh? Then let me ask you this: do you really know what kind of person Kaido is?"
Luke asked with a smile. "You know so much about Kozuki Oden, someone who was originally a stranger to you, yet you do not seem to know much about your own biological father."
Yamato looked displeased. "Of course I know him. Kaido is the greatest enemy of Kozuki Oden. As a samurai, I naturally have to understand my enemy in order to defeat him."
"Is that so? Then tell me: do you know what your father experienced before he came to Wano? Do you know what stories are told about him across the seas?"
Luke asked.
"Huh? I was only a few years old when he brought me to Wano. I was too young to remember anything. How could I possibly know about his past?"
Yamato looked at Luke in confusion. "Don’t tell me you know?"
"Wouldn’t it be stranger not to know? Your father is one of the Four Emperors, a legendary figure on these seas. Ask any Beast Pirates member or Wano official, and they’ll know his famous exploits."
Luke was not merely trying to fool Yamato. He could not speak for Wano’s ordinary citizens, but of course the Beast Pirates knew Kaido’s legend. Otherwise, they would not have admired him enough to join him. And pirates and adventurers throughout the New World were even more familiar with the exploits of a figure like Kaido. He was far more famous than Kozuki Oden.
He continued, "As a pirate, Kaido challenged the Marines alone and was captured eighteen times. He endured more than a thousand brutal tortures and was sentenced to death a full forty times. Yet even when they tried to hang him, he tore apart the chains. When they put him on the execution block, he shattered the blade. When they stabbed him with spears, the spears broke instead. He sank nine massive prison ships. No one has ever been able to kill him—not even himself."
He briefly summarized Kaido’s record before emphasizing the key point. "There’s a saying on the seas that Kaido is the strongest creature on land. But why would the strongest creature on land be captured so easily?"
Yamato’s heart churned. This was the first time she had heard of her father’s exploits when he was young. The feeling was strange. She had not even been born at that time, yet her father had already been active on the seas.
And Luke’s account gave her no small shock. Her father had been that strong?
"Why? If he was captured, then he can’t be called the strongest creature, can he?"
Yamato asked in confusion.
"The story passed around the seas is that he was captured on purpose. The reason was that he was hungry."
Luke looked into Yamato’s eyes, then turned and pushed his ore-filled cart toward the place where food tickets were exchanged. "I’m hungry too. I’m going to get breakfast first."
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