The Wrong Way Home

Sanji saw the ship after the smoke started to rise.

It sat far out on the water, small and white in the sun, full sails, a bright deck. A line of blue sea stretched between him and it. From this far it looked plain — wood, sail, rope, wind. A ship had a kitchen. A ship had a cook. A ship had knives that were only knives, fire that was only fire, and food handed to people because they were hungry.

For one second he wanted to swim to it. Climb up the side, stand there dripping on the deck, ask to work in the kitchen. He could peel potatoes. He could wash dishes. He could learn. He could be useful without blood under his nails.

Sanji crushed the want flat. He'd learned that one fast. If you wanted something and they found out about it, it would be used to hurt.

He turned away from the sea.

The man on the ground was still moving. One hand pressed to his neck, the other clawed at the dirt. His eyes were wide, his mouth working around wet sounds. Sanji looked down at him. The man looked back, and for a second Sanji saw the same fear he'd seen on every island like this one — the look people got right before they stopped fighting back.

The man tried to crawl. Sanji stepped on his wrist and brought the short blade down. After that the man stopped moving, and Sanji wiped the blade on the grass because blood made a grip slip. Then he looked back at the ship. It had already moved farther off. He let the thought of it go with it.

He stood alone at the edge of the burned yard and listened. The island was small, smaller than the maps made it look. A fishing village. A few houses. A storehouse near the road. A low hall where people had tried to gather with spears and old guns, like standing close together would keep them alive. It never worked. They went down the same as the ones who ran. This was the East Blue — this was what his father had crossed the Red Line from North Blue to take. New territory, weak seas, easy conquests. Standing in the ash, it looked the same as every other place Germa had ever burned. 

The air smelled of smoke, salt, and iron. Screams still came from farther inland, but fewer now. Germa soldiers had spread through the village on their own orders. Sanji had been set apart for his own piece of it, far enough that what he did could be seen without anyone else's hands in it.

His brothers would've made a show of it. Ichiji would've walked through like the village had been built for his boots. Niji would've made the first scream last. Yonji would've broken anything that still looked strong enough to break.

Sanji wasn’t supposed to think about that at all. He looked down at his hand. Blood under the nails. His fingers weren't shaking. His body had learned that much, even if the rest of him took longer.

It hadn't always worked like this.

The first tests came before he knew the names of half the tools they used on him. White rooms. Cold tables. Straps at his wrists. Needles in arms too small for them. Voices above him talking about numbers — blood counts, bone density, failure rates. Judge stood behind the glass sometimes, watching with the same flat mouth he wore for everything.

His brothers changed the way Judge wanted. Their skin stopped bruising. Their bones stopped breaking. Pain stopped meaning much to them at all. Sanji stayed soft. Soft skin. Soft bones. Soft heart, which Judge hated the worst of the three. The scientists cut him and burned him and shocked him and waited for something to wake up inside. It never did.

Judge called him a failure in front of the others, and his brothers picked the word up fast and used it with their fists whenever Judge wasn't looking. Reiju looked away, sometimes. Sometimes she didn't.

His mother never called him that. Not once.

Sora had thin hands and a soft smile and eyes that got more tired every month. She was sick before Sanji understood what sick really meant — he just knew she stayed in bed more than she walked, that her room smelled like medicine, that there was a tray of cups by her bed he wasn't allowed to touch. He knew she smiled every time he came in, even when whatever he brought her looked terrible.

He'd started sneaking into the kitchen to make food himself. He waited until the cooks were gone, then climbed up to reach the counter. The knife was too big for his hand. The pan was too heavy. The rice came out lumpy. The fish tore apart when he tried to turn it. He burned one side of the bread and scraped at it with a knife until it looked even worse than burned.

He carried the bento to her room with both hands, and it shook the whole way there. He almost threw the whole thing out before she saw it.

Sora ate it like it was the best meal in the world. "Thank you, Sanji."

Some days he remembered her voice better than her face. It scared him that one day he’d forget it all, worse than the lab ever did.

She died when he was seven. No one stopped the world for it. Judge didn't break. His brothers didn't get any kinder. The kitchen still made food. The lab still opened every morning. The soldiers still trained.

Sora was gone, and everything else just kept going like she'd never been there at all.

After that the tests got worse, not better. Judge stopped watching him as much, and that was somehow worse than being watched. Being seen by Judge hurt. Being ignored by him meant Sanji had stopped being worth the trouble.

Then came the mouse. It was small and gray, with a torn ear and quick feet, and it came in through a crack near his room. At first he only watched it move along the wall and stop under the chair to sniff the air. He should have called someone. Any real Vinsmoke would have, or crushed it as a pest. Instead he started saving crumbs for it. Then he started saving more than crumbs.

One night he went back to the kitchen the way he used to for his mother. The halls were dark, the cooks asleep. He took rice from one pot, a strip of fish from another, a torn corner of bread from under a cloth. He warmed what he could and made a little plate out of scraps, then carried it back under his shirt and set it down by the crack in the wall.

The mouse came out and ate. Sanji sat on the floor and watched it. Something in his chest hurt in a way that almost felt good. The mouse was hungry. He'd fed it. That was all it was.

Then the door opened and Judge was standing there.

The mouse froze first, before Sanji even understood why. Then Judge looked at the plate, and then at him.

"Are you cooking food for rats again?" His father's voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. "Royalty does not serve. How many times do I have to tell you this?"

Sanji opened his mouth, but Judge had already crossed the room. He grabbed the mouse in one hand and the plate in the other and threw both out the window. Three floors down, Sanji heard them hit the ground.

Judge looked down at him. "Your mother is dead. Stop chasing her shadow. And never cook again."

He left. Sanji sat against the wall for a long time after that, thinking that if he hadn't fed the mouse, it would still be alive. If he hadn't cared about it at all, it wouldn't have had to die.

The next day, when the scientists came for him, Sanji went with them without being told twice. The lab smelled the way it always smelled — metal, soap, cold air, old fear. They put him on the table. One of them said they'd start the next round.

Sanji stared at the ceiling. "Do it all at once."

The scientist stopped. Sanji turned his head and looked at the man straight on. "All of it. At once."

If he didn't care about anything, nothing he cared about could die. His mother was already gone, and there was nobody left to mind. So Sanji knew they'd do it.

The treatment took him apart. Needles, tubes, masks. Heat inside his bones, cold in his blood, hands holding him down even with the straps locked. Voices above him, clear at first, then far away, then gone under the sound of his own screaming. He screamed until his throat tore, and then he screamed past that, for a day, then longer — though he only learned how long afterward, from soldiers talking low in the hallway like the sound was still stuck in the walls somewhere.

He didn't wake up for a month. When he did, his hand closed around the bed rail and bent it. Sanji stared at the bent metal, then at his hand. Same fingers. Same size. Not the same anymore.

The scientists tested everything fast — his grip, his bones, his skin, his speed. They struck him with rods. They cut shallow lines into his arm and watched the blade skid off instead of cutting deep. They burned him and timed how fast the mark faded. They ran him until the floor blurred under his feet.

He didn't break. He dented, and then the dent filled back in.

Judge came to see him on the third day. For three years Sanji had stood in front of his father and braced for the word failure. This time he stood straight and waited for nothing, because for the first time he didn't know what was coming.

Judge circled him once. "Again," he said to the scientist holding the rod.

The rod cracked across Sanji's ribs. It barely rocked him. He stayed on his feet and didn't even bring his arms up.

For the first time Sanji could remember, his father's mouth pulled into a real smile. "Good," Judge said. "Very good."

Nobody had ever said that to him. Sanji didn't know what to do with it, so he just stood there and let it sit in his chest next to everything else he wasn't allowed to feel.

After that, things moved fast. He learned how to wield a sword well and how to take one off an enemy. How to strike with the hilt when the blade got trapped. How to break a wrist. How to use his knees, elbows, fists, teeth — whatever was closest. How to stand still while men twice his size hit him and not give them the satisfaction of a sound. How to take an order and answer it before it had finished being given.

And how to keep his face still when something underneath it wanted to crack. 

The training fixed everything Judge cared about. It didn't touch the rest. Sometimes the smell of bread still caught him off guard and he thought of his mother before he could stop himself. Sometimes he saw scraps on a plate and thought of a gray mouse with a torn ear. Sometimes he walked past the kitchen and his fingers moved like they still remembered the weight of a knife — not for fighting; for carrots, fish, bread. 

Sometimes he looked at the sea and wanted to be somewhere else entirely.

He learned to bury all of it, under orders and training and the long quiet he was good at now. Three years of it. He was ten years old now, and there was a burned village behind him to prove every bit of it had worked.

On the island, the test ended before sunset. Germa flags went up over the hill. Smoke drifted along the road. Soldiers gathered bodies and counted supplies. Nobody asked Sanji if he was hurt or tired. It didn't matter if he was.

He went back to the transport snail alone. It was huge and gray, with a castle strapped to its back and Germa's mark painted along the side. Its eyes rolled toward him as he came up the ramp, like it knew him, or at least knew the smell of his blood by now.

A handler bowed as he reached the deck. "Prince Sanji. The fleet is moving east. Your route is set."

Sanji nodded once and didn't ask about his brothers. They'd be coming back from their own islands soon enough, with their own stories to tell. Judge would judge. Someone would get praised. Someone would get corrected. Sanji knew which one he wanted to be, now that he finally knew what that felt like.

He went up to the top deck where he could see the water. The ship from earlier was already gone.

The snail moved through the night. Clouds came in after midnight, thick and low, and the air turned heavy and wet against his skin. Sanji stayed on deck because sleep wasn't coming anyway. He’d have nightmares over what he’d done, even when he told himself he no longer cared. Wind pulled at his hair and snapped the Germa flag hard enough to shake the pole.

The rain started small. A few drops, then a steady patter, then something sharper and sideways that stung when it hit his face. The deck went slick. Sanji shifted his footing and stayed where he was. He'd been in the rain before.

An hour later it wasn't just rain anymore. The wind came in hard walls that hit and then hit again before the first one had finished. The sea changed under them, a heaviness, a slow rolling swell that made the snail's pace uneven. Below deck, men were moving, shouting orders, lashing things down. The snail made a low sound in its shell.

Then the swells became waves. The first one hit the snail broadside and the whole castle shell shifted six inches to the left. Sanji grabbed the rail. The second wave was bigger. Men came up from below, then went back down when there was nowhere better to stand. The snail tried to turn its head into the waves the way it was trained to, but they were coming too fast now, from too many directions, and the weather didn't care about training.

A rope snapped somewhere above him. Then another. A cannon broke loose on the lower deck and went through a wall — Sanji heard the wood split from where he stood. The snail screamed, a sound so deep he felt it through the rail and up his arms and into his back teeth.

Then the sea in front of them simply rose. Not a wave — a wall. White-edged and black underneath, taller than the mast, taller than anything water had a right to be. Soldiers turned and ran with nowhere to run to.

The wave hit and the world flipped. Sanji's hand tore off the rail. His shoulder hit wood, his head hit something harder, and then the sea closed over him, cold and full of broken pieces.

He didn't panic. Panic used up air, and he'd been trained out of wasting it. He held his breath and let the water take him down. A soldier spun past him in the dark, then another — one reached out, fingers opening and closing on nothing, and then the dark took him, too.

When the pull of the wave let go, Sanji kicked upward with force until his head broke the surface and rain hit his face. He got one breath before the next wave covered him again.

It went on like that for hours. Sometimes he caught sight of wreckage. Sometimes only water. He held onto a torn board once until another wave tore it back out of his hands. He watched the snail's shell go under and not come back up.

By morning the soldiers were gone. The snail was gone. That small part of Germa was gone. Sanji floated alone in open blue water, arms moving because they were told to, legs moving because stopping meant dying.

By the second night the storm had passed and the sky opened up full of stars. Sanji lay on his back and looked up at them and thought, for one weak second, that maybe his mother was up there somewhere. Maybe she could see him. Maybe she'd seen the lab, and the mouse, and this island, and all of it.

His throat closed before the thought could finish. He crushed it the way he crushed everything else. Sora was dead. The dead didn't watch. They didn't answer. They didn't care if some boy was floating alone in the middle of the ocean.

He turned his face away from the stars and kept breathing.

Two more days passed. Sun burned his skin. Salt dried hard on his lips. His stomach cramped and then went quiet. Sometimes fish brushed against his legs. Sometimes he heard gulls and lifted his head to nothing but empty water. He didn't pray. He didn't cry. He waited for land, or a ship, or for it to just be over.

On the third morning a wave pushed him into the sand.

Sanji hit the shore on his side. Water rushed past his legs and pulled back, and the next wave rolled over his waist while he lay there. His body wanted to stay down. He made one hand move anyway, fingers digging into wet sand.

Then he heard it. Thock. Thock. Thock. Wood against wood.

Sanji opened his eyes. A boy around his age stood near an old dock post, swinging two wooden swords, one in each hand. Green hair. Too-big forehead. Scraped-up knees. His shirt was soaked through with sweat, not seawater.

He hit the post again. He didn't look over.

Sanji pushed himself up on one elbow. The boy hit the post again, and Sanji just watched him do it. Boys didn't wash up on beaches every day, not even out here. It should've earned at least a glance.

The boy finally planted both swords point-down in the sand and rolled his shoulder like it ached.  Sanji decided to make him look. "Where am I?"

The boy turned. His eyes went over Sanji's wet clothes, his scraped-up face, his empty hands. He didn't look scared. He didn't look impressed either. "Shimotsuki."

Sanji sat up. The world tipped sideways and he let it settle before he spoke again. "Is everyone here a swordsman?"

"No."

The boy picked his wooden swords back up and squared back into his stance.

Sanji looked past him — trees behind the beach, a path running inland, rooftops further up. A small village. No walls. No guards. No cannons. No Germa flags anywhere. No soldiers behind him, no snail, no Den Den Mushi, nobody waiting on a report.

He could still take it. Probably. His father would like that — Vinsmoke Sanji, lost at sea, comes back having taken land on his own. A proper son. A useful one.

The boy's stomach growled loud enough that the gulls on the dock rail lifted their heads. He stopped mid-swing and let the wooden swords fall to his sides. "Lunchtime."

Sanji stared at him.

The boy started up the path, then stopped and looked back. "You coming?"

Sanji had been in the sea for two days. His hunger had moved past pain into something flatter and worse. He knew better than to follow some kid he'd never met. He knew better than to trust a village he'd already been thinking about how to take. Still, food was food.

He stood. His legs held. "Okay."

The boy nodded once, like that settled it. "C'mon."

Sanji followed him off the beach.

It was his first mistake.

The boy walked too fast for someone who had asked a half-drowned kid to lunch. Sanji still followed. His legs felt stiff from the sea, and salt had dried hard in the seams of his clothes. Sand clung to his skin. His throat hurt each time he swallowed. None of it mattered. His body moved because he told it to move, and the boy stayed a few steps ahead of him, swords tucked under one arm as if boys walked around with two of them all the time. Maybe boys here did.

Sanji watched the path, the trees, the slope of the ground, the places where a person could hide. The beach curved behind them. The old dock leaned into the water, its posts dark with rot near the tide line. Beyond the sand, the path climbed through scrub grass and low trees. Roofs showed farther in, gray and brown under the sun. No watch tower. No wall. No guns. No guards.

Small village. Easy village. His father would call it weak.

The boy scratched his neck with the end of one wooden sword and kept walking. Sanji looked at the boy's feet. Bare. Tough. Scuffed at the toes. The boy didn't move like a soldier. His steps had no order, no count, no care for sound. He stepped on dry twigs, kicked stones, and looked back only once to see if Sanji still followed.

"Why are you so slow?" the boy asked.

Sanji kept his face still. "I was in the ocean for two days."

The boy looked at him for a long second. "Huh."

Then he turned and kept walking.

Sanji waited for more. There was no more. No questions about the wreck. No demand for a name. No fear of Germa. No care for the blood still stuck under Sanji's nails. The boy had seen him crawl out of the sea and had decided the next thing to do was eat.

Sanji didn't understand him.

The path split ahead. One trail ran toward the rooftops. The other cut left, into more trees. The boy took the left path.

Sanji stopped.

The boy walked six more steps before he noticed. He turned with a frown. "What?"

"The village is that way." Sanji pointed.

"No, it's this way."

Sanji looked at the rooftops, then at the boy. "You can see the houses."

The boy glanced toward them. His frown got deeper. "That's not the way to the dojo."

"The dojo is past the village?"

"Yeah."

"Then we go through the village."

The boy snorted. "You don't know where it is."

Sanji didn't answer at once. He looked at the sun, the slope, the roofs, the thin smoke rising from cooking fires, and the worn marks in the dirt where many feet had passed. The right path had more use. The left path had broken leaves and fewer steps.

The boy waited with his two swords under one arm and total faith in his wrong choice.

Sanji had seen trained soldiers lose routes in bad weather and get punished for it. He had seen handlers beat snails for turning slow. He had seen Judge look at maps for hours before a raid and mark each place where a unit could fail.

The boy was wrong in broad daylight, under clear skies, near his own village, and seemed annoyed that Sanji disagreed.

"You're lost," Sanji said.

"I'm not lost."

"You're going the wrong way."

"No, I'm not."

Sanji pointed. "The houses are right there."

The boy jerked his thumb to the left path. "Dojo's this way."

Sanji stared at him. The green-haired boy looked ready to fight over the direction of his own home. Sanji started walking toward the rooftops.

"Hey," the boy snapped.

"Lunch," Sanji said.

The boy hesitated. His stomach growled again, low and loud. Then he came after Sanji.

Sanji didn't smile. The want to smile rose, small and sharp, and he killed it before it reached his face.

The boy caught up and walked beside him with a scowl. "I knew it was this way."

"You were going left," Sanji said.

"I was checking something."

"What?"

"A thing."

Sanji looked at him.

The boy looked away.

They walked in silence for a while. The ground turned firmer under Sanji's feet. The trees thinned. The village came closer, and with it came ordinary sounds. A door sliding open. A woman calling for someone to bring water. A dog barking. A hammer hitting wood. A child laughing and then being told to stop running.

Sanji knew villages after Germa soldiers came through. Screams. Smoke. Feet running. Orders shouted. Metal hitting bone. Mothers grabbing children. Men trying to stand between soldiers and doors.

Shimotsuki sounded alive. It smelled alive, too. Rice. Fish broth. Damp wood. Cut grass. Smoke from small cook fires. There was no blood in the air. No iron. No burned flesh. No fear.

Sanji kept his hands loose at his sides. A man passed them carrying a basket of greens. He looked at the boy, then at Sanji, and his steps slowed.

"Zoro,” he said, looking between them. “Who’s your friend?”

Sanji now knew the boy's name. He didn’t like being called a friend, though. Friends were something weak people had, and Sanji wasn’t weak.

