Chapter Text
Luffy was sprawled out on the living room floor, as if the worn-out rug were more comfortable than any chair. The sunlight filtered through the curtains, forming warm patches that danced across his face. He slowly opened and closed his eyes, scrunching his nose every time the light hit him directly. Beside his head lay the old straw hat, tossed aside carelessly—a symbol of his rebellion against the simple act of having to stay still.
On the windowsill, pigeons pecked at the ledge but flew away in a panic whenever the boy, distracted, raised his hand as if to grab them out of nowhere. The boredom was almost palpable, a weight in the air. The pages of the notebook in front of him seemed to mock him: the letters blurred together, curves and scribbles without meaning. To Luffy, every line of homework was a battle worse than any villain on the news.
From the couch, Dadan let out a tired sigh, with the remote balanced on her stomach. The TV echoed chaotic images—heroes and villains clashing in the city center, buildings collapsing like houses of cards. The narrator spoke in a grave tone, but she seemed more interested in lighting her next cigarette than in saving the world.
“Always the same crap…” she muttered, shifting on the cushion.
Ace was hunched over the coffee table, his pencil gripped tightly between his fingers. His notebook lay open before him, though its margins were far more densely adorned with haphazard sketches than with complete sentences. Beneath the table, his foot tapped restlessly, a steady, impatient rhythm betraying his feigned concentration. The grave narration from the television broke his focus, and he lifted his head, eyebrows furrowing in a deep, frustrated scowl.
“Why do they always do that?” he asked, his voice layered with raw frustration, posing the question as if it were a genuine, serious inquiry rather than a mere complaint.
The pencil slipped from his grasp, rolling across the wooden surface until it came to a stop near Luffy’s head. Luffy blinked at it slowly, as if it were a curious new toy. Just as the boy began to extend his arm, his body stretching like lazy rubber to snatch it up, a smooth, measured voice, laced with practiced irony, cut through the room’s heavy atmosphere.
“Because chaos sells more newspapers, Ace.” Sabo leaned casually against the doorframe, his arms crossed, a nearly imperceptible smile playing on his lips. “And because ‘the end justifies the means’—so long as you’re on the right side of the microphone.”
Ace glanced up, visibly irritated by the interruption, yet he found himself unable to form an immediate retort. Luffy simply chuckled under his breath, utterly oblivious, as if his brother’s words were just another complicated joke he wasn’t meant to understand.
Without waiting for any protest, Sabo strode calmly across the room, plucked the remote from Dadan’s lap, and with a single, decisive click, replaced the stark images of burning buildings with the vibrant colors and cheerful soundtrack of a random cartoon.
“You really shouldn’t be watching that sort of thing,” Sabo added, his tone shifting into one that was almost professorial, laced with a calm, didactic certainty that seemed too mature for his years.
Dadan, who up until that moment had resembled a piece of upholstered furniture more than an actual person, let out a low grunt and heaved her head up, forcing her heavy, sleep-blurred eyes to focus on the flickering screen of the television.
“Hey, you insufferable little brat!” she snarled, her voice a gravelly rasp worn raw by cigarettes and the lingering haze of near-sleep. “Who died and made you the king of the remote control?” She pushed herself up with a dramatic, grunting effort, levering her weight onto one elbow. “I was watching that, you know.”
Sabo didn’t even flinch, his serenely composed expression remaining perfectly, infuriatingly intact. “You weren’t watching anything, Dadan. You were snoring. Quite loudly, I might add. And even if you had been awake, it’s perpetually the same monotonous cycle. Heroes, villains, meaningless destruction. A recent psychological study indicated that a full twenty percent of individuals addicted to this type of sensationalized content develop acute anxiety disorders. It isn't entertainment; it’s a pathology.”
“And this moronic cartoon doesn’t drive people insane?” she shot back, her hand already patting down the pockets of her robe in a frantic search for her pack of cigarettes. “Besides, I like the background noise. The screaming, the explosions… it’s weirdly soothing. It’s white noise with collateral damage. Now put that garbage back on.”
