Binks' Sake

The melody on the deck was unsteady from the very first note.

The accordionist's left hand had lost its strength. He could only manage to press the keys with his right, and the notes came out in fits and starts.

The drummer's vision had blurred, and his drumsticks missed their mark several times, but he kept the beat.

The flutist's lips were purple, and he couldn't get his breath into the flute. The notes came out with a breathy rasp.

Brook stood in the middle, his violin on his shoulder, drawing the bow steadily across the strings as tears fell onto them, one drop after another.

He was the only one on deck who could still play normally.

But he couldn't stop.

Because if he stopped, the others would stop with him, and once they did, they would never start again.

Binks' Sake.

They had played the song together hundreds of times: in every port they had called at, at every celebratory banquet, and on every afternoon when Laboon swam alongside the ship.

Every time, it had been cheerful and lively, full of the smell of liquor and the sound of laughter.

Every time but this one.

The Sky Screen showed a close-up of every musician's face.

The drummer's hands stopped. His drumsticks slipped through his fingers, rolled across the deck, and fell into the sea. His body leaned against the drum, then slowly toppled to one side. The last beat buzzed against the drumhead for a long time before fading away.

The accordionist lasted thirty seconds longer than the drummer. When his right hand slipped off the keys, the bellows let out a long, off-key note, like a sigh.

The flutist blew his last breath into the flute. The note was so thin and high it seemed about to break, and then it did. The flute fell from his lips and struck the deck with a crisp clatter.

One after another.

There were fewer and fewer sounds on deck as the instruments fell silent one by one.

But Brook's violin did not stop.

He played as he cried. His shaking hand threw off the angle of his bow, and it occasionally produced a grating screech, but the melody's framework remained.

Binks' Sake, delivered into your hands.

By the final chorus, his was the only sound left on deck.

A violin solo.

No accompaniment, no harmonies, no drumbeat, no laughter.

Just one violin playing a song meant for an entire band, out in the thick fog.

He played the final note.

As he lifted the bow from the strings, the Tone Dial clicked. The recording was over.

Brook lowered his violin and looked around the deck.

All his crewmates had gone still.

He stood among them for a long time.

Then he fell too.

The picture went dark. When it lit up again, the time marker had changed to several years later.

A skeleton sat up on the deck.

There was nothing in its hollow eye sockets, but a fluffy black afro grew atop its head.

It was Brook.

The power of the Revive-Revive Fruit had pulled his soul back from the path to the underworld, but he had been lost in the fog for so long that by the time his soul found his body, its flesh had rotted away, leaving only white bones.

He looked down at his bony fingers and told a joke to the empty deck, a joke no one would laugh at.

"Although I'm already a skeleton, please allow me to say one thing."

"I'd like to see a pretty lady's panties."

"Ah, but I don't have any eyes anymore."

"Skull joke, yohohohoho."

No one laughed.

The sound of waves slapping against the ship's sides was unusually clear.

He rose from the deck, went to the box where the Tone Dial was kept, opened it, and took the dial out.

He pressed play.

Binks' Sake poured from the Tone Dial, and the instruments of all his dead crewmates rang out once more across the empty deck.

Accordion, flute, drums, and his own violin.

Brook held the Tone Dial to his chest and sat down on the deck.

There was no expression on his skull, because there were no muscles to move his face.

But his shoulders were shaking.

"Everyone."

His voice squeezed out through the gaps between his teeth.

"I'll go back for you."

"I'll take this Tone Dial to Laboon."

"I promised you."

He sat on the rotting deck, holding the Tone Dial, surrounded by his crewmates' remains, beneath a fog that never lifted.

He sat there for a long time.

The picture sped forward, the time marker jumping in increments of years.

The first year.

The third year.

The fifth year.

The tenth year.

The twentieth year.

The thirtieth year.

The fortieth year.

The fiftieth year.

Each time the marker jumped, the picture showed Brook from the same angle: sitting on the deck, holding the Tone Dial, gazing out at the gray sea whose edges were hidden by the thick fog.

Fifty years.

One person.

One ship.

One song.

People all over the world watched the time marker jump from year to year, watched the skeleton's posture in the picture remain almost unchanged from the first year to the fiftieth, and felt something heavy settle in their hearts.

In Water 7, Iceburg took off his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on.

"Fifty years."

"I haven't even lived fifty years yet."

Franky sat beside him, his broad shoulders hunched, glistening traces at the corners of his eyes beneath his sunglasses.

"He drifted alone for fifty years, without even a person to talk to."

"All he had to keep him going was a Tone Dial and a promise."

"How lonely must that have been?"

He sniffed hard.

"Super uncool."

The picture on the Sky Screen switched to another view.

Twin Cape.

On this side of the Red Line, in the sea beside the lighthouse, a whale was ramming the rocky wall of the Red Line.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Every impact sent fragments of rock flying. The whale's head was covered in countless wounds from the collisions, and blood seeped from his split skin, staining the surrounding seawater red.

But he didn't stop.

The Sky Screen held a long shot of the whale from the front.

His eyes were large, large enough to make out the emotion in them clearly.

That emotion was neither anger nor pain.

It was waiting.

He was ramming the Red Line because he knew the people who had made him a promise would come back from the other side.

He wanted to break through the wall so he could see them sooner.

He had rammed it every day for fifty years.

A line of text appeared on the Sky Screen.

[Time the whale Laboon has waited at Twin Cape for the Rumbar Pirates to return: fifty years and seven months]

[Number of times he has attempted to break through the Red Line with his head during that time: impossible to count]

[Number of scars on his head: 172]

[He has never left Twin Cape for more than three days]

The four lines of data were nailed to the Sky Screen like nails.

The whole world fell silent.

Even the rowdiest pirate taverns had quieted down. Burly men held their mugs, staring at the four lines of data in the sky, unable to take a single sip.

In the New World, on the deck of the Moby Dick, Whitebeard watched the whale ram the Red Line on the Sky Screen, silent for a long time.

"Fifty years."

He rolled the words over in his mouth.

"A whale waited for fifty years."

"A skeleton drifted for fifty years."

"All that separates them is a wall and a song."

Marco stood beside him, a blue phoenix flame flickering at the corner of his eye.

"Pops, do you think they'll ever see each other again?"

Whitebeard didn't answer. He lifted his cup and took a drink, then looked at the bloodstained whale on the Sky Screen.

The system's verdict began to appear on the Sky Screen.

[Regret assessment: The promise between the Rumbar Pirates and the whale Laboon represents the longest wait on these seas. Fifty years of solitude and fifty years of loyalty, gazing toward each other across the Red Line yet never reunited]

[In the original timeline, Brook eventually joined Straw Hat Luffy's pirate crew and was able to leave the Florian Triangle, but his reunion with Laboon remained a distant prospect]

The final line paused at its end for two seconds, then a new line of golden text appeared out of nowhere, its brightness abruptly surging.

[But in this rewritten timeline, the system has decided to shorten this wait]