"Found him," Zoro said.

The man blinked. "Found him?"

"On the beach."

Sanji watched the man's face. Surprise first. Concern next. No threat.

"You hurt?" the man asked Sanji.

"He's walking," Zoro said.

"I'm fine," Sanji said. His voice came out rough from salt and thirst.

The man's concern sharpened. "You don't sound fine."

"I said I am."

Zoro pointed ahead with a sword. "We're going to lunch."

The man opened his mouth, then shut it. He looked at Zoro again. "Koushirou-sensei should see him."

"Yeah," Zoro said, and started walking.

Sanji followed because the food was still ahead, and because a sensei meant a teacher, maybe a swordsman, maybe the person who ran the place Zoro called a dojo. A leader, then. Someone to measure.

They passed houses with open windows and low fences. People looked at Sanji. No one reached for a weapon. No one bowed. No one told him where to stand. Their eyes stayed too soft. Curious, worried, and rude with it. Children peered around corners until an older woman hissed at them to go inside.

Zoro ignored all of them. Sanji didn't. He counted faces. Counted paths. Counted doors. He tracked places where the village narrowed and places where the street opened. He noted the well, the storehouse, the small foot bridge over a ditch, the cart with one cracked wheel, the laundry lines, the roof that sagged on one side.

If he had to take the village, the storehouse mattered. The well mattered more. His stomach cramped. Food mattered most.

Zoro turned between two houses, ducked under a laundry line, and came out behind a shed.

Sanji stopped again. Zoro took three more steps.

"You're lost again," Sanji said.

Zoro spun around. "I'm not."

"This is the back of a shed."

"It's a shortcut."

"To what?"

Zoro pointed through a patch of trees. "Dojo."

Sanji looked. There was a fence. Behind it, chickens scratched in the dirt. Zoro glared at the chickens as if they had betrayed him.

A voice cut across the yard. "Zoro!"

Sanji turned. A girl stood near the corner of the shed with a wooden sword in one hand. She was a little taller than Zoro, with dark hair cut around her chin and a face that looked used to being obeyed. Her clothes were plain training clothes, and her feet were bare. She looked at Zoro first, sharp and annoyed, then at Sanji.

Her eyes moved over him. Wet clothes. Sand. Scrapes. Empty hands. Blood under the nails. She looked back at Zoro. "You got lost again," she stated.

"No."

"You're behind the Yamadas' shed."

"I knew that."

"You were headed for the chicken pen."

Zoro's jaw tightened. "I was taking him to the dojo."

"The dojo's the other way."

"I told him," Sanji said.

The girl looked at him again. "Who are you?"

"Sanji."

"Where'd you come from?"

"The beach."

Her eyes narrowed. "People don't come from the beach."

Zoro shrugged. "He did."

The girl's look moved to Zoro with deep disgust. "You found a boy on the beach and brought him here?"

"Lunch," Zoro said.

Sanji studied her. She stood with her sword down, but her grip was ready. She didn't seem afraid. She didn't look impressed either. She looked irritated. This one was more careful.

"What's your name?" Sanji asked.

"Kuina."

Zoro made a sound through his nose. "She thinks she's in charge."

"You're definitely not," Kuina said. "We'd all get lost."

"I didn't get lost," Zoro insisted.

"You did," Sanji said.

Zoro turned on him. "Whose side are you on?"

Sanji didn't know why there were sides. He had only stated a fact.

Kuina gave Sanji one more look, then pointed with her wooden sword. "Come on. Father needs to see him."

So Kuina's father was this sensei of the dojo. A good fact to know.

Kuina walked ahead. Zoro followed, grumbling under his breath. Sanji stayed behind them both, close enough to hear, far enough to keep his hands free.

The real path to the dojo took less than a minute. Zoro had missed it by enough distance to make Sanji wonder how he had survived this long.

Isshin Dojo stood beyond a gate, low and simple, with a sign hung above the entrance. The yard had hard-packed dirt, swept smooth in places and scuffed in others. Wooden practice swords rested in a rack near the wall. Students moved in lines under the eye of an older boy, stepping and striking in rhythm. Their voices rose together with each count.

Sanji paused just inside the gate. A sword school. A real one, though small. No polish. No show. Wood worn by hands. Floorboards marked by feet. Air full of sweat, dust, rice steam from somewhere deeper inside, and the dry scent of bamboo practice blades.

The students saw Kuina first and straightened. Then they saw Zoro and relaxed. Then they saw Sanji and stared.

Sanji stared back. He could beat them. The younger ones held their swords too loose. The taller boy by the rack leaned too far onto his front foot. One child's stance shook from tired legs. Another kept looking at Zoro, which meant Zoro mattered here.

Zoro dropped his wooden swords near the rack and pointed at the building. "Food's inside."

Kuina smacked the back of his head with her palm.

Zoro rounded on her. "What was that for?"

"You can't just bring him to eat."

"He's hungry."

"So is a stray dog."

"Then feed the dog, too."

Sanji looked at him. Zoro looked serious.

Kuina made a sound of pure annoyance and stomped toward the open doors. "Father!"

The students whispered. Sanji kept his face empty.

A man came out a moment later. He wore glasses and simple clothes, and his hair was tied back. He didn't hurry, but the yard changed when he appeared. The students grew still. Kuina went quiet. Even Zoro stood a little straighter, though he tried to make it look as if he hadn't. This was Koushirou-sensei.

The man's eyes went to Sanji's face, then to his clothes, his hands, his feet, and the salt dried on his skin. He saw more than the others. His face stayed mild, but his attention sharpened.

“Zoro, who’s your friend?” Koushirou asked.

Friend again. Sanji didn’t let his feelings about the term show on his face.

Kuina spoke up instead. “Zoro found him on the beach.”

Koushirou waited.

Zoro shrugged. "He was lying there. And it’s lunchtime."

"I see."

Kuina crossed her arms. "And then Zoro got lost bringing him here."

"I didn't get lost."

Koushirou's mouth tipped in a small smile. "Of course."

Zoro glared at the ground.

Koushirou moved slowly, the way someone moved around a stray dog they weren't sure had teeth. Most adults who did that didn't actually know what a kid could do. Sanji had a feeling this one did. He didn't like that.

"What's your name?" Koushirou asked.

"Sanji."

"Were you in a wreck, Sanji?"

Sanji let his shoulders stay loose. "Storm."

"Were there others with you?"

Sanji thought of soldiers spinning in black water. Hands reaching. Bodies gone under foam. He thought of the transport snail's shell sinking into the dark. "They died."

The yard went very quiet. Zoro looked at him then. So did Kuina.

Koushirou's face changed into pity. "I'm sorry."

Sanji didn't know what to do with that. Sorry was a strange word. People said it when they had done something wrong. Koushirou hadn't drowned the Germa soldiers. Hadn't ordered the storm.

Sanji said nothing.

Koushirou looked toward the house. "You need food and dry clothes."

"I can leave."

"You can," Koushirou said. "After you eat."

Sanji waited for the hook. Koushirou only stepped aside and gave him room to pass.

Zoro brightened at once. "Lunch."

Kuina rolled her eyes. "Try not to trip on the way in."

"I don't trip."

"You tripped twice this morning."

"Those were different."

The two of them bickered all the way inside.

Sanji followed because Koushirou walked behind him, because the exits were visible, because his stomach hurt, and because refusing food after two days at sea would be stupid.

The dining room was larger than Sanji expected. Low tables had been set out, and students sat around them with bowls and cups. The room filled with voices, wood scraping, steam, and the smell of rice. 

An older woman near the kitchen saw him and frowned at his wet clothes. "Oh, the poor thing. Sit, sit. I'll get more."

Poor thing.

Sanji looked at her. She had flour on one sleeve and a cloth over her shoulder. Her hands were red from hot water. She moved fast, but not from fear.

Sanji sat where Koushirou pointed. Zoro dropped down beside him, close enough that Sanji could've struck his throat with an elbow. Kuina sat across from them and watched Sanji with open suspicion. She was smart to be suspicious. Suspicion made sense.

Bowls came out and went down the middle of the table. Rice, a little wet. Fish, plain but fresh. Pickles cut too thick. Soup still steaming. Weak tea. People reached and passed and helped themselves without waiting for anyone. Sanji looked at it all sitting there in the open — nobody's portion, everybody's food. Not fit for royalty. Nobody here seemed to know that. 

Zoro had already started eating, open-mouthed and without any grace.

Kuina kicked him under the table. "Don't be gross."

Zoro spoke around rice. "I'm eating."

"You're spraying rice."

"I'm hungry."

"Doesn't mean you can't have manners."

Zoro swallowed and reached for more fish. "Don't care."

Sanji watched them. Their words were sharp, but their bodies stayed loose. Kuina's foot had hit Zoro's leg, and Zoro had only scowled. No one had struck her for it. No one had told Zoro pain was his lesson. No one had stopped the meal.

Koushirou sat nearby and poured tea. "Eat, Sanji.” 

Sanji looked at him. Then he reached for the rice, served himself, and picked up his chopsticks. His hands stayed steady. He ate with care, one bite at a time, though hunger clawed at him. He chewed. Swallowed. Took another bite. The rice warmed his mouth. The soup touched his throat and hurt in a good way.

Zoro glanced at him. "You eat slowly."

"You eat like an animal."

Kuina made a small sound of agreement.

Zoro frowned. "No, I don't."

"You do."

"You washed up on a beach."

"You got lost behind a shed."

Kuina choked on her tea.

Zoro's face went red. "I didn't get lost."

Sanji ate another bite of rice. "You did."

Koushirou lowered his cup. The room had gone a little still, but the stillness felt different from fear. Some of the students were trying not to laugh. Kuina pressed her mouth tight. Zoro looked ready to throw his bowl, or challenge Sanji, or both.

Zoro leaned closer. "You fight?"

Sanji kept eating. "Yes."

"What do you use?"

"Whatever works."

Kuina snorted into her tea. "He fights me. Every day."

"And loses," Zoro muttered.

"Every day," Kuina said again, with relish.

Zoro's ears went red. "Not every day."

"Name one day you didn't."

Zoro opened his mouth, found nothing, and shut it again.

Sanji's eyes narrowed, and there it was. Interest, fast and bright. Food had mattered. Now fighting mattered more.

Kuina saw it, too. "Zoro."

"What?"

"He just got here."

"So?"

"Zoro," Koushirou said with warning.

Zoro slumped, but only a little. "After lunch?"

Koushirou looked at Sanji. Sanji felt every eye turn to him. A test, then. Maybe this village wasn’t as soft as it looked.

Sanji set down his bowl. He didn't back down from tests. "I can fight after lunch."

Zoro grinned. Kuina looked at him with interest. Koushirou's gaze stayed mild. "We'll see what’s wise after you've eaten."

Wise. Another strange word.

Sanji lifted his bowl again and finished the rice. He let the warmth settle in his empty stomach. Around him, the dojo students slowly began talking again, but their voices kept mentioning his name.

Zoro ate beside him, loud and easy, already thinking about the match. Kuina watched from across the table, sharp-eyed. Koushirou poured more tea as if feeding unknown boys from the sea happened often enough to be casual about it.

Sanji kept his face still. His chest felt warmer than it should have, and he shoved it back down where it belonged. Food was just food. This was just a village, the kind he could measure and take if he had to.

He was still telling himself that when Zoro stole the last piece of fish off the shared plate and Kuina kicked him under the table for it. Zoro yelped.

Sanji looked down at his empty bowl. For the first time since the storm, he wasn't hungry.

After lunch, Zoro tried to fight him before Sanji had even finished his tea.

He shoved back from the table with rice still stuck to one cheek. Kuina kicked him before he got up. Zoro hissed and kicked back, but he missed her leg and hit the table post. The bowls jumped.

One of the younger students laughed. Zoro glared at him until the laugh died behind both hands.

Koushirou set his cup down. "Zoro."

"What?" Zoro said.

"You're still eating."

"I'm done."

"You have rice on your face."

Zoro wiped the wrong side of his mouth.

Kuina sighed so hard Sanji looked at her.

Zoro caught the look and scowled. "What?"

Sanji lifted his tea. "You missed."

"I didn't ask you."

"You should've."

Kuina made the small sound again. Almost a laugh. She hid it behind her cup, but Sanji saw it.

Zoro's face went red, and for one breath, Sanji thought the boy would throw himself across the table. Instead, Zoro scraped the rice off his cheek with his sleeve, shoved the last bite of fish into his mouth, and stood with his chin up as if he'd won something. "Now I'm done."

Koushirou watched him with a mild face that made Sanji more careful than a shout would've. "Sanji may wish to rest first."

Zoro looked at Sanji. "Do you?"

The room waited. Sanji could've said yes. Rest would've been useful. Dry clothes would've been useful. Time to learn the building, count the students, find the storehouse, and see where Koushirou kept real blades would've been useful. But this was a test.

Zoro's eyes stayed on him, bright and too direct. A challenge sat there, waiting.

Sanji set down his tea. "No."

Zoro grinned.

Koushirou's eyes moved over Sanji once. He had already seen the salt in Sanji's clothes, the sand in his hair, and the way he held his shoulders. He had also seen Sanji eat with hands that didn't shake.

"All right," Koushirou said. "A short match."

Zoro was already halfway to the door.

Kuina stood as well. "Bet that stupid idiot he gets wrecked." She sounded gleeful about it as she headed after Zoro.

Sanji didn't answer. Stupid was a word for mistakes, and Zoro made plenty. Wrong turns. Too much food too fast. Challenging strangers from the sea right after lunch. But Sanji figured he wasn't actually stupid. He was about to find out if he was right.

He followed them outside into the yard. More students had gathered near the practice floor. Some stood in the open doorway. Others sat along the wall with bowls still in their hands. News moved fast in small places. A boy had washed up on the beach. Zoro had found him. Zoro had gotten lost bringing him to lunch. Zoro wanted to fight him. The last part seemed to matter most.

Sanji stepped into the practice area and felt the boards under his feet. Worn smooth in the middle. Rough near the edges. A loose board near the left wall. A rack of wooden swords beside the open doors. Training posts beyond the yard. A bucket near the steps. A broom leaning against the wall. Useful things to know.

Zoro went straight to the sword rack and grabbed two wooden swords. He put one in each hand, testing the weight of both. Sanji looked at him. A few students shifted with pride, as if waiting for Sanji to be surprised. Sanji kept his face still. Two swords meant more reach, more angles, more weight, and more ways for a child to get in his own way. It was strange, but strange didn't mean weak.

Sanji walked to the rack. He chose one wooden sword. The weight was familiar. Lighter than the short blades Germa soldiers used in tight halls. Longer than a knife. Thicker than a real sword because wood had to stand up to hits. He'd used swords like this before he graduated to real ones. The grip had been worn by many hands. Sweat had darkened it in streaks. He knew how to hold it. His hands knew a lot of things — sword hilts, yes, but also the weight of a pan, the handle of a knife meant for carrots instead of throats, the food he used to make for his mother. Sanji shut those thoughts down hard.

Zoro's eyes narrowed. "Only one?"

Sanji turned the wooden sword once in his hand. "One is enough."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

Zoro's grin came back, wider now. "Don't complain after."

"I won't."

Kuina stood near Koushirou with her arms crossed. "He won't complain. You will."

Zoro snapped his head toward her. "I don't complain."

"You always complain."

"I ask for another match."

"After complaining."

Zoro made an angry sound in his throat.

Sanji looked between them. Their words hit fast, but the air around them stayed light. Zoro bristled. Kuina cut him down. He snapped back. She looked bored. The other students watched as if this happened often enough to be part of practice.

Koushirou raised one hand. The yard settled. "Begin," he said.

Zoro came first. Fast. Too fast for a normal child, though still slow to Sanji's modified eyes. He moved like someone who trained until his body forgot fear. The sword in his right hand cut high. The left came low, forcing two lines Sanji had to read at once. 

Sanji stepped back and let the first two strikes pass. Wood hissed through the air. Zoro followed hard. No pause. No check. He attacked as if stopping would make him weaker. Sanji blocked the right-hand sword, turned his wrist, and felt the hit travel up his arm. Strong for ten. Very strong for ten.

The left sword came for his ribs. Sanji slid inside it. Zoro's eyes widened. Sanji used the wooden blade to knock Zoro's right sword outward, then drove his shoulder into Zoro's chest. Not hard enough to crack bone, but hard enough to break balance.

Zoro stumbled back, heels scraping the boards. He caught himself.

The watching students gasped.

Zoro's jaw set, eyes sharper now. Good. Now he knew.

He came again, lower this time, faster from the legs. Sanji met him. Wood hit wood. Once. Twice. Three times. Zoro's arms had power, but he wasted it. He wanted to force through. Sanji let him try, then turned aside and struck at Zoro's wrist.

The wooden sword flew from Zoro's left hand.

Zoro didn't stop. He ducked and swept the sword in his right hand toward Sanji's knee. The knee strike hit his shin, reverberating against it. Zoro felt the impact and looked pleased for less than a breath.

Sanji stepped forward. He struck Zoro's right wrist with the sword. Zoro's fingers loosened, but he held on. Stubborn. Sanji drove his knee into Zoro's middle with less force than he could've used. Air burst from Zoro's nose. Sanji hooked a foot behind Zoro's ankle and pulled.

Zoro hit the boards hard. Sanji moved before Zoro could roll. He pinned the right-hand sword under one foot and set the point of his wooden blade at Zoro's throat.

The yard went silent.

Zoro glared up at him. No fear. Only rage.

Sanji stared down, blade steady.

The match was over. A real enemy would be dead. A Germa trainer would have praised speed, control, and use of mixed strikes. Judge might have nodded once and called it acceptable.

Zoro's hand twitched toward the sword pinned under Sanji's foot.

Koushirou's voice cut across the yard before he could move. "Stop."

Sanji lifted the wooden blade at once. Zoro shoved himself up. His face was red, and his breath came hard. "Again."

Sanji blinked.

Zoro grabbed the sword at his feet. "Again."

"You lost," Sanji said.

"I know."

"So it's over."

"It's over when I beat you."

A few students laughed.

Zoro rounded on them. "Shut up!"

Kuina spoke from near the wall. "He didn’t just use his sword."

Zoro turned on her instead. "He still beat me."

Sanji looked at her. Kuina didn't look impressed. She looked annoyed, like he'd kicked over a board game.

Zoro pointed a sword at her. "You wanna fight him?"

Kuina looked Sanji over once, then shook her head. "No."

"Why not?"

"Don't feel like it."

Zoro scowled like that wasn't a real answer. He looked ready to argue when Koushirou said his name.

Zoro bit down on whatever he'd been about to say. His jaw worked. Then he stomped toward the rack and shoved two practice swords into place. "I want another match later.”

Koushirou folded his hands into his sleeves. "After Sanji has rested."