Luffy immediately burst into applause, clapping his hands together with such unbridled enthusiasm that one might have thought it was the single greatest decision ever made in the history of the world. Ace, on the other hand, let out a long, profoundly defeated sigh, the very picture of exasperation as he sank his chin even deeper into the palms of his hands, his entire posture slumping into a monument of teenage discontent.
“Seriously, Sabo?” he grumbled, making absolutely no effort to conceal the thick, palpable layer of boredom coating his every word. “You talk exactly like some stuffy, forty-year-old adult who’s forgotten what fun even is.”
“Well, somebody around here needs to act like one, doesn’t he?” the blond retorted without missing a single beat, arching one eyebrow with an air of immense self-satisfaction, all while deftly swaying his body to the side to avoid the grimy, worn-out slipper that Dadan—too lazy to actually get up and exert real effort—had half-heartedly hurled in his general direction.
The makeshift projectile sailed across the room with a soft whir and landed with a dull, unsatisfying thud against a teetering stack of old magazines, sending a few sliding to the floor. Dadan, having already surrendered to the inevitable with the weary resignation of a veteran soldier who has long since lost the will to fight, merely lit her cigarette, drawing in the first long drag with a sigh that seemed to carry the accumulated weight of the entire world upon its smoky exhalation.
“Well then, act like one and go make dinner, you insufferable bore,” she spat, exhaling a plume of smoke to the side before turning her back to them in a definitive gesture of dismissal. “And keep your hands off my remote control for good.”
The contrast within the room became starkly, palpably evident: on one side, the news broadcast continued to murmur ominously from beneath the television set, a grim, persistent echo serving as a relentless reminder of the harsh reality waiting outside their walls; on the other, Luffy’s gleeful, uninhibited laughter now filled the domestic space, seamlessly intertwining with the exaggerated sound effects and cheerful soundtrack of the cartoon characters.
Ace offered a faint, wry smile, shaking his head in a mixture of amusement and resignation as he reluctantly returned his attention to the blank sheet of paper before him. The assignment was to write an essay about his favorite hero and their great deeds for society. But he found himself utterly paralyzed, completely at a loss for what to write—not because he lacked for ideas, but rather because his genuine, unfiltered opinion on the matter wasn't exactly… socially acceptable.
This was the world they inhabited. A world where status and prestige were measured not by wealth or noble titles, but by the very type of power one carried within their blood. The rarer the ability, the more it was coveted; the more destructive its potential, the more deeply it was feared. The government and the media fed this simplistic, brutal logic to the masses daily, presenting it as the unassailable, natural order of things.
But the truth was far less glamorous. The overwhelming majority of people, upon finally manifesting a power, discovered it was good for almost nothing. They were left with useless, bizarre abilities that had no real impact—like being able to change their hair color in sunlight or create sparks no larger than what a cheap lighter could produce. For every larger-than-life hero who graced the front page of the newspapers, there were thousands of anonymous, faceless individuals just trying to make sense of their own small, seemingly pointless mutations.
It was perhaps an excessively dark line of thought for a fourteen-year-old boy just beginning his high school years, but he couldn’t help it; he couldn’t shield himself from the pervasive cynicism of it all.
The global classification system had been born years before Luffy or his brothers had even existed, and by now it was treated with the devout, unchallenged reverence of a state religion. Zoan was the category granted to those who could transfigure themselves into animals, a wild, instinctual inheritance. Logia, on the other hand, represented the absolute apex of power: those rare individuals who could personify the very elements of nature itself. Intangible, devastating, universally feared—and, precisely because of that, the most prestigious of all. The World Government kept them close, either exalting them as paragons of heroic virtue… or monitoring them as potential existential threats.
Your pen was scratching circles on the paper as you thought.
And then there were the Paramecia. The leftovers. The ones that didn't fit into any neat definition. Most were underestimated, hastily labeled as inferior, even though, in the hands of a creative user, these powers could be just as devastating as any Logia. The rarest among them were the mythical ones—improbable mutations, near-living legends. One in a million.
