Before he knew it, Rubick had fallen asleep.
His brow was tightly furrowed. All kinds of sounds reached him in fragments, and no matter how he tried, he couldn't drive them away. They seemed to pass straight through his eardrums and into his mind.
Vivi noticed something was wrong. Rubick lay curled up on the ground, his brow furrowed, his face pale. His body twitched from time to time.
Vivi asked, "Nami, is Uncle all right?"
Nami shook her head. The water still needed to be distilled, so she could set her work aside for now. She went to Rubick and gently smoothed his brow. "My sister said Uncle always sleeps like this."
"Your sister?"
Vivi was just about to ask for the story when Luffy and Usopp returned, along with Karoo, who had two large bags of fruit hanging from him.
Zoro and Sanji had worked together to catch a fish weighing over five hundred pounds. They carried it back, soaked to the skin. Igaram returned empty-handed.
Luffy asked, "Huh? Why's Rubick asleep? We found lots of food. Let's wake him up."
Nami hurried to stop him. "Let Uncle sleep a little longer. He's already done so much."
Sanji said in surprise, "I wouldn't have guessed it. Uncle sleeps like a baby."
Rubick was usually the last to bed and the first to rise. The others had never really seen him asleep.
Nami recalled some things Nojiko had told her about Rubick. "Sleeping curled up like that, Uncle must feel unsafe deep down."
"A year ago, Uncle came to Cocoyasi Village, defeated the Fish-Men, and saved our village. He stayed there afterward, and he made my sister look after him."
"My sister said she sometimes found him sleeping curled up like this. It was hard to imagine someone so