"I'm fine," Sanji said.

Koushirou just looked at him until he stopped arguing. "Rest anyway."

Sanji didn't know why everyone in this place kept saying things like that. A body needed orders, food, water, and use. Rest was a soft word. It didn't belong near training yards.

Zoro stepped closer, still breathing hard. "You fight weird."

Sanji looked at him. "You lost weird."

Zoro scowled. Kuina snorted. This time she didn't hide it.

Zoro looked betrayed. "What?"

"You did," she said.

"I was figuring him out."

"From the floor?"

More students laughed. Zoro lunged one step toward them, and they scattered, still laughing. Sanji watched the movement. No fear. Not real fear. These children ran because it was a game.

Zoro chased one boy three steps, forgot where the boy went, and turned the wrong way. Kuina grabbed the back of his shirt without looking up from the sword rack. "Other way."

"I knew that."

Sanji had been about to say something. He didn't.

Koushirou sent Zoro to wash his face and arms before he tracked dirt back inside. Zoro complained that he wasn't done training. Koushirou only said his name again, and Zoro went, grumbling.

Sanji watched him leave. The boy had lost. Fast. In front of everyone. He had been thrown, pinned, corrected by Kuina, and laughed at by smaller students. He still wanted another match.

His father punished failure until it stopped. This place fed it and let it stand up. Sanji didn't know what to do with that.

The students began to drift away once Koushirou dismissed them. Some kept watching Sanji, but their eyes had changed. Less pity now. More caution. That made sense. Caution was honest.

Sanji went to return the wooden sword. Kuina was already at the rack.

"He loses to you a lot," Sanji said.

"Every time." She didn't say it like a brag. Just a fact.

Sanji looked toward the wash area, where Zoro had gone. "And he still asks for more."

Kuina shrugged. "He always does."

Zoro came back with his face wet and his hair dripping at the edges. Water darkened the front of his shirt. He looked between Kuina and Sanji and frowned. "You ready now?"

Koushirou answered from the doorway. "He's resting now."

Zoro groaned. "But he said he was fine."

"He also washed up on the beach this morning."

"That was hours ago."

Kuina hit the back of his head.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"You're stupid."

"You keep saying that."

"You keep proving it."

Zoro pointed at Sanji. "He called you stronger than me."

Sanji hadn't said that.

Kuina's eyes sharpened. "He did?"

Zoro looked less certain. "He asked how many times I lost."

"That's different."

"No, it's not."

"Yes, it is."

They started arguing in the middle of the yard with Koushirou standing right there, and Koushirou let them go at it without stepping in. Kuina said Zoro would lose again if he kept rushing in. Zoro said he'd beat her by the end of the day. Kuina said he'd said that yesterday.

Sanji stood beside the sword rack and listened. No one told them to stop wanting. No one told Zoro that losing meant he was a failure.

Koushirou finally cleared his throat. "Kuina, Zoro, enough. Sanji needs a bath and dry clothes. Zoro, you can help bring water."

Zoro looked offended. "Why me?"

"Because you found him."

"I found him on the beach. I didn't make him wet."

"The ocean did," Sanji said.

Zoro pointed at him again. "See? He knows."

Koushirou just looked at him. Zoro dropped his arm. "Fine."

Kuina smirked.

Zoro saw it and scowled. "You help, too."

"I didn't find him."

"You found us behind the shed."

"Because you got lost."

"I didn't get lost!"

Sanji followed to get the water. The match had taught him enough. Zoro was stubborn, and he lost a lot, on purpose or not. The dojo had food, water, weapons, and routines. A simple report. A proper one.

Yet when Zoro shoved a bucket into his hands and said, "Don't drop it," Sanji looked down at the water and thought about the way Zoro had said again from the floor. Not afraid. Not ashamed. Just angry that losing had ended the fight too soon.

Sanji's fingers tightened around the bucket handle. He didn't know what to do with a boy like that.

Zoro leaned closer. "Later, we're fighting again."

Sanji looked at him. "You'll lose."

"No, I won’t." Zoro grinned, all teeth and challenge. Then he turned and walked straight into the doorframe. Kuina laughed so hard she had to lean on the wall. Zoro clutched his forehead. "Stupid door."

Sanji looked at Zoro. Then at Kuina, bright with laughter for one small breath before she wiped it off her face and stood straight again.

Something moved in Sanji's chest. He pushed it down at once. It didn't belong there.

Zoro glared at the doorway as if it had challenged him.

Sanji stepped around him and went inside.

Koushirou gave Sanji dry clothes. They came from a shelf near the bath, folded in a stack with a cord set on top. The shirt was pale and loose. The pants were slightly short at the ankle. Neither had marks, rank, buttons, or a Germa crest. Sanji held them in both hands and waited for the rest of it, for the servants to attend to him. 

Koushirou only pointed toward the washroom. "You can change there. Leave your wet things outside the door. We'll hang them up."

Sanji stepped inside and shut the door. A window too small for an adult. No second door. The bucket handle could be used as wire if bent free.

He washed. The water turned gray around his feet. Sand, salt, blood still under his nails. The soap smelled like flowers. The dry clothes felt strange when he put them on, soft from many washings. He folded his wet clothes and set them outside the door. Following simple orders made people ask fewer questions.

When Sanji stepped back into the hall, Zoro was sitting on the floor with a damp cloth in one hand and a red mark still on his forehead from the doorframe. He looked Sanji over and frowned. "Those are mine."

"They fit me," Sanji said.

Zoro opened his mouth, shut it, and looked at Sanji's ankles. "Huh." He went back to wiping dirt off his sword. "You look less dead."

"You look the same."

Zoro grinned like that was a compliment.

Kuina appeared at the far end of the hall. "Father said to bring him to the small room."

Zoro pointed at Sanji with the wet cloth. "He's wearing my clothes."

"You weren't wearing them," Kuina said, and kept walking.

Zoro grabbed the bucket and went after her, corrected his off-course without being told this time, and Sanji followed. 

The small room was near the back of the dojo. It had a mat, a low table, and one wall that faced the garden. A sliding door opened to the outside. Another led back to the hall. No lock.

Sanji noted all of it before Koushirou told him to sit. Tea waited on the table. Koushirou sat across from him. Zoro dropped down by the door without being asked. Kuina stayed standing until Koushirou looked at her, then she sat, too, neat and stiff. Sanji sat last.

Koushirou poured tea. "You said there was a storm."

"Yes."

"And you came from a ship?"

Sanji touched the tea cup without lifting it. "A snail."

Koushirou's hand paused over the teapot, just slightly. Sanji watched it happen and understood. This man read more than swords. He'd probably heard the same things every adult around here had — giant snails moving through these waters, conquering islands as they went. 

Zoro leaned forward, missing all of it. "A snail? A giant one? With a castle?"

"Were you with them?" Koushirou asked. It didn't sound like a real question. It sounded like a man giving Sanji the chance to confess.

"Yes."

The room went silent.

"Are you Germa?" Zoro said.

"Yes."

Kuina stared at him. "You don't look like a monster."

"Kuina," Koushirou said.

"Everyone says Germa are monsters."

"They are." The words left Sanji's mouth before he could check them.

Zoro's frown worked at that. "You don't look like one."

Kuina snorted. "You said that about the goat that bit you when you tried to ride it."

"It was standing there waiting to be ridden."

"No, it wasn’t."

Sanji stared at them. Germa was in the room, and they were arguing about a goat.

"You may stay here for now," Koushirou said. "We'll send word to the harbor and see what ships are due. Until then — no serious harm during practice. No leaving the grounds without telling someone. Meals with everyone else. Chores like everyone else."

"I can leave now," Sanji said.

Zoro looked at him. "You just got here."

Sanji ignored him.

"You can leave, when there's somewhere safe to go," Koushirou said.

"I'll find somewhere.”

Kuina leaned forward. "Do all Germa kids talk like old men?"

Sanji looked at her. "Do all village girls talk too much?"

Zoro laughed.

Kuina hit him with the side of her hand without looking.

Zoro yelped. "Why me?"

"You laughed."

"It was funny!"

"It wasn't."

Sanji watched them. Kuina had hit Zoro and Zoro had yelped and complained and already forgotten about it. 

"Can you follow those rules?" Koushirou asked Sanji.

Sanji could say yes and leave later. Simple. "Yes."

"Good."

Judge had said it after the rod hit Sanji's ribs and Sanji stayed standing. Koushirou said it over tea, after rules, in a room with sunlight on the floor. It meant nothing.

Zoro stood at once. "Then he can train?"

Koushirou sighed. "Zoro."

"What? He said yes."

"He also needs rest."

"He keeps saying he's fine."

"Zoro."

Zoro slumped back down. Kuina smirked.

Sanji looked at the open garden door. Outside, the late sun touched the stepping stones. A path ran past a low fence and toward a side yard. Beyond that, trees. Beyond trees, village roads, then harbor. He had seen enough from the beach and the walk in to guess the island's size. He hadn’t decided if he’d conquer it yet.

The rest of the day passed with small things. Someone showed Sanji where students slept, gave him sandals, placed his short blade on the high shelf in Koushirou's room because weapons from wrecks had to be "kept safe." Sanji let them take it. He knew where the shelf was.

Zoro appeared outside the kitchen door with a stolen rice ball, which the kitchen woman slapped back into the basket.

"You can wait until supper," she said.

"I'm hungry now."

"You're always hungry now."

Sanji watched from the hall. Zoro saw him. "If I get one, you want half?"

The kitchen woman smacked the back of his head. Sanji walked away. He had no use for half a stolen rice ball.

But he thought about it for the next hour.

At supper, the room filled again. Students sat close. Bowls passed from hand to hand. Zoro tried to take more than his share and got blocked by Kuina's chopsticks. Sanji ate what was put in front of him. Around him the table was loud and close, kids reaching past each other, someone arguing about who'd taken the last pickle, Zoro trying to claim he hadn't heard Kuina tell him to stop. 

After the lamps were lowered and the dojo grew still, Sanji lay awake in the dorm with his back to the wall. The other boys slept in messy rows. One snored through his nose. Another mumbled. Zoro slept like he fought, all limbs and no care, one arm flung over his face, mouth open, hair spread on the mat like moss.

Sanji watched him for a long time.

Zoro had no blade in reach. His practice swords were on the rack outside the room. He slept with his throat open, his ribs loose, one foot uncovered. Stupid. Open. Relaxed.

Sanji waited until the hall went silent. Then he rose. His borrowed clothes made almost no sound. He moved around sleeping bodies, opened the door enough to slip through, and closed it behind him with care. The hall lay dark. Moonlight cut pale lines across the floor.

Koushirou's room was down the left hall. The kitchen past the main room. The back door near the washroom. The short blade sat on a high shelf behind Koushirou's sliding door. Too much risk for too little gain.

Sanji chose the back door. He stepped outside into the cool air. Crickets called from the grass. The yard smelled of dirt, wood, and old ashes from the kitchen stove. The village lay quiet beyond the fence.

He crossed the yard without touching the gravel path. His bare feet found packed dirt, then grass. He climbed the low fence and dropped on the other side. Harbor first. Then a boat.

Small boats could be rowed. Larger ones needed sail skill. Sanji could learn fast. He only needed to get away before the dojo noticed. He moved toward the road he had marked earlier.

A voice said, "Where're you going?"

Sanji stopped.

Zoro stood under a tree with one wooden sword in his hand and a blanket around his shoulders. His hair stuck up worse than before. His eyes were half-lidded with sleep.

Sanji stared at him. "Why are you outside?"

Zoro yawned. "Bathroom."

"The bathroom is inside."

"I know."

"You're outside."

Zoro looked around. His face changed. "Oh."

Sanji closed his eyes for half a breath. "You got lost going to the bathroom."

"No."

"You're standing outside the yard."

"I knew that."

Sanji opened his eyes. "Go back inside."

Zoro looked at the fence, then at the road, then at Sanji. "You first."

"I'm leaving."

"Sensei said tell an adult."

"I'm telling you."

"I'm not an adult."

"You noticed."

Zoro scowled. "You can't leave."

Sanji took one step toward him. "You can't stop me."

Zoro's grip shifted on the wooden sword. 

Sanji could cross the space before Zoro took a breath. He could take the sword, put Zoro on the ground, and be gone before the first shout. Yet if Zoro cried out, the dojo would wake. If Sanji struck too hard, Koushirou would know. If he left the boy in the yard, Zoro might wander into the road, the trees, or the sea and become a problem.

Zoro lifted his chin. "You don't even know where the harbor is."

"I do."

"Which way?"

Sanji pointed. Zoro looked. A long pause followed.

"What?" Sanji asked.

"That's the graveyard," Zoro said.

Sanji turned his head. Moonlight made the road strange, but the line of it was right. He had marked the slope, the tree with the split trunk, the ditch.

Zoro scratched his cheek. "Or the old well."

Sanji stared at him.

Zoro pointed the other way. "Harbor's that way."

"You got lost going to the bathroom."

"I still know where the harbor is."

"You don't know where you are," Sanji told him.

"I know where I am now," Zoro said.

"Because I told you."

Zoro stepped past him. "C'mon."

Sanji didn't move. "Where?"

"Harbor."

"Why would you take me there?"

Zoro looked back. "You're gonna get lost."

Sanji stared. Zoro, who had gotten lost inside his own yard, said this with full belief.

"No," Sanji said.

"Yes," Zoro said. "You were going to the graveyard."

"I was going to the road."

"Wrong road."

"You don't know that."

"I'm from here."

"You got lost going to the dojo from the beach."

Zoro's face went red. "That was different."

"How?"

"It was daytime."

Sanji had no answer to that because it was ridiculous.

Zoro started walking. He took the left path, stopped after four steps, and turned around. "This way."

Sanji followed because letting Zoro wander alone would create noise, and because he needed to know if Zoro was right.

They walked between houses. The village slept around them. Dogs huffed from under porches. A shutter knocked soft in the wind. Near the road, water moved through a ditch. Zoro walked with his wooden sword over one shoulder and the blanket trailing behind him, half awake and turning wrong twice before Sanji caught it.

A door slid open nearby. Both boys froze. An old man leaned out with a lamp. "Who's there?"

Zoro grabbed Sanji's sleeve and pulled him behind a stack of firewood. Sanji let him because the old man had a lamp, and light would bring questions.

The old man looked around, grumbled about cats, and shut the door.

Zoro let out a breath. Sanji looked at the hand still wrapped in his sleeve.

Zoro noticed and let go fast. "You were standing in the open."

"You pulled me behind the firewood."

"You're welcome."

"I didn't thank you."

"You should."

Sanji's stomach made a small, mean twist. Zoro had pulled him out of sight without thinking. No plan. No order. No gain. It had been fast and stupid and useful.

Sanji stepped away from him. "Take me back."

Zoro frowned. "Thought you wanted the harbor."

"I want to go back to the dojo."

"Why?"

"Because you're going to get caught."

Zoro stared. "Me?"

"Yes."

"You're the one sneaking out."

"You're louder."

"I am not."

A dog barked.

Zoro winced.

Sanji pointed toward the path. "Back."

Zoro looked around. "Dojo's this way."

"It isn't."

"Yes, it is."

Sanji chose the other path. Ten minutes later, they reached the chicken pen behind the Yamadas' shed.

Zoro folded his arms. "Told you."

Sanji looked at the sleeping chickens. He could take this island. He could survive storms, blades, tests, and soldiers. He could hold his breath under black water while men drowned around him.

He could not find the dojo in the dark with Roronoa Zoro as a guide. It almost made him laugh. He killed it before it was released.

Kuina found them before dawn. She stood at the end of the lane with her wooden sword in one hand. Her face looked flat with sleep and anger.

Zoro pointed at Sanji at once. "He got lost."

"He got lost first,” Sanji said.

Kuina stared at them both. Behind her, Koushirou stood with a lamp.

Sanji went still. The escape was done.

"I see," Koushirou said.

Zoro shifted. "I had to go to the bathroom."

Kuina said, "Outside?"

"I got turned around," Zoro said.

"You live here," Kuina said.

"Shut up."

Koushirou looked at Sanji. "Were you leaving?"

Sanji could lie. He could say he’d wanted air. He could say he had followed Zoro. He could blame the boy with no sense of direction and make it believable.

Zoro waited beside him, jaw set, ready to argue with anyone.

"Yes," Sanji said.

Koushirou nodded once. "Thank you for telling the truth."

Sanji hated the warmth in the words.

"Come back inside," Koushirou said. "We'll speak after everyone has slept."

Koushirou turned and walked back to the dojo, trusting them to follow. Kuina went after him. Zoro stumbled beside Sanji, heading straight for the fence post. Sanji caught his sleeve before he hit it. Zoro looked down at the hand on his arm. Sanji let go. "Fence," he said.

"I saw it."

"No, you didn't."

Zoro rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand. "You're annoying."

"You're lost."

"I'm not lost now."

"You almost walked into a fence."

Zoro looked at the fence. Then away. "It moved."

Sanji followed him back through the gate.

The sky had started to pale. Birds called from the roof. Smoke rose from the kitchen, and the smell of rice drifted through the yard. Breakfast.

Sanji's stomach growled.

Zoro heard. He looked over with a grin. "Hungry?"

"No."

"Liar."

Sanji said nothing.

Zoro kept grinning, sleep-heavy and still bruised by the doorframe, with a blanket over one shoulder and no idea how close he had come to being left behind in the dark.

Sanji looked toward the kitchen smoke. The rule had been no leaving without telling an adult. He’d left. He’d been brought back by a boy who couldn't find the bathroom. The whole place made less sense each hour.

Koushirou held the door for them and said nothing else.

Sanji walked past him with his back straight. He would leave later. He would plan better. He wouldn’t need Zoro's help.

Behind him, Zoro tripped over the raised step and swore into the morning air. Kuina called him an idiot. The kitchen woman shouted for them to wash their hands before breakfast.

Sanji kept walking. He already knew where the washroom was.

Koushirou spoke to Sanji after breakfast, while the younger students were sent out to sweep the yard. It didn't take long. "You left last night.”

"Yes."

"You'll tell me before you try again."

"If I tell you, you'll stop me."

"Probably." Koushirou set his cup down. "Today you'll help in the kitchen. Hana needs hands."

Sanji's head came up before he could stop it.

Koushirou's gaze was mild. Too mild. "Is that a problem?"

"No," Sanji said, too fast.

"Good." Koushirou rose and didn't say anything else about it.

The kitchen sat at the back of the dojo, past the dining room and a short hall. Sanji had marked it on the first day because kitchens mattered. Food stores. Knives. Fire. Water. Doors. He told himself that was the only reason he remembered exactly where it was.

The smell hit him before he reached the doorway. Rice. Fish stock. Hot oil. Tea leaves. Something with ginger in it. His feet slowed without his permission. His hand came up and touched the doorframe before he'd decided to do that.