And like any system, there was a combat hierarchy. Ace remembered it all too well, because his grandfather had forced them to memorize every book, every manual, every statute issued by the Heroes' Committee. “Understand the world before you try to change it,” he would say. For Ace, it was pure torture.
Abilities were divided into active and passive. Passive ones were almost a sentence of uselessness, unless they came paired with something else. Active ones, on the other hand, determined attack strength, defense, control. And above it all, there was one type of gift the system itself venerated: the Healers. They were so exceptionally rare that their very existence was governed by its own set of laws. Anyone who manifested a healing ability was forced to enlist in the hero program, no matter their age. The official justification was simple: to protect them, since villains would kill for such a power. But Ace had always thought that was blatant hypocrisy. It wasn't protection. It was imprisonment.
The only healer who had openly refused that leash and was still breathing was known by the codename The Phoenix. He was a legend—respected, feared, and, in hushed tones, envied. On the other side of the spectrum was the emergence of a rare awakened ability to cure any illness, Mansherry’s power to restore anything to its original state. It was a gift, but also a curse, for to heal someone, she had to siphon away parts of her own life force. It was a devastatingly high price to pay.
He remembered how the news channels had exploded when that ability was first discovered. The endless, breathless cycles of speculation, the grainy footage played over and over, the solemn-voiced anchors trying to explain the inexplicable. And he remembered, even more vividly, how the public had fractured.
A deep, ugly chasm had opened right through the heart of society. For some, she was an instant saint, a miraculous answer to every suffering. For others, she became a symbol of the ultimate moral failing.
He’d hear their arguments everywhere—on the public transit screens, in the snippets of conversation from open café windows, even muttered in the school hallways.
“If you have the power to save a life, you have the duty to use it,” they’d say, their voices dripping with a sense of righteous, collective ownership over her existence. “To refuse is the pinnacle of selfishness. How can you cling to your own life when you could give it for thousands?”
Hypocrites, Ace thought.
The Hero System didn’t want a savior; it wanted a resource. It didn't seek to protect a person; it sought to control an asset. They draped their greed in the noble language of "protection" and "duty," but Ace saw it for what it was: a beautifully gilded cage. The system, as always, was primarily and perpetually designed to benefit one entity above all others: the system itself.
Ace, on the other hand, was just a boy who had yet to manifest anything at all. Not a single sign, not the faintest spark; he couldn't read minds, he wasn't impossibly fast, he possessed no hidden talent waiting to erupt. It was an impotence that throbbed within him like a permanent, invisible wound, a silent and private shame that gnawed at his sense of self every single day.
Sabo, at the very least, had been granted a passive ability, though it often felt more like a profound curse than any kind of gift: his mind operated with a relentless, logical, coldly calculative precision… but his inherent limitation manifested as a distinct, almost tangible blockage in his emotional reasoning. It was as if a pane of impenetrable glass had been erected between his intellect and his capacity to feel, as if the world had decided to surgically remove a fundamental piece of his own humanity in exchange for a razor-sharp mental clarity he had never once asked for.
And then, there was Luffy. At the tender age of seven, without any prior warning or ceremony, the youngest had spontaneously revealed his peculiar and unusual ability: to stretch his body like rubber. It wasn't the awe-inspiring intangibility of a Logia, nor the fierce, instinctual transformation of a Zoan. It was just a bizarre, unconventional Paramecia. But, in stark contrast to his brothers, he seemed genuinely, radiantly happy with it—as if the very oddity of the power was precisely what made him feel special and complete.
Every single power came bundled with a inherent weakness—this was the unbreakable, natural order of the universe. It was as if the cosmos itself demanded a price for the extraordinary gift it bestowed. The history books and the flashy newspaper headlines always showcased the brilliance, the spectacular displays of might, but they almost never spoke of the fragile underbelly, the hidden cracks and vulnerabilities that were the true cost of such gifts.
