"A good thing?"
Flare couldn't make sense of it at all. She frowned, baffled.
"Why is that a good thing? Don't you want me to train hard and get stronger?"
Yemu looked into her eyes. Compared to everyone else on the ship, Flare's eyes were the brightest of them all.
"Of course I do. But you have to understand, everything has a price."
"A price?"
"Yeah."
Yemu sat up straighter, his expression turning serious.
"Everyone on our ship has their own story. Take Enel, for example. Don't let how he acts now fool you. He was an orphan from the moment he was born. He never even knew what his parents looked like. Before he met me, he lived alone the whole time, went through all kinds of abuse, and sometimes didn't even have enough to eat. Can you imagine that kind of loneliness? That kind of pain?"
Flare was genuinely shocked.
She thought back to Enel's arrogant, unruly face. It was hard to connect that image to what Yemu had just described.
But it had happened. It was real.
"I honestly thought Enel had always been like that…"
"Of course not. That's exactly why he hates being alone so much. He'll complain about Baby-5, call her a little brat, act like she's a pain… but the second someone gets close to him, he's happy inside. And if he wants to protect that place he finally belongs, he has to become stronger."
"As for Tiger's story… if he doesn't want to talk about it, I can't tell you. Just know that what he went through is a kind of darkness you can't even imagine."
"And that little girl Baby-5, too. When she was born, her family was so poor they thought she was just wasting food, so they threw her away in the forest. She lived there alone. If she hadn't accidentally eaten a Devil Fruit, she probably would've died a long time ago. And later… later she was sold as a slave. If Enel and Tiger hadn't saved her, then now…"
Yemu didn't finish, but Flare could already picture it. The thought alone made her stomach turn.
"Erik and Ayala—you know their story. They don't have anything left to lose. That's why they're desperate to get stronger, to protect the only family they have left, and everyone else."
"And the Kuro Brothers… sure, in a sense they're robots, but they watched their country be destroyed with their own eyes. And they're carrying the mission their creator left them. So they have to get stronger too."
"That's the price behind why they have to become strong."
"You have your own dreams, sure. But compared to everyone else, you're the happiest. You've lost the least."
"But you don't need to feel like you don't belong. Everyone pushing themselves to get stronger is doing it to protect something… and that includes the kind of happiness you have."
In that moment, Flare suddenly understood a lot of things she'd never been able to put into words.
Why she'd always felt the Sky Pirates were different from other crews.
Why everyone worked so hard to become stronger.
Why they were willing to entrust their dreams to Yemu and follow him out to sea.
Maybe Yemu really was the one person who understood them all.
"I get it. Don't worry. I won't drag everyone down."
Flare said it like a vow.
In that moment, it felt like something heavy had settled onto her shoulders, but she didn't hate it. If anything, it lit a fire in her.
Then another question surfaced, and when she looked at Yemu again, there was something different in her eyes.
"What about you? Why do you push yourself to become so strong?"
"Me?"
"Yeah." Flare nodded, then added with a bit of guilt, "If it's not something you want to talk about, that's fine. Either way, I'll keep working hard for you too. Your share as well."
Seeing how earnestly she meant it, Yemu's heart gave a small stir.
He looked into her eyes and spoke softly.
"It's not that I can't tell you. It's just… you probably won't understand."
"I won't understand?"
"Mm. Can I borrow your hand?"
Flare was confused, but she nodded anyway and held out her slender, pale hand.
Yemu took it and gently placed it against his cheek, rubbing it lightly as if he was trying to hold on to the warmth.
Flare didn't pull away. She could tell clearly that this wasn't him trying to take advantage of her.
Right now, the feeling coming off Yemu was completely different from his usual overbearing, reckless self. He seemed unusually gentle, quiet.
For the first time, Flare had the strange sense that she didn't really know Yemu at all.
And it made her even more curious.
Then Yemu's voice sounded again, carrying a loneliness Flare had never heard from him before.
"Maybe it's because I feel lonely."
"Lonely?"
That was an answer Flare had never even considered. Yemu, who was always cheerful and fooling around, actually felt lonely?
"How should I put it… my experience is pretty simple. You could say I don't have any memories of my childhood. I don't know who I am, or what my place in this world is. It's like I suddenly appeared here out of nowhere. That feeling is like drifting alone in a small canoe on the open sea, staring at an endless ocean, not knowing where you'll end up or where the horizon even is. So I have to do something. Find people to get on this ship, give it a destination to sail toward, and make it strong enough to protect everyone on board."
To be honest, Flare still couldn't truly understand what was going on in Yemu's heart at that moment. But that didn't stop her from feeling something different toward him, a sudden urge to hold him, to give him something to lean on.
She thought it, and she acted on it.
She rushed forward and wrapped Yemu in a tight embrace.
Yemu was startled, but he didn't push her away.
They stayed like that for a long time, until Yemu's stomach let out a loud growl. Only then did Flare pull back, a little embarrassed. She looked at him, raised her small fist, and spoke with determination.
"It's okay. You'll have us from now on."
"Mm."
Maybe this was exactly the kind of support he wanted in this world.
Just then, Flare suddenly seemed to think of something and spoke again.
"From the looks of it, you really don't know, do you?"
Yemu paused.
"Don't know what?"
"When you were fighting Bullet, Dr. Kureha told us that you might be one of the D clan."
"!!!"
That genuinely caught Yemu off guard.
After all, in the world of pirates, bearing the name of D, whether in the past, present, or future, was something extraordinary.
But for some reason, he didn't feel the excitement he had imagined. Instead, his brow slowly furrowed.
Because it felt like this was telling him that his strength wasn't the result of his own efforts, but something he was born with.
Thankfully, that uneasy feeling didn't last long.
Yemu wasn't the type to dwell on things unnecessarily.
Instead, his thoughts shifted elsewhere.
Dr. Kureha probably wasn't wrong. That meant he really might be one of the D clan.
And when he thought back to what Charlotte Linlin had said during their conversation, about his true name…
"It seems this body of mine really does have something extraordinary about it…"
In that instant, Yemu recalled something he had almost forgotten.
That final moment during his battle with Bullet…
The sudden strange noise, and the power that had surged out from deep within his body…
"What was that, exactly?"
"Now seems like a pretty good chance. Maybe I should try it…"
With that thought, he clenched his fists tightly.