Three years. He hadn't stood this close to a working stove in three years.

Hana stood at a low table with her sleeves tied back, hair gone silver at the sides. A younger girl washed bowls at the basin. Steam rose from a pot. "There you are," Hana said. "Koushirou-sensei said you'd help. Carry those bowls to the shelf. Careful with the tall stack — Zoro broke three last week."

From the yard, Zoro yelled, "I heard that!"

"Good!" Hana yelled back.

Sanji picked up the bowls. Warm clay, chipped at the rims. He carried them carefully and set them on the shelf, and told his hands they had no memory of this. They didn't believe him. They just knew what they knew. 

Royalty does not serve. The words sat in his chest like something swallowed wrong.

He'd been six the first time he climbed onto a stool to reach a counter that wasn't his to touch. Seven the last. In between, there had been eggs — scrambled poorly, half of it stuck to the pan, salted by guesswork because no one would teach him how much. A banana mashed flat because his hands were too small to peel it without crushing it first. A piece of fish fried too long on one side and not at all on the other, the skin blistered black, the inside still pale. He'd carried all of it with hands that shook the whole way, every time, because every time he was certain someone would catch him before he made it to her door.

Mmm, yummy. Will you cook for me again?

Sora had said that the first time, over the eggs. She'd said it like it was true.

It was never true. He knew that even then. The food was bad. He just hadn't cared, because she ate it like it wasn't.

Servants weren't allowed to let him near the stove — Judge had made that clear after the second time, with a hand on the back of Sanji's neck hard enough to leave a mark and a warning passed down to the whole staff. He doesn't cook. He doesn't serve. If you let him, you'll answer for it. After that, Sanji had to sneak. After Sora died, he'd stopped trying at all, until the mouse, and then Judge had made sure that didn't happen twice either.

Three years. He hadn't held a spatula, a pan, a real knife meant for food instead of throats, in three years.

Hana lifted the rice pot and clicked her tongue. "Too much stuck again."

Sanji looked before he could stop himself. A layer of rice had scorched along the bottom, not black yet, but close. She reached for a metal spoon.

"Wood–" The word was out of his mouth before he caught it.

Hana paused. "Hm?"

Sanji's pulse jumped. He looked at the floor instead of her face. "Saw a servant do it once. Metal scrapes the burn into the rest."

It wasn't a lie, exactly. He'd seen it. He'd also done it, more than once with a spatula too big for his hand. He didn't say that part.

Hana picked up the wooden spatula instead, unbothered. "Like this?"

"I don't know," Sanji said, and meant it, and went back to the bowls before she could ask him anything else.

He kept his hands busy after that. Bowls to shelf. Cups to shelf. Chopsticks into a jar. He didn't look at the stove again.

Then Hana set a fish down on the cutting board, half-cleaned, the cuts along its side ragged and torn. Sanji looked at it for a second too long. His hand curled at his side before he noticed it doing that. 

"Knife's there," Hana said, nodding at it.

He looked at the knife. Small. Plain handle. The edge needed sharpening. Not a fight knife. Not balanced for throwing. Not made for taking anyone apart before they could scream. Just a kitchen knife, the kind that belonged to carrots and fish and bread.

His mother's bento made by his hands, shaking the whole way to her.

Judge's hand closing around the mouse. The window. The sound three floors down.

Never cook again.

Sanji looked away from the knife. "I don't cook."

Hana didn't push. "All right," she said, and picked it up herself.

He spent the rest of the morning carrying water and staying on the far side of the room from anything with an edge.

Zoro missed supper. No one noticed right away. Training kept going, students washed up, the evening meal got laid out. Then Kuina came to the kitchen door with a flat line between her brows. "Have you seen Zoro? He was supposed to bring in firewood."

"No," Sanji said.

Koushirou appeared behind her a moment later, already half into the question of who should look where. Sanji set down his cloth. "I saw him head toward the back path earlier. He had two swords and a food bundle."

"The old practice stump," Kuina said, already annoyed at the answer.

"Where's that?" Koushirou said.

"Northwest," Sanji said.

Koushirou looked at him for a second too long. "You know the way?"

"I know the way he went."

"Bring him back, then. Stay on the path until you're past the wall."

“Fine,” Sanji said, set down the cloth, and went. 

The path behind the dojo ran between trees and a low stone wall. He found Zoro ten minutes later, slumped against an old practice stump scored with sword marks, two wooden swords beside him, a food bundle loose at his feet. Three rice balls. A piece of dried fish. One rice ball had fallen in the dirt.

Zoro was asleep, head tipped forward, mouth open.

Sanji looked at the sky, then the path, then the boy. "Idiot," he said, without much feeling behind it, and kicked his foot.

Zoro jerked awake and cracked his hand on the stump. "Ow!"

"You missed supper."

"I have food."

"It's in the dirt."

Zoro looked down at the fallen rice ball, dirt and ants and all. He winced, half annoyed and half ashamed. "I'll get more."

"Pick it up."

Zoro picked it up, scowling the whole time. "Now what?"

"Chickens," Sanji said. "Come on."

They started back. After three turns, Zoro pointed left with total confidence. "Dojo's that way."

"No, it isn't."

"How do you know?"

"Because you're pointing at it."

Zoro glared, but he followed anyway, the dirty rice ball still in one fist, dragging his feet.

By the time they got back, supper had ended and the kitchen had mostly emptied. Hana took one look at Zoro — dirt on his knees, leaves in his hair — and pointed at the wash basin without a word.  He went, groaning the whole way.

Sanji stayed near the doorway. The leftovers sat on a low shelf near the stove, covered with a cloth. Cold rice. A piece of fish gone stiff at the edges. He could smell it from across the room.

Hana left not long after, taking the younger girl with her, the two of them yawning their way down the hall. The kitchen went quiet. A lamp burned low near the stove. Outside, crickets. Somewhere in the dojo, someone snored.

Zoro came back still rubbing water off his face, hair stuck up worse than usual. He looked at the cloth-covered shelf and his shoulders dropped. "It's cold."

"It's still food."

"It's gross cold."

Sanji looked at the shelf. Looked at the stove, banked low but not dead. He thought about turning around and going to bed and letting Zoro eat cold rice like he deserved for getting lost in his own village for the second time in two days.

He thought about Sora, and the eggs, and the way she'd said it like it was true.

He thought: if I feed him, something bad happens.

He didn't believe that. He told himself he didn't believe that. His hands didn't seem to know the difference, because they were shaking by the time he found the eggs in the basket near the door.

"What're you doing?" Zoro said.

"Sit down."

"Why?"

"Sit down."

Zoro sat, mostly out of confusion.

Sanji cracked the egg the way he remembered doing it and some of the shell went in with the rest. He picked it out with two fingers. His hand wasn't steady. He told it to be steady and it ignored him. He found the small pan, the oil, the spoon, and stood over the low flame with his back rigid, waiting for someone to come through the door and ask him what exactly he thought he was doing in this room, with this knife drawer two feet to his left, with this fire under his hand.

No one came.

The egg went in. It stuck a little at the edges. He scraped it loose too rough and it broke apart into something closer to scrambled than fried, which wasn't what he'd meant to make, but it was hot, and it wasn't dirt, and it wasn't going to sit cold on a shelf.

He slid it onto the bowl of rice without looking at Zoro's face. "Eat."

Zoro looked at it. "What is it?"

"Egg."

"It's weird-looking."

"Eat it or don't."

Zoro ate it.

Sanji stood very still by the stove and waited for something to go wrong. For the door to open. For a hand to close around his collar. For the bowl to shatter against the ground three floors down, except there was no window here he could throw it out of, no Judge standing in it, nothing but Zoro chewing with his mouth too full, the way he always did.

Mmm, yummy. Will you cook for me again?

Zoro swallowed. "S'fine," he said, and reached for more rice.

That was all. Not the best meal in the world. Not even close. Just fine. Nothing happened. No one died. No one's hands closed around anything except a pair of chopsticks, and Zoro kept eating like the food hadn't cost Sanji anything at all.

Sanji's chest hurt in a way that wasn't painful exactly, and wasn't nothing either.

"I'm going to bed," he said, and left before Zoro could say anything back.

The hall was dark. Sanji walked to the washroom, shut the door, and put both hands on the edge of the basin. His fingers had touched egg, oil, pan, shell. Not blood. Not death.

He breathed in and out until his chest settled. Then he washed his hands, though they were already clean, and washed them again, until the water ran cold and his fingers had stopped shaking, which took longer than it should have for something that was just an egg. 

By the fourth day, Sanji could guess what kind of morning it was going to be before he even opened his eyes, just from the sound. Wood hitting wood. A yelp. Somebody hitting the ground.

Zoro and Kuina fought every morning, sometimes more than once, and Kuina won every time. It had been going on so long that Mina said the count out loud sometimes without anyone asking — six hundred, eight hundred, somewhere past a thousand — the way you'd read off a price. Sanji didn't believe it was real until he'd done kitchen chores at the same hour enough mornings in a row to hear it for himself. Same thud. Same yelp. Same again. After a while it stopped being strange and turned into just another sound the dojo made, like the rooster or the well pump.

He still didn't get it. 

Zoro lost before breakfast. He lost in the yard with dew still on the ground and steam still rising off the kitchen roof. He lost with one sword in each hand. He lost fast enough that the younger students stopped pretending they hadn't come outside just to watch to him fall. 

Kuina stood across from him with one wooden sword in her hand. Zoro was on his back. Again.

Sanji stood near the kitchen door with a bucket in one hand and a cloth in the other. Hana had told him to scrub the low shelf before the rice went on. The shelf could wait. Zoro had shouted for Kuina before the sun cleared the wall, and Sanji had looked because noise meant something was happening.

Zoro rolled to his feet. "Again."

Kuina lowered her sword. "Breakfast."

"Again first."

"You lose when you're hungry."

"I'll lose faster if I'm full."

"You'll lose either way."

Zoro pointed a sword at her. "Shut up and fight."

Kuina's mouth twisted. "You talk big for somebody who's on the ground all the time."

"I'm standing now."

"You won't be soon." She said it like she was telling him the weather.

Sanji watched her feet. Kuina didn't waste steps. She stood loose and ready. Her hands were smaller than Zoro's. Her arms were thinner. She looked like a village girl with a wooden sword and sweat at her temples.

Zoro looked like a problem trying to turn itself into a storm.

Kuina beat him anyway.

The next match lasted longer. Zoro came in hard, low, angry. He tried to press her back toward the rack. Kuina stepped away before he could trap her. Her wooden blade hit his wrist, then his shoulder, then the side of his head.

Zoro cursed and fell to one knee.

Kuina tapped the point of her sword against his chest. "Dead."

Zoro scowled. "I wouldn't die from that."

"Yes, you would."

"No, I wouldn't."

"You're dead and arguing."

"I'm not dead."

Kuina hit him on the head.

Zoro yelped.

"Now you're extra dead."

The younger students laughed. Zoro lunged at them and they scattered. He chased the wrong boy for three steps, turned, spotted the real one hiding behind the practice post, and yelled, "I knew you were there!"

"You didn't," Kuina said.

"I did!"

Sanji turned back into the kitchen before he could grin.

Hana looked at him over the rice pot. "They do that every morning."

"Why?"

"Because Zoro wakes up."

Sanji took the cloth to the low shelf and started scrubbing. "She always wins?"

"As far as I know."

He scrubbed a mark out of the wood. It took three passes. "So why's he keep asking?"

"Because he's Zoro."

People here used that as an answer too much.

Sanji didn't get it. In his head, training had a point — you found what you were bad at, you fixed it, or you stopped doing it and found a different, better way. Losing to the same person every single morning should've taught Zoro something by now. Pick easier fights. Get smarter. Stop walking into the same wall. Instead Zoro just picked himself up and walked into the wall again, same stupid fire in his eyes as the first time.

It didn't make sense. Sanji watched every morning like it might start to.

By midday Zoro had lost four more times. No one punished him for it. The younger students watched him like losing to Kuina still made him bigger than they were. Koushirou fixed his grip once and told him to breathe through his nose instead of choking on his temper.

"I know!" Zoro snapped.

Koushirou only said, "Then do it."

He lost again.

Sanji set bowls on the shelf, one by one, and tried to make the number mean something. It didn't.

After lunch, the kitchen got hot. Hana had Sanji rinse greens and carry water. He restacked them once because the bottom leaves were getting crushed. Hana saw and didn't say anything, which somehow felt worse than being told to fix it. Mina asked if he knew how to cut them. He said no. Hana handed him the knife and told him to trim the stems.

His hand closed around it before his head could catch up. The blade was small, sharper than it looked, with a nick near the base that snagged a little each time he moved it. He cut one stem, then another. For a while the world shrank down to green stems and the sound of the knife. Tap. Tap. Tap. 

"You’re in here again."

Sanji's knife stopped. Kuina stood in the doorway, dirt on one knee, sword over her shoulder.

"Hana needed help," Sanji said.

“You were in here yesterday, too.” 

"Hana needed help yesterday."

Hana lifted both hands. "Leave me out of it."

"Hana doesn't need help every day." She watched him cut another stem. "You just like it."

Sanji's knife didn't stop. "It's stems."

Kuina came closer and looked at the board. "Do you cook or not?"

"No."

"Then stop making that face."

Sanji cut another stem. "What face?"

"The one Hana makes when Zoro ruins something."

"I don't make faces."

"You do." Kuina leaned against the table. "You're fast, though."

Sanji frowned at her. "Shouldn't you be beating Zoro?"

"Already did."

"Only five times today."

Kuina's brows went up. "You counted?"

"No."

"You did."

He cut another stem. "He's loud."

"He's always loud."

"He's stupid."

"Yeah."

"He keeps losing."

"Yeah."

"Why?"

Kuina looked at him like he was the slow one. "Because he hasn't won yet."

"That's what losing means."

"No. Losing means you lost that fight."

Sanji cut a stem too hard and hit the board. He looked at her. Sharp face, proud, a little dirty from practice. She wasn't trying to sound smart. She just sounded annoyed that he was making an easy thing complicated.

"In my family," Sanji said slowly, "failure has a cost."

Kuina's mouth turned down. "Here, too."

"What cost?"

"You lose."

"That's all?"

"What else should there be?"

Sanji thought about straps. Rods. Needles. Judge's eyes behind glass. His brothers laughing while he tried to stand. He cut the next stem carefully. "Nothing."

She didn't believe him. He could tell. She glanced toward the yard, where Zoro's voice carried through the window.

"Kuina! Fight me!"

She rolled her eyes. "See?"

"You'll win," Sanji said.

"Yeah."

"Then why go?"

She lifted the sword off her shoulder. "Because he asked." And she left before he could say anything back.

"They're close to two thousand," Mina said.

Sanji looked at her. She ducked her head and went back to the basin.

Hana stirred the pot. "Zoro's been counting."

Outside, Zoro bounced on his feet with both swords ready. Students were already gathering. Koushirou came to the open side of the hall, hands folded into his sleeves.

Two thousand fights. Sanji had known men who hadn't lived that long. He set the knife down and went to the doorway.

Kuina stopped across from Zoro.

"This is it," Zoro said.

"You say that every time."

"This time's different."

"You say that, too."

"I mean it."

"You always mean it."

His eyes flashed. "You scared?"

"Of you?"

The watching students made a low sound. Zoro grinned viciously.

Sanji had seen that look before, on soldiers right before a fight, but there was no bloodlust in it. No desire to hurt for the sake of hurting. He just wanted to win so badly it could be felt from across the yard.

Koushirou raised his hand. The yard went still. "Begin."

Zoro moved better than he had that morning. Sanji saw it right away — his feet set stronger, his first cut wasted less motion. He tried to close too fast, caught himself, and changed angle instead. Kuina's wooden sword met his right hand, then slipped clear before the left could trap her.

Zoro pressed. Kuina gave ground. The students gasped.

Sanji watched her feet. She'd chosen to give that ground. Zoro didn't see it. He thought he'd forced her back, and his shoulders rose with the thought — pride, or hope, or both — and his guard dropped a hair too low.

Kuina struck. Her blade hit the left-hand sword and knocked it aside. Her foot stepped inside his stance. Her shoulder touched his chest, light as a door closing. Her sword came up under his guard and stopped at his throat.

Zoro froze. The whole yard held its breath.

"Dead," Kuina said.

He spat the sword into his hand. "Again."

"Zoro," Koushirou said.

"Again!"

Kuina lowered her blade. "That was two thousand."

Zoro stood there with his hands locked around his swords and his jaw tight. His eyes shone, but he didn't cry. Not then.

Sanji looked at the students. They knew what the number meant. Something older than his own few days in this place. Something Zoro had carried around in his head and thrown himself at every single morning.

Zoro turned on Koushirou. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why can't I beat her?"

Kuina's hand tightened on her sword.

"You're younger," Koushirou said.

"That's stupid. I beat adults."

"You do."

"Then why?"

Koushirou didn't answer right away. His face held no anger, just something Sanji didn't want to put a name to.

Kuina looked away first.

"Don't make that face," Zoro said.

"I'm not making a face."

"You are."

"Shut up."

"You're being weird."

"You're the one yelling."

"I lost two thousand times!"

"I know!"

Their voices cracked through the yard.

"Enough for now," Koushirou said.

Zoro looked ready to argue. Then he turned and stormed off, swords in both hands. No one followed.

Supper felt wrong. Zoro didn't show up at first. Kuina sat in her usual spot and ate without looking at the empty place beside her. The other students whispered until Koushirou told them to stop.

Zoro came in late, dirt on his knees, a new bruise blooming on his cheek. He sat hard, took the bowl Hana handed him, and ate too fast.

Kuina didn't tell him to slow down. Sanji noticed. Zoro noticed, too. "What?"

"Nothing," Kuina said.

"You always say something."

"I'm eating."

"You're being weird."

Her chopsticks stopped. "You keep saying that."

"Because you are."

Sanji looked down at his rice. Something was happening in this room that wasn't going to happen with swords.

Kuina set her bowl down and stood. "I'm done."

"You didn't finish."

"I said I'm done." She left. She hadn't looked at Sanji once during supper, which was the first time she hadn't.

Zoro stared after her. He pushed his own bowl away and started to stand.

"Zoro," Koushirou said. "Let her be."

Zoro's fists clenched. For once, he did what he was told.

Later, when the lamps were low and the dojo had gone quiet, Sanji woke to the absence of something — Zoro's mat was empty.

He sat up. The other boys slept on around him. Nobody else moved.

He could've laid back down. Zoro leaving wasn't his problem. 

He still got up, moved through the hall, and slid the yard door open. Moonlight shone on the practice floor. Voices came from the far side of the yard. Sanji stepped into the wall's shadow. Kuina stood near the gate, a real sword in her hand. Zoro faced her with two real blades in his own hand.