Even the Logias, so universally venerated and deeply feared, possessed their own glaringly obvious vulnerabilities. For every intangible body composed of living flame or crackling lightning, there existed some fundamental element perfectly capable of neutralizing it—be it something as simple as water, as rare as specific minerals, or even the unpredictable, specific conditions of the environment itself. Their glory came inextricably accompanied by a hidden set of instructions, a fatal disclaimer that few ever dared to mention aloud for fear of shattering the illusion of invincibility.
For all the others, the unspoken rule of existence was even more brutally cruel. It wasn't enough to simply develop a useful, impactful ability; one was compelled to hide the corresponding vulnerability at all costs, to bury it deep and never speak its name. To reveal one's weakness was akin to personally handing an enemy the key to one's own coffin. Villains would exploit it without a moment's hesitation, and even the so-called heroes, behind their pompous speeches and righteous façades, could and would use that knowledge as a potent form of leverage and control.
Ace dwelled on this bitter truth with a resentment that seeped into his very bones. Having no power at all was, in and of itself, his greatest and most profound weakness—a gaping, naked vulnerability that offered no way to disguise or conceal it. And though the vast majority of the world's population also lived without any extraordinary abilities, this statistical normality did nothing to change the cold, hard fact that it rendered them all easy, defenseless targets in a world increasingly shaped by those who were not.
Sabo, by contrast, seemed utterly unbothered by his own peculiar condition. The fact that he couldn't properly process his own emotions was, in his meticulously ordered view, merely a minor technical detail—a small obstacle, one that could be easily circumvented through the diligent application of pure logic and detached observation. All it required was carefully watching the behavior of the people around him, mentally cataloging the intricate patterns of their laughter, their gestures, their telling pauses and weighted silences. In a remarkably short time, he had become adept at reproducing each nuanced reaction as if it were his own natural response, a perfect performance of feeling.
And if, by some chance, his analytical observations and logical deductions were to fail him… there was always the reliable, ever-ready Plan B. To offer a slight, practiced smile, to tilt his head with an air of gentle, almost innocent politeness, to employ words so soft and measured they could soothe a startled animal. Most people never bothered to look twice when they believed they were in the presence of a well-mannered, harmless child. No one ever suspected that behind that carefully curated smile lay a mind racing with rapid-fire calculations, making conscious, micro-adjustments to his tone, his inflection, and even the subtlest shift in his posture.
It was a simple trick, perhaps, but it was devastatingly effective.
Not processing emotions in the conventional way did not, however, equate to an inability to feel them.
Sabo knew this with the same unshakable certainty with which he knew the sky was blue or that gravity pulled objects relentlessly toward the earth.
He loved his brothers. He loved them with an absolute, unwavering constancy, like some fundamental, invisible law of nature. He might not demonstrate it with explosive outbursts of emotion; he might not lose himself in tears or lengthy, crushing embraces, but the feeling was there, nonetheless—immutable, solid as bedrock, a permanent fixture within the architecture of his being.
For him, love did not arrive in chaotic, overwhelming waves; it came in straight, firm, discreet lines. It was present in the smallest of gestures—in keeping a watchful eye on Ace whenever his temper threatened to flare too hot and too fast, in deftly distracting Luffy the moment the youngest showed signs of spiraling into boredom, in quietly assuming responsibilities that no one had asked him to take on but that he knew, with cold clarity, were necessary for their collective well-being.
And Luffy… well, Luffy was still far too young to care about the complexities or the implications of his own powers. To him, the simple fact that he could stretch his body like rubber was endlessly entertaining, a boundless source of laughter and amusement, not some dangerous secret to be guarded and hidden away. It was just fun. But sooner or later, even he would be forced to learn the universe's oldest, cruelest lesson: that every single gift comes indelibly stamped with its own unique mark of fragility, its own hidden price tag.
Yet, amidst all this uncertainty, Luffy possessed one single, unshakable conviction, a truth carved so deeply within the core of his very soul that not even Ace's most stubborn defiance nor Sabo's most logical sermons could ever hope to pry it loose. He would become the greatest villain the world had ever seen.
