"My daughter?"
The summoned Bell-mère blinked in bewilderment. Her spirit seemed to solidify in the salt-heavy air, her senses returning in a disorienting rush. She looked toward Nami, letting out a soft, breathy hum of surprise as the reality of the girl's presence began to sink in.
It was only then that Li Ke truly took in her appearance—specifically, her hair. He'd always held a vague respect for women with "half-shaved" heads, viewing the look as a bold statement of rebellion. But the woman standing before him was in a league of her own. Her hairstyle was so eccentric, so jagged and unconventional, that he couldn't even find a category for it in his mind.
In an instant, his burning desire—which should have been roaring like a furnace at the sight of a legendary beauty—flickered and died like a candle in a gale.
While Li Ke wasn't usually one to be picky about aesthetics, he suffered from a distinct lack of "spark" when it came to bald or near-bald women. To his eyes, the gap between Bell-mère's current uneven crop and a completely shaved head was practically non-existent. The visual turn-off was immediate and total.
For Bell-mère, however, the strange man's internal monologue didn't exist. The only thing in the world that mattered was the orange-haired girl trembling nearby.
"Is that... is that really Nami?"
Her eyes widened, brimming with a mixture of hope and heartbreak. Seeing Nami bound on the deck, Bell-mère's first instinct was to tear herself out of Li Ke's grip and rush to her daughter's side. But as she moved, her gaze caught the silhouette of pirate activity in the distance, and the words Li Ke had just whispered into her ear began to echo with sinister clarity.
Her expression shifted instantly, her eyes narrowing into dangerous slits.
"You want me to 'stay' with you? Fine!"
The moment the words left her mouth, Li Ke felt a sudden, freezing surge of killing intent. Without a second's hesitation, Bell-mère lashed out. Her leg whipped through the air, a vicious kick aimed straight for his groin. She didn't wait to see if it landed, immediately shifting her weight into a disciplined combat stance. As a former Marine, she possessed a level of combat intuition and alertness that years of civilian life hadn't managed to dull.
It was, however, completely useless.
With a casual, almost bored block, Li Ke neutralized her entire offensive. Bell-mère retreated cautiously, her boots skidding on the wood. She was visibly surprised when Li Ke didn't immediately follow up with a counter-attack. She knew she had left a massive opening by miscalculating his speed; if he had struck then, she would have been broken instantly.
Instead, he just looked at her with an expression of utter, soul-crushing disappointment.
"Actually, one look at your hair and I've lost all interest," he sighed, waving a hand as if to dismiss her presence. "That style is really hard to swallow. But whatever, it's not like you're staying long. You've only got ten minutes of life in you anyway."
Li Ke never intended for Bell-mère to hang around for the long haul this time. He knew the nature of the woman he had summoned. No real mother would ever allow her daughter to jump into a "fire pit" just to secure her own survival—and Bell-mère was, through and through, a real mother.
"My hair is the least of our problems," Bell-mère spat, her voice raspy but firm. "Did you bring me back from the grave just to use me as leverage against Nami? To twist her heart?"
She was sharp, her mind racing to connect the dots. Linking his previous demands with the impossible reality of her own return, she glared at him with a gaze filled with maternal ferocity. Li Ke saw the fire in her eyes and knew his assessment was correct; there was no version of this story where she would willingly sign her daughter away.
"What if I added 'defeating Arlong' to the pot?" Li Ke asked, spreading his hands with an air of faux-generosity. "Arlong is still terrorizing your village as we speak. I defeat him, I give you ten years of life, and in exchange, she stays as my 'companion' for a while. Seems like a fair trade to me."
Bell-mère's brow furrowed in deep, agonizing confusion. She looked at the man, then at the distant horizon where her home lay, then back to the bound Nami. Something felt... fundamentally off.
"You're... surprisingly reasonable," Bell-mère said, though her voice dripped with suspicion. Her fingers tightened around a nearby mop handle, gripping it like a combat staff as she positioned herself firmly in front of Nami, shielding her daughter with her own body.
She was trying to read him, searching for the logic behind his cruelty. If Li Ke had simply helped Nami defeat Arlong first and then brought her mother back—instead of this twisted game of teasing and provocation—the impression would have been entirely different. She wouldn't be feeling this crushing sense of distrust. A man with his god-like power shouldn't be too dense to realize that, which left her with one terrifying thought: he wanted her to hate him.