Sanji's whole body went tight. Real blades changed everything. They didn't stop at bruises unless the hand behind them stopped first.

"You said real swords," Kuina said.

"Yeah."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"You scared?"

"No."

"You look scared."

"I'm not."

"You should be."

Zoro bared his teeth. "So should you."

Her mouth twitched — something close to a smile, small and gone fast. "You're stupid."

"You keep saying that."

"You keep proving it."

Sanji stayed in the shadows. He should stop this. He should wake Koushirou. He should do nothing and just watch how they fought when the blades could actually cut. Every answer came and went without him picking one.

They fought.

It was nothing like the morning matches. Zoro attacked hard but carefully this time — he knew the edge could open skin now. Kuina met him with a focus that made her look older, until Sanji caught her bare feet in the dirt and the catch in her breath every time steel rang on steel. Nobody had ordered this. There was nothing to take, nothing to report. They were just out here in the dark because they wanted to be. 

Zoro pressed. Kuina gave ground, then stopped giving it. They came together hard, blades ringing, and then both of them were in the air — Sanji didn't fully track how — clashing once, twice, three times before Zoro's sword spun out of his grip and he hit the ground. 

Kuina brought her sword down in one sharp motion and planted it in the dirt beside his ear.

Zoro went very still.

"That makes two thousand and one," she said, still breathing hard. "I win."

“Damn it!” Zoro's fist hit the dirt at his side. "Again.”

"No."

"Again."

"No."

"Again!"

"I said no!"

His voice cracked. "I can't lose again!"

Kuina looked down. Sanji saw her hand shake, just once, around the hilt.

"I'm a girl," she said.

"So?"

Her face twisted. "So you'll get stronger. Bigger. Everyone says so. Father says so, too. One day you'll pass me 'cause you're a boy, and everyone'll act like it was always gonna happen."

Zoro looked baffled first, angry second. "That's stupid."

"It's true."

"No, it's not."

"You don't know."

"I know I lost two thousand and one times!" Zoro threw one sword down. "Don't say I'll beat you 'cause I'm a boy. I'll beat you 'cause I beat you."

Kuina just stared at him.

He pointed the other sword at her. "And you're gonna keep trying, too. I'm gonna be the greatest swordsman in the world. You're gonna try for it, too. So don't quit before I beat you."

She looked at him for a long time. Then she laughed — strange, wet, almost angry. "You're so stupid."

"Stop calling me stupid!"

"You are."

"You're annoying!"

"You're worse!"

They stood there under the moon, both breathing hard, swords still in hand, arguing like the real blades meant less than the words did.

Sanji watched from the shadows and felt something tighten in his chest.

Kuina had just been told her body had already picked her future for her. Sanji knew that feeling from somewhere else. His body had been wrong, too, once — soft skin, soft bones, soft heart, and Judge had called every bit of it failure. Then the scientists fixed it for him, because he hadn't been born the kind of son his father wanted. Nobody called him soft now. But there was no lab for what Kuina had. No needle that would make her taller, no machine that would even the fight. Whatever was wrong with her, by Vinsmoke science, couldn't be cut out and replaced.

Zoro didn't seem to think that mattered. Sanji didn't get why. Some small, useless part of him wanted to.

Zoro held out his hand. Kuina looked at it, then took it. "Promise?"

"Promise."

Their hands held tight.

Sanji stepped back from the wall before either of them could see him there. He went the long way around, past the water jars, and nearly walked into Kuina coming the other direction with a cloth in her hand. She'd been crying, or close to it. She saw him see it and her chin came up at once.

"Say anything," she said, "and I'll hit you."

"I wasn't going to," Sanji said.

She looked at him for a moment, measuring. Then she looked away, toward the yard where Zoro still was. "He's going to keep asking."

"I know."

Kuina pressed her mouth flat. Something moved across her face that wasn't quite anger and wasn't quite grief. "Good," she said, like she'd decided something. She went past him without another word, back toward the house.

Sanji watched her go. He didn't know what she'd decided. He didn't think it was his to know.

Inside, the hall smelled like wood, oil, and old dust. His hands had gone cold. He checked his palms for blood out of habit and found none. He went back to his mat.

Zoro came in later, hit his shoulder on the doorframe on the way past, muttered at it, then stepped over sleeping bodies and dropped onto his own mat.

Sanji kept his eyes shut.

"You awake?" Zoro said.

He didn't answer.

"Sanji."

He opened his eyes. "What?"

Zoro turned his head. Moonlight caught one side of his face. "You saw?"

Sanji looked at him.

"You did."

"Yes."

"You gonna tell?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"It's not useful."

Zoro went quiet, then said, "I'm gonna beat her."

"I know."

"No, you don't."

"You say it all day."

"That's different."

"How?"

"It just is."

Sanji thought about Kuina's hand shaking around the hilt. Zoro's hand held out anyway. The word promise sitting between them like something sharp.

"You lost again," Sanji said.

"Yeah."

"Two thousand and one."

Zoro went still, then turned fast. "You counted?"

"You did."

For a second Zoro looked younger than ten. Then he rolled onto his side, away from Sanji. "Shut up."

Sanji watched his back for a while.

Zoro would wake up tomorrow and ask to fight her again. Kuina would win again. They'd both keep counting, because the number meant something Sanji still didn't get.

He thought about being called a failure himself — more times than he could count, by people whose word mattered more than anyone's word here ever would. He'd stopped being a failure by deciding not to care about anything enough to fail at it. That had worked. Whatever Zoro and Kuina were doing instead, Sanji didn't understand it.

He pressed his hands flat under the blanket until his thoughts settled. Then, he went to sleep.

Morning came. The kitchen fire lit before the sky had gone pale. Hana's steps moved through the back hall. The rice pot knocked once against the stove. A rooster called somewhere in the village.

Sanji opened his eyes before the other boys. He hadn’t slept well. He kept thinking about Zoro leaving. Zoro coming back. The soft ring of real swords under the moon. Kuina's voice saying she was a girl like it was a wound someone kept pressing. Zoro saying he'd beat her because he beat her. A promise.

Sanji lay on his mat with his back to the wall and watched Zoro sleep. A bruise darkened near his jaw. His hand had a thin cut across the knuckles. He looked like a boy who had lost two thousand and one times and still thought the next fight belonged to him.

Sanji didn't understand him.

He got up before anyone could see him watching. He went to the kitchen because Hana would need the water carried. The path through the hall had become easy in his head. He knew this place too well already.

Outside, the air felt cool. The yard was empty. Sanji filled the buckets at the well and carried them back. When he passed the practice yard, he looked toward the gate. Kuina wasn't there like she'd normally be. He told himself it was early and kept walking.

Sanji brought the water in. Hana put him to work washing greens. Mina came in yawning and got scolded for rubbing her eyes with kitchen hands. The rice went on. Miso soup went on. Eggs were taken from the basket. The morning became steam and salt and wood smoke.

Zoro abruptly burst through the kitchen door with his hair worse than usual and his shirt tied wrong. "Did I miss breakfast?"

Hana lifted a spoon. "Out."

"But I'm hungry."

"Wash first."

"I washed yesterday."

Sanji looked at him.

Zoro saw it. "What?"

"That isn't how washing works."

"It should count."

"It doesn't."

Hana pointed the spoon harder. "Wash."

Zoro groaned and left. Two steps later, he turned the wrong way.

Mina called, "Washroom's the other way!"

"I knew that!"

Sanji turned back to the greens. He wanted to grin. He pressed it flat.

Breakfast was loud. Zoro ate like an animal. Kuina's place stayed empty. At first, Sanji only noticed because Zoro had no one to kick him under the table when he reached for too much food. Then he noticed because the room had a small gap in it.

A missing bowl. A missing sword by the door. A missing voice telling Zoro he was stupid.

Zoro noticed, too. He looked at the empty place once, then again. "Where's Kuina?"

Koushirou's chopsticks paused. Only for a breath. "She's helping inside." 

Zoro frowned. "She's missing practice."

"She'll practice later."

Zoro accepted that because he wanted more rice. Sanji didn't.

Koushirou's voice had been too even. Germa voices did that when something had already happened and no one had been told where to stand.

Sanji looked toward the hall that led deeper into the house. No one came through it. The kitchen door stayed open. Hana moved with her normal speed, but her mouth had gone thin. Mina washed cups with too much care.

Something had happened.

Sanji ate the rest of his rice. He didn't ask. Questions put a person in the answer.

After breakfast, the yard filled. Students lined up. Zoro stood near the front, wooden swords ready, and kept looking toward the house. Kuina still didn't come.

Koushirou led practice. His voice stayed calm. Step. Strike. Turn. Again. The students followed. Zoro's arms moved harder than the count. He put more force into each swing, as if he could make Kuina appear by being louder than her absence.

The morning stretched past breakfast, past the first water break, into the kind of heat that made the practice yard smell like dust. Still no Kuina. Still Koushirou's voice, even and calm, counting them through forms like nothing was wrong.

Sanji watched from the kitchen door with a tray of cups in his hands.

A woman from the village came through the side gate. She moved fast, then slowed when she saw the students. Koushirou went to meet her. They spoke too low for Sanji to hear. The woman's hands twisted in her sleeves.

Koushirou bowed his head. The woman covered her mouth. Sanji set the tray down. Hana came up behind him and stopped.

Koushirou turned back toward the yard. "Practice is done for now.”

The students broke rank in a mess of confused feet and voices.

Zoro stepped forward. "What? Why?"

Koushirou looked at him. The yard went quiet.

Sanji knew then. He knew before the words. He had known death in halls and labs and burned villages. It changed the air. People held their hands wrong. Adults looked at children as if the world had become too large. Voices softened because they had no use left.

"Zoro, come with me," Koushirou said.

Zoro's face twisted. "Why?"

"Come."

"Is Kuina in trouble?"

Koushirou didn't answer.

Zoro looked around as if someone else would. His eyes passed over the students, Hana, Mina, Sanji. He looked annoyed first. Then angry. Then afraid, though he didn't seem to know it.

"Sensei," he said.

Koushirou held out one hand.

Zoro didn't take it. He walked.

Sanji stayed by the kitchen door. No one told him to follow. So he didn't.

The dojo became strange after that. Students were sent away from the yard. Some were told to go home. Some cried because they knew something had happened but hadn't been told what. Hana took bowls from the shelf, then put them back. Mina stood in the kitchen with both hands in dishwater and tears running down her face.

Sanji went to the back hall because no one stopped him. He heard voices. Koushirou speaking low. Zoro shouting, "No!" One word. Again. "No!"

Sanji stopped. Zoro's voice broke through the house. It was too loud. Too raw. Shouting couldn't change what had already happened. Still, Zoro shouted. "No! She promised!"

Someone tried to speak. Zoro shouted over them. "She promised!"

Sanji stepped back from the wall. His mother had died in a bed. Quiet. Pale. Her hand light against his hair when she had enough strength. He remembered being pulled from the room after. He remembered Reiju's face. He remembered Judge walking past him later like nothing in the world had changed.

He hadn't shouted. He didn't think he had. Maybe he had cried. Maybe he had been too small to stop. The memory had soft edges where pain had eaten it.

Zoro had lost people, too, somewhere further back than Sanji knew about. A mother, maybe. Whoever had raised him before the dojo did. Zoro had never mentioned it. Whatever it was, it had happened when he was too young to remember much. This loss was different. This one Zoro had watched happen. 

The mouse had made a small sound.

Sanji pressed both hands flat at his sides.

Hana found him in the hall. Her eyes were red. "Sanji."

He looked at her. She opened her mouth, then closed it. For a moment, she seemed to think about touching his shoulder. She didn't.

"Kuina fell," she said.

Sanji stared at her.

"On the stairs." Hana's voice shook. "She hit her head."

Words came in pieces. Small pieces. Useful pieces. Fell. Stairs. Head. Dead, though Hana hadn't said it yet.

"She was strong," Sanji said.

Hana's face folded. "She was."

Sanji waited for the rest. There was no rest. None of it — the strength, the skill, two thousand and one wins — mattered to a wrong step on a staircase. Kuina had beaten Zoro under moonlight with real steel in her hand. Now she was gone because she'd missed a stair.

It made no sense. It made perfect sense. Bodies broke. Sanji knew that better than most.

He walked back to the kitchen because standing in the hall had no use. Food still had to be made. People would need to eat. Even if they didn't want to. Especially then. 

He thought about Kuina leaning against the table watching him cut stems. You just like it. She'd said it the way she said everything — like it was obvious, like there was nothing wrong with saying it out loud. She hadn't meant anything by it. That was what had stuck. 

Hana followed him after a while. She didn't ask him to leave. They worked.

Mina cried into the dishwater until Hana sent her to sit down. Sanji took the knife and cut what needed cutting. He scraped fish bones for broth. He washed rice until the water ran pale. He kept his face empty.

Hana watched him once. Sanji kept cutting. The knife didn't shake.

By afternoon, the dojo filled with people. Villagers came first. Then older students. Then parents with children who had trained with Kuina. Their voices were low. Too low. They brought cloth, flowers, food, tea leaves, small things Sanji didn't know what to do with. People bowed. People cried. People held one another. No one knew where to put their hands.

Zoro didn't come out.

Koushirou came and went. His face stayed calm, but his eyes looked far away. He thanked each person who came. He bowed. He gave orders in a soft voice. He stood straight. Sanji watched him from the kitchen.

Koushirou had lost his daughter. He still told Hana where to place the tea. Sanji didn't know if that made him strong or broken.

Near sunset, Hana gave Sanji a tray. "Take this to the small room."

Sanji looked at it. Tea. Rice. Soup. A little fish. One bowl. "Zoro?" he asked.

Hana nodded.

Sanji almost said no. Instead, he took the tray.

The small room was dim. The garden door was open, and evening air moved through it. Zoro sat on the floor with his back to the wall and his knees pulled up. His wooden swords lay beside him. He didn't look at the tray. Sanji set it on the low table.

Zoro's face was red and wet and strange. He looked younger than ten. His hair fell into his eyes. His hands were closed tight enough to make his cut knuckles white.

Sanji stood beside the table.

"Go away," Zoro said.

Sanji should have. He didn't. "Hana said to eat."

"I don't care."

"Your stomach cares."

Zoro lifted his head. His eyes were wild. "Shut up."

Sanji looked at him.

Zoro's teeth clenched. "She promised."

Sanji said nothing.

"She promised," Zoro said again, and the second time his voice broke. "We were gonna… one of us was gonna…"

His hand slammed into the floor. The bowl jumped on the tray. Sanji caught it before the soup spilled.

Zoro stared at his hand on the bowl. Sanji set it down.

For one second, he thought of telling Zoro the dead were gone. The dead didn't answer. The dead didn't care if boys shouted. He thought of saying what he knew because it was true and hard and useful.

Then he thought of Sora eating burned bread and smiling. He thought of the mouse beside the plate.

He said nothing.

Zoro wiped his face with his sleeve and made it worse. "Why?"

Sanji looked toward the garden. "She fell."

"I know she fell!"

Sanji's jaw tightened. Zoro looked at him like he wanted to hit something and Sanji had come close enough. Sanji would let him try if he had to.

Zoro pulled his knees tighter to his chest instead. "She beat me."

"Yes."

"Two thousand and one."

"Yes."

"I was gonna beat her."

Sanji looked back at him. "I know."

"No, you don't!" Zoro shouted. "You don't know anything!" His breath caught hard on the way back in, and what came out next was smaller, like he didn't want it heard at all. "She was supposed to beat me first. Everybody kept saying she'd lose once I got bigger. Like it was already decided. Like nothing she did mattered. She was gonna prove that wrong." His voice cracked apart on the last of it. "She didn't even get a chance to."

The words hit the room and fell.

Sanji stood still. He thought of the lab. Of Judge. Of Sora's empty bed. Of the mouse. Of the ship he had wanted to swim to. Of the sea under stars.

Zoro was right.

Sanji didn't know this. Not this way. He knew death as silence. He knew death as a thing to bury before it made him weak. He knew death as the end of a problem or the start of punishment.

Zoro was holding it with both hands and refusing to let it go.

"No," Sanji said. "I don't."

Zoro looked at him. The anger in his face faltered.

Sanji nodded once toward the tray. "Eat later, then."

He left the room before Zoro could answer.

The funeral was the next day.

The sky was pale. The village came in quiet lines. Students wore plain clothes. Koushirou stood near the front, holding himself still. Zoro stood near him, fists clenched, eyes fixed on the ground.

Sanji stood at the back. He didn't belong with the family. He didn't belong with the students. He didn't belong with the villagers. He had known Kuina for days. She had called him weird, watched his hands, and beaten Zoro more times than Sanji could count. 

Now she was still.

Sanji looked once and then away.

People cried. Children cried hardest. Adults tried to cry without sound and failed. Hana kept wiping her face with her sleeve. Mina held both hands over her mouth. Koushirou spoke, but Sanji heard only parts. Daughter, student, skill, kind heart, dream.

Kind heart.

Sanji thought Kuina would have hated that being the part of her named out loud. She hadn’t been kind to him. She had been accurate, which was different, and harder, and he thought she would have preferred being remembered for that. 

Zoro made no sound. His face was tight and white. His eyes stayed on the ground until Koushirou brought out a sword. The blade was sheathed, but it carried weight. White hilt. Guard neat and simple. A sword cared for by hands that knew its worth. Kuina's sword. The one she had fought Zoro with the two thousand and first time. The last time she would ever fight. 

Zoro's head lifted. Koushirou held it in both hands. The yard seemed to draw in around them.

Zoro stepped forward. His bare feet made no sound on the ground. "Sensei," he said.

Koushirou looked at him.

Zoro's voice shook, but he pushed the words out. "Give me her sword."

A murmur moved through the people. Sanji went still. Koushirou didn't look shocked. Only sad.

Zoro's hands closed into fists. "I'll carry it. I'll get strong enough for both of us. I'll be the greatest swordsman in the world. So…" His voice broke. He swallowed hard. "So my name reaches to Heaven!"

Sanji felt the words enter him and stay. The dead were gone. The living survived by cutting them away. Zoro stood in front of a dead girl's father and asked for the thing she had left behind because he refused to cut her away.

Koushirou looked at Zoro for a long moment, then he held out the sword.

Zoro took it with both hands. He bowed over it. His shoulders shook. No one told him to stop. No one called him weak. No one looked away as if grief made him ugly.

Koushirou set one hand on Zoro's head. Zoro broke, then. Sanji watched from the back while Zoro cried over the sword and the whole village let him.

Something hard pressed up under Sanji's ribs. He looked down at his hands.

His mother's face came to him wrong at first. Blurred. Then her voice. Thank you, Sanji. Then the tray in his small hands, shaking. Then the mouse eating beside the wall.

