Chapter 12

He stared at his open palm, his knuckles bearing thin calluses from years of holding a gun.

They were roughly equal in physical ability, and when it came to willpower, he had never believed he would lose to anyone.

Yet in their exchange just now, those intricate pulls and shifts had sent all his brute strength into empty space.

Complicated feelings rose in his chest-gratification like a warm tide, with fine threads of frustration hidden beneath.

He had seen what the Calm-Calm Fruit could do.

It was more like working behind a curtain: it could eliminate sound and conceal one's presence, but it could not directly strengthen punches and kicks.

Yet in these past few days, some sort of transformation had already taken place.

What that girl had taught was clearly more than simple moves.

"I envy you more, actually."

Rossi's voice interrupted his thoughts.

Doflamingo raised his head.

"You've always had a certain power inside you."

Rossi looked toward the distant horizon. "Whenever we faced a hopeless situation before, you always said a 'miracle' was protecting us.

"But in fact-"

He paused, and a seagull's cry swept across the sky.

"That was Conqueror's Haki."

For an instant, the air on the deck went still at those words.

Doflamingo's pupils contracted slightly.

"People born with that potential can make the weak tremble through sheer presence alone, or even knock them unconscious."

Rossi continued explaining, his tone as calm as if he were describing the weather. "It's something innate, as natural as breathing."

Before his joy could fully bloom, the words that followed pressed it down.

"Don't celebrate too soon."

Rossi turned around and leaned against the railing. "It's only a tool, just as a sword alone doesn't decide who wins.

"That legendary Marine-how many people with Conqueror's Haki has his Iron Fist shattered the confidence of? Too many to count."

He recalled an old man with an oddly shaped head from his memories, and, in a more distant future, a figure who cut fate open with a scalpel.

Abilities were never an absolute shield; skills honed to their pinnacle could themselves become another kind of "Haki."

The sea breeze brushed his cheeks with its salty tang, and Rossi narrowed his eyes.

"What matters is how you use it."

He finished, "And how much you're willing to pay for it."

Doflamingo stood and brushed the wood shavings off his trousers.

He did not ask about the name left unspoken, nor did he probe where those descriptions, as if witnessed firsthand, had come from.

Some things did not need to be fully understood. Knowing the direction was enough.

"Well, then."

He flexed his wrists. "One more time."

This time, his footwork changed. He lowered his center of gravity and fixed his gaze on the other's shoulders.

The waves struck the hull in a long, steady rhythm, like some ancient drumbeat.

A briny sea breeze brushed across the deck, and moonlight broke into silver fragments on the rising crests.

Rossi watched the distant outline of land gradually sharpen, his fingertips unconsciously rubbing the rough rope.

"That power really is rare."

His voice was quiet when he spoke, as if he were talking to himself. "But there's more than one path to strength.

"Having it doesn't mean you can do whatever you please, either."

The outline of the North Blue blurred along the horizon.

He was not sure when or where Doffy would meet those four people-the future core members of "Donquixote."

In his fragmented memories, Trebol's and Diamante's faces always clung to the young Doflamingo's side, like shadows attached to light.

If someone hurt Doffy's finger, Trebol made that person disappear forever.

If Doffy tripped on a stone-paved road, Diamante turned around and set the whole street ablaze.

That twisted protection coiled around him like vines around a tree trunk, gradually molding the boy into someone else: arrogance seeped into his marrow, cruelty became instinct, and tenderness was crushed into a tool for achieving his goals.

Years later, when Doffy learned to temper his edge, those four began to fear the monster they had nurtured with their own hands.

Trebol was always talking about "Family."

But when Rossi said, "You're just a pawn,"

his mask shattered in an instant.

When Diamante lost that burning Devil Fruit, his voice wavered as he tried to explain, long stripped of the confidence with which he had once thumped his chest and made promises.

The moment they knelt, the distinction between sovereign and subject was branded into their bones.

What kind of family in this world required bowing and prostration?

From beginning to end, the person who could stand beside Doffy-

"I won't let you become like that."

Rossi spoke suddenly.

The boy lying on the deck turned his head, moonlight illuminating half his face. "Aren't you the one being presumptuous?"

Doffy snorted. "You win once, and suddenly you're spouting weird things nobody understands."

Rossi held out his hand.

Doffy stared at it for two seconds before reluctantly taking it.

No one noticed the crease etched between the boy's perpetually knitted brows quietly ease a little.

"Now that I know it's called 'Conqueror's Haki.'"

Doffy pulled himself upright with his help, the sea breeze tousling the blond hair over his forehead. "Sooner or later, I'll master it completely.

"When that happens, don't let your knees buckle."

"In your dreams."

Rossi sat down beside him, their shoulders touching. "That kind of presence won't scare me."

Waves lapped gently against the hull, and the two boys' shadows stretched long across the deck.

They sat there by the railing, their words swept up and scattered by the night wind.

Supporting each other, challenging each other-that was what family ought to be.

Scattered cheers rose aboard the ship when the coastline appeared through the morning mist.

"The Kingdom of Rafal's harbor is just ahead."

The captain pointed at the gradually sharpening outline and shouted.

Days of uninterrupted sailing had left most of them looking exhausted, and now they finally relaxed.

The three-masted merchant ship carried several lifeboats.

Though each could hold only seven or eight people, they were more than enough to transport the remaining passengers.

"Please check your belongings."

Rossi's voice carried across the deck.

The sailors lowered the rope ladders, and the passengers climbed down one after another, disappearing into the rocking boats.

