After becoming sworn brothers, it felt like we had grown even closer.
I no longer thought about how I was originally older than them (not that I ever did).
I thought of them as my real brothers.
Ace, who was like a tsundere.
Sabo, who looked after Luffy and me, calling us his little brothers.
And Luffy, who was an idiot but always fun to be around.
Maybe it was thanks to Grandpa Garp’s training methods,
or maybe we were all just talented, but we kept getting stronger.
We even hunted increasingly powerful animals and saved up a decent amount of money.
"You brats should join the Marines instead of becoming pirates!!"
Grandpa Garp was still going on about the Marines while beating us to a pulp.
Maybe he thought the Hawaiian shirt was a disguise, but it was pissing me off.
Seeing as even rubber-man Luffy had passed out, he must have hit him with Armament Haki.
I couldn’t see it, though.... You had to become a Haki user before you could sense someone else’s Haki
or see it with your own eyes.
And I only barely managed to dodge Grandpa Garp’s fist.
"Oh?"
"Yes?"
"Your eyes are the best of the lot. Or is it that your reflexes are good too?"
Garp looked intrigued as he threw a fist even faster than before.
"Try dodging this too!"
"I’m still a kid!!"
I tried to evade with everything I had, but I was ultimately hit and knocked unconscious.
"Hmm, is this as far as you can go for now? Well, you are still very young."
I also got close to Dadan and the mountain bandits,
so we would secretly visit Makino’s bar behind Grandpa Garp’s back.
They were the happiest days imaginable.
Then one day—
"Give Sabo back!! Bluejam!!"
Sabo had been captured by a pirate named Bluejam,
and everyone except Sabo had been beaten down.
The man claiming to be Sabo’s father had come back, bringing the Bluejam Pirates and soldiers
from the Goa Kingdom with him.
The difference in numbers was overwhelming, and the enemy was too strong
for kids like us to overcome. Of course, I thought I might be able to do it alone, but—
"What nonsense are you spouting about giving him back?"
"Sabo is my son!! It is a child’s natural duty
to live according to the wishes of the parents who gave birth to him!!"
"I’ll leave the rest to you, pirates."
Sabo’s father left only those words behind before turning to leave with the soldiers.
"Of course, sir. We’ve already received the payment."
"We’ll make sure these three never approach the young master again."
Bluejam, the pirate captain, answered Sabo’s father.
"Wait!! Bluejam. Dad, stop it. I understand."
Sabo spoke when Bluejam said he would take care of us.
"What do you understand, Sabo?"
"I’ll do whatever you tell me.... Just don’t hurt these three. Please...
They’re my precious brothers."
That was how we survived—through Sabo’s sacrifice.
If I had been alone, there might have been a way. But I couldn’t save everyone.
I couldn’t stop wondering whether this had happened because things had gone wrong due to me,
or whether it was something that had originally happened.
I was afraid that I had now twisted the fate of my precious friend away from the original story’s course.
"So one of the notorious Four Brats was a noble...."
"Coming all the way down from the High Town just to look down on the Gray Terminal."
"You must have looked down on us in your hearts too."
That was what Bluejam said after taking us to the pirates’ hideout.
"Don’t talk bullshit!! Sabo isn’t like that!!"
"That’s right!! We’re brothers!!"
"Yeah!!"
"...Heh-heh. Is that so? Sorry about that. In any case, you brats
won’t be going near him again, right...."
"If you intend to, then I’ll have to kill you right here and now."
"If you care about your brother, leaving him alone is what’s best for him...."
"But Sabo hated the High Town!!"
"Forget about him. That’s what consideration means...."
"You’ll understand when you’re adults."
"We may have bad blood between us, but...."
"That’s all in the past. I actually like strong kids.
Age doesn’t matter. I need workers right now. You brats,
why don’t you help me with my work?"
I just wanted to leave, but Ace agreed,
and Luffy went along with him, so I said okay too.
It didn’t look like they would let us go anyway.
The job Bluejam gave us was to place boxes
at marked locations on a map of the Gray Terminal.
"...I don’t like this without Sabo," Luffy said as we moved boxes around.
"Put up with it!! I feel the same way. But I really don’t know
what Sabo’s happiness truly is."
Ace spoke with a face that plainly showed how conflicted he was.
"For now, let’s get stronger, so Sabo can do what he wants."
I was the last to speak.
‘Yeah. Let’s get stronger. I don’t want to keep running and hiding like this anymore.’
The next day—
"You’re going to burn the Gray Terminal?? Why would you do something like that!!"
Ace spoke after hearing Bluejam’s plan.
"Idiot, don’t shout.... The people of the Gray Terminal
will hear you."
"This is bad. We have to tell the people in the Gray Terminal!!
You bastard, you really are a bad guy!!"
"I told you not to make a fuss. Hey, hold them tight!"
At Bluejam’s command, his men seized us.
"...I’m not the one behind it. What you carried around yesterday and today
was oil and explosives. There’ll be a fire so massive that people won’t even have time to escape."
"Have those famed bad boys finally gotten scared...?"
"But now that you know the plan, we can’t let you go."
Bluejam spoke with an incredibly vile expression.
A little later, just as Bluejam had said,
a huge fire erupted in the Gray Terminal in an instant.
