Chapter Text
Stop me if you've heard this story before, yes? I'd hate to bore you, lovely audience.
Our tale begins in the North Blue. A beautiful ocean, just like all the others. Don't make me pick a favorite among the six of them, please. You'd kill me.
In the North Blue there was a kingdom called Germa. I hate the name, it makes me think of germs, but it's not like I chose it. I'm just the narrator. If it was up to me, I'd be telling a good story. A romantic one, with a dashing, manly hero and a delicate, beautiful damsel for him to save. They'd fall in love and live happily ever after, the way it's supposed to be.
As it is, our hero is a pathetic tryhard and the damsels in this story aren't the love interest. That role belongs to a brute, an idiot, a stubborn soul that will follow you to the ends of the world without hesitating if he's decided to do so. A man that'd never have cared for our pathetic tryhard if he'd truly known him, and for whom our so-called hero will pine after for his whole fucking life. Wish him luck! He'll need all of it and then some! But you shouldn't waste your goodwill on someone like him. You shouldn't—
Ah. There I go.
Forgive me, lovely audience, I'm getting ahead of myself. It's just that I'm frustrated. I wanted to be part of a different story, one I'd enjoy telling. One that'd make people happy and give them hope. What I have to offer you is… this.
Oh, well. Let's continue, at the very beginning.
Germa was a cold place under every meaning of the word, ruled by the sort of man that allows for its existence. Vinsmoke Judge was ambitious, bloodthirsty, and cruel. A piece of shit no matter how you look at it. To him, lives were just another thing to utilize in his plans, something to keep track of in terms of numbers and usefulness. He cared about his kingdom because it allowed him to have power—without subjects, there'd be nothing for him to rule. He cared about his wife because he needed her to carry his heirs—if he could have replaced her for an incubator, he would have done it. His children? Tools to continue waging war, a way to preserve his achievements after he was gone—he'd have preferred to live forever and save himself the trouble of a legacy.
Nothing was sacred in his search for power. He experimented on people, treated his children like test subjects and soldiers, and the world as an extension of his lab.
His oldest was a girl, Reiju. She was beautiful, something she could only thank her mother for. Maybe Vinsmoke Judge had been handsome in his youth, but I wouldn't put my hands into the fire over that. I doubt he was charming at any point of his life either, and I'm certain the only reason he got a wife like Vinsmoke Sora was his position as king. That's the only way men like him get to marry good women.
She was lovely, you know? Kind and brave—the sort of person that would stare a monster in the eye without blinking for the sake of her loved ones.
Her story's short. She married a monster, gave him the aforementioned daughter, and got pregnant again later. The fucker that was her husband wanted their children to be monsters as well—emotioless, ruthless, eternally chasing after glory. The only glory she wanted for them was the daily victory of life, the constant overcoming of problems and improvement of their flaws. She wanted them to be silly, to make mistakes, to love with everything they had and make monumental mistakes. In simple words, she wanted them to be human.
She did what she could to save them, poisoning herself in the process. Reiju—her emotions a different type of victim to her father's interventions—could only watch this happen, the memory of affection for her mother making something like pain flicker in her chest.
Vinsmoke Sora's efforts were mostly in vain. She gave birth to four babies, of which three grew up to be exactly what their father wanted.
But I'm getting ahead of myself again, lovely audience. Before I tell you about what they became, I have to tell you what the doctors and nurses saw and said when those babies were born.
I won't bore you with explanations about monozygotic and dizygotic twins and how that makes some twins identical and others non-identical. You're here for a story, not a biology lesson. What you need to know is this: two sets of identical twins were born that day. The first two babies were healthy boys. The next two babies were just as healthy, but here's where things get delicate: the doctor said they were girls.
Vinsmoke Judge had no use for more daughters. He looked at the second set of twins and said, “No. Those are boys.”
Nobody protested his words. The doctors and nurses rather liked being alive, you see? If the king tells you the sky is neon green, you nod and agree. If you're brave enough, you might ask him for the exact shade, but that's it.
