Lister had a few toasts with the others and then left.
Without him there, the pirates only got wilder and more unrestrained.
Back on the Money, Nami and the twelve girls were celebrating on deck—celebrating their escape from slavery and their new start with the Money Pirates.
When they saw Lister return, they all stood.
"Captain!"
"Sit, all of you. From now on we're crewmates on the same ship. No need to be so stiff," Lister said with an easy smile.
"Aye!" the twelve answered, though inwardly they couldn't help feeling a touch of awe toward him.
Lister understood and knew that awe wouldn't fade quickly, so he wasn't in a rush. He sat down beside Nami and smiled gently. "I don't know your names yet. Will you tell me?"
The twelve glanced at each other, a little nervous, each waiting for someone else to go first.
Nami spoke up. "I'll introduce them."
"Please," Lister said, smiling.
The twelve girls all quietly exhaled. Nami knew Lister well; earlier she'd noticed the way he'd looked at the twin sisters wasn't the same as how he looked at the others, so she started with them.
"The elder sister is Youlan, the younger is Jingxiang," Nami said, pointing out which was which.
Lister's eye for people was sharp. Though the two looked very much alike, he still found the differences. The elder had grace and poise that felt natural and genuine. The younger's bright eyes carried a pure, slightly goofy charm.
"Youlan and Jingxiang. Good names," Lister said.
The twins blushed.
Nami went on introducing the others. Of the twelve, besides the twins the two who struck Lister most were a girl with crimson eyes and a girl with long purple hair. As Nami explained, the red-eyed girl hadn't been taken by slavers—she'd been sold by her parents, who thought her naturally red eyes were ominous and that she ate too much, a burden to their poor home. On her fifteenth birthday they gave her a roast chicken; she was happy, thinking they had finally accepted her. After she finished eating, she passed out. Later she learned from the slavers that her own parents had sold her—for a mere hundred thousand Beli.
The purple-haired girl gave Lister a mix of spacey innocence and odd nerves—impossible to forget.
Their names were Hongmei and Xiaozhi. Lister felt those didn't match their looks and temperaments, so he renamed them. The red-eyed girl became Akame, the purple-haired girl became Sheele. They didn't object; they accepted the new names gladly.
Lister chatted with the girls for a while. But seeing how restrained they were around him, not much different from the pirates, he lost interest and went back to the vice-captain's quarters.
He didn't know how long it was before Nami returned and found Lister reading training notes from his predecessors.
"Not sleeping?" she asked with a smile.
"I was waiting for you."
"If you're waiting for me, then go to sleep when you're sleepy," Nami said, cheeks tinged pink.
"That won't do. We've known each other too short a time. We need a… special way to bond quickly," Lister said, walking over and pulling her into his arms.
Nami rolled her eyes at him and didn't refuse.
Night lamps swayed; two shadows intertwined.
Time slipped by; a few more days passed.
At last Lister began work on hyper-thought. In this stretch he had deepened his understanding of the Quick-Quick Fruit. Carefully, relying on that understanding, he guided its power into a certain layer of his brain.
Buzz—
In an instant, he seemed to enter a strange state. His mind felt more agile. Things he had long forgotten rose up one after another. He grabbed a book from the shelf and flipped it open. His eyes swept line after line—ten lines at a glance—and nothing slipped away. He read faster and faster. In under five minutes he finished a book of over a hundred pages; everything in it was memorized and digested.
Holding down his excitement, he took another book. Four minutes later it too was done, its contents stored and made his own. He took a third; three and a half minutes later it was finished as well.
He read with mounting interest and couldn't stop, reaching for a fourth book—then, halfway through, a wave of dizziness hit. He dropped out of the overclocked state. Nausea rose as if he might vomit; the spinning in his head grew worse. He knew it was the aftermath of overusing his brain. At the same time his body sent signals of weakness and hunger.
He hurried to the door and shouted, "Bring me meat!"
With past experience, Lister had already told Michelin to prepare a large stock of meat. Hearing him call, the twelve girls came in one after another, each carrying a tray. Lister had no time to play the gentleman; he grabbed a bone skewer and tore into it, polishing off a five-jin chunk in a few bites. As soon as he finished, he pushed the Quick-Quick Fruit into his gut to accelerate digestion. With his body replenished, the symptoms eased.
After that he didn't hold back, wolfing down everything they brought. "More!"
They made several trips. Nearly five hundred jin of meat went into Lister's belly. He accelerated digestion, patted his ordinary-looking stomach, and laughed aloud.
"Like a great roc riding the wind, I'll soar ninety thousand li in a day!"