One Piece: Lust Haki

Isuka woke me up by throwing a boot at my head.

"Rest day. Get up. We're going to town."

She was already dressed. Her hair was tied back with the white ribbon and she had her rapier at her hip, which was unnecessary for a day off and completely expected because Isuka without her rapier was like Tashigi without her glasses: technically functional, visibly incomplete.

I caught the boot before it hit my face. It was mine. She'd pulled it off the floor beside my bunk. "What time is it?"

"Late enough that Tashigi already ate breakfast and is waiting at the gate." Isuka was leaning against the barracks doorframe with her arms crossed. "She said if you're not there in ten minutes she's going without us, which is a lie because she doesn't know where anything is in town, but she said it and I'm passing it along."

I got dressed. The barracks were half-empty because most recruits were still in their bunks, earning back the sleep the joint exercise had taken. The floor was cold. My left boot still had sand in it from the training grounds. I shook it out this time because yesterday's sand pile had been swept up by someone who wasn't me and the guilt about that was mild but real.

The morning was bright. Clear sky, salt wind off the harbor, one of those days Marineford had maybe once a month when the weather forgot it was a military fortress and acted like a coastal town instead. Tashigi was at the eastern gate in a clean uniform with Shigure across her back. She had a list.

"There's a blade vendor on the second street. And a metalworking supply shop near the harbor. And a stall that sells rice crackers that a Lieutenant in the armory recommended."

"You made a list."

"I made a list." She held up a folded piece of paper. Her handwriting was small and precise and the list had bullet points.

Isuka looked at the list. Looked at Tashigi. "We're on a day off and you made an itinerary."

"It's not an itinerary. It's a list of places I'd like to visit. The order is flexible."

"The order is numbered."

"For reference."

We went to town.

The town outside Marineford was small, wedged between the base wall and the harbor in a strip of buildings that served Marines who needed to spend money and civilians who needed Marines to spend money. Food stalls, a general store, a tailor who specialized in uniform alterations, a bathhouse, and a collection of shops that sold everything from weapon oil to postcards of the headquarters' execution platform, which was a thing that existed and that tourists apparently bought.

Isuka ate everything. She moved through the food stalls like she moved through a sparring yard: aggressively, without hesitation, testing whatever was in front of her. Grilled squid, rice dumplings, a bowl of spiced noodles she finished in the time it took me to pay for mine. She ate with her hands when chopsticks were too slow and wiped her fingers on her trousers and her fingers were clean by the time the next stall appeared.

Tashigi ate a rice ball. One. She turned down the squid because the preparation looked unsanitary, turned down the dumplings because they had a filling she couldn't identify, and ate the rice ball because rice balls were predictable and Tashigi liked predictable food the same way she liked predictable sword grading systems. She held it with both hands and ate it in small bites and there was a grain of rice on her cheek that she didn't notice and neither Isuka nor I told her about.

I ate what was there. Squid was fine. Noodles were good. A meat skewer from a vendor who was grilling something that smelled better than it looked, which was a low bar because it looked like charred rope.

Tashigi found the blade vendor at 1035.

I knew it was 1035 because Isuka had looked at the clock tower when Tashigi disappeared through the shop door and said "Time starts now."

"Twelve minutes," Isuka said.

"Thirty."

"Twelve. She's efficient when she's focused."

"She's not going to be focused. She's going to find one thing wrong with his inventory and interrogate him about his entire supply chain."

Isuka considered this. "Fifteen."

"Thirty."

We leaned against the wall outside the shop. The sun was warm on the stone. Isuka's rapier clinked against the wall when she shifted. A cat sat on the step of the shop next door, licking its paw with the dedication of an animal that had nowhere to be and no intention of being anywhere else.

From inside, Tashigi's voice: "These fullers are machine-cut. Where do you source your blanks?"

"Told you," I said.

Isuka pushed off the wall and went to a food stall across the street. She came back with two skewers and no money visible in the transaction. The vendor was still serving the next customer and hadn't looked up.

"Did you just steal that?"

"I acquired it through creative redistribution." She handed me one. "Payment for the bet. She's going to be in there at least twenty minutes now."

The skewer was pork. It was good. The cat on the step watched us eat and its tail twitched with each bite.

At fourteen minutes, Tashigi's voice carried through the shop door, now louder: "The carbon content is inconsistent across your stock. Are you mixing suppliers?"

At twenty-two minutes: "This dagger has a stress fracture along the tang. If you sell this to a Marine, it will break on the first heavy impact. That's a safety issue."

At twenty-eight minutes, Tashigi emerged from the shop holding a small paper bag and looking satisfied. Her glasses had slipped down her nose and the rice grain was still on her cheek.

