West Blue Visitor (1)

Gwen's first desk at the Uchiha Trading Company was placed at the end of the second-floor corridor.

The room was small, originally a storage room for old invoices. Barlow had someone clear it out and move in a pine desk and a wicker chair.

A hand-drawn East Blue shipping route map hung on the wall. Gwen had drawn it herself, spending three days copying and reducing the heavily annotated map on Barlow's desk. The scale was precise, the handwriting neat, and the stopover intervals for every route were marked with fine lines.

Her position in the trading company had no official title.

Koldo told the dockworkers she was a "shipping route analyst," Ando told the town hall staff she was a "trading company consultant," and Joey told the regulars at the tavern, "She's my coworker."

That was right—the Uchiha family still had not fully accepted Gwen. But she did not care. She continued completing her duties every day and occasionally offered Barlow a few suggestions.

Preparations for the wedding began the day after the dinner.

Barlow spread a map of White Wax Island across the large ebony table and used a pencil to mark the locations of flower arches, reception stations, banquet areas, and backup mooring points along the four-hundred-meter stretch from the docks to the town center.

He personally wrote to White Wax Island's lumber supplier to order forty white wax logs, half for decorating the pillars along the commercial street and half for building supports at the wedding venue.

He placed three orders with flower merchants in the Konomi Archipelago, each for different varieties and colors, demanding delivery three days before the wedding to ensure the flowers would not wilt early.

Marcus came from White Wax Island twice.

The first time, he delivered samples of freshly cut lumber. He sat in Barlow's office for an entire afternoon, reviewed the commercial street construction plans, and used his experience to revise several load-bearing structure annotations.

The second time, he came specifically to see Gwen.

He did not go to the trading company. Instead, he went straight to Gwen's office, sat down in the wicker chair, pulled out a handful of white wax wood scraps from his pocket, and said, "I made something for you."

He placed it on the desk. It was a palm-sized comb, with a tiny flower carved into its spine. It was neither a rose nor a lily, but the unknown wildflower Gwen had casually picked from the courtyard during her three-day stay on White Wax Island.

Gwen held the comb for a long time before saying to Marcus, "Thanks, Dad." It was the first time she had called him Dad.

Roy's assigned duty at the wedding was "overall security coordination."

Over three weeks, he expanded the patrol from twenty people to one hundred, added night patrol shifts, and gave the six-man unit temporarily stationed on White Wax Island specialized training. It covered crowd control, emergency response, and one point he emphasized in particular: "No staring blankly at female guests during the wedding."

Mila added from the side, "You should manage that yourself first." Roy did not argue back.

Mila's task was "guest screening."

She had Koldo use the intelligence network to compile a list of everyone in Orange Town who had done business with the Uchiha Trading Company over the past three years. They screened them one by one: anyone with a record of unpaid debts was removed, anyone with a record of causing trouble while drunk was removed, and anyone who had leaked information in private was removed.

After the screening, one hundred and twenty people remained. Mila then crossed out another seventeen names, citing "intuition."

Barlow glanced at the crossed-out names, asked not a single question, and approved it immediately.

Everything progressed in an orderly manner, until Mila pushed open the door to the training hall's underground prison.

It happened ten days before the wedding.

At dusk, Roy had just returned from the docks, and the fishy smell on his boots had not yet faded.

On the second-floor training ground of the training hall, he watched six newly recruited patrol members practice basic swordsmanship. The sound of wooden swords colliding mixed with the smell of sweat, while the sunset over the docks outside painted the wooden floorboards red.

The Uchiha Patrol had been founded under Roy's leadership to protect the territories under Uchiha control. Occasionally, it also maintained public order. Beyond that, Roy was responsible for training caravan guards.

A patrol member ran up the stairs, his steps hurried but steady. He stopped before Roy, stood at attention, and saluted. That was a rule Roy had set: no matter how serious the matter, no one was allowed to be too out of breath to make a report.

"Report! An unflagged ship has been lingering outside the harbor for three days. It looks like it may dock tonight."

"Another one?" Roy set his wooden sword on the rack. A few drops of water fell from the sweat-soaked strands of hair on his forehead.

He turned and shouted downstairs, "Prepare a team of ten. You're coming with me." Then he pointed at the patrol member who had brought the report. "Lead the way. Tell me everything as we move."

The ship had not docked at the harbor.

It had gone around the breakwater of Orange Town's main port, passed through the reef-filled waters on the eastern side of the island, and stopped at a stretch of Gravel Beach.

There was no pier there, no lighting. At high tide, half the beach would be submerged. No outsider would even know a ship could dock there.

The ship was neither large nor small, about the size of an ordinary cargo vessel. Its draft was shallow, and there was no sign of cargo being stacked on deck.

Its hull was dark gray. There was no ship name on the bow, no flag on the mast. Two people stood on deck, and the moment they saw the patrol's flashlight beams, they blew a short whistle. More than a dozen people surged out from the cabin.

All of them wore black suits.

The suits were tailored to fit, their lapels stiff, the fabric giving off a faint matte sheen under the moonlight.

Each person had a standard-issue curved sword at their waist. The metallic scrape of blades rubbing within their sheaths rang out in perfect unison.

The leader at the front was around thirty. His tie was impeccably knotted, his right hand resting on his sword hilt, his left hanging at his side with an unlit cigar held between his fingers.

Roy made no effort to hide.

He led ten men directly out of the bushes along Gravel Beach. The patrol's flashlight beams struck the black suits opposite them, reflecting a sheet of blinding white glare.

"Who are you people? What are you doing docking here?" Roy stood between the two groups. His voice was not loud, but everyone on Gravel Beach turned their attention to his words.

The leader took a step forward.

He stood half a head taller than Roy, with broad shoulders, deep-set eyes, and skin roughened by the sea wind over his cheekbones.

There was an ingrained superiority in the way he looked at Roy, as though he was used to seeing fear in others and believed this young man in his early twenties should be no different.

"Was it you who kidnapped the young lady?" His voice was coarse, like a throat steeped in rum for half a lifetime.

Roy tilted his head.

"The young lady?" He repeated the words, his tone like he was sampling a new dish with a strange name.

"What young lady? You've come to the wrong island."

"Stop playing dumb!" The leader threw his cigar to the ground and drew his sword, pointing it at Roy's face.

"I'll ask one more time. Was it you who kidnapped Ka—"

"What nonsense. Take them down first," Roy said.

The order came too quickly. Before the other side's leader had even finished raising his sword, Roy's blade was already out of its sheath.