Right now, I am lost at sea. On the ocean. Alone.
What I'm riding is a single small boat. Only big enough for maybe two or three people, the kind of flimsy vessel that could easily capsize from even a slightly large wave.
It doesn't even have oars, let alone a sail. Which means I can't move under my own power and am simply carried wherever the waves take me.
I don't know where I am. I don't know where I should go. And even if I did know, I can't move the boat, so it wouldn't matter either way.
"Haah... How did it come to this..."
The words slipped out with a sigh, almost involuntarily.
Rewinding roughly half a day.
I'd been accompanying Master and the others, heading to the site of the current deal.
But partway there, we ran into an absolutely enormous storm.
I did think, 'Why so suddenly?' but... even without thinking hard about it, this kind of thing is an everyday occurrence on the Grand Line.
If anything, I should be grateful it wasn't a cyclone or something.
Well, I say "grateful," but I'm not exactly saved here.
The storm alone might have been manageable, but... while we were holding on, trying to keep the ship from capsizing, an iceberg appeared out of nowhere and slammed into the hull, damaging it.
I'm not exaggerating. The iceberg really did appear out of nowhere, coming at us from the other direction. One instant before, there had been absolutely nothing there. And then it just rammed right into us. Seriously, what is wrong with this ocean?
Curses, shouts, screams, and every other sound imaginable echoing from all over the ship. I instinctively knew that staying put meant certain death, so I did what needed to be done to survive.
Total pandemonium, the ship almost certainly going under. Things had already deteriorated well past the point where anyone would call me out for abandoning my post, so I went for it.
I kicked open the storage room door, gathered up food and anything else that looked useful, shoved it all into a waterproof bag, and hauled it out.
Then I grabbed something to float with and jumped into the sea.
A few minutes later, I watched the ship split in two and sink.
After that, I clung desperately to my flotation device while being tossed by the waves for a while, but by sheer luck I spotted an escape boat. It must have broken free from the ship when its rope snapped during the storm. I climbed aboard.
The fact that the small boat didn't capsize before the storm subsided was, honestly, a miracle.
By the time I could see blue sky peeking through gaps in the clouds, I let out a breath of relief, thinking I'd somehow made it.
...Well, given the situation, I still couldn't honestly say I'd "made it" if my life depended on it.
So that's roughly how I ended up adrift.
I have no idea what happened to Master, the other slaves, or the bodyguards. There's no way to know.
Whether they could survive that storm without lifeboats... honestly, it seems hopeless.
If they couldn't even get off the ship in the first place, they would have been dragged straight to the bottom of the sea along with it.
And my situation is pretty hopeless too.
As I said, I'm currently adrift.
On this vast, open ocean, with no idea where I am.
I did manage to grab a sea chart and compass, but they're not much use when I don't even know my current position. And besides, compasses don't work on the Grand Line in the first place. Why did they even have one on board?
A Log Pose would have been great, but the ship's navigator had that.
I could only grab a little food and water. Even rationing it, how many days will it last...?
It's like young Sanji's situation from the Original Work... no, actually, I'm on a boat instead of land, with no way to collect rainwater, so it might be even worse.
For now, I should divide the food into small portions. I need to make it last as long as possible.
Move as little as possible, minimize energy expenditure...
After that, it's all down to luck. If a Marine ship or something happens to pass by, great. If I wash up on some island, that works too.
But if I hit another storm before that, or get attacked by Sea Beasts or Sea Kings, I'm done for. I do have a weapon, but I'm no master swordsman. There's no way someone like me can fight off something that dangerous with a single blade.
A harpoon would have been nice... I might be able to catch fish with one. Well, maybe it's not impossible with a katana... maybe? I could try if it comes down to it. But only to the extent that it doesn't drain my stamina.
...Also, what I normally use is a "sword," and what I have now is a "katana."
Not the "hack and cleave" type, but the "draw and slice" type that cuts through friction. It's not like I've never used one before, but the handling is subtly different, so I'll need to be careful.
