I'm Really Not Blind

A strange scene played out on a busy street packed with people.

A boy stood motionless in front of a barbecue shop at the corner, while passersby looked at him with pity.

Because that boy was blind!

At least, that was what everyone passing by thought.

His eyes weren't beautiful, colorful ones like other people's. Instead, they were pure, flawless white, clouded over with a lifeless gray.

At first glance, it looked as if he had no eyeballs at all.

Wasn't that what a blind person looked like?

The boy silently stared at the scattered coins by his feet.

"sigh I'm really not blind."

He was just standing there for a while, waiting for the barbecue shop to finish grilling his skewers!

The uncles and aunties who had been out buying groceries had already tossed him a whole lot of coins.

The total wasn't worth much, but there were quite a few of them. They'd thrown all their leftover change at his feet.

What was he supposed to do?

He was helpless, too!

Should he jump up and beat up the passersby who were only trying to be kind?

The boy silently picked up the coins from the ground one by one.

He had money.

Or rather, he didn't have many things to spend it on. At most, he occasionally came into town to buy some of his favorite snacks.

"Morito, your barbecue skewers!"

The shop owner poked his head out with a bag in hand and spotted the boy picking up money. This wasn't the first time he'd seen it happen.

He grinned and teased, "Made a pretty good haul again, huh?"

The boy glanced at him speechlessly, paid without changing his expression, took the bag, and turned to leave.

My name is Ōtsutsuki Morito.

I'm not blind.

And I'm not begging.

I'm just too kind to turn down other people's good intentions.

The Grand Line, Marine Headquarters.

Marine Headquarters was an organization directly affiliated with the World Government in the pirate world. In the name of Absolute Justice, it maintained order across the world's oceans.

It was commonly said that Marine Headquarters was one of the Grand Line's three great powers.

That wasn't true. Marine Headquarters was the strongest ruler of these blue seas!

Without exception!

Marine Headquarters was located on the island of Marineford.

The island held more than just a military fortress. Behind it lay a sprawling complex of buildings that formed a large town.

Most of the town's residents were naval families.

There was another important place on the island, too: the Naval Academy, which trained and supplied talent for the future Marines!

Most of the Marines' strongest fighters had graduated from the Naval Academy.

The Naval Academy was the most sacred place in the Four Seas and even the first half of the Grand Line. Every young man and woman with a sense of justice dreamed of getting in.

Still, it seemed not everyone felt the same way.

Beneath the imposing gate in front of the Naval Academy, a boy held a bag that wafted with the aroma of meat in one hand and a greasy barbecue skewer in the other.

He knocked—or, rather, kicked the gate.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The heavy thuds rang out, immediately drawing the attention of the guards at the gatehouse.

A Marine hurried from the guardhouse to the iron gate. When he saw Morito standing outside, his face took on an expression that said, "There he is again."

Another good-for-nothing with no ambition!

"What were you doing? Do you know what time it is? Training at the Training Camp started ages ago!"

The Marine on gate duty scowled and fired off three questions in a row.

Morito raised the skewer in his hand, then looked up at the sun. Finally, he looked at the Marine and nodded.

Raising the skewer was his way of telling the Marine he'd gone to buy food.

Looking up at the sun was to check the time. Then he nodded to let the Marine know he understood.

The Marine's eye twitched. Morito's attitude nearly made him explode with anger.

He was about to curse him out when he seemed to suddenly remember something.

The words caught in his throat.

The Marine opened the iron gate and let Morito in. Watching him walk away, he looked at him with scorn.

"The Training Camp's annual examination is coming up. If he fails again, even if Vice Admiral Garp brought him here, he'll be kicked out of the Naval Academy!"

"Don't bother with him. Trash like that will get thrown out of the Naval Academy sooner or later!"

"Exactly. The Naval Academy isn't a place for taking in deadbeats!"

The other two Marines in the guardhouse had noticed the commotion at the gate and joined in with their jeers.

They didn't bother to keep their voices down. If anything, they raised them on purpose, as if they wanted Morito to hear.

And it wasn't just Morito. The trainees exercising on the grounds heard them, too.

"That guy snuck out again?"

The young men and women sweating through their training finally noticed the figure strolling lazily beneath the great gate.

The Naval Academy was run as a closed campus, and all trainees lived in dormitories. They could only leave during holidays.

Yesterday and today clearly weren't holidays.

"How many people would do anything to get into the Naval Academy? How many wealthy merchants and nobles would pay a fortune to get their kids into the Training Camp, only to be turned away? Is his head stuffed with tofu?"

"Does he even understand what kind of place this is?"

The Naval Academy had two divisions.

One was the Training Camp, which had an age limit and generally only admitted those under eighteen.

Most of the trainees were young men and women with Marine connections. A small number were orphans with promising talent, brought back by Marine officers.

Morito was one of the latter.

"I heard Mr. Garp brought him here. If not for Mr. Garp, he'd have been kicked out of the academy ages ago."

"Talk about not knowing how lucky you are."

"Trash like him is disgusting."

He kept sneaking out of the academy and was always late to class.

It was practically an insult to the sacred Naval Academy!

Why did they have to work themselves to the bone every day, crawling on the ground to do physical training?

Why did that guy get to stand off to one side like some big shot, holding a skewer and watching them like monkeys?

Why had they worked so hard to get into the Training Camp, only to risk being kicked out for the slightest failure?

Why did that guy spend every day loafing around and come in dead last on every test, yet still get to stay in the Training Camp?

In an instant, anger blazed in everyone's chest.

One furious gaze after another became a blade, stabbing into Morito as if trying to leave him riddled with holes.

No one knew who started it, but a suppressed, angry shout suddenly rang out.

"Get out! Get out of the Naval Academy, you blind bastard!"

"Stop embarrassing yourself here!"

"Someone like him doesn't deserve to stay here!"

Unlike the townspeople, who rarely saw Morito, the trainees at the Training Camp saw him every day. They knew he only looked blind—he wasn't actually blind.

They guessed that Morito's eyesight might not be very good, but he could probably still see.

They called him blind just to mock him.

A towering figure who had finished his physical training stepped out onto the grounds. Standing in front of Morito, he cast a vast shadow over him like a small mountain.

Who knew what the people in the pirate world ate to grow so huge?

Anyone under two meters was considered crippled. Three, four, five, or six meters was normal, while seven, eight, nine, or even ten meters was only slightly taller than average.

"If your eyesight's bad, then stay home and live as a civilian. If you had even the slightest self-awareness, you'd leave on your own."

"Staying here will only bring you humiliation!"

Morito tilted his head and looked at the man. It was the future Marine Headquarters Vice Admiral, Onigumo.

He upheld Absolute Justice and was a staunch supporter of Akainu's Hawk Faction.

Onigumo couldn't tolerate even the slightest flaw. A stain on the Naval Academy like Morito should have been gone long ago.

The protagonist's given name comes from the phrase "a stranger as beautiful as jade"; his surname comes from Naruto, and the Tenseigan is also from Naruto.

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