There existed not a single doubt in his mind, not a single conceivable alternative. For him, this chosen path possessed the same immutable certainty as the rising of the sun each morning.
And only then, once he had finally seized that cursed, infamous title for himself, would he be able to return the straw hat to its original owner: Red, the man who had saved his life all those years ago.
Red was a living legend—and not for any noble reasons. Throughout newspapers and screaming headlines, his name appeared with increasing frequency, always encircled by an aura of pure, unadulterated terror. He was one of the most formidable villains of the modern era, infamous for recent acts of devastation that had left entire cities in smoldering ruins. And yet, to Luffy, he would never be just a villain.
To Luffy, Red was the hero of a single, defining moment.
The memory of that one gesture—the hand extended toward him at the precise instant when all hope seemed utterly lost—still burned in his memory with the brilliant, enduring intensity of a wildfire. His brothers, too, recognized the profound importance of that rescue, even if they couldn't bring themselves to agree with the way Luffy had transformed it into his life's ultimate, unwavering objective.
For the youngest brother, it simply did not matter if the entire world viewed Red as a monster. If a man capable of such a profound act of salvation could be called a villain, then Luffy would become one as well. And he would not just join their ranks; he would ascend to become the greatest of them all.
It was at that precise moment that the sound of a heavy engine sliced through the afternoon's stifling silence. It was distant at first, then grew progressively closer, until the metallic growl echoed through the narrow street. The three brothers exchanged a series of quick, knowing glances, and as if by some natural, ingrained reflex, they all scrambled to pile onto the windowsill, jostling and elbowing each other for a prime viewing spot.
Ace was the first to plant his elbows firmly on the wooden frame, Luffy immediately draped himself over Ace's back, nearly crushing his own straw hat flat against the glass in his excitement, and Sabo, with considerably more calm, positioned himself off to the side, adjusting his posture just enough to secure an unobstructed view.
In the corner of the room, the forgotten bottles of sake sitting beside the couch still glimmered in the sunlight, a testament to Dadan's chronic laziness in hiding her contraband. But none of the boys paid them the slightest bit of attention now.
Outside, a white moving truck was parking in front of a neighboring house. With a loud, protesting creak, the truck's cargo bay door swung open, revealing stacks of cardboard boxes, furniture shrouded in protective plastic, and two sweaty movers who began to unload the contents in a weary, practiced silence.
"That's strange…" Ace murmured, his eyes narrowing to slits as he scrutinized the scene below. "Nobody ever moves into this neighborhood."
It was an undeniable truth. The houses on their street had been occupied for years by the exact same families, people who knew each other by sight if not by name, a community where the most exciting news was usually an occasional shouting match or yet another unfinished home renovation. The arrival of a new neighbor wasn't just unusual; it was practically a historical event.
Luffy, in stark contrast, had widened his eyes to comical proportions, as if he were about to witness the grand opening of a spectacular circus. For him, any change, no matter how small, was a thrilling promise of potential adventure.
Sabo, however, remained utterly silent, his gaze fixed and analytical. He understood, with a certainty that went beyond simple observation, that in neighborhoods like theirs, nothing was ever just a coincidence.
From within the shadowy interior of the car, a man with strikingly red hair emerged, stepping into the afternoon light as if he had just walked out of a vividly painted portrait. Sabo's keen eyes immediately locked onto something peculiar: the man's left arm seemed… different. Perhaps it was the stark black leather glove that sheathed his hand all the way up to the forearm, or maybe it was the particular way the sunlight glinted off the metallic zipper of his jacket. But there was something else, something more deeply unsettling—the precise, knowing way the man turned his head and looked directly at their window, as if he had been fully aware of their observation from the very beginning.
Sabo narrowed his eyes even further, his mind rapidly assessing every minute detail. This wasn't merely curiosity; it was pure, honed instinct. There was a calculated aura in that direct gaze, a calm, unshakable confidence that seemed to make the very air feel both lighter and, paradoxically, charged with a new, unspoken tension.