Sanji's throat closed. He turned away before anyone could see.

Behind him, Zoro was still crying. The sound followed Sanji into the hall, through the back room, past the kitchen, and out to the water jars. He stood there where no one had asked him to be, with the wall at his back and his hands flat against his sides.

Sora was dead. Kuina was dead. The mouse was dead. The dead didn't watch. The dead didn't answer. The dead didn't care.

Sanji had told himself that in the sea under the stars.

Zoro had just told the whole village something else.

Sanji hated him for it. He hated him because Zoro had cried and nothing had come down to crush him. He hated him because Koushirou had touched his head and called no one to drag him away. He hated him because Kuina was gone, and Zoro had made that mean more, not less.

Sanji pressed his palms harder to his sides.

The wall behind him was cool. The air smelled of tea, smoke, and flowers. Somewhere outside, a child sobbed into an adult's sleeve. Somewhere closer, Hana was stirring soup because people would eat after a funeral whether they wanted to or not.

Sanji breathed in. Held it. Breathed out. 

When he could move, he went back to the kitchen. Hana looked at him with red eyes. Sanji picked up the knife and began cutting vegetables for the soup. The pieces came out even.

His hands didn't shake.

The dojo didn't go back to how it had been.

Sanji had known it wouldn't. He had known it before anyone else seemed ready to know. Death stayed in rooms. It changed where people looked. It changed how bowls were set down, how doors were opened, how feet moved over floors that had heard someone laugh the day before.

Kuina's place stayed empty at breakfast. No one moved her bowl there. No one said her name at first. The empty space did that on its own.

That morning Sanji made rice without being asked. He didn't think about it until the pot was already on. He didn't take it off. 

Zoro sat in his usual spot. He had Wado Ichimonji across his lap.

The sword was too real for the table. Too bright, even in its sheath. Too much like the line between before and after. Zoro kept one hand on it while he ate, as if someone might take it back if his fingers left the hilt.

He ate less than usual. Everyone noticed. No one said anything.

Sanji sat across from him with his rice bowl in both hands and watched without seeming to watch. Zoro's eyes were red. His face looked stiff from crying or from trying to stop. His hair stuck up on one side because he hadn't fixed it. He had a bruise on his forehead from something. A wall, maybe. A door. A tree. Zoro could make enemies with any of them.

Hana put more fish near his bowl. Zoro looked at it. For a moment, Sanji thought he would take it. Hunger always found Zoro. It found him faster than sense did.

Zoro pushed the fish back. Hana's face fell. Koushirou lowered his cup. Sanji looked down at his rice.

The body needed food. Grief didn't get a say in that. If Zoro stopped eating, he'd get weak. Weak meant slower, dumber, easier to hurt. Simple.

Sanji ate. The rice was too wet. He said nothing.

After breakfast, Zoro went to the yard. Koushirou told the students to take light practice. Zoro didn't listen. He swung Wado with both hands, one strike after another, until Koushirou crossed the yard and stopped him with one word. "Zoro."

Zoro froze. The blade hung in the air.

"This sword is not for that."

Zoro's hands shook once. "I know."

"Do you?"

Zoro bit down hard. "I said I know."

Koushirou held out his hand.

Zoro went pale.

For a breath, Sanji thought Zoro might fight him. He thought the boy might bare his teeth, pull the sword close, and refuse anyone who came near it.

Instead, Zoro lowered the blade.

Koushirou didn't take it. He only guided Zoro's hands until the sword was sheathed. "Wooden swords for practice," Koushirou said.

Zoro stared at the ground.

"Wado stays with you," Koushirou said. "But you will treat it with care."

Zoro nodded once. His jaw worked.

Sanji stood by the kitchen door with an empty water jar and watched Zoro take up his wooden swords again. Two swords, one in each hand. Wado lay near the wall within reach.

Zoro trained until his arms shook. Then he trained more. By noon, his knuckles had split. By afternoon, he had tripped over the same practice post twice. By supper, he was gone.

No one knew at first. The dojo had too many tasks after a death. Cloth to fold. Bowls to wash. Flowers to clear. People to thank. Students to send home. Koushirou spoke with villagers in the front room. Hana made soup because people kept coming by with low voices and sad faces. Mina cried again over the pickles and had to be sent outside.

Sanji worked where he was told. He cut vegetables. He carried water. He skimmed the broth. He took bowls from the table and stacked them by size. His hands kept moving. Moving hands didn't think as much.

Near sunset, Hana looked toward the yard. "Where's Zoro?"

Sanji didn't lift his head. "Training."

"I don't hear him."

The kitchen went quiet.

Sanji listened. No thock of wooden swords against posts. No feet on boards. No Zoro yelling at a tree, a bucket, or himself. Only crickets.

Hana wiped her hands on her apron and went to the door. Sanji set the knife down.

Koushirou entered the yard from the front room at the same time. His eyes moved over the practice space. Wooden swords lay near the rack. Wado was gone. His face didn't change much. Sanji saw enough.

"He's wandered off," Hana said.

Koushirou turned toward the gate.

"He went toward the back path," Sanji said.

Both adults looked at him.

Sanji looked at the cutting board. "Earlier."

Koushirou's gaze stayed on him. "How much earlier?"

"After the third time he missed the left post."

Koushirou turned to Hana. "I'll go."

Sanji heard the weight in the words. Koushirou had just buried his daughter. He shouldn't have to go looking for a lost boy in the dark on top of that. 

Koushirou turned toward the gate. He said something low to Hana and she went with him, both of them moving toward the front of the dojo and the village.

Sanji waited until their footsteps faded. He went into the kitchen, found the cloth in the kitchen drawer where Hana kept it and the bamboo cup with the fitted lid. Then he went to the dining hall and packed what little was leftover on the table: rice balls, dried fish, soup still warm in its pot. Then he was out the back gate before anyone came to look for him.

The path ran past the old stump, then split near three trees grown close together. Sanji had been trained to track on worse ground than this. Zoro had stepped in soft mud and left everything: bare feet, one toe dug deeper where he had turned, the drag of a sword sheath along the ground. Sanji followed. 

The air cooled as the sun went down. Trees thickened near the edge of the village. Birds moved in the leaves. Somewhere to the left, water ran over stones. The grave road led north, up a small rise. Zoro had gone east, then south, then east again. Away from the grave. Toward the fishing sheds.

Sanji stopped at a bend in the path and looked at the marks. Zoro had turned in a circle there, twice, before setting off in another direction.

Sanji kept going. He found Zoro near an old storage shed with a broken roof, half hidden by brush. The shed stood above the shore road, where a narrow path led down to the water. Zoro sat with his back against a tree, Wado across his lap. Two wooden swords sat beside him in the dirt. His head was bowed. For a moment, Sanji thought he was asleep.

Then Zoro said, "Go away."

Sanji stood in the path. "You're at the fishing sheds."

"I know."

"I thought you were going to her grave."

Zoro's shoulders went tight.

Sanji looked at the road, the trees, and the slope. "It's north."

"I know."

"No, you don't."

Zoro lifted his head. His face was wet.

Sanji had seen blood on faces. Salt water. Sweat. Rain. Tears from people about to lose everything. Zoro's tears looked worse somehow.

"I said go away," Zoro snapped.

Sanji held up the food bundle. "Hana said to eat."

"I'm not hungry."

"Your stomach doesn't care."

"I don't care."

"Your stomach still doesn't care."

Zoro glared. "You talk too much."

"You get lost too much."

"I'm not lost!"

"You're by the fishing sheds."

Zoro looked past him at the shed. His mouth twisted.

Sanji walked closer and set the food on a flat stone. "The grave is north."

"I know that."

"You went east."

"I was taking a shortcut."

Sanji looked at him.

Zoro looked away first.

A gull cried from the shore. The sound came thin through the trees. Wind moved over the grass and stirred Zoro's hair. Wado stayed across his lap, both hands closed over it.

Sanji sat on the other side of the stone.

Zoro turned back fast. "I didn't say you could sit."

"I didn't ask."

"This is my tree."

"Your village has strange laws."

Zoro scowled at him.

Sanji opened the bundle. The rice balls had kept their shape. The dried fish smelled too salty. The soup was still warm in the bamboo cup, though less than it should've been. Hana had tied the lid well. He set one rice ball near Zoro.

Zoro stared at it. "I said I'm not hungry."

"Eat anyway."

"No."

Sanji looked at him. "If you pass out, someone has to carry you."

"I won't pass out."

"You hit your head on doors."

"I don't hit my head on doors."

"You did yesterday."

"The door moved."

"Eat."

Zoro grabbed the rice ball and took an angry bite. Sanji watched his throat move when he swallowed. Zoro took another bite. His hand shook once, so quick Sanji almost missed it. Almost.

"You cook this?" Zoro asked.

"Hana made it."

"You packed it."

"Hana packed it."

"You brought soup, too."

"Hana also packed it."

"You carried it."

Sanji looked at him. "You want it or not?"

Zoro snagged the soup from the pack as if he thought Sanji might take it back. "Yeah."

He drank too fast, hissed when the heat hit his tongue, and kept drinking anyway.

"Stupid," Sanji said.

Zoro lowered the cup. "You're stupid."

"You burned your tongue."

"It'll heal."

"That doesn't make it smart."

Zoro wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared down at Wado. His fingers moved over the sheath with more care than he used for food, doors, or his own body.

Sanji ate one of the rice balls. The rice was plain. Good enough. It needed a little more salt.

"I was going to her grave," Zoro said.

"I know."

"I took the road."

"You took a road."

Zoro's mouth pulled tight. "I wanted to tell her."

Sanji waited.

Zoro looked at the sword. "I got it."

Sanji knew what he meant. Wado. The promise. The thing Kuina had left behind and hadn't meant to leave.

"She knows," Zoro said, then his face changed. "No, she doesn't."

Sanji's chest tightened.

Zoro's voice went rough. "She's dead. So she doesn't know. She doesn't know I got it. She doesn't know I'm gonna do it. She doesn't know anything now."

Sanji looked at his hands. Here it was. The truth he knew. The dead didn't watch. The dead didn't answer. The dead didn't care.

Zoro had found the same wall Sanji had found after Sora. He had run into it at full speed, and now he was bleeding from a place no one could wrap.

Sanji could tell him yes. He could say dead was dead. He could say promises were for the living because the dead couldn’t hold them. He could say it didn't matter if Kuina knew.

His mouth didn’t move.

Zoro looked up. "Say something."

Sanji looked at him. "What?"

"I don't know."

"Then why tell me to say something?"

"Because you're sitting there."

"That's a bad reason."

Zoro let out a sound that might've been a laugh if it hadn't broken halfway through. He pressed the heel of his hand to one eye.

Sanji looked away.

The sight felt private. More private than wounds. Zoro had cried in front of the village, but this was different. This was smaller. Meaner. A boy by the wrong road, holding a sword, trying to tell a dead girl he had it.

Sanji picked at the edge of his rice ball. "My mother died."

Zoro's hand lowered.

Sanji kept his eyes on the rice. "When I was seven."

The air between them changed. Zoro said nothing.

Sanji hadn't meant to say it. The words had been sitting in his mouth since the funeral. Maybe longer. Maybe since the stars over the sea. He could still stop. He could leave it there. A fact. No more.

"Did you get lost, too?"

Sanji looked at him. "What?"

Zoro's face was still wet, but he looked serious. "When you went to her grave."

Sanji didn't know what to do with the question. "I didn't go."

Zoro frowned. "Why?"

Because Judge wouldn't let him. Because Sora's death had been folded into closed doors and watched halls, and crying near it got noticed by the wrong people. Because after she died, the world had kept moving so fast Sanji had learned to move with it or get crushed. "I wasn't allowed."

Zoro stared at him.

Sanji felt the words spread too far. "I didn't need to," he added.

Zoro's frown deepened. "You just said she died."

"Yes."

"So you needed to."

Sanji looked away. "That doesn't follow."

"Yes, it does."

"No, it doesn't."

"If she died, you go."

"I said I wasn't allowed."

"Then that's stupid."

Sanji's hands curled around the rice ball.

Zoro kept going. "Who doesn't let a kid go to his mom's grave?"

"My father."

Zoro's mouth pressed into a flat line. "Your father’s stupid."

Sanji blinked. The words had no care in them. No weight. No fear. Zoro said them the way he said doors moved and buckets got in his way. Judge's kingdom. Germa's soldiers. The labs. The snails. The raids. All of it made into one blunt word.

Stupid.

Sanji's mouth opened, then closed.

Zoro ate the rest of the rice ball.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

The sun dropped lower. The sky beyond the trees went orange near the sea. The fishing shed cast a long dark line over the grass. Zoro finished the soup and took the dried fish. He chewed slower now.

"Hana will want the cup back," Sanji said.

Zoro nodded.

"You should go to the grave before dark."

Zoro's shoulders went stiff again. "Yeah."

"You'll get lost."

"I won't."

"You will."

Zoro glared. "You gonna take me or just be annoying?"

Sanji stood. "Both."

Zoro rose with Wado held close. He picked up his wooden swords too, tried to tuck all three under one arm with the sheathed sword, and dropped one.

Sanji looked at it.

Zoro snatched it up. "Shut up."

"I didn't say anything."

"You were going to."

Sanji turned toward the road. "North."

"I know."

Zoro started east. Sanji caught the back of his shirt.

Zoro choked. "Hey!"

"North."

"I was checking."

"For what?"

"Stuff."

Sanji let go and walked.

Zoro followed, grumbling under his breath.

The grave road climbed behind the village. It was not far if a person chose the right path. Grass grew high along the sides, and small stones marked older graves near the trees. New flowers had been placed at one grave near the top. Fresh dirt. A plain marker. The place was still too new to look like it belonged with the others.

Zoro stopped before they reached it. Sanji stopped, too.

Zoro held Wado with both hands now, the wooden swords tucked into his belt. "You can go away."

Sanji looked at the path behind them. "You'll miss the way back."

"I won't."

"You will."

Zoro turned on him, eyes hot. "I don't want you standing there."

Sanji looked at him. This, he understood. Some things needed no witnesses. Some wounds were worse when looked at.

He nodded once and moved down the path until the bend hid the grave but kept Zoro's feet in hearing range. He stood with his back to a tree and looked over the village below.

He could see the dojo. Smoke rose from the kitchen. The yard was small from here. The roof sat low between trees. The sea showed past the houses, blue going dark. Somewhere down there, Hana would be setting bowls out. Koushirou would be waiting with his calm face. Mina would be crying into something again.

Sanji listened. At first, only wind. Then Zoro spoke. Too soft for words. Sanji heard the sound, not the meaning. One voice. A boy talking to a dead girl because he needed her to hear him, even if she couldn't.

Sanji looked at the sea instead. He thought of Sora. He tried to picture a grave. A stone. A place where he could stand and say something. The picture wouldn't come.

Germa had walls, labs, halls, beds, doors. It didn't have places for boys to stand with grief and food in their hands.

His throat tightened, but he only breathed.

Zoro came down after the sky had turned purple. His face was still wet. His jaw was set. Wado rested against his shoulder now, and the wooden swords were under his other arm. He looked tired enough to fall over.

Sanji pushed off the tree. "This way."

Zoro looked at him. "I know."

Sanji pointed down the right path. 

Zoro looked to the left. 

Sanji waited.

"I knew that," Zoro said.

They walked back in near dark.

Zoro was quiet for half the trip, which made the road feel wrong. Then he said, "Your mom."

Sanji's shoulders went tight. "What about her?"

"What was her name?"

Sanji's feet stopped.

Zoro walked two steps, noticed, and turned. "What?"

Sanji stared at him. No one had asked him that since she died. People once said Queen Sora. Lady Sora. Your mother if they had to speak of her near him. Judge didn't say her name unless it served something.

"Sora," Sanji said.

Zoro nodded. "Sora." He said it once, plain and rough, and then kept walking.

Sanji stayed still for one breath longer. The name hung in the road after him.

Sora.

Spoken by a stupid boy with no sense of direction, who had never seen Germa, never seen the lab, never tasted the burned bread she had eaten with a smile.

Sanji caught up because leaving Zoro alone in the dark would lead to another search. Only that.

Zoro looked sideways at him. "You can tell her stuff anyway."

Sanji's mouth went dry. "No."

"Yeah, you can."

"She's dead."

"So's Kuina."

"That means she can't hear you."

Zoro's hand tightened around Wado. "Maybe."

"Maybe isn't useful."

Zoro kicked a stone off the path. "I'm still gonna do it."

Sanji looked at him. "Why?"

Zoro's face pulled tight. "Because I want to."

The answer sat there between them.

Because I want to.

Want wasn't a reason, where Sanji came from. It wasn't even a real word, not on its own. It needed a use behind it. Sanji had no use for it. He had no answer at all.

They reached the dojo after the lamps had been lit. Hana came out before they reached the door. Her eyes went to Zoro, then Sanji, then the empty food cloth in Zoro's hand.

"He ate?" she asked.

"Yes," Sanji said.

Zoro held out the food cloth. "Soup was too hot."

Hana took it. "You drank it too fast."

Zoro frowned. "How do you know?"

"Because you're you."

Sanji looked at her. Another answer people used here.

Koushirou stood inside the doorway. Zoro slowed. For one moment, the boy looked like he might speak. Maybe tell him about the grave. Maybe say he had gotten lost. Maybe give back the sword because grief had made it too heavy.

He did none of those things. He bowed his head. Koushirou placed one hand on it. Only for a moment. Zoro's shoulders shook once, then stopped.

Sanji looked away.

Hana handed Sanji the empty food cloth. "Thank you."

Sanji's fingers closed around it. "He was a problem."

"He is," Hana said.

Zoro lifted his head. "I'm standing right here."

"We know," Hana said.

Zoro scowled.

Koushirou's hand rested on his shoulder. "Wash and eat again."

"I ate."

"Eat more."

Zoro went inside. Sanji followed.

The dining area smelled of rice and fish broth. Bowls waited on the table. The dojo was warm with lamp light and low voices. Kuina's place stayed empty. Wado stayed at Zoro's side.

Sanji sat across from him. Zoro ate. Less than before. More than breakfast.

Sanji picked up his own bowl and looked at the rice. It had been kept too long and needed more water. He would fix that tomorrow if Hana let him near the pot.

Across from him, Zoro chewed with his eyes half shut. "Sanji," he said.

"What?"

"If I get lost again, bring food."

Sanji stared at him.

Zoro kept eating. "Not the dry fish. It's too salty."

"You can starve."

"Bring rice."

"You can starve."

Zoro grinned into his bowl.

Sanji looked down before he could smile.

The days after the funeral settled into something that almost looked like normal, if normal could still hold a sword that didn't belong to the boy carrying it.