The three of us were tied to wooden posts.
Damn it. I started wondering whether I had eaten the wrong Devil Fruit.
If it had been a Logia, I would have gotten out of mere ropes ages ago....
Absorption wouldn’t work, transformation only gave me wings, and spreading darkness only let me hide,
so none of it was useful.
And those Bluejam bastards had wrapped us up in so much rope
that even Luffy, a rubber man, couldn’t get out.
"Got it, it snapped!"
Ace broke through his ropes.
That’s my big brother!!
"Let’s move, fast! I’ll fly up and scout ahead!"
Seeing flames all around us, I said this to Ace.
"No!!"
"Ace!!"
"You can’t fly for long. What if you can’t fly when we really need it!!"
"Just follow me for now!!"
"Okay."
"Who said you naughty little brats were allowed to escape!!"
It was the Bluejam Pirates, who we had thought were already gone.
"Why hasn’t the one who started the fire escaped this place?"
"The king of this place betrayed us. Humans are hilarious creatures.
When misfortune gets this utterly terrible, all you can do is laugh."
"Oh, yeah? That’s too bad. Let’s hurry up and find a way out."
I answered, growing frantic.
"Catch them! We worked together, didn’t we? If we die, we die together."
"Can’t we live together instead?"
"Then tell us where you hid your treasure before it all burns up in this fire.
We’ll take it for you."
"Is this really the time for that?"
"Quit talking shit. That treasure is!! We...."
Luffy and I answered Bluejam’s words.
"...Fine. I’ll tell you."
"Yeah, we can gather treasure again."
I chimed in when Ace said he would tell them where the treasure was hidden.
And after Ace told them the location where he had hidden the treasure—
"There’s really no time left. Let’s go, hurry!"
But the Bluejam Pirates did not let us go.
"What’s this? We told you the location!"
Ace protested.
"It could be a lie. You brats are coming with us too."
"Don’t be ridiculous! We’ll get trapped and die while you’re doing that!!"
"Don’t make me any angrier right now."
Bluejam pointed a gun at the captured Ace.
At that moment, Luffy bit the hand of the pirate holding him.
"You little shit!!"
The pirate whose hand had been bitten pulled out a sword and slashed Luffy.
"It hurts!!"
Fortunately, it did not seem fatal, but an injury was dangerous
at a moment when we needed to escape as fast as possible.
"I’ll kill you...."
"Stop!!"
The moment I said, "Stop," the pirates lost consciousness.
I felt that I had done something, and I knew it was Conqueror’s Haki.
But perhaps because it had activated incompletely, Bluejam did not pass out.
"What did you do, you suspicious little brat!!"
I dodged Bluejam’s kick, slipped inside his guard,
and bit down on his neck as though I meant to tear it apart.
"Absorption."
"Aaargh!!"
Bluejam’s resistance was utterly feeble, as though all his strength was draining away.
In contrast, I grew stronger the more of his vitality I absorbed.
Then I reached Absorption’s limit.
I pulled my mouth away from Bluejam’s neck and spat on the ground, feeling sickened.
Bluejam, collapsed on the ground, had become a white-haired old man.
I had bitten his neck so badly that it looked like he could die at any moment.
And just as I was about to take the unconscious Luffy and Ace away,
Dadan and her men came looking for us.
"Dadan!!"
"You’re hurt badly."
"What about Sabo?"
"Sabo is safe. He isn’t here."
"Okay. Let’s go home, quickly!"
Dadan saw what Bluejam looked like, but she did not ask me about it.
While we were recovering from the injuries we had received during the Gray Terminal arson incident,
Dogra, one of Dadan’s men, told us that Sabo had died.
"Don’t lie, you bastard!! I won’t forgive you even if it’s a joke!!"
"Ace, stop!! There’s no way he would lie about something like that."
"I doubted my own eyes!!! I wondered if I’d seen a dream or a hallucination!!"
Dogra told us how Sabo had died.
Celestial Dragons...!!
"I’m going to avenge him!!"
"Ace!!"
"Will you cut it out, you damn brat!!"
Dadan pinned Ace down.
"The ones who killed Sabo are this country!! This world!! What the hell can a brat like you do!!"
"Your father died and changed the era!!"
"Become a man like that first, then live or die however you damn well please!!"
After that, Ace was tied to a tree and thrashed around,
while Luffy sobbed his heart out.
Hearing Luffy cry as he called Sabo’s name made tears flow from my own eyes too.
A little later,
a letter from Sabo arrived.
"Give it to me....! I’m never going back to the town. He sent it to us, didn’t he?"
Ace said, calmer now.
【Ace, Luffy, Jin. Were you hurt in the fire?
I’m sorry, but by the time the three of you read this letter,
I’ll already be out at sea.
For various reasons, I decided to set sail one step ahead of you.
My destination is somewhere that isn’t this country.
There, I’ll become a strong pirate.
I’ll become the freest pirate of all, and the four brothers will meet again
somewhere someday.
Somewhere in the vast, free sea—definitely, one day!
And Ace, which of us is the older brother?
Two eldest brothers and two younger brothers. It’s strange, but this bond
is a treasure to us.
Jin acts arrogant despite being the youngest, and Luffy is still far too weak and cries all the time,
but they are our little brothers.
I’m counting on you.】
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register