A dark golden interface unfurled like a scroll before Eri's eyes.
She looked at the goods in the store.
Her lifeless eyes gradually came alive, sparkling with interest.
She browsed from Harry Potter to Naruto.
Then from Bleach to One Piece.
She reached out to search the store for a glimpse of the Sea Kings.
Every item in the store stirred something in her heart.
Those tiny sparks of excitement added up. Even browsing the store made her happy, and she smiled.
If her brother Genji Yash had been there, he would have been stunned.
He had never seen Eri, usually as lifeless as a doll, smile like that.
Eri's life was a sealed world: a room shut away behind dozens of blast doors.
It wasn't because she was so precious that she needed layer upon layer of protection.
It was because she had been a monster since birth. Only by keeping her under strict guard could everyone else feel even a little safe.
So her world was no bigger than one room.
Admittedly, it was a very nice room.
It had sandalwood-scented antique timber, polished wooden floors bright enough to reflect light, and winding old-fashioned corridors. The whole place was an estate from another era.
A house that large,
in Tokyo, where every inch of land cost a fortune,
was beyond the reach of ninety-nine percent of people, even if they sold their flesh and kidneys.
But Eri had no idea how fine or expensive her home was.
She knew nothing about the real world.
The world she knew had been pieced together from anime and games.
In her view of the world,
pirates and marines fought with Devil Fruit powers on the seas every day.
After they died in battle, their souls went to Rukongai and wandered around