With that matter settled, Vinsmoke Judge proceeded to number his children and pretend that those were names. That was the extent of his role as a father. I told you he was a piece of shit, didn't I?
Anyway, after that he was simply the king of Germa, and the guy to whom these children would answer.
Here's the thing, before we continue with this story. You know the worst thing about horrible people? The one thing all of them have in common and which none of us can ever forgive them for? Every single one of them has done at least one thing right in their lives. Maybe it was a single act of genuine kindness, maybe it was a decision that benefited someone on the other side of the planet, maybe it was deliberate goodness done for bad reasons. In Vinsmoke Judge’s case, his accidental good action was that he got it right. He did have four sons.
In another world—one where he wasn't turning his kids into war machines—he'd have heard the doctors say that his third and fourth child were girls and he'd have raised them the same way he'd been raising Reiju. He'd have put them in dresses, let them grow their hair, and forced them to marry into influential families. Those kids would have found themselves questioning many things as they grew up, and eventually one of them would have run away, cut their hair short, bought a binder and lived the rest of his days as himself. The other one would have been bitter and angry the rest of his life, trapped by the chains of filial loyalty in the life his father had chosen for him.
I guess we can be happy for Vinsmoke Judge’s fourth son? He got it good in this life.
Scratch that. We should be happy for him. He's a dick and an idiot, but at least he gets to be himself in this world.
Let's go back to our story, my lovely audience. Thank you for being so patient with me.
As I was saying, Vinsmoke Judge declared that all his newborn children were boys and that's what the kingdom heard. Anybody who dared imply otherwise got promptly executed. I think one of those doctors and nurses suffered that fate, actually? One that said too much while drinking, or when they thought themselves in confidence. I'm not sure. I have to admit that my knowledge is rather limited; the only person I know completely is our pathetic tryhard of a protagonist. Everybody else? I'm guessing at what they feel and think, for the sake of this story.
I'm sorry. You'd probably have preferred an omniscient narrator instead of me. I promise to do my best to deliver a flawless telling of this shitty story, but I won't get offended if you dislike my job. How could I, when nothing about this is what anybody wanted?
Hm. This turned sad and self-deprecating. Please forgive me, lovely audience.
I was telling you about the children and how their father got it right about them, yes? Right. Now please think about those boys’ mother. See, she thought that she'd given birth to a couple of boys and a couple of girls. We can't blame her for it—it's not like babies #3 and #4 could speak and say, “Mom, it's okay! We are boys!” At that point of their existence they weren't even aware that they were alive, and if they'd been capable of complex sentences, neither would have started with asserting their gender identity. The third baby would probably have said something pitiful? And the fourth one would have screamed, “Mother, I crave violence!”
No, I have no doubts that that's what he would have said. He's a brute, after all, and not in the way that our already announced love interest is. Please don't do him the disservice of comparing him to our tryhard's brother (even though they have almost the same hair color). The love interest is…
He…
That guy has a heart. That man is passionate and determined—when he sees you, it makes your heart race and your blood boil. When he gifts you with his attention you realize that you haven't been truly alive before that moment. He's the sort of man you'd do stupid things for, just so he never stops looking at you. Our pathetic tryhard certainly did. Many times. All the time.
I digress.
Well, the point is that Vinsmoke Sora heard her husband declare that all her newborn children were boys and her heart broke for them. She hurt for the girls that would never get to be themselves, that would never find themselves wooed by tender-hearted boys, that would never get flowers and attention. She mourned the dresses and hairstyles they wouldn't wear, the games they wouldn't play because they'd be raised as boys.
In the other world I told you about, the one where the third and fourth child were raised as girls, Vinsmoke Sora would have taken them to shop for new clothes if they'd gone to her and told her that they were, in fact, boys. She'd have been supportive and protective. In this one, she had no way of knowing that she had four boys. All she had was her husband's word, and we've already established that he was a bastard. I wouldn't trust anything that came from him either.
The princes, as I said, got numbers for names. Count with me: Ichi(ji), Ni(ji), San(ji), Yon(ji). Our pathetic tryhard is Sanji, as you might have already deduced. I should use his name from now on—it's shorter and you're probably tired of me by now. If I use his name, it's less words you have to hear from me.