Then, a broad, easy smile spread across the red-haired man's face. It wasn't forced, nor was it arrogant. It was entirely natural, brimming with a vibrant energy that felt almost contagious. It was a smile that seemed to contain both infinite patience and genuine humor all at once—a smile too peaceful to be considered casual, yet sufficiently, disarmingly human to avoid being frightening.
And then, finally, he raised a hand and waved directly at the children in the window. A simple gesture, yet one profoundly loaded with an undeniable, magnetic presence. It was as if he were silently communicating: “I know you’re there. I see you. And it’s perfectly alright.”
At the window, only two faces remained pressed against the glass—because the third was suddenly, conspicuously absent.
Sabo’s eyes widened in dawning horror as he registered the sudden emptiness beside him; in a single, frantic glance, he caught sight of Luffy’s small silhouette already darting across the front lawn, the straw hat swinging wildly from his arm.
“Damn it… no!” he whispered, his face instantly paling with a mixture of panic and exasperation.
Ace reacted in the very same instant, shoving his notebook aside and lurching to his feet so violently he nearly sent the entire coffee table toppling over.
“That absolute idiot!” he snarled, already bolting for the door.
From outside, Luffy’s voice rang out, loud and clear as a juvenile clap of thunder, utterly devoid of any semblance of shame or fear:
“HEEEEEY! I’m Monkey D. Luffy!” the boy proclaimed, thrusting his arm into the air as if he were standing atop a grand stage before a massive audience. “And I’m gonna be the greatest villain in the whole world!”
The red-haired man froze for a single, suspended second in the face of such a bold declaration, but then he laughed—a loose, almost musical laugh that seemed to ripple through the air, as if this outrageous introduction were the most natural thing in the world.
“Hey there, Luffy,” the man named Shanks said, lowering himself into a crouch, one knee resting on the ground, until his eyes were level with the boy’s. His smile was open, utterly tranquil, as if this first contact were nothing more than a casual conversation between old friends. “I’m Shanks.”
Luffy beamed back, his eyes shining with uncontainable excitement, and he opened his mouth, poised to unleash another torrent of words, when a sharp, stinging slap connected with the back of his head.
“Ow!” he grumbled, his hand flying up to clutch the injured spot as he bent over to rub the sudden pain. “Aceee!”
"Shut your mouth, you idiot!" Ace huffed, skidding to a halt beside his brother, his face a tense, flushed mask of pure embarrassment. He quickly turned to face the red-haired man, struggling to recompose his frayed dignity. "I am so sorry about that... he has absolutely no filter and doesn't know what he's talking about… we won't take up any more of your time."
Shanks raised a single eyebrow, still comfortably crouched, observing the scene as if it were more entertaining than bothersome. His easy smile didn't fade, but it also held no trace of mockery; there was an unexpected warmth in it, an almost paternal quality in the way his gaze traveled between the two brothers.
Behind them, Sabo finally reached the doorway but chose to remain on the threshold, watching the exchange in utter silence. His eyes narrowed into analytical slits, scanning the man from head to toe as if trying to decipher every minute detail: the carefree nature of his smile, the arm concealed by the glove, the calm demeanor that felt more practiced and deliberate than truly natural.
"Don't you worry about it," Shanks said, raising his hands in a disarmingly friendly gesture. "I've always had a soft spot for noisy, energetic kids."
Luffy, having already forgotten the stinging pain on his head, flashed a gigantic, radiant smile back, utterly convinced he had just gained a spectacular new friend. Ace, on the other hand, remained with his brow deeply furrowed, caught in an internal war between yanking his brother back inside the house and continuing to offer profuse apologies.
Shanks let out a short, genuine laugh, one that seemed far too sincere and familiar for someone who had just arrived. "It's really no problem at all."
It was in that exact moment that another voice interjected, slicing through the air as if it had always been there, though no one had noticed its approach.
"Why are you moving here?"