"You lot, go lend a hand-"

He gestured to the crew.

Amid the creak of ropes rubbing against the railing, parting quietly arrived.

The small boats cut across the sea, leaving several trails of ripples that gradually faded.

The sailors worked their wooden oars in silence. No one looked back at the merchant ship turning away.

The passengers crowded inside the boats, eyes lowered, as though the grain of the deck had suddenly become fascinating.

All that remained in the air was the splash of oars stirring the water, and a taut silence like a bowstring on the verge of snapping.

At the stern, the sea breeze gently lifted the pink edge of a cloak.

The girl watched the black speck shrinking in the distance, her black hair pressed against her cold cheeks.

She said nothing. She only watched.

"They're not on the same path as us."

The bearded man came to her side, his voice very low, as if stating a fact long since confirmed.

He too watched the horizon, his brow unconsciously tightening.

That boy in sunglasses-rather than a boy, he was more like a vicious blade not yet fully drawn. Merely standing at a distance, he gave off a pressure that made one's skin prickle.

Like a sky rumbling with muffled thunder before a storm, with no telling where the lightning would strike.

At last, the girl's lips moved.

"He said... he wouldn't become a pirate."

The man let out a short breath through his nose, neither clearly a laugh nor a sigh.

"Words carry the least weight.

"What matters is which ship they chose."

Only moments earlier, two people had still been standing beside the railing.

The briny sea breeze brushed past, stirring the stray hairs over the girl's forehead.

She tilted her face up, her expression like paper that had been crumpled and then someone had tried to smooth out.

"Next time..."

She paused, seemingly choosing the right words. "The next time we meet, we might have to cross blades, mightn't we?"

This world stripped children of their innocence too soon.

Not far behind her, the boy in sunglasses sat casually on a barrel, holding a match between his fingertips and scraping it against the barrel's edge now and then. Scritch, scritch-the faint flame flickered in and out.

But the blond-haired boy facing her smiled, a smile so relaxed it was utterly at odds with the solemn atmosphere around them.

He wagged his index finger.

"Don't worry.

"I'm not interested in being a pirate."

His gaze passed over the girl's shoulder toward the wider sea.

Steal a hook and you're executed; steal a kingdom and you're a lord-in this age of surging tides, did one's ambitions have to be limited to bandits who plundered the seas? The Shichibukai, the Four Emperors, even that supposed title of Pirate King-in his eyes, they were nothing but squares of varying sizes on a chessboard.

"Then why won't you-"

A finger gently touched her lips, cutting off the rest.

The blond-haired boy sighed, with genuine regret in that sigh.

"Not becoming a pirate doesn't mean I'm willing to wear someone else's shackles."

Besides, in theory, those cloaks of justice served precisely the "Celestial Dragons" from whose ranks the brothers had come.

Two fugitive Celestial Dragons running off to join the Marines? The thought itself was like a bad joke.

"This is where we part."

Though they had spent only a little over ten days together, he had received a solid grounding from her.

And she, too, seemed quite satisfied with this unusually focused "student."

And, of course, with his seemingly endless supply of curious tales and anecdotes.

He gave her shoulder a gentle push by way of farewell.

"To borrow an old saying: as long as we're still drifting on this sea, we'll meet again someday."

The small boat drew farther and farther from the merchant ship.

The bearded swordsman withdrew his gaze and patted the girl's shoulder.

"Stop dwelling on it.

"There's an old saying in the Flower Country: 'Those who follow different paths cannot make plans together.'"

He paused, then added, "There might still be room to turn things around with that Rossi, but his brother..."

He did not finish, only shook his head.

Some dangers did not need to be experienced firsthand; a beastlike instinct had already sounded the alarm.

At last, the girl turned away and stopped gazing into the distance.

She pulled her pink hood back up, concealing most of her face.

She walked toward the cabin with steady steps, only the knuckles clutching the edge of her cloak turning slightly white.

On the sea, three small boats slowly headed toward the outline of the free port.

In the other direction, the lone merchant ship had already become a blurry gray speck on the horizon, sailing into the unknown deep blue in the exact opposite direction.

The sea breeze struck his face with its salty tang, and the rope rubbed roughly against his palm.

Rossi adjusted the angle of the sail rope, the billowing sound of canvas filling with wind like the breathing of some enormous creature.

"The heading's right."

Doffy's voice came from the helm, carrying laughter he could barely suppress, his fingers gripping the edge of the wooden wheel. "Now it answers to us."

A few days earlier, a different kind of tension had still filled the ship.

The bearded man had checked every barrel of fresh water, his knuckles tapping dull sounds against their rims.

Whenever his gaze swept over the two children, it lingered briefly before moving away.

He could not attack-that was the rule, and a restraint.

He could only wait, watching those two small figures move around the deck like two bombs that might explode at any moment.

When the girl made that suggestion, he had almost sighed.

Support them? He rubbed the spot between his brows, his navy uniform a little dazzling in the sunlight.

He crouched down to meet the girl's eyes, the sea breeze tousling the hair over her forehead. "Everyone wants something different."

His voice mingled with the wind. "Some people want a place within the established order. Others... just want to grab everything within reach, then go somewhere farther away."

He looked toward the horizon, where there was nothing, yet it seemed to hold every possibility.

Hopefully it won't lead to the worst possibility, he thought.

By now, the ship had become a gray speck in the distance.

The deck fell quiet, leaving only the sound of wind and waves.