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Ch. 1: How We Met
Furiously rubbing the tears out of your eyes, you continue to run away from the sound of trampling feet and the multiple voices shouting behind you. This wasn’t anything new, you should be used to this by now, but you weren’t. After multiple days and weeks of being bullied by the neighborhood kids, running away, and treating your wounds, you still held onto that small hope that someday it would be different. One day, all of this will stop and you’ll have some friends or a friend. Having at least one friend would’ve been enough. You didn’t understand why people would give you mean looks or why the