Robin's Broken Defense

"Boss, two cheesecakes, make them the sweetest. Plus one low-sugar."

"One of my wives can't eat things that are too sweet."

The chubby boss responded cheerfully, wiping his hands:

"Coming right up! Mister is such a thoughtful man, you two ladies are truly blessed."

Robin sat upright, giving Lucas an expressionless side-glance without a word.

She disliked overly sweet cake, and it went without saying who the low-sugar one was for.

After a few days of getting along, she was almost getting used to it.

Used to this man casually blurting out preferences she had never told outsiders, used to him taking verbal advantage of her every now and then.

At first it was vigilance, the guarded certainty that he possessed mind-reading.

As the days passed, the guard didn't slacken, but her heart inexplicably developed a few indescribable ripples.

Soon, the three cakes were served. Robin picked up her silver fork, suddenly raising her gaze to stop the retreating waiter, a trace of a very faint smile hooking the corners of her lips:

"Please wait a moment. My husband has a habit of chewing gum after meals, please bring some over. The stickier, the better."

The waiter blinked, smilingly answering as he went.

"Forcing others to eat what they don't like isn't very kind, is it?"

Lucas forked a large piece of cake into his mouth, mumbling indistinctly.

"Isn't remembering a husband's preferences a wife's basic duty?"

Robin's smile remained unchanged, asking back leisurely, her eyes hiding a touch of mischievous slyness.

Since he loved playing the mind-reading game, she would play along to the end.

Gum was precisely her least favorite food, because it couldn't be swallowed.

Baccarat beside them bit her spoon, covering her mouth with a muffled chuckle, enjoying watching the two of them spar.

Finished with the cake, Lucas got up to pay the bill at the counter. Slapping a few Beli onto the wood-grained countertop, he casually struck up a conversation:

"Boss, let me ask you something. I heard there's an exceptionally brutal sheriff in the West Blue, do you know where he is? Someone has to teach scum like that a lesson for trampling on justice."

He fabricated the reason so grandiosely that even he almost believed it.

Just like when searching for Robin, the blessing of the Lucky-Lucky Fruit always hovered over him.

This was already the fifth shop he had asked. Choosing this place wasn't just relying on blind luck; this dessert shop was quite well-known in the nearby waters, and passing pirates and merchants all loved to stop here to rest. When it came to well-informed news, it might not be much worse than a bar.

The boss paused in wiping his cup, raising his head to size him up, and sighed:

"Customer means Lafitte, right? He's serving as the sheriff in the Karth Kingdom on Gerra Island.

Take my advice, don't go throwing your life away. That man is ruthless and black-hearted, there are eighty if not a hundred people who've died at his hands.

You're young, with two such pretty wives, it's not worth throwing your life away for this."

"Thanks for the advice. I know what I'm doing."

Lucas smiled, turning to call the two women out.

The wind chime jingled. The boss watched their backs, shaking his head with pity:

"What a shame... Young people are just too impulsive. They won't live a good life, and instead go out of their way to provoke a star of misfortune."

The main street was bustling with noise, but turning into a quiet alley, it instantly grew peaceful. Seeing no one around, Robin quietly crossed her hands over her chest.

Several pairs of slender, fair arms grew from Lucas's shoulders, clutching more than a dozen pieces of high-adhesion gum and stuffing them all toward his mouth.

He cooperatively opened his mouth and swallowed all the gum down.

The moment it entered, a fine, high-pressure bio-electric current surged through his oral cavity, and the sticky colloid was instantly broken down completely into nothingness.

Robin was stunned. It wasn't like she had never teased people. Past bounty hunters and gang thugs had been driven into absolute wrecks by her, crying for their mothers.

Yet that was all built on the premise that the other party couldn't beat her.

The man before her was clearly outrageously strong, yet he went along with her little petty pranks and quietly took it.

A trace of unprecedented strangeness, like a feather, gently tickled the tip of her heart.

Walking out of the alley, a second-hand bookstall was set up by the street, its pages rustling in the wind.

Lucas's gaze swept over the piled-up books, and his footsteps paused.

He bent down to pull one out, paid a few coins, and turned to hand it to Robin.

"For you."

Robin subconsciously took it, looking down to see the words "Brag Men" striking the cover.

Her breathing hitched sharply. This was the book she had flipped through the most back in Ohara. The book was filled with strange tales of the Grand Line, serving as a window for her young self to peek at the outside world.

Her fingertips brushed over the rough, worn cover, the familiar tactile sensation making the bridge of her nose sting slightly.

Her full two years of practicing emotional management were on the verge of collapsing at this moment.

She was calm, precocious, and had worn herself a suit of sharp thorns amidst her flight.

Yet she was, after all, still a woman.

What woman could resist tenderness that precisely pierced her heart every single time?

Even if he used a cheating method like mind-reading, it was still better than those gifts carrying malice and greed, better than sweet words one second and selling her to the Marines the next.

At the very least, everything he gave was entirely what she wanted.

Late at night, the steamship quietly berthed on the sea, moonlight spilling through the porthole into the cabin, spreading a layer of cold silver frost on the floor.

Robin leaned against the head of the bed, perusing that book of "Brag Men" by the dim light of the night lamp.

Scene after scene of their days together over the past few days replayed uncontrollably in her mind. A thought popped up:

Perhaps staying by this man's side wasn't even all that bad. If this man had genuinely fought that ice-cube man to a draw, staying by his side might actually be pretty nice.

At the very least, she wouldn't have to scurry and hide anymore, nor spend every waking moment calculating how to survive.

At the very least, this man knew what she liked and what she cared about, and wouldn't betray her over a mere 79 million.

Right when this stir of emotion had just popped up and hadn't yet had time to ferment:

"Mn... ah..."

Intermittent, ambiguous sounds came from the neighboring cabin, clearly transmitting across the wooden planks.

The thin flush that had just appeared on Robin's face faded entirely, and that budding heartbeat shattered into absolute zero fragments.

She was so angry her fingers clenched tightly, almost hurling the book in her hand away.

Taking a deep breath, she abruptly forced herself to endure it. Robin gritted her teeth, violently pulled the quilt over, and dove headfirst under it.

What tenderness, what heartbeat.

It was all an illusion.

This bastard!

TO BE CONTINUED

(PS: Robin's preferences are all from the SBS. The book in this chapter truly exists in the Pirate world; the author of this book even went to Elbaf and left behind a remark saying this place is not to be lingered in, leading some pirate fans to speculate that the time flow in Elbaf is different.)