Dressrosa District, at an open-air restaurant by the sea.
At a table near the corner, a young Black Cat Mink gnawed on grilled Elephant-Nosed Tuna. Sauce smeared the corners of her mouth as she looked at Pedro and his two companions at the next table and asked through a mouthful of food:
"Huh? You're Minks too? I've never seen you in the village. Where are you from?"
She had never met any Minks from outside her village, and her eyes brimmed with curiosity.
The male Black Cat Mink beside her also looked up at them, his gaze searching. A cross hung against his chest, and he sat tall and straight.
At the neighboring table sat a blond young man.
His long hair flowed over his shoulders. Six thin, triangular eyebrows marked his forehead, and a black cross was tattooed over his Adam's apple.
He ignored the conversation beside him, intent on sorting the Tarot Cards in his hands. His fingertips brushed across them one by one, his expression shifting with each card. Sometimes he frowned; sometimes his brows lifted slightly.
"We're from Zou."
"And I should correct one thing: there can't be Minks anywhere else besides Zou.
I imagine your parents went 'down from the elephant' years ago to see the sea, then lost their way and couldn't return. That's how they ended up somewhere else."
Pedro gave the young Black Cat Mink a kind smile and patiently answered her question in detail.
He wasn't boasting or trying to exaggerate his homeland's importance. That was simply the truth of this sea.
Long ago, for reasons now unknown, their ancestors had called on every Mink scattered across the sea to gather in the Mokomo Dukedom atop Zou.
Even Minks born elsewhere could trace their family lines back a few generations and