Watching Only One Person's Back on the Battlefield

The scene on the Sky Screen began in a stone bedroom.

Boa Hancock stood before a mirror, dressed in an ornate robe for the expedition, her snake hair swaying gently behind her.

She was practicing what to say in front of the mirror.

"Luffy, there's something I want to tell you."

"No, no, that's too stiff."

She shook her head and started over.

"Luffy, I'm very happy to have met you."

"No, that's too formal."

She took a deep breath, clutched the hem of her robe with both hands, and lowered her voice as much as she could.

"Luffy, I... like you."

As soon as she finished, she toppled backward, and Sandersonia caught her.

"I said it, I said it, I said it!"

"Lady Sister, that's a mirror, not Luffy."

"I know, I'm rehearsing!"

The timestamp in the lower right corner showed that it was the day before they set out for the Paramount War.

Viewers all over the world watched the scene and reacted with unprecedented unanimity.

They laughed.

They laughed from East Blue to West Blue, from South Blue to North Blue.

On Drum Island, Chopper covered his mouth and kicked his little hoof against the ground several times.

"She's so nervous."

Doctorine took a swig of liquor, a smile on her lips as well.

"It's nice to be young."

At Marine Headquarters, even the soldiers who had been reeling from one shock after another briefly lifted their heads from the gloom.

"The Empress is really like this?"

"She's completely different from the ice-cold woman on her wanted poster."

"Are all women like this when they're in love?"

The scene switched to the day they set out.

Boa Hancock stood at the bow of the Kuja Pirate Ship, the sea breeze blowing through her long hair. Her destination lay ahead: Marineford.

Her expression had returned to its usual haughty indifference, but her left hand kept clutching something inside her sleeve.

The scene gave a close-up of the object.

It was a hand-braided red bracelet, crudely made and tied with several tight knots. One look was enough to tell it had been made by someone doing this for the first time.

"Lady Sister, what's that?" Sandersonia asked.

"It's nothing."

"Did you make it for Luffy?"

Boa Hancock's face turned scarlet in an instant, and the bracelet nearly flew out of her hand.

"No!"

"Then why is there an L on it?"

"That's not an L. It's an Amazon Lily snake pattern!"

"Snake patterns don't look like that."

Boa Hancock tucked the bracelet into her robe against her chest and turned her back without another word, the tips of her ears red enough to drip blood.

The scene quickly advanced to the battlefield at Marineford.

Boa Hancock had joined the battle as one of the Shichibukai, standing on the Marines' side.

But from the moment the war began, her gaze stayed fixed in only one direction.

When the boy in the straw hat charged out across the ice, her whole body leaned slightly forward.

"Luffy."

Her lips moved, but her voice was completely drowned out by the roar of the battlefield.

The scene shifted to a first-person view.

The battlefield seen through Boa Hancock's eyes was unlike what anyone else saw.

In her sight, there was no Whitebeard, no Akainu, no Sengoku, no overwhelming presence of the Three Admirals, and no fighting between pirates and Marines.

There was only Luffy.

Luffy was kicked flying.

She turned her foot in his direction, ready to rush over.

Luffy got back up.

Her foot stopped.

Luffy was blocked in the middle of the plaza by a human wall of Marine Vice Admirals.

She kicked out a Love-Love Fruit flying kiss that crossed half the battlefield and turned three Marines blocking Luffy's path to stone.

As Luffy ran past the petrified Marines, he didn't even notice who had helped him.

Boa Hancock stood in the distance, watching his back recede as he ran. She clenched the red bracelet in her palm so tightly that its braided pattern pressed into her skin.

The Sky Screen inserted a line of text at this point.

[Over the course of the entire Paramount War, Boa Hancock secretly helped Luffy clear obstacles seventeen times]

[Number of times Luffy noticed: zero]

The two lines hung on the Sky Screen, and people all over the world made the same sound after reading them.

It was a complicated sound, a mixture of laughter and heartache.

"Seventeen times? He didn't notice even once?"

"Luffy's way too dense."

"It's not that he's dense. He only has eyes for Ace."

"So the Empress can only watch his back from behind."

In the royal palace of Alabasta, Princess Vivi covered her mouth with her hand.

"Seventeen times."

"She did it seventeen times, and he didn't see any of it."

King Cobra looked at the Sky Screen and sighed.

"Loving someone who won't turn around and look at you is one of the hardest things in the world."

The scene continued.

The final stage of the war.

Akainu's magma pierced through Ace's chest.

Luffy held Ace's body and let out that heartbreaking howl.

The scene cut to Boa Hancock's perspective.

She stood at the other end of the battlefield. The Marines and pirates around her were all fighting their own battles, and no one noticed her.

She watched Luffy kneeling in the distance, watched the boy's straw hat slip from his head, and watched his shoulders tremble violently.

She took a step.

Then a second.

A third.

She began to run.

She ran toward Luffy with no regard for anything else, her high heels striking cracked ice and rubble, her robe whipping in the wind.

But the battlefield was too large.

The distance was too great.

For every ten steps she ran, new enemies blocked her path. Every time she kicked one away, another appeared; every time she petrified one, two more came.

By the time she finally broke through the last human wall, Jinbe had already carried Luffy away from the battlefield, disappearing into the smoke and dust of the explosions.

She stopped at the spot where Luffy had been kneeling.

There were traces of blood on the ground.

An imprint left by the straw hat.

And a puddle of tears that had already gone cold.

Boa Hancock stood there without moving, the wind blowing her long hair across her face.

She looked down at the red bracelet she had clutched throughout the war. It was soaked with sweat, and the red dye had bled onto her palm.

She did not cry.

There were no tears on the face of the world's most beautiful woman. What that face revealed in this moment was not beauty, but the emptiness of having lost something important without having had time to reach out and touch it.

She put the bracelet back against her chest, turned around, and walked back into the thick smoke of the battlefield.

One final line of narration appeared on the Sky Screen.

[She ran across the entire battlefield, yet never caught up to his receding figure]

The scene ended there.

The whole world fell silent for a few seconds.

This silence was different from before. There was no anger, no panic; it was the silence of throats being clogged by something soft.