"In any case..."
Garp brushed the remaining senbei crumbs from his hands, clapped them together, and continued.
"Although the official account later claimed that the pirates' involvement in God Valley began with Shakky-Shakuyaku, as she was known then-
and that the mountains of Celestial Dragon treasure on the island had drawn the Rocks Pirates there..." Garp shook his head, his tone certain.
"I'm positive that a man whose ambition was to rule the world didn't go to God Valley for either of those things!"
Then Garp's voice sank, carrying the pain of an understanding that had come only after many years. "Because the look on his face back then...
Those silent tears, the grief and despair almost spilling from the depths of his eyes, and even that trace of pleading...
Thinking back on it now, I'm almost certain." At this point, Garp's voice caught.
The moment Ace breathed his last on the battlefield at Marineford seemed to flash before his eyes-that overwhelming, heart-wrenching grief, and the helplessness that came with it-
and instantly overlapped with the face of Rocks in his memories, streaked with tears and screaming without a sound.
That was an expression someone wore only when they watched their dearest loved ones perish, or everything they treasured crumble before their eyes!
It was precisely that firsthand experience that, decades later, allowed Garp
to finally understand the pain in Rocks's eyes back then, a pain far deeper than defeat.
"No..." Garp slowly shook his head, his voice hoarse as he offered a chilling possibility.
"Or rather, what Rocks suffered might have been... even more painful, even more hopeless than what I felt when I lost Ace..."
"Because his grief might not have come merely from 'watching' a loved one die..."
Garp swallowed, then struggled to voice the cruelest possibility