Chapter 96: Suddenly There Was
As a businessman, Yves was good at hearing what people did not say.
At first, he had assumed Axel and the others would come to their senses after hearing how troublesome the Sabaody Archipelago was. But after watching them for a while, he realized they had not been intimidated in the slightest. They were distracted, calm, almost indifferent.
That told him enough.
He had no intention of sticking his nose into other people's business. If they insisted on chasing trouble, then sooner or later reality would teach them what words could not. There was no need for him to waste more breath.
Still, whatever else he was, he was not heartless.
Before returning to rest, he ordered his men to prepare food and a room for the three of them. He also had the shipboard rules explained clearly, especially the one about staying out of the cargo hold. Only after making those arrangements did he finally head back to his cabin.
The room assigned to them was small and plain.
A few beds had been lined up side by side, and that was about it. No decorations, no extra furniture, not even a proper table. It was the kind of room that existed for sleeping and nothing else.
Issho stepped in first, tapping the floor lightly with his cane sword. When he found the edge of a bed, he bent down and traced its outline with his hand before sitting. At that moment, he looked less like a terrifying future monster of the seas and more like an ordinary older man with failing health.
Hawkins came in behind him, found a bed of his own, and sat down in silence.
Axel remained standing for a moment, his gaze resting on Hawkins.
Compared to their chance meeting with Issho, Hawkins was much harder to read. Issho had simply appeared through coincidence and a strange twist of events, but Hawkins had deliberately chosen to follow them. That made Axel curious.
Finally, Hawkins looked up.
"What is it?" he asked flatly.
Axel did not bother circling around the issue.
"I'm wondering why you're following us."
Hawkins answered just as bluntly.
"Because of fate. I divined the probabilities and chose the path with the highest one."
He said it as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
Axel stared at him for a second, then exhaled through his nose.
That answer was about as useful as a locked door with no keyhole.
Still, it was very Hawkins.
"Right," Axel said dryly. "That does sound like you."
...
For the next several days, the weather turned miserable.
Rain fell without pause, day after day, the kind of cold, soaking rain that found every crack and seam in a ship. It seeped through warped planks, dripped down the walls, and spread quietly into places it had no business reaching.
By the time Yves realized the extent of the problem, both his warehouse records and part of his cargo had already been affected.
He stood in his cabin, staring at the ledgers piled on his desk with a look of genuine anguish on his face.
Several had been soaked through. The ink had blurred into dark stains, numbers and entries running into one another until they were no longer readable.
Yves grabbed one, flipped it open, and his expression immediately darkened.
Ruined.
Completely ruined.
At the same time, his men kept bringing him more bad news. Some of the goods in storage had also been damaged, and the cause had already been found. A few sections of the ship's planking had been made from inferior timber. The earlier collision had not broken them, but the days of rain had finished the job.
Yves nearly exploded on the spot.
"Those damned shipbuilders!" he cursed, slamming the ruined ledger onto the desk. "Using trash like this and still daring to charge me that price! I hope they go bankrupt! No, I hope their whole yard sinks into the sea!"
He had prepared for storms. Any merchant who sailed often would.
What he had not prepared for was rain turning into disaster because someone, somewhere, had cut corners on materials.
And of all the places for those rotten planks to be, they just happened to be near the cargo hold and where his records were stored.
The more he thought about it, the more his chest tightened.
Fortunately, after venting for a while, he remembered something.
He hurried to his sleeping area and brought out another ledger from a hidden place.
At once, the tension in his face eased a little.
"Thank heavens," he muttered. "I kept the original with me."
That original ledger was not the polished record he used later, but the raw account book he wrote in during actual transactions. Keeping it close had long since become a habit of his. This time, that habit had saved him.
Even so, it was only a partial relief.
The figures on it would let him reconstruct most of the losses, but that still meant recounting damaged goods, sorting out which items could still be sold, and recalculating the rest. It was a mountain of work.
Worse, there was no help for it.
As a merchant, he valued credibility above all else. If the goods were damaged, then they were damaged. He would account for them honestly.
That only made the coming workload feel even heavier.
Elsewhere on the ship, Axel had begun a different kind of work.
His eyes were wrapped in a strip of cloth, shutting out every trace of light, and he moved through the cabin one step at a time.
To the crew passing by, it looked like some strange game.
One sailor laughed and pointed.
"Look at that kid. He's pretty funny."
Another chimed in, "Seeing him reminds me of when I was little. I was probably just as cute."
His companion gave him a long, skeptical look, then said, "If that's true, then all I can say is... you really let yourself go."
Their laughter drifted past, clear in Axel's ears.
He heard it all, but he ignored it.
He was not playing.
He was training.
Since meeting Issho, Axel had set his sights on something new. Issho's terrifying strength was not just the product of a powerful Devil Fruit. His swordsmanship was monstrous, yes, but what fascinated Axel even more was his Observation Haki.
Devil Fruit powers could not simply be copied. Swordsmanship, Momousagi had already made clear, was a path each person had to shape for themselves.
That left one thing he might still learn from Issho.
So he had gone directly to the point.
"Teach me Observation Haki."
Issho's answer had been far less inspiring than Axel expected.
"Teach... you?" Issho had scratched his head awkwardly. "Truthfully, I'm not quite sure how I learned it. One day it was just... there. After I lost my sight, it only grew stronger."
At that time, Axel's face had twitched hard.
Just appeared?
What kind of ridiculous answer was that?
Seeing Axel's expression, Issho had thought for a long time before finally offering a suggestion.
And that suggestion had led to Axel's current state.
For the past several days, he had kept his eyes covered at almost all times. Eating, bathing, walking, moving, living, all of it was done in darkness. On top of that, he deliberately suppressed most of the senses he normally used to orient himself. He kept Reflection active enough to stop himself from getting seriously injured, but not enough to make movement effortless.
The idea was simple.
If he wanted to awaken something deeper, then he had to stop relying on what came naturally first.
The result, however, was not graceful.
He had bumped into walls, doorframes, furniture, and people more times than he cared to count. Without Reflection, he would have been covered in bruises by now.
Even so, he endured it.
Because for all the inconvenience, he could feel something sharpening little by little.
Sound became clearer.
Movement became easier to picture.
Even the flow of space around him felt different.
As he moved through the ship now, guided by instinct, memory, and a hundred tiny cues, he heard footsteps approaching.
Then a familiar voice spoke.
"What are you doing here?"
It was Yves.
Axel turned his head toward the sound.
"I'm training."
"Training?" Yves clearly took that to mean child's play. In his eyes, Axel was just a little boy inventing strange games to entertain himself. Still troubled by his ledgers, he had no energy to argue over it. "I don't have time to play with you. Stay here if you want, but keep the noise down."
Axel nodded. It was a fair enough request.
After all, they were still guests on this man's ship.
Then, from nearby, another voice suddenly cut in.
"Skinny, you made a mistake in your calculations."
.....
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