"So why the act? Why present yourself this way?"
"Because I'm building a harem," Li Ke replied, his voice ringing with a shameless, matter-of-fact confidence.
"…You're unbelievable!"
Bell-mère felt a massive headache brewing. She understood his logic instantly. If she were resurrected only to find out later that Li Ke was a womanizer who had "tricked" her daughter into a relationship, she would do everything in her power to make Nami leave him. But by being this brutally honest from the start...
He was leaving her no room to argue.
And then, a voice cut through the tension.
"I'll do it!"
Nami stared at Bell-mère's back, her eyes wet with tears that refused to fall, her voice ringing out unwavering across the deck. "I accept! If you can bring Bell-mère back permanently and kill Arlong... I'll be your companion for the rest of my life! I'll go anywhere you want!"
"Nami, shut up!" Bell-mère hissed, her voice cracking with a mixture of terror and heartbreak. She didn't turn around, kept her eyes locked on Li Ke, but her shoulders trembled. "We can find another way to deal with Arlong. I'm a woman who already died once; I have no business returning to the world of the living! How can you even trust that what he says is true? You're still just as stubborn and disobedient as you were when you were a child!"
"I'm grown up now! I've survived on the sea by myself for years!" Nami shouted back, her resolve hardening like steel. The desperation in her voice was gone, replaced by a cold, adult certainty. "I can make my own decisions, Bell-mère! I'm not that little girl hiding in the tangerine groves anymore!"
Bell-mère was livid. The sheer audacity of the girl made her blood boil; Nami had never listened to reason, not once in her life!
But Nami couldn't back down. The weight of the past eight years pressed down on her chest—the memory of the gunshots, the blood on the grass, and the fact that Bell-mère had died because of her. For her. She couldn't treat this impossible miracle as a joke or a trick. As for whether this was truly her mother... even without reaching out to touch her, Nami recognized those scars, the faint scent of tangerine blossoms and tobacco, and that fierce, protective aura. This was the woman who had pulled her and Nojiko from the rubble of an Oykot Kingdom war zone and raised them as her own.
"You're going to be the death of me all over again!" Bell-mère snapped, her jaw tight. If she didn't have to keep her guard up against the monstrously powerful man in front of her, she would have slapped Nami right then and there just to wake her up from this nightmare of a deal.
"Well, it looks like you two have a lot of family drama to catch up on. I'll leave you to it," Li Ke chuckled, the sound devoid of any real empathy. He adjusted his grip, hoisting the still-unconscious Nico Robin over his shoulder like a sack of grain, and started walking toward the cabin.
He hadn't gone more than a few steps, however, before Robin's eyes fluttered open. The disorientation of the knockout lasted only a second before her gaze sharpened. She looked up at him from her upside-down vantage point with the chilling, flat expression one might give a piece of discarded trash.
Before Li Ke could utter a word of greeting, several arms sprouted directly from his own chest and shoulders. With practiced, surgical precision, the phantom limbs pushed against his torso and caught Robin's weight, deftly lowering her to the deck. She landed silently on her feet and stood there, momentarily speechless, watching Li Ke—whose hand was still awkwardly resting on the space where her backside had been just a moment before.
"You really are a scumbag," she said, her eyes full of disdain. "It's one thing to use these tactics on me, but to do it to another girl... should I call your lack of creativity pathetic, or just accept that you're a bastard?"
Though the circumstances differed, she had heard enough to piece together his "contract" with Nami.
"I've never denied being a scumbag," Li Ke replied, looking at her with genuine curiosity. "But how did you hear that? Were you faking being unconscious?"
Robin quickly turned her head away, her expression one of pure elitist scorn. "Who would fake being out cold just to let you play with them? I was merely... testing you. And clearly, the moment I was out, you started planning something perverse. Honestly, if you're that desperate, just use a clone."
She snapped her fingers, and a clone instantly manifested in front of him. Li Ke glanced at the real Robin, who had already retreated back to her chair, and then at the clone in his arms. Without a second's hesitation, he reached out and...
Firmly squeezed the real Robin's breast.
"What do you think you're doing?" she gasped.
"You."
"!!"
Robin tried to bolt, but it was too late. Li Ke hauled her back into the cabin.