"Everyone, please sit wherever you like! The food will be ready soon!"
The moment Tama got home, she bustled about like a busy little bee.
From the tattered sack, she carefully lifted out a small cloth pouch wrapped tightly in fabric.
When she opened it, the sunlight streaming through the window revealed its contents to everyone-gleaming white, translucent grains of rice.
In the Land of Wano, where Kaido's factories had thoroughly polluted the land, leaving the fields barren and the springs dry, rice untouched by toxins was worth more than gold!
Without holding back a single grain, Tama poured all the rice she had bought into an iron pot scrubbed clean with fresh water. Then she lit the fire, added wood, and crouched beside the stove, intently fanning the flames with a worn palm-leaf fan.
The firelight flushed her little face red beneath its smudges of dust.
As the temperature rose, wisps of steam began drifting from the iron pot, and the pure, sweet fragrance unique to rice spread through the humble thatched hut.
Sanji leaned against the doorframe with his arms folded. His usually lecherous eyes now held the utmost seriousness and respect of a master chef.
He looked at the pitifully small amount of rice in the pot, which Tama cooked as though it were the most precious treasure in the world, then at her thin, bony arms. An indescribable ache welled up inside him.
What a... strong little girl. So kind it hurts.
Sanji sighed silently to himself.
As someone who had experienced extreme starvation and treasured food as life itself, he understood all too well what Tama's actions meant.
She was giving everything she had to entertain the benefactors she had only just met.
"Bubble, bubble..."
The water in the pot boiled, and the rich aroma