☆☆☆
Day 1, Adrift
My stomach has been growling nonstop.
Nothing to be done about it. Of course it's growling when I've cut my food intake to the bare minimum... It'll be like this from now on, so there's no point worrying about it.
I'm grateful the sea is calm. Maybe there's a Spring Island nearby?
A school of fish passed near the boat, so I tried to catch one with the katana, but predictably, it didn't work. Fishing like a Hokkaido brown bear is a bit much for a human, I suppose...
If anything, the big movement made the boat lurch and I nearly fell in, so I hastily gave up.
If something slower came along... like a sea turtle, maybe I could catch it...
Day 3, Adrift
Bored out of my mind.
But this time, I can't exactly kill time with strength training. Wasting stamina like that is absolutely out of the question. My only options are to daydream and play around inside my head, or stare at the sky to pass the time.
...Then again, with the malnutrition setting in, my stamina will keep dropping, so in a few days I might not even have the energy for training anyway.
Still no sign of any ship or island. Nothing on the horizon.
Day 5, Adrift
It's not just the hunger anymore. I can feel my body starting to fall apart in various ways.
Malnutrition, probably. When you're lacking nutrients, your body starts breaking down muscle and bone to compensate, right?
I've already eaten more than half the food.
No ships or islands today either. ...Could it be that I've drifted far off any normal shipping routes? ...That's entirely possible. We were traveling for a black market deal, so they may have deliberately avoided standard routes.
If that's the case, the already slim odds of being rescued just got even more hopeless...
Day 7, Adrift
Got caught in a storm.
The rocking was intense enough to kill.
If I'd fallen in, I had no energy left to swim. I resigned myself to death.
Fortunately, it died down before the boat capsized.
I thanked God, even though I have no idea if anyone's up there.
Day 10, Adrift
A sea turtle was swimming near the boat.
By sheer luck, I managed to stab it with the katana and catch it.
I butchered and ate it immediately. Drank every last drop of blood too, to quench my thirst.
No way to make fire, so everything was raw.
Parasites, maybe? Who cares. If they're there, I'll deal with it when the time comes.
Day 14, Adrift
Something I read in a book once suddenly came back to me.
A person can endure without food as long as they have dignity.
A person can survive without dignity as long as they have food.
But when both are gone, nothing matters anymore. You'll cling to anything.
That's exactly how I feel right now.
Because yesterday, my food finally ran out.
At this point, I don't care if it's a Pirate Ship or whatever. If someone will save me, that's enough.
I'll be a slave, I'll let them do whatever they want with my body, just please, someone pick me up.
...No good, huh. Not with a body this wasted and skeletal.
...Technically, there is one "edible thing" still left...
Oh, not my own leg or anything. I don't have that kind of nerve... and in my current state, even if it filled my stomach, I'd bleed to death for sure.
What I mean by "edible thing" is... this, the last thing remaining in the bag I brought out.
It was a fruit about the size of a child's head.
But clearly, this was no ordinary fruit. You could tell just by looking at it.
It looked something like a melon, but... its surface was covered in intricate, indescribable patterns, and... it looked like something that would sell for around 100 million Berry.
Clearly a Devil Fruit. Thank you very much.
It must have gotten mixed in when I was frantically stuffing things into the bag.
Master... could this have been what the big deal was about...? But wait, I raided the food storage... Would something like this just end up mixed in there by accident?
Surely a normal piece of fruit sitting in the food storage didn't just spontaneously transform into a Devil Fruit...
From how it was described in the Original Work, they're supposed to taste absolutely terrible, but they are edible, and they should fill the stomach. ...No idea about the nutritional value, though.
Plus, if I eat it, I'll gain some kind of mysterious power.
But... eating it means I can't swim anymore.
For someone currently adrift on the ocean, that's a slightly too-fatal drawback. If I fall off the boat, my strength will drain instantly and I'll just sink. The End.