Shanks lifted his gaze and found the third boy standing just a few paces away. He couldn't tell if the boy had emerged from the shadow of the house, from the wind itself, or simply from nothing at all—but his presence carried that elusive, furtive quality. Not in the literal sense, but as if he were a natural, seamless part of the environment, invisible until the very moment he chose to reveal himself.
The boy stared back at Shanks with a curious, unnerving calm that seemed utterly mismatched with his youthful age.
“An uncle of mine passed away,” Shanks answered, still maintaining his crouched position but shifting his full attention to this new, more serious interlocutor. “He left the house to me as an inheritance.”
Sabo tilted his head just slightly, analyzing each spoken word as if he were weighing its truthfulness on an invisible scale. The silence that followed wasn't overtly hostile, but it was charged with a distinct edge of childish caution—the kind of primal instinct that is born in children who have learned far too early in life to be wary of strangers.
Sabo gave a slow, deliberate nod, carrying himself with the air of a miniature detective that he seemed to have possessed since the day he learned to speak. It wasn’t a full acceptance of the story, nor was it a stamp of approval or trust—it was more akin to a mental notation, a silent “I’ll let that pass… for now.” His eyes continued to assess Shanks as if meticulously weighing every single word the man had uttered, every subtle gesture he made, while his hand discreetly smoothed the surface of the windowsill beside him, treating it as the invisible notepad upon which he recorded all his budding suspicions.
Ace, who was still gripping Luffy by the collar of his shirt to prevent his younger brother from tumbling into another act of recklessness, let out an exasperated huff.
“You’ve got a suspicious vibe about you, you know that?” he blurted out, crossing his arms tightly over his chest in a defensive posture.
Shanks laughed, not in a mocking way, but with a light, easygoing air, like someone who had heard that exact comment more times than he could possibly count. “I’ve been told that before, yeah.”
Luffy, of course, immediately began wriggling and squirming to free himself from Ace’s grip, his eyes shining with uncontrollable excitement. “So you’re really gonna be our new neighbor?!” he asked, as if this single piece of information were more monumental than any other detail, or even whether this man posed any actual danger.
The red-haired man offered a faint, half-smile, his gaze settling over the three children with an almost affectionate quality. “It certainly seems that way.”
Suddenly, Dadan’s voice erupted from the window of the house next door, slicing through the air like a domestic clap of thunder, sharp and impatient. Its tone was rough and gravelly, the kind that didn’t request but commanded, and one that every person on the block knew all too well.
“Get back inside this house right now, you little brats! It’s time!”
Her call shattered the fragile bubble of tranquility that had momentarily enveloped the three brothers and the red-haired stranger. The distant sounds of traffic and the faint noises of other children playing in nearby yards seemed to fall silent in the face of Dadan’s formidable presence.
Ace let out a deep, resigned sigh, his shoulders slumping under the familiar weight of obligatory obedience. Luffy, meanwhile, scrunched his face into a potent mixture of stubbornness and pure frustration, his fingers twitching slightly as if he wished he could physically grasp onto just one more minute of that conversation.
“Aww, already?!” the youngest complained, dragging his feet petulantly against the ground.
He was still looking at Shanks with that unmistakable glow of pure admiration and insatiable curiosity. He wanted more—more stories, more laughter, more of that strangely comforting presence emanating from their new neighbor.
Even reluctant, the brothers turned to go. Ace firmly took Luffy by the arm, ignoring his muffled, grumbling protests. Sabo, who had observed the entire exchange in utter silence, merely offered a single, curt nod in Shanks’s direction—a gesture of almost formal acknowledgment—before falling into step with his brothers.
Luffy, being dragged away, turned back one last time. He raised his hand, offering nothing more than a quick, energetic wiggle of his fingers, a wave brimming with the promise of interactions yet to come.
“See you later!” he shouted, his youthful voice cutting cleanly through the suburb’s tranquil afternoon air.
Shanks remained standing on the sidewalk in front of his new house, his silhouette relaxed and utterly at ease. This is going to be fun, he thought.