“What's the point of all this?” you must be wondering. “Must he tell us everything that goes through his mind?”
Nobody’s forcing you to be here. You can go. Everyone can go, except me and Sanji. He and I are stuck together forever. This is his story and it's my duty to tell it, as much as I hate him.
It. As much as I hate it. The story. It's such an unfair one.
I told you that Vinsmoke Sora had courage and heart. That she was someone who would have defied a monster without hesitation. Here's the problem with that: the only possible outcome is death. The only way to face a monster and live is by being a monster yourself. She wasn't one. She was a good person.
The second time she got pregnant, her husband tampered with their unborn babies, and she drank something to counter whatever it was that he'd done. It mostly didn't work, and it wrecked her body.
The first, second and fourth child didn't feel anything. They saw Vinsmoke Sora as the incubator Vinsmoke Judge had wanted her to be, but she loved them anyway. That's mothers for you.
It took her years to die. She was sick all that time, slowly wasting away in a bed. She received the best care possible, of course. After all, she was the queen.
She always put on a brave face. She always had a smile for whoever came to see her. It was a beautiful smile that didn't falter even when her third son—our pathetic tryhard, Sanji—brought her food. He was a child, and his cooking was terrible. It didn't help that he often tripped on the way to see his mother, or got attacked by his brothers. That turned the already bad food into something downright inedible, yet Vinsmoke Sora would eat it with a smile and praise him. Once again: that's mothers for you.
I guess I can't keep avoiding Sanji. It's time to talk about him.
Vinsmoke Judge had tried to decide what Sanji would be like when he came out of the womb. Thanks to his mother's sacrifice, he was born with a heart. That's a terrible thing to have in Germa.
His hair had been meant to be dark like the night. Instead, he was blond, like his parents.
All of the Vinsmoke siblings knew what muscles they needed to move in order to smile. Their attempts were always unsettling, covering the range from “grimace” to “knife to your throat”. Not Sanji. He knew how to smile, because it came from that stupid heart of his. When his lips curled upwards, it was a fire in a hearth.
The princess and princes were handed weapons as soon as they were old enough to hold them, and taught how to use them. Sanji’s hands could never adjust to their weight and texture, and instead they itched for kitchen knives, whisks, spatulas. The only orders he wanted to follow were the ones found in recipe books, and even then he dreamed of being good enough to disregard them in order to make something better.
Sanji had a heart, and everyone could see it.
“You're such a girl,” his brothers would say. Nobody said it as much or as venomously as Yonji.
“We're not the same,” he'd say, shaking Sanji, spitting the words at his face. There was always something on his expression then—something a little wild, a little scared, a little like how Sanji felt when his brothers called him “princess”.
Of course they weren't the same. Yonji was strong and skilled, and he beat Sanji to a pulp whenever he wanted to. A true prince of Germa, just like Ichiji and Niji. He'd grow up to be a man.
Sanji sometimes thought he'd be lucky if he got to grow up.
“Maybe I should be wearing dresses,” he'd whisper to his mother, trying to hold back tears.
Vinsmoke Sora was of the opinion that, yes, Sanji should be wearing dresses, and playing with dolls, and being the girl that she thought she'd given birth to. But she could see how much it hurt Sanji to consider that possibility, and while she didn't understand what that meant, she knew to bite her tongue and comfort him.
“Let me tell you a story,” she'd say instead, to distract him.
Sometimes, she read him from picture books. She read to him about Mont Blanc Noland and taught her son not to lie.
Other times, she made up tales for him, which always featured a princess in danger. The hero, however, changed all the time. Sometimes it was a disgraced prince, sometimes it was a knight, sometimes it was a commoner. They always had a heart as big as Sanji’s, and they always got to marry the princess at the end. When that happened, they became more. They were acknowledged for what they were, not what society said about them. The princess’ love turned this sad excuse for a human being into something worthy of existing.
