"You're paying me back!"
Nami took one look at the distance and knew she had zero chance of catching up to that Roger guy—the man who looked exactly like the Pirate King. She pivoted instantly, snatching Li Ke by his collar and screaming in his face.
Li Ke didn't say a word. He just gave her a flat, calm look, and Nami's hands instinctively let go of his shirt.
"That was a fortune!" she barked, trying to maintain some dignity. "My savings were not part of our contract!"
She stared him down with deadly seriousness. She could back down, sure, but she wasn't giving up on the money. That was her absolute bottom line.
Li Ke was speechless. He knew Nami was written to be a greedy cat-burglar, but seeing it in person was something else entirely. The level of obsession was borderline impressive.
"Fine. You're staying in character, I'll give you that," Li Ke said, rolling his eyes. "Consider the money 'confiscated' by me for now. I'll pay you back later, but don't think you're going to use this as an excuse to shake me down for a massive interest rate."
He reached out and pinched Nami's cheeks, squishing her face. He was eventually going to head back out to sea anyway. If it weren't for Nami, he wouldn't have even bothered with the East Blue. Most of the top-tier beauties on his "recruitment" list were in the Grand Line or the Calm Belt.
He was only here for her—and maybe to see if he could cross paths with Luffy. No matter what his personal take on the guy was, it felt wrong to pass through without seeing the future Pirate King while he was still just a naive kid.
"Ugh! That bastard! He better hope I never see him again!"
Nami slammed her fist against the railing. She didn't dare push Li Ke too far; he still held the key to her mother's resurrection. That was the only reason she was being this compliant. If it weren't for the hope of seeing Belle-mere again, she wouldn't be following his orders this easily—even if he had saved her from Arlong.
She glared at the horizon where Roger had vanished, her heart simmering with rage. But there was nothing to be done; he was long gone. Her frustration was quickly overtaken by a desperate urge to reach the shore and tell the village that the nightmare was over.
As they steered the ship toward the coast, the shock of Roger's island-splitting strike finally began to fade, replaced by a crushing realization.
"Arlong... is he really dead?"
She stared at the spot where Arlong Park used to be. There was nothing left but churning, violent waves and debris. Her eyes grew distant.
She thought about the years of suffering, the endless, sleepless nights, the image of Belle-mere being gunned down, and every single villager who had been murdered because they couldn't scrape together enough tribute for the fishmen.
Over the years, Arlong had methodically wiped villages off the map. Those who couldn't pay the tribute died; those who tried to fight back died faster.
Arlong kept the island in a stranglehold, controlling every vessel to ensure no one escaped. Aside from the corrupt Marines and a few shady merchants, anyone who set foot on the island was slaughtered by the crew.
Nami was the only exception—the only one allowed to roam the seas, all so she could steal for him and map the world. To scrape together that blood money, she had lied, cheated, and stolen. She had dragged herself through the mud, doing every lowlife thing imaginable except selling her own body.
She had lived that hell for over a decade.
And now, to kill the monster and bring back her mother, she had gone and sold her very soul. Her entire life had been systematically dismantled by Arlong.
Tears began to stream down her face uncontrollably. She stared blankly at the place that had been the source of all her agony and terror, now completely erased from existence. A strange, hollow grief settled in her chest.
Look at that, she thought. In the face of true power, the "mighty" Arlong was nothing more than an ant to be crushed at will.
A guy like that had spent ten years ruining their lives.
The world was a dark, godless place.
Li Ke walked over and silently pulled Nami into his arms. He didn't feel much of a deep emotional connection to her yet, but he knew exactly what his role required in this moment: to simply be a pillar of support and give her a steady shoulder to cry on. He was, at the very least, that self-aware.
For Nami, even though the man holding her was just another bastard in a world full of them, he was a "useful" bastard. She finally let go of her icy composure, wailing at the top of her lungs and letting out every ounce of suffocating, repressed trauma she'd been hoarding for years.
She cried for a long time, her body shaking with the force of it. At one point, she even buried her teeth into Li Ke's shoulder in a frantic, desperate release of agony, as if trying to bite through the very memory of her pain.
Watching from the periphery, Robin felt a sharp pang of bittersweet irony tighten in her chest. Nami's long-awaited revenge was finished—settled with a single, effortless strike. But what about her own ghosts? The monsters who had slaughtered everyone she ever loved and erased her entire home from the maps were the World Government. She wasn't delusional enough to believe that simply surrendering her body to Li Ke would be a high enough price to convince him to wage war against the entire world.
To a man like Li Ke, the World Government might not be a terrifying threat, but by that same cold logic, he had absolutely no reason to go out of his way to dismantle a global superpower just for her sake. She was well aware that in his eyes, the cost of such a conflict likely far outweighed the value of a single woman's gratitude.
"Must be nice..." she whispered, unable to hide the envy in her voice.
As they finally pulled up to the shore, Li Ke's newly awakened Observation Haki pinged. He sensed someone ducking into the trees the moment they landed. Just as he was wondering who it was, a woman stepped out from the brush and revealed herself.
The woman was clearly more mature than Nami, but only just. Her frame shared that same skeletal leanness—a grim testament to the fact that life under Arlong's boot hadn't been kind to her either.
She was arguably in better shape than Nami, but "better" was a relative term when you were both starving.
Looking at her, Li Ke suddenly felt a surge of annoyance. He'd given Arlong way too much respect; dying that quickly and spectacularly to a legendary move was far too good for a piece of shit like him.
Nami spotted the woman and immediately lunged forward, throwing herself at the girl who was older but shared that same "undervalued" look.
"Nojiko!"
Nami's voice was stripped of its usual guarded weight. For the first time, she sounded truly, vibrantly free.
"Nami? Are these... your friends? And Arlong Park... was that you guys?"
Nojiko had been hiding in the brush when the ship docked, but seeing Nami had drawn her out. She asked the question with a voice full of fragile disbelief.
"Yeah! That's right!"
Nami nodded firmly. Even though her deal with Li Ke was purely transactional, there was no denying that he was now her "partner" in a sense. He had delivered exactly what he promised: the head of Arlong. Even if it was that Roger guy who physically swung the sword, it was only because Li Ke had ordered the hit.
"I see..."
Nojiko looked dazed. The dark cloud that had loomed over her head for over a decade had vanished in a heartbeat. The feeling was surreal, impossible to put into words—it was as if, in a single breath, the weight of the world had simply ceased to exist.
"This is really..."
Her legs gave out, and she stumbled. Unlike the others, she hadn't felt the literal shockwave of Roger's strike, which only made the reality of the situation harder to grasp.
"Thank God!"
She buried her face in her hands and began to sob right along with Nami.
"Wow. The more I look at these poor sisters, the more I realize what an absolute scumbag you are."
Robin, still clutching her book, watched the sisters' tearful reunion and couldn't resist a dry jab at Li Ke.
"If you think I'm so despicable," Li Ke said, his voice dropping as he shot Robin a predatory, ill-intentioned look, "how about you take over Nami's 'duties' for her?"
Robin met his gaze, her expression unreadable behind a mask of cool detachment. She let out a short, dry laugh.
"Ah, I'll pass on that. I haven't reached the point where I have to trade with you yet," she replied, her voice smooth and entirely devoid of fear. "So, thanks—but no thanks."
Li Ke didn't look away, his eyes lingering on her with a proprietary chill that made the air between them grow heavy. The rejection didn't seem to bother him; it only made the game more interesting.