Wado stayed at Zoro's hip now, even during chores, even when Hana told him three times to set it down before he knocked the dishes. He trained harder than before, not louder, just harder, like grief had found a place to go that wasn't his mouth. He still had nobody to lose to, because there was nobody left, and some mornings he stood in the yard with both wooden swords loose at his sides and didn't swing them at all. 

Sanji noticed. He didn't say anything about it. There wasn't a useful thing to say.

What he did instead was keep his hands busy. Kitchen work. Water carrying. The knife when Hana handed it to him. He didn't think about what any of it meant. He just didn't stop moving, because stopping left room for things he hadn't decided what to do with yet. 

Hana came back from the harbor a little past noon with fish in her basket and something working behind her face.

"Fishermen were talking today," she said, setting the basket on the table. She didn't look at Sanji when she said it, which was how Sanji knew to listen harder. "Said they saw something out past the point this morning. Big. They thought it was a whale at first, till it didn't move like one."

Sanji's hands went still over the cutting board.

"Said it had a shell on it," Hana went on. "Like a turtle, only built up — walls, a roof, like somebody'd put a small castle on an animal's back and made it swim. They laughed about it. Said the sea makes people see strange things."

The knife sat under Sanji's hand without moving.

"Sanji?" Hana said.

He set the knife down carefully, the way he set down everything that could be useful as a weapon if his hand decided something for him before his head did. "Did it stop?"

"They said it kept moving. Didn't come close to land."

"Which way?"

Hana looked at him properly now. "East, they said. Why?"

Sanji didn't answer. He was already thinking about distances, about how a transport snail moved at half the speed of a real ship but covered ground a real ship couldn't, about how "didn't come close to land" only meant today.

Zoro came in from the yard with Wado over one shoulder, caught Hana's face and Sanji's stillness, and stopped in the doorway. "What happened?"

"Nothing," Sanji said.

"You're doing the face."

"I don't have a face."

"You have the face you make right before you lie."

Hana looked between them, then quietly picked her basket back up and found something to do at the stove that didn't require listening, which Sanji understood as its own kind of kindness.

He told Zoro outside, where the words could be smaller. A ship. Far out. Could be nothing. Could be his father's men, checking the coast slow and careful, the way they did when nobody had found a body yet. 

"They're not gonna stop till they're sure," Sanji said. "Either they find proof I'm dead, or they find me."

Zoro's jaw worked. "So what do we do?"

"I leave."

It came out flat, already decided, the way orders came out of Sanji's mouth when he didn't want to think about them twice.

Zoro stared at him. "No."

"If I'm not here, there's nothing for them to find."

"No."

"You're not listening."

"I am. You said you’d leave. I said no."

Sanji's hands curled at his sides. "It's not about you."

"Yeah, it is." Zoro's voice cracked on the word, and he looked furious about it, like crying twice in one season was a personal failure he wasn't going to allow a third time. "You leave, that's it. You're just gone. And I don't get a say."

"It's not about you."

"You keep saying that like it makes it true." Zoro's jaw worked. "You washed up on my beach. You ate my food. You're in my dojo. How is it not about me?"

"Because the danger is mine."

"Then it's mine, too." Zoro said it like it was obvious. "That's how it works."

"That's not how it works."

"It is." He looked genuinely baffled that Sanji didn't see it. "They're the dangerous ones. Not you. You leaving doesn't make me safe. It just means you're gone and they're still out there anyway."

"I don't almost die."

"You washed up half-dead on a beach."

"That was a storm."

"You held your breath for two days. That's not a real thing."

"I'm not like other people."

"I know that," Zoro snapped. "I don't care. If there's danger, I'll get stronger. That's my problem. You don't get to pick it for me."

Sanji didn't have an answer ready, which didn't happen to him often anymore. He looked at the yard instead — the practice posts, the low fence, the kitchen smoke rising soft against the afternoon — all of it ordinary, all of it the kind of thing he'd be leaving for the sea again if his training got its way.

Koushirou found them there a few minutes later, Hana having clearly gone and told him everything in the time it took Sanji to fail to win the argument. He didn't ask what they'd decided. He just said, "You don't have to leave to be safe."

Sanji looked at him. "If they search the village–"

"They're looking for someone who made himself known. You haven't." Koushirou folded his hands into his sleeves. "You stay out of sight. You don't go near the harbor. If anyone comes asking, no one here has seen you. This village is small enough that it's easy."

"And if they ask the other kids?"

"They won't know anything to say." Koushirou's eyes moved briefly to Zoro. "Including this one, if I have to lock him in the storeroom."

"You wouldn't," Zoro said.

"Try me."

Zoro looked unconvinced but didn't push it, which told Sanji something about how seriously he was taking all of it.

Sanji turned the plan over in his head. Hide instead of run. He almost argued. Almost laid out, one reason at a time, why leaving was safer for everyone but him. He looked at Zoro instead. His jaw set like the argument was already over and Sanji just hadn't caught up. "Fine."

Zoro blinked. "Fine?"

"I'll hide. I won't leave."

Zoro's whole face broke into a grin, fast, like he hadn't actually expected to win.

"Don't make that face," Sanji said.

"I'm not making a face."

"You are."

"Shut up."

Sanji almost smiled. He caught it before it reached his mouth, the way he caught most things, but not all the way, not anymore — Zoro saw it and looked pleased with himself for causing it.

That night, Sanji lay on his mat and listened to the dojo breathe around him — Zoro's snoring two mats over, the wind moving the paper screens, night birds calling outside. Somewhere toward the east, a snail-shaped ship was working its way along a coastline, looking for him, and there was nothing he could do about that tonight.

He thought about the egg that morning. About Zoro saying it tasted different, when it wasn't.

He fell asleep before he could decide whether that was true.

The loft above the dojo's storeroom hadn't been used for much besides spare mats and a broken practice rack, and now it was Sanji's, more or less, for as long as his father’s men had reason to ask questions in the village.

The ladder up was steep and creaked on the third rung. Sanji learned to skip it. There was a single high window, shuttered, that let in a stripe of light if he angled it right. Dust sat thick on everything that wasn't moved often. It smelled like old wood and older rope.

He was supposed to stay up there alone during the day, when strangers might pass through. Come down at night, when the gate was barred and the only feet in the yard belonged to people who already knew him.

Zoro lasted one full day on that arrangement before he gave up on it entirely.

"You're not supposed to be up here," Sanji said, the first time Zoro's head appeared through the hatch, Wado strapped across his back at an angle that made the climb look like a bad idea.

"I'm not anywhere."

"That's not how hiding works."

"You're hiding. I'm visiting." Zoro hauled himself the rest of the way up and dropped down across from him, knocking dust off an old mat. "Hana sent rice."

He had, in fact, brought rice, wrapped in cloth, one corner already coming open.

After that, the rule mostly stopped mattering. Zoro came up most mornings with food he'd either made himself – badly – or stolen from somewhere Hana would notice later. He came up at midday, too, sometimes, breathless from the ladder, to report nothing of importance — a chicken had gotten loose, a villager had asked Koushirou something boring, he'd won a match against one of the older students and nobody had been there to see it, which he seemed to consider a personal injustice.

"You're going to get us both caught," Sanji told him, more than once.

"Nobody's looking for two boys in a storeroom."

"They're looking for one boy who washed up from the sea."

"Then it's good there's two of us up here." Zoro said this like it settled something, and went back to picking dust off a mat he'd apparently decided was now his.

After a while he asked, without looking up, "Did you have your own room? Before."

Sanji looked at him. "Yes."

"Big?"

"Yes."

Zoro picked at a thread on the mat. "You miss it?"

Sanji thought about the room. Stone walls. Cold floor. A window three floors up. "No," he said, and found that it was true.

Zoro nodded like that answered something he hadn't known he was asking, and went back to the mat.

One morning Zoro climbed up with two rice balls and handed one to Sanji without asking.

Sanji looked at it. "Why are you giving me this?”

"Hana made extra." Zoro was already eating his. "You gonna take it or not?"

Sanji took it.

"The rice is better when you make it," Zoro said, around a mouthful.

Sanji looked at him. "Hana made what you’re eating."

"Not today's. The other day's."

"I just heated it."

"It was better."

"It was the same rice."

"It tasted different."

Sanji didn't have an answer for that because he didn't know if it was true or if Zoro was just saying things. He'd only added a little water and moved the pot at the right time. That wasn't cooking. That was just not ruining it.

"You should make rice more," Zoro said.

"I'm not your cook."

"I didn't say you were." Zoro finished the rice ball and looked at the other one. "You gonna eat that?"

"Yes."

Zoro looked at it a moment longer.

"Yes," Sanji said again.

Zoro lay back on the dusty mat with one arm over his face. The loft smelled like old rope and warm wood. Outside, whoever had dropped the metal thing picked it up again and dropped it a second time.

"Tomorrow, before you come up here, make the rice again,” Zoro said.

"I'll think about it."

"That means yes."

"It means I'll think about it."

Zoro smiled at the ceiling. Sanji ate his rice ball and didn't say anything else.

It was a pretty good morning.

On the fifth day, someone came looking.

Sanji heard it before Zoro did — boots on the gravel path outside, unfamiliar, too even, a voice asking Koushirou something in the front yard that carried just enough for the words boy and storm to reach the loft. Zoro's head came up fast. Sanji was already moving, flat against the floorboards near the back wall, behind a stack of old practice armor nobody had touched in years.

Zoro dropped beside him without being told, for once getting something right on the first try.

They lay there while the voice in the yard asked its questions. Sanji listened through the floor.

The voice was even, unhurried, with the particular flatness of a Germa field officer running a checklist. Not a traveler. Sanji recognized the register the way he recognized the smell of the lab. He pressed himself flatter against the boards.

Koushirou's voice came back just as even. A quiet village. Mostly fishermen. He didn't know anything about a wreck.

The officer asked about a boy. Blond. Around ten. May have come ashore in the past month.

Koushirou said he hadn't seen anything like that. His voice didn't change at all.

The officer asked if he was certain. Koushirou said he was. He offered the harbor road. He sounded exactly like a man with nothing to hide. Sanji knew how dangerous that was. He'd been trained to find exactly that gap in other people. 

Sanji's hand was already flat against Zoro's chest before he knew he'd moved it. Zoro had gone rigid — not panic, but the particular stillness of someone who had understood, suddenly, that the game had changed weight. His mouth was shut. His eyes were on the ceiling.

The footsteps moved. A pause at the gate. Then they faded down the road.

Sanji counted to a hundred before he let his hand drop.

"That was close," Zoro whispered, much too late to matter.

"You're loud."

"I was quiet."

"You breathe loud."

"Everyone breathes."

"Not like that."

Zoro elbowed him, and Sanji let it land. Neither of them moved from behind the old armor for another several minutes. Sanji spent them thinking about the way Koushirou's voice had stayed level. He had lied to a Germa officer without a tremor in it. For a boy he'd known only a month.

Sanji didn't know what to do with that. He pressed his back harder against the wall and didn't move until Zoro did. 

The word came four days later, through Hana, who'd had it from a fisherman, who'd had it from someone at the harbor: the strange ship was gone. Headed east, same as it came, no warning, no second sweep through the village. Whatever they'd decided, they'd decided it was enough.

"For now," Koushirou said, when he told them, which was the part that mattered.

After that, the dojo changed in small ways. The younger students stayed inside the gate. Hana sent Mina with one of the older students for water. Koushirou stood longer at the front of the yard when people passed on the road. Nobody said Germa. Nobody said Sanji’s name either. 

Sanji came down from the loft that afternoon for the first time in days. The yard looked the same. Zoro was hitting the practice post while other students ran drills. The danger had only stepped back. It hadn't left. But Sanji stood there and watched Zoro until Hana called them both in for supper. 

Some nights he lay awake and listened to Zoro breathe two feet away — easy, unguarded, the kind of breathing you only had if no one had ever taught you to listen for danger in your sleep.

Sanji knew what his brothers did with things people cared about. They found the soft place and hit there first. It worked better than a blade. He hadn't had a place like that since Sora. Since the mouse. That had been safer. If he didn't care, there was nothing for anyone to grab.

Now there was a boy two feet away who slept like the world couldn't touch him. Who'd punched a wall over Sanji vanishing into the sea. Who'd shoved a crushed rice ball into his hand like that fixed anything, and somehow it had.

If his father ever learned what Zoro was to him — not suspected it from a soldier's report, but actually knew it — Zoro stopped being a village boy with no sense of direction. He became a reason. Something to take and hold until Sanji came back on his own. 

It wouldn't take much. Wado at his hip, easy to spot from any rooftop. The dojo's name, easy enough to find on any map. Sanji had already given them enough just by staying this long. The safest thing for Zoro was for Sanji to stop existing anywhere near him.

He had the bag packed again by the fourth night. He'd hid it in the loft. He was leaving. Going far enough that nobody could ever use a green-haired boy with a dead girl's sword to bring him home.

The ladder creaked.

"Where are you going?" Zoro asked, coming up, Wado strapped to his back.

"Nowhere."

"That's a lie."

Sanji didn't answer.

Zoro climbed the rest of the way up and sat across from him. "You're leaving again."

"Yes."

"Why?"

Sanji looked at the bag instead of at him. "If they ever find out what you are to me–" He stopped. Started over. "They use the things a person can't stand to lose. That's how the Vinsmokes work. They find what's important and they crush it."

"You think I'm weak?"

"I think you're the first thing in three years they could use against me." The words came out rougher than he meant, scraped instead of spoken. "I watched my brothers do it. To grown men who thought they had nothing left to lose. There's always something. Somebody always finds it."

"So you're leaving so I can't be used against you."

"Yes."

"That's the dumbest thing you've ever said." Zoro's voice cracked, same as it had at the funeral, and he looked just as angry about it now. "You're not protecting me by leaving. You don’t get to pick that for me."

"It is when the danger's because of me."

"It's not because of you. It's because of them." Zoro jabbed a finger east – the right way, for once – toward the direction the snail ship had gone, toward Germa, toward everything Sanji had spent years learning to survive. "You didn't choose any of that. You don't get to act like caring about me is the dangerous part. They're the dangerous part. You leaving doesn't fix that. It just means I lose you for nothing."

Sanji's hands curled tighter around the strap. "I'm not supposed to want things."

"Too late."

"And this isn't about wanting. This is about keeping you alive."

"Same thing, the way you're doing it." Zoro leaned forward. "You want me alive. That's wanting something."

Sanji opened his mouth and didn't have anything. He'd been thinking about this for four nights. It had made more sense before Zoro was sitting right there looking at him like that. 

“I don't know how to just stay somewhere,” he said. It came out smaller than he meant. “I only know how to be useful.” 

Zoro looked at him for a long moment. "Then just stay. Figure out how to be useful later."

Sanji laughed — short, broken, more breath than sound, but real. Zoro's eyebrows went up like he hadn't expected it either. He grinned. “You laughed.”

"I didn't laugh," Sanji said.

"You did. I heard it."

"You hear lots of things wrong."

"Not that one." Zoro grinned some more. “I like your laugh.”

Sanji forced his lips together, so as not to give him the satisfaction of doing it again. But he thought about it.

He tried the morning after the loft argument. Woke early, got to the kitchen before Hana, stood in front of the stove. Then stood there too long, and by the time he moved the rice was already burning at the bottom and he scraped it out and left before anyone came in.

The morning after that he didn't try.

The morning after that he did. Not because he'd decided anything. Because Zoro would be hungry and the leftovers were going to be cold again, and his hands already knew what to do even when the rest of him hadn't caught up yet.

Hana found him there when she came in, already moving, already sure of his hands in a way she hadn't seen before. She didn't say anything. She got out of his way and let him work. She left the good pan on the low hook and put the eggs where he'd find them, and didn't mention that she'd done either.

He made more than eggs. Fish, though he burned one side a little. Rice that came out better than the first time but still clumped at the bottom. Greens he wasn't sure about but put on the plate anyway.

Zoro came in halfway through, hair a mess, Wado at his hip. He stopped in the doorway and looked at the stove, then at Sanji.

"Smells good," he said.

"It's an egg."

"Smells like more than an egg."

Sanji didn't answer. He set a bowl down in front of him. "Sit."

Zoro sat. "You're not leaving."

"Not today."

Zoro picked up his chopsticks. His eyes were a little too bright. "That's not the same as not ever."

"No," Sanji said. "It isn't."

It was the truest thing he'd said in weeks, and it didn't scare him the way truth usually did. He'd been delaying leaving because leaving kept being the wrong move. This was different. This was choosing the kitchen, the rice, the bowl in front of him. He sat down across from Zoro, in the kitchen that wasn't his, in clothes that weren't his, in a life he hadn't asked for and didn't fully understand yet, and ate breakfast across from the only person who'd ever told him too late like it was a gift instead of a threat. 

Outside, the village woke up slowly around them, the way it always did, like nothing in the world had almost gone wrong in the night.

Zoro found him after the lunch bowls were put away, later that afternoon.

"Now," Zoro said, from the kitchen door, two practice swords already in hand.

Sanji looked at him. "Now what?"

"You said you'd fight me again."

"I said you'd lose again."

"Will not!"

Sanji looked out at the yard. The afternoon had gone soft and slow, the kind of heat that made the practice posts smell like warm wood. No students around. Hana had gone to the harbor. Koushirou was somewhere in the house.

He should've said no. He knew he’d beat Zoro and for some reason that felt like he was taking someone’s place.

But Zoro was looking at him eagerly, and maybe it was a good thing someone was still around to keep Zoro from getting a bigger head than he already had.

"Fine," Sanji said.

Zoro was already in the yard before Sanji finished wiping his hands.

It was different from the first time. The first match had been a test Sanji passed in under two minutes. This one Zoro made last, which Sanji hadn't expected from someone who spent most of his attention walking into things. He came lower. He switched hands faster. He stopped trying to force through and started waiting for Sanji to move first, which wasn't patience so much as him getting angrier and angrier until staying still felt like the only thing he hadn't tried yet.

Sanji let him try it. He also started slowing down deliberately, the way he hadn't in the first match. Not because Zoro needed the charity — Zoro would've been furious at the charity — but because he wanted to see what Zoro would do with more time, and wanting to see something was different from needing to know it. 

They went three rounds. Sanji won all of them. The third took long enough that Zoro hit the boards and lay there staring at the sky without immediately shouting for another.

Sanji looked down at him. "Done?"

"No." Zoro didn't move. "Give me a minute."

Sanji sat on the edge of the practice floor and waited. The yard was quiet. Somewhere past the wall a bird called once and stopped. Zoro breathed.

"You slowed down," Zoro said, still looking at the sky.

"You noticed."

"Why?"

Sanji looked at the boards. "Fighting you was more interesting that way."

Zoro turned his head. He looked like he was going to argue with that, then didn't. He looked back at the sky instead. "Again tomorrow."

"You'll lose tomorrow."

"Yeah." Easy as breathing. "But I'll be more interesting."

