Kaido looked annoyed, his chin tipped up slightly and a stubborn edge in his voice. "What do you take me for? Some little brat?"
Was she kidding? Sure, his strength wasn't exactly top-tier in the Rocks Pirates, but did that mean he didn't deserve any respect? He had his dignity, too.
Seeing how seriously he took it, Linlin couldn't help sighing again. Her tone softened a little. "All right, all right, I chose the wrong words. Don't be angry, okay?"
Kaido gave a heavy snort, as though he had finally been given a way to back down, and his tense shoulders relaxed a little. "That's more like it."
"Pfft~"
Annika had been standing quietly off to the side, but after hearing Kaido's utterly self-assured "That's more like it," she simply couldn't hold back a tiny laugh.
She quickly pursed her lips and forced herself to stifle it, but she couldn't quite suppress the corners of her mouth that had lifted for that instant. Her face already spelled it out clearly: she was laughing.
Kaido turned his head, his eyes zeroing in on her expression. "Annika, are you laughing?"
Annika shook her head gently, but whether she was laughing was already written all over her face. Shaking her head at a time like this wasn't very convincing.
She was struggling to hold it in. Kaido had just been arguing so confidently that he wasn't easy to fool, only for Linlin to placate him with a single "All right, all right." She really couldn't keep a straight face.
"It's written all over your face," Kaido explained earnestly. "Don't forget, you, me, and Ron are teammates. Linlin's an outsider."
What he meant was that, no matter what, she had to take his side whenever a problem came up.
"Oh, get lost." Linlin planted