That wasn't the point of the stories, but it was what Sanji got from them, how he understood them. That girls like boys, and that he'd become a man if he got a princess to love him. Don't try to follow his logic. He was a child, grasping at anything that gave him hope about his future.
He put on a dress once, you know? He snuck into his sister's bedroom, went through her clothes, and put on a pink dress. It wasn't his color, lovely audience. Blue would have suited him better, or perhaps a warm shade of orange. Black fits everyone. Pink? He didn’t look good in pink. Reiju told him so when she caught him, curled into himself in a corner of her bedroom, about to be sick.
“Green doesn't suit you either,” she said, taking a look at his face. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought… I thought maybe if I was like you, I'd fit in,” Sanji said, his eyes closed, his hands tugging at his hair.
“You're supposed to be a boy,” Reiju said, pulling him to his feet. “Get that off before somebody else sees you.”
I am a boy, Sanji thought. But when he looked in the mirror, he saw his mother. Same eyes, same hair, same weak body. Unlike Yonji, he'd never be the boy his father had declared him to be.
He was a princess playing at being a prince, hoping nobody would notice the deceit. As if it wasn't obvious in everything he did. As if his heart wasn't soft like a girl's. Yonji had been born with the same body, and he'd turned it into a battle machine. He was a real boy, who'd grow up to be a real man. All Sanji could hope to be was a girl in disguise.
Can we take a break, lovely audience? I don't like this part of the story. It breaks my stupid heart.
He might be a pathetic tryhard, but Sanji didn't deserve to believe something like that. Nobody does.
He did get sick, in case you're wondering. He threw up all over Reiju's floor. He cried himself to sleep that night.
Let's skip the part about Vinsmoke Sora's death, yes? I don't like it either. She was the only one that truly loved Sanji, and she was gone.
She left him with a dream about a fantastic ocean, the hopes of making food that brought happiness to others, and the idea that if he got a girl to love him, he'd be a man.
That last thing was an accident.
There are monsters in this story. Vinsmoke Judge made sure to earn that description.
He had a child that was useless to him, and four that were exactly what he wanted. He thought that it'd be an insult to nature if Sanji ever had children of his own, but he also thought there was no reason to throw away a perfectly good incubator.
You can guess where this is going, can't you?
Shortly after Vinsmoke Sora died, Vinsmoke Judge handed Sanji off to some doctors and made a specific request.
“What did they do to me?” Sanji asked Reiju later. He was in a sick bed, dressed in a hospital robe, and his lower abdomen hurt. He could feel the places where the surgeons had cut into him.
He wondered if his mother had also felt so small as she wasted away. He wondered if his fear was more proof of how bad he was at playing the part of a boy.
“Something so you can't get pregnant when you grow up,” Reiju said.
“Like what they did to you?”
I warned you about the monsters. I told you this was a cruel story.
Reiju shook her head.
“You can still carry children.” I'll never know if it bothered her, to have that choice taken from her.
I know how Sanji felt, though. He wasn't old enough to care about being a father, but he was old enough to be afraid. He wrapped his arms around his belly and wondered how much they could do to him, and how little control he had over his own body.
Could he be a girl, if he couldn't bear children? Could he be a boy, when he was weak? Sanji wasn't allowed to be anything but Germa's property.
He managed not to be sick, even though it was the perfect moment for it. He could have blamed it on the anesthetics.
When Vinsmoke Judge grew tired of Sanji's inadequacy, he locked him up in a dungeon. Nobody cut his hair while he was there. They gave him a robe and no pants.
Some days, he wanted to tear off his own skin. Other days, he only stared at the ceiling.
His brothers visited often just to beat him up. They called him “princess”.
Sanji wasn't a princess. If he was, a disgraced prince would have come for him. Or a knight. Or a commoner with a good heart. Girls manage to move the hearts of men, to earn their affection and push them to help them. Whatever Sanji was, it wasn't a girl. He knew he was wearing a boy's skin as a disguise.
He finally understood when Reiju freed him. When he got on a ship and sailed away from Germa.
Sanji had faced monsters and lived. The only way to survive against a monster is by being a monster yourself.
That's what Sanji was.