Then again, with practically zero stamina left, I don't have the energy to swim anyway, so you could argue it doesn't make a difference...
And depending on what power I get, there's a chance it could be a complete reversal of fortune, something that could break me out of this situation.
A Zoan-type Bird-Bird Fruit with flight capability would be ideal, or a crafting-type power like the Wax-Wax Fruit would work too.
On the other hand, if it turned out to be the Flame-Flame Fruit, I'd be terrified of setting the boat on fire... What a gamble.
After thinking it over, I...
Day ???
I've lost track of what day it is.
The Devil Fruit. I ended up eating it.
But I didn't gain any power. At least, nothing feels different.
Was it a fake?
But no, the taste was every bit as god-awful as advertised... I forced myself through it and ate every last bit, down to the last drop of juice.
I barely have enough energy to move anymore, so my days are spent simply staring up at the sky, lost in daydreams.
With nothing else to do, I endlessly create stories in my head, or look back on everything that's happened, keeping myself occupied.
And in doing so, I noticed something.
These past few years... I'd often felt that my personality was considerably more detached than most people's.
After my home village was attacked and destroyed by pirates, I was able to move past it and start living positively again fairly quickly.
That much could be attributed to the Kuja and how their companionship helped me heal.
But after that, when my second homeland was destroyed... the fact that I could chat so amicably with the very pirates who did it, who kidnapped me and were planning to sell me off?
Even I thought that was way too quick to make peace with things.
And after that, living under the Black Market Merchant "Master" I'd been sold to, it was pretty much the same. Negative thoughts rarely surfaced. If anything, I felt like I was enjoying the life and work there, seeing it as valuable experience.
...Yes, "experience."
I just realized that this personality of mine, this ability to quickly forget, or suppress, painful and difficult things and face everything with an abnormally positive outlook, is probably keyed to the "experience" I gain in each situation.
Grandma, who I'd been boarding with in my second homeland, once told me, "Sue-chan, you really love learning, don't you?"
I think what she meant wasn't "studying" in the academic sense, but simply "acquiring knowledge." I was an avid reader, always reading all kinds of books, enjoying the process of gaining new knowledge and turning the "unknown" into the "known."
Just as she said, I probably love learning things I don't know.
And that probably applies not just to reading, but to "experience" as well.
Raw tales of pirate adventure, including all the pillaging and everything else? You'd never get to hear those living a normal life.
Being captured by pirates, thrown in a cell, treated as a prisoner? Not something you'd normally experience.
Being sold off, enslaved, trained as an Elite Slave candidate, taught the ABCs of the underworld trade, actually conducting black market deals, and everything else that came with it? Same thing.
Back then, listening to the pirates' stories, I definitely thought, 'What terrible people.'
But at the same time: 'So that's how pirate raids work.' 'So that's what it's like to be kidnapped and sold.' 'So that's how pirate-versus-pirate battles go.' My curiosity about unknown knowledge, and the joy of gaining it, won out.
As a result, I listened eagerly to those stories, feeling neither fear nor revulsion.
Maybe when I'm confronted with rare "knowledge" or "experience," the filters and brakes of my moral compass just... break.
Even this whole being-adrift ordeal, in the beginning I was probably thinking, 'So this is what it's like to be lost at sea.'
I see... Now I finally understand. That's the kind of person I am.
...Come to think of it, I once entered a writing contest, didn't I?
And the feedback I got back then... said something like this:
'If you gain more knowledge, accumulate more experiences, and enrich your life, that depth will naturally come through in your expression and your stories.'
...That's what it said.
At this point, I've racked up quite a few rare experiences... I feel like I could write a pretty good story now.
Somehow, thinking about that made me want to write again for the first time in ages.
If I make it back alive, maybe I'll become a novelist or something.
...Huh?
Is that... something that looks like a ship in the distance? Am I hallucinating? A mirage? Or...
To be continued...