The moment the rabbit-eared girl finished speaking.
The entire deck fell silent.
Tiger silently rubbed the wine cup in his hand without replying, but it was obvious that he had tacitly agreed.
"Marine Headquarters?"
Inazuma scratched his head beside them, looking somewhat confused. "No way... We're not pirates. Why would the Marines come arrest us?"
"Yeah, yeah."
The rabbit-eared girl nodded repeatedly as well. "And the Marines aren't like those agents. There should be more good people on the side of justice, right? When I had just left Zou, I ran into an ocean storm. A few Marine uncles risked their lives to save me..."
"Too naive, little girl!"
Before she could finish, a frail old man with a head full of white hair slammed his cane down and cut her off angrily. "Justice? My ass! Those Marines deserve to talk about justice?"
"Twenty years ago, our entire village—several hundred people—was taken away by slave ships and sold to the Celestial Dragons as slaves just because we couldn't pay the grain tax and offended the royal family!"
"We encountered warships several times along the way and screamed for help with all our strength. But what happened?"
"The Marines aboard those warships heard that we were slaves bound for Mary Geoise, and every last one of them avoided us like the plague! They never once turned back, no matter how hoarse we screamed or cried!"
Mentioning those painful memories, the old man, already past sixty, began trembling all over. By the time he spoke again, tears were streaming down his weathered face.
"My daughter, my wife... and everyone else in the village. More than three hundred people... None of them made it through. Only this old man is still alive. If even one of those Marine warships had chosen to intervene