The Excel window flickering before my eyes, the convenience-store canned coffee gone cold, and the barrage of messages pouring in from that bastard department head.
[Assistant Manager Kim, have the revised version on my desk before tomorrow morning’s nine o’clock meeting. You can do that, right?]
[Ah, yes! Of course, sir. Even if I have to stay up all night, I’ll get it done! ^^]
Of course my ass.
It had been five years since I’d started reflexively saying yes to that goddamn word.
My body, unable to refuse even once because I was so busy reading everyone else’s mood, forever serving as a punching bag and taking on overtime like it was three meals a day, had finally gone into shock.
A murderous pain tore through the left side of my chest.
The coffee can rolled to the floor, and as my vision flickered black, only one thought crossed my mind.
‘So this is how I die a dog’s death, worrying about what everyone else thinks.’
It wasn’t fair.
So this was all I got for being a nice guy and a pushover: sudden death facedown on a cold office floor.
If—just if—there really was some god out there who would give me another life...
Then I’d truly live however the hell I wanted.
Let people point fingers if they liked. I’d tell everyone else’s opinions to go to hell and live as shamelessly and ruthlessly as I pleased.
That was the final testament of my pathetic life in my twenties.
But apparently, God had really taken my whining to heart.
"...Ugh, my head."
When I opened my eyes, the first thing I felt was a salty sea breeze stabbing deep into my lungs instead of the stale smell of an office.
Above me stretched a sky so blue it hurt my eyes, rather than grimy fluorescent lights, while waves crashed by my ears instead of an eardrum-shattering phone ring.
I had reincarnated.
Fortunately, it wasn’t hardcore mode where I had to start out crawling as a nursing infant. I was in the healthy body of a young man around his late teens.
Looking around, I found myself in a modest harbor village built from red brick and timber. People in linen shirts and loose trousers cleaned fish, while wooden ships with massive sails creaked at their moorings along the docks.
‘The Middle Ages? Or maybe the Age of Exploration?’
An old European-style island village.
It was some backwater whose name I didn’t even know, but that was fine by me. I could catch and sell fish, guzzle cheap liquor, and loaf around to my heart’s content.
With the survival instincts and shamelessness I’d developed from my previous life of watching everyone’s moods, making a living in this little romantic seafaring town would be nothing.
But that impression of it being a romantic little town did not even last a month.
The longer I lived there, the more things felt off.
First of all, this town’s newspaper delivery system was anything but normal.
Flap—
A huge seagull flew down and landed in front of me as I sat on the dock railing, yawning wide enough to tear my jaw apart.
The problem was that this bird wore a bizarre hat on its head and carried a satchel around its neck.
"...Hey."
As I stared blankly at it, the seagull arrogantly held out one wing.
Its utterly insolent eyes seemed to say, ‘Pay up if you want a newspaper, human.’
At first, I found it fascinating and tried to pet its head, only for it to peck the back of my hand until it bled. It was a thoroughly capitalist bird: only after I tossed it a coin did it spit out a newspaper and fly away.
Even the currency was strange.
It wasn’t pounds, dollars, or gold coins. They used a currency called Berries, a name that sounded like some refreshing fruit.
Then, last week, while I was fishing on the beach and spacing out, a gigantic monster fish as large as a house burst from the middle of the sea. I nearly sprayed out the beer I was drinking when it bared teeth as large as bulls, growled, and vanished back beneath the waves.
‘What the hell? Is this medieval fantasy? Is this a world with monsters in it?’
One day, as the unease that I had landed somewhere seriously wrong began crawling up the back of my neck...
I was perched on the railing of an old tavern at the edge of town, lazily flipping through the newspaper I had bought after being shaken down by that cocky seagull.
Flutter.
A sheet of coarse newsprint tucked between the pages rode the wind and dropped onto the floor.
"Whoops."
I reached out unsteadily and picked it up.
A black-and-white composite sketch of a vicious-looking man.
A gaudy pirate hat, clown makeup, and above all, a big round strawberry nose that stole the eye.
It was a face I felt I had seen somewhere before.
No. Not just somewhere.
That bizarre face, along with the bold lettering printed beneath it, froze my gaze in place.
[ WANTED - DEAD OR ALIVE ]
BUGGY THE CLOWN
Bounty: 15,000,000 BERRIES
"...Huh?"
The unlit cigar clenched between my lips dropped to the ground.
Buggy the Clown?
A red nose?
A fifteen-million-Berry bounty?
In that instant, memories of my previous life began churning in my mind as though I had been struck by lightning.
The anime I used to watch as a kid, giggling away in my house.
That vast story I remembered hazily, yet with certainty.
A seagull wearing a hat.
Bizarre sea monsters.
A currency with a fruit-like name.
And at the very bottom of the wanted poster, six letters printed clearly beside the emblem of a seagull and anchor crossed together.
[ M A R I N E ]
"Wait a second..."
With trembling hands, I picked up the cigar that had fallen to the ground and put it back between my lips.
My pupils shook uncontrollably.
"...This is the world with that rubber brat?"
It wasn’t the Age of Exploration, a martial arts world, or some commonplace medieval fantasy.
Beneath a veneer of dreams and romance lay a living hell where every sort of monster and pirate ran rampant, and ordinary lives were as fragile as flies.
This was the Great Pirate Era—the world of One Piece.
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