Encounter

Grand Line.

Unknown Waters.

An island lay shrouded in thick fog.

Though the island looked full of life, its town was steeped in decay.

The houses and streets seemed worn down by the passage of years, steeped in the weight of time.

Everywhere the eye could see, there were white-haired elders. Not a single young adult was in sight.

Strangest of all, many of the elders walking together were clearly married couples, yet the children they held by the hand were not little ones with tender faces. They were wrinkled old children.

Old children—there was no other word for them. The ones being led by their elders acted just like ordinary children, their eyes still bright with the innocence and imagination only children possessed.

Strange. How strange.

From end to end, top to bottom, the entire town felt profoundly wrong.

It was as though time had ravaged this place, leaving even the air thick with the stench of decay.

In a house on the edge of town, a gaunt, deeply wrinkled old man sat at a desk, staring blankly at the book before him and muttering over and over.

"She's back. She's back. She's back..."

His name was Sada Kabuli. The townspeople usually

called him Kabuli.

At some point, the townspeople had begun aging as though time had sped up. They changed day by day, living through most of their lives in less than half a year. Even the children were no exception.

He had been in his twenties, yet those six months had turned him into an old man.

And everyone in town seemed to have lost their minds together, accepting it all as perfectly natural.

Everyone but him.

He had no idea why he was the exception.

After reading countless books and searching through the island's historical records,