Isuka handed me the second skewer. "You win."

"You already gave me a skewer."

"That was an advance. This is the balance."

I ate the balance. Tashigi looked at both of us and the skewers and the wall we'd been leaning against and the cat.

"Were you betting on how long I'd take?"

"No," I said.

"Yes," Isuka said.

Tashigi adjusted her glasses. "How long was I?"

"Twenty-eight minutes."

"That's..." She considered. "That's reasonable. He was selling defective stock."

"Tashigi, eat a skewer."

She looked at the vendor stall. Looked at the skewer in my hand. "Is it sanitary?"

"It's pork on a stick."

She took it. She ate it in small bites, holding it with the tips of her fingers, and the rice grain fell off her cheek when she chewed and landed on her uniform and she brushed it away without noticing it had been there.

The hot spring was at the end of the main street, a stone building with separate entrances and a bamboo wall dividing the men's and women's sections. The water came from somewhere under Marineford's hills and smelled like sulfur and old minerals and the promotional sign out front claimed it was "restorative," which probably just meant hot.

I was the only one on the men's side. The pool was stone-lined, shallow, and the water was good enough that my shoulders unknotted. Weeks of tension dissolving. I leaned against the edge and stared at the wooden ceiling and the steam curled and the sulfur smell settled into my skin and I didn't think about Observation Haki plateaus or Tsuru's knowledge or Gion's door.

The bamboo wall was thin. The women's side was louder. Tashigi and Isuka and a couple of other recruits I didn't know.

My Observation was passive. Fifteen meters. The wall was about two meters away and the women's pool was directly on the other side and I couldn't shut it off and I'd stopped trying to shut it off because the attempt took more energy than just letting it run.

Their voices came through the wall and through my Observation both. Splashing. Conversation. One of the recruits complaining about the exercise. Tashigi's voice, quieter, saying something about water temperature.

Then Isuka.

"He's gotten bigger."

Silence on the other side. A splash. Someone shifting in the water.

Tashigi: "...what?"

"His shoulders. From training. Have you noticed?"

Another silence. Longer.

"What did YOU think I meant?"

Splashing. Tashigi moving in the water fast, suddenly very interested in being anywhere else in the pool. A strangled sound from Tashigi that might have been a word before it died.

One of the other recruits laughed. Isuka's laugh joined it, low and pleased with herself.

I stayed very still on my side of the wall. The water was warm. The ceiling was wooden. The grin on my face was the kind that would have gotten me killed if anyone on the other side could see it.

I was never going to tell them I'd heard this. Never. This was going in the vault next to the Note and the manga knowledge and the fact that Gion's perfume was jasmine. Permanent storage. No retrieval. I'd take it to the grave and on the grave I'd still be grinning.

Tashigi's voice, eventually, very small: "I hadn't noticed."

Isuka: "Liar."

More splashing. The conversation moved on to training schedules and ration quality and I stopped listening because the grin was using too many muscles and I needed to compose my face before I got out of the water.

We walked back to base at sunset.

The road from town to the eastern gate was dirt and straight and the sun was going down behind Marineford's towers and the shadows were long on the ground. Tashigi was in the middle. Isuka on the left. I was on the right.

Tashigi had the paper bag from the blade vendor in one hand and Shigure across her back and her glasses were clean because she'd wiped them at the hot spring and the world was in focus and her cheeks were pink from the water and she was walking at the pace of someone who wasn't in a hurry to get anywhere because she was already where she wanted to be.

Isuka had her hands behind her head, elbows out, rapier swaying at her hip. She'd eaten enough for three people and she was walking with the loose stride of someone who was full and warm and had won exactly one fewer bet than she'd wanted to.

The town was behind us. The gate was ahead. A seabird crossed the road at ankle height and banked over the wall and was gone.

"Today was good," Tashigi said.

Nobody disagreed.

The gate guard saluted when we came through. Isuka saluted back with the hand that was behind her head, which was technically incorrect but the guard didn't say anything because Isuka's scores were posted on the board and the guard had seen them.

We split at the barracks corridor. Tashigi went left. Isuka went right. I went straight.

"Same time next rest day," Isuka said over her shoulder.

"If you stop stealing from vendors."

"No promises."

Her boot steps faded down the corridor. Tashigi's went the other way, softer, accompanied by the quiet clink of Shigure's sheath against the wall when she turned the corner.

I went to my bunk. Sat down.

Good day. They exist. Between the exercises and the Tsuru weight and the Observation plateau and the six sentences in my boot, there are days where three people eat bad food and sit in hot water and walk home at sunset and nobody needs anything from anyone except the walking.

The mess hall bell rang. I went to dinner. The fish was the same.

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