Sanji almost smiled. "Maybe.”

A few days after that, Hana sent the two off with empty baskets to fill with wild mustard, and on the way back they passed two of the younger boys crouched by the fence in the kind of conversation that only happened at age seven or eight, all whispers and wide eyes.

"–and he ate his own leg," one of them was saying. "Right off the bone. 'Cause there wasn't nothing else out there to eat."

"No way."

"Way. My uncle heard it from a guy at the harbor. Fishermen pulled some man off the rocks past the south channel. Half-dead. Whole leg gone below the knee."

"That's so gross."

"I know."

Zoro snorted, hauling his basket higher on one hip. "Bet he just got hurt and they're making it sound cooler than it is."

"Bet you're scared of it," the smaller boy shot back, as the two younger boys joined them.

"Am not."

They argued about it the rest of the way to the gate, Zoro fully committed to the position that nobody actually ate their own leg and anyone who said otherwise was an idiot. Sanji barely listened. Something about it snagged anyway, just for a second — not the gore, just the plain fact underneath it. A man alone long enough, hungry enough, that there was nothing left to use but himself.

He wondered if he could've done that, had he remained at sea after capsizing.

He didn't think about it again after that. Or he told himself he didn't.

Time passed the way it did, too slow some days and too fast the others. Sanji got used to being at the dojo, but he didn't stop waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He checked the harbor road most mornings without making it obvious. A new face in the village, a boat that sat too long at the dock without unloading — he noticed those things the way he noticed loose boards and unlocked doors. Nothing came of it. Days went by, then more days, and the danger stayed where it was: out there somewhere, real but not close enough to act on yet.

So he stayed. One day at a time. He didn't call it a decision.

What he called it was breakfast.

It started because Sanji kept going to the kitchen before anyone else, and Zoro kept following him there. Sanji didn't invite him. Zoro didn't ask. He just appeared in the doorway every morning with his hair worse than the day before and Wado already at his hip, and sat down, and waited. So Sanji made rice. He cracked eggs without thinking about it too hard. He put things in pans. Zoro ate whatever appeared in front of him.

"'S'good," Zoro said one morning, around a mouthful of rice that had stuck to the bottom of the pot.

"It's burned."

"Still good."

"It's not."

Zoro held out the bowl for more.

Hana started coming in later than she used to. She never said why. She just made sure things were where he'd find them — the good pan on the low hook, eggs near the front of the basket — and by the time she arrived, the rice was already on and Zoro was already eating. She'd look at the two of them and say nothing, which Sanji had learned was the loudest thing she knew how to do. He didn't mention it, and she didn't mention it, and somehow that made it easier to keep doing.

He didn't think about whether it would last. He thought about whether to try something other than eggs, fish and rice.

The getting-lost-on-purpose started because of a cat.

Zoro had spotted it on the roof of the storehouse — a big orange one with a torn ear, sitting there like it owned the building. He wanted a closer look. He had some idea that if he got to it first it would probably let him pet it.

"I don’t think cats work like that," Sanji said.

"This one will."

"It won't."

"It might."

They went anyway, which meant leaving through the back gate and taking the long way around the storehouse wall because the front path was too visible from the road. The cat was gone by the time they got there. Zoro decided they should look for it. Sanji said that was stupid. They looked for it.

They didn't find it. They found, instead, a shortcut behind the tanner's shed that Zoro claimed to know about already, and a ditch full of frogs that Zoro immediately wanted to catch.

"Why?" Sanji said.

"Because they're there."

"That's not a reason."

"Yes it is."

Sanji watched Zoro wade into the ditch up to his ankles. "You're going to fall."

"I'm not going to fall."

Zoro fell. He came up with mud on his chin and a frog in each hand, looking pleased about it in a way that made no sense at all. Sanji stood on the bank and watched him do it, and didn't help, and didn't leave either.

They let the frogs go eventually and found a path down toward the old fishing sheds that neither of them had taken before. The path ended at a flat rock above the waterline with a view of the whole western shore. They sat on it for a while without talking.

The sea went out a long way from here. Further than it looked from the dojo yard. Sanji watched it without thinking too hard about what was on the other side of it. Just water. Just the afternoon going gold and flat across the surface.

"Good spot," Zoro said.

"Yeah."

"I'll remember it."

Sanji said nothing to that, because Zoro would absolutely not remember it, and they both knew it, and that was fine.

They went back the wrong way, got turned around twice near the tanner's shed, and arrived at the dojo late enough that Hana made them wash vegetables for supper without the usual argument about it. Zoro complained the whole time. Sanji cut stems and didn't complain.

They went back to the flat rock three more times after that. Zoro found it wrong twice and right once, which he announced as evidence of significant improvement.

Two nights later, Sanji took the bag down.

He did it after the lamps were out, after Hana was gone, after the last student in the dorm rolled over and went still. The bag sat in the loft where he had left it, tucked behind the old armor, half-packed and waiting. Spare clothes. A rice bundle gone hard at the edges. A short length of cord. The knife he used in the kitchen, wrapped in cloth because kitchen knives did not belong in bags unless a person meant to leave.

Sanji held it in both hands for a long moment. Then he climbed down.

The yard was dark. Moonlight made pale lines across the dirt. He knew which boards on the outside steps creaked now and which ones didn't. He knew where Hana set the water buckets, where Koushirou left the rake, where Zoro dropped his sandals because he never put them in the same place twice. He moved through all of it without sound.

The yard smelled of damp dirt and old smoke. The gate was shut, but not locked. It never was. Sanji crossed the yard and put one hand on the wood.

He could leave. Harbor first. Then a boat. If there was no boat, he could wait. If there were guards, he could go around. If Germa came back, they would find nothing here worth stopping for. 

Behind him, someone snored. Sanji went still. It came from the dorm, loud enough to carry through the open window. Zoro, probably. No one else slept that obnoxiously. A second later, there was a thump and a muttered, “Stupid mat.”

Sanji stared at the gate. The smart thing was to open it.

Zoro snored again.

Sanji's hand stayed on the wood. He thought of the harbor road. He thought of Germa sails. He thought of Zoro standing in the yard with Wado at his hip and both wooden swords loose at his sides, not swinging. He thought of Hana saying his name from the kitchen like she expected an answer.

His fingers tightened once.

Then he turned around. He climbed back to the loft and put the bag where it had been. Then he climbed down, returned to the dorm, and lay on his mat with his back to the wall until morning. 

When Koushirou called names after breakfast, he said Sanji's between Zoro's and Mina's. Sanji answered.

The thing about staying one day at a time was that the days stacked up without asking permission.

A month in, the younger students had stopped watching Sanji move through the yard. Hana stopped asking if he needed anything and started telling him when things needed doing, which was a different thing entirely. Koushirou said his name in the morning the same way he said Zoro's, like it just belonged in the list of people who were there.

Sanji still checked the harbor road. He still slept with his back to the wall. He still kept the bag in the loft, not fully packed anymore but not put away either. Just there, in case.

Some nights he lay on his mat and thought about his father the way you thought about bad weather — real, and coming eventually, just not today. The snail ship had moved east and kept moving. The man who'd asked questions in the front yard hadn't come back. It only meant nobody had yet. 

He'd deal with it when it was today's problem.

The cookbook appeared on the kitchen shelf a few weeks later, between the rice jars and the pickle crocks. It was old, the cover soft from handling, the pages wavy at the edges like they'd been near steam for years. Sanji stood in front of it for a moment before he picked it up.

He opened it. The handwriting inside was small and careful, the kind that took time. Recipes for things he hadn't tried. Soup bases that started differently than Hana's. Something on the third page with ginger and soy and a little sugar cooked into pork that made his fingers slow down over the words.

He read it twice. Then he put it back.

He took it down again an hour later.

"What is that?" Zoro said, from the doorway.

"A book."

"I can see that."

"Then why ask?"

Zoro came in and looked over his shoulder. "Are you gonna make that?"

"I'm thinking about it."

"Make it."

"I might mess it up."

Zoro shrugged. "So?"

Sanji looked at him. Zoro looked back, completely unbothered by the possibility of eating something that had gone wrong, which was either very stupid or very useful. Sanji put the book on the counter where he could see it.

It went wrong in two places. The heat was too high and the sugar burned before the pork was done, and he added more soy trying to fix it which made the whole thing too salty. He knew it before he put it on the plate.

Zoro ate the whole thing.

"Well?" Sanji said.

Zoro thought about it with the seriousness he usually saved for fighting. "It's too salty."

"I know."

"But the pork is good."

"The salty part matters."

"I ate all of it."

"Because you eat everything."

"I ate it because it was good," Zoro said, with the same flat certainty he brought to everything. "Make it again."

Sanji took the plate back and looked at what was left. Burned sugar underneath, too much soy on top of that. He already knew what he'd do differently. He wanted to do it differently right now.

"Tomorrow," he said.

"Tonight."

"Tomorrow."

Zoro looked at the empty plate, then at Sanji. "I'll still be hungry tonight."

"You're always hungry."

"Exactly," Zoro said, like that settled it.

Sanji made it again the next morning before breakfast. It came out better. Not right, but better. Zoro ate that too and said so, in the same blunt way, and Sanji stood over the empty pan and thought: I’ll stay one more day, then.

He started on the next page of the cookbook.

By the time the weather turned and cold came in off the water, Sanji had burned through half the cookbook and started on things Hana hadn't taught him.

He made mistakes. He made the same mistake twice on the fish stock and figured out why the second time. He ruined a sauce completely and stood over the pot long enough that Hana came in, looked at it, and left without saying anything, which he'd learned meant it was worse than he thought. He threw it out and started over with different proportions.

Zoro appeared in the kitchen doorway with the frequency of someone who had decided it was part of his daily routine. 

"You're in here again," he said one afternoon, leaning against the frame with Wado at his hip.

"I'm always in here."

"Yeah." Zoro watched him work. "You used to leave more."

Sanji didn't answer that. He was trying to get the heat right on something that needed to reduce slowly, and Zoro talking was not useful.

"Is that gonna take long?"

"Yes."

"How long?"

"Longer if you keep asking."

Zoro dropped onto the floor in the doorway and sat there with his back against the frame, not leaving and not helping, which was his version of patience. After a while he drew Wado partway from the sheath and pushed it back, slow and even, the way he did sometimes when his hands needed something to do without it meaning anything.

Sanji focused on the pot.

"Smells different from the other day," Zoro said eventually.

"It's a different thing."

"Better or worse?"

"I don't know yet."

Zoro considered this. "When will you know?"

"When it's done."

"And if it's bad?"

"Then I'll know what I did wrong."

Zoro drew Wado an inch and pushed it back again. Outside, one of the younger students was running laps in the yard, feet thudding on the packed dirt. The kitchen smelled of ginger and something sharper underneath it that Sanji was still working out.

"You gonna make it again if it's bad?" Zoro asked.

Sanji looked at him. "Yes."

Zoro nodded, like that was the right answer, and his hand stilled on the hilt.

It wasn't bad. It wasn't right either, but it wasn't bad, and Sanji knew exactly what to do differently. He wrote it in the margin of the cookbook in small careful strokes, the way the original handwriting had been, and put it back on the shelf where it lived now.

Zoro ate two bowls and didn't say anything except “Again, tomorrow."

Sanji said he'd think about it.

He was already thinking about it.

Seven years on, the Baratie sat at the end of Shimotsuki's harbor with its windows lit gold against the evening and the smell of frying oil drifting clear out to the breakwater. It wasn't much to look at from the road — squat, wood-sided, a hand-painted sign that needed touching up — but the dining room stayed full most nights, and Zeff liked to say that was the only review that mattered.

Sanji was elbow-deep in a sink of dishes when the kid from the dojo came skidding through the back door, breathless, maybe eleven years old, with a wooden practice sword still strapped to his back like he'd run the whole way without thinking to take it off.

"Sanji-san!" The boy braced both hands on his knees. "Zoro said — he said he was coming here — he left this morning, and he's not–"

Sanji didn't even look up from the pot he was scrubbing. "Let me guess. He's not here."

"No, sir."

"And you've checked the harbor road."

"Twice."

"The hill path."

"That, too."

Sanji sighed through his nose and set the pot down hard enough to slosh water over the rim. He pulled the towel off his shoulder, wiped his hands, and turned toward the kitchen door. "Old man! I'm going to go find the green-haired idiot. Again."

From the back, without even turning around, Zeff barked, "That doesn't get you out of dish duty, eggplant!"

"Yeah, yeah."

Sanji untied his apron, hung it on the peg by the door, and was three steps into grabbing a knife and a hunk of fish before his hands had even fully decided to do it. Ginger, scallion, the last of the rice from the lunch pot — wrapped tight in a cloth, the knot pulled tight and even, because some habits stuck better than others did.

The dojo kid trailed him the whole way out, still talking. Sanji wasn't really listening. He already knew where Zoro would be. He always knew, eventually, even when Zoro himself didn't.

He found him forty minutes later, sitting on the rocks past the old dock, all three swords laid out across his knees like he was taking inventory of them, his hair longer now and the same impossible green, three small gold rings catching the last of the light from one ear. He looked up at the sound of feet on gravel and didn't even have the decency to look surprised.

"You're late," Zoro said.

"You're lost."

"I'm not lost. I'm thinking."

"You think better when you're not lost."

Zoro scowled. Sanji dropped down onto the rock beside him and held out the cloth bundle without comment. Zoro took it, unwrapped it, and started eating before he'd even finished arguing his point.

"The restaurant moved," Zoro said, around a mouthful of rice.

Sanji lit a cigarette and didn't dignify that with anything but a long, slow exhale through his nose. "It's been in the same place for six years."

"It feels like it moved."

"That's not how buildings work."

"Maybe you redecorated."

"You probably walked past it twice."

Zoro chewed, swallowed, and said nothing else on the subject, which was as close to conceding as he ever got.

For a while they just sat there, the tide coming in slow over the rocks below, the same stretch of beach where Zoro had once stood swinging two wooden swords at a post and not even glancing at a half-drowned boy crawling out of the surf. Sanji had thought about that morning more times over the years than he'd ever admit out loud.

"I've been thinking," Zoro said eventually, not looking at him. "About leaving."

Sanji didn't move. "Leaving the island."

"Yeah."

"To get stronger."

"Yeah." Zoro's jaw was tight. "Sensei taught me everything he's got. Past that, I need real fights. Real swords. People who'll actually try to kill me."

"That's a strange thing to want."

"You'd know."

Sanji huffed something that was almost a laugh. He looked out at the water instead of at Zoro, cigarette smoke curling off into the dark. "Makes sense," he said. "Even though I could still kick your ass."

"No, you couldn't." Zoro's mouth pulled into something sharp. "We're even now. Even with that stupid kicking style of yours."

"It's not stupid. It's effective."

"It's a guy who refuses to use his hands."

"My hands are for cooking. Zeff's rule."

"Stupid rule."

"Works for me."

Zoro huffed, and for a second the old rhythm of it — stupid, stupid, stupid, back and forth, neither of them meaning it the way it sounded — settled something in Sanji's chest that had been sitting uneasy since the dojo kid came through the door.

Then Zoro said, quieter, "Come with me."

Sanji looked at him.

"I mean it," Zoro said. "You can cook anywhere. I can fight anywhere. We don't need this island."

For a moment, Sanji actually let himself consider it — really consider it, the way he hadn't let himself want anything out loud in years before this place taught him how. The open sea. A ship he’d chosen himself. Zoro at his back.

He thought about it long enough that Zoro noticed, and didn't push, just waited, which was its own kind of growth for both of them.

"Not yet," Sanji said finally. "I'm not done here. Zeff's still got things to teach me, and I'm not leaving before learning them." 

Zoro nodded slowly, like he'd expected that answer and only half-hoped to be wrong. "Yeah. Figured you’d stay."

"In a couple years," Sanji said. "I'll come find you."

"You don't even know where I'll be."

"You won't know either. You'll be lost." Sanji flicked ash off the end of his cigarette. "I'll just follow the trail of confused islanders giving wrong directions."

Zoro shoved him, not hard. "Shut up."

"I'll find you," Sanji said again, and meant it the way he meant very few things.

Zoro looked at him for a second too long. "I'll hold you to that."

He left on a clear morning, a few weeks later, with a borrowed boat and a bag that looked too small for everything he was carrying away.

The whole dojo turned out to see him off — Koushirou standing straight at the front of it, Hana with a cloth pressed to her face before he'd even untied the rope, half a dozen younger students who'd grown up hearing stories about him losing fights to a dead girl two thousand and one times. Sanji stood at the edge of it all with a wrapped bundle in his hands, the knot pulled tight and even.

"Food," he said, holding it out. "Don't lose it before you eat it."

Zoro took it, weighed it once in his palm, and didn't say anything for a second. Sanji had packed enough rice balls for two days, dried fish, pickles, and the buns Zoro pretended not to like even though he ate them first every time. Too much food, probably. Not enough if Zoro got lost before noon.

The first time, Sanji had followed him for lunch. Now he handed over the food and let him go.

"You tied this right," he said finally.

"I tie everything right. You're the one who never learned."

"I learned plenty."

"Not knots."

Zoro huffed, tucked the bundle into his bag, and then — before Sanji had time to do anything about it — pulled him into a hug. It was stiff and too fast and Zoro's arm caught wrong on one of his swords, and it lasted exactly as long as it took for both of them to realize how unfamiliar it was and pull back at the same time.

"You're such a sap," Sanji said.

"Shut up. I'm not."

"You hugged me."

"That was an accident."

"Your eyes are wet."

"It's the wind."

"There's no wind."

"There's wind somewhere," Zoro said, and turned fast toward the boat before Sanji could press it further, swiping the back of one hand across his face on the way.

Sanji let him have it. He stood at the edge of the dock with his hands in his pockets and watched Zoro climb aboard, fumble the sail twice before getting it right, and push off from the harbor with the look of a man who had absolutely no doubt about where he was going.

He was sailing west.

The island he was going to was east.

Sanji watched the boat cut wrong across the water, drifting further from the route he knew Zoro had marked out on Koushirou's old chart not three days before, and said nothing. Beside him, Hana drew breath like she meant to shout something after him. Sanji put a hand on her arm. "Let him go."

"He's going the wrong way."

"I know."

Hana looked at him, confused, and Sanji just kept watching the small shape of the boat shrink against the horizon, wrong direction and all, sun catching once on green hair and the white of a sail that didn't know any better than its captain did.

He'd be lost again within the hour. He'd probably be lost for years. It didn't matter.

Sanji took one last drag off his cigarette and turned back toward the Baratie. The kitchen would need him. There was prep for the dinner service, and Zeff would already be making noise about it. The dishes from this morning were still in the sink.

He let the smoke go slowly into the morning air and didn't worry about Zoro at all.

Sanji would find him.

End