"Romanov Noah..."
Upon the Empty Throne, Imu sat with his legs crossed, quietly gazing at the photograph in his hand.
After a long while, he suddenly chuckled.
"He truly is an undeniably handsome man. His beauty in this photograph alone is enough to take one's breath away."
"Setting aside his looks, his strength is passable as well. To have reached this point in his twenties, though it is merely children brawling among themselves..."
"Only..."
Imu suddenly rose. Without any visible movement, his figure blurred and vanished from where he stood. When he reappeared, he was before a wall behind the Empty Throne.
Quite a few photographs were pinned to the wall.
The photos hanging on the left belonged to the Marines.
At the very top were old-generation Marine legends such as Garp, Zephyr, and Sengoku. Below them, the photographs of Aokiji, Kizaru, and Akainu were arranged in a row. They seemed to have been pinned there for several years already, but they were still far newer than those above.
"Only, why do those eyes on such a beautiful face look so... unsettling?"
Imu murmured softly. He seemed about to hang Noah's photo in front of Akainu's and the others, but then he gently shook his head and shifted Noah's photo to the right, placing it together with another group.
Gol D. Roger, Dragon beneath a green hood, Rocks...
And there was a young man wearing a straw hat, scratching his head and grinning broadly at the camera, as though silently mocking Imu before him...
Imu's narrow eyes slowly narrowed as he remained silent.
Just as the outside world was shaken by the great battle in the North Blue,
Noah, at the center of the storm, was far too busy to spare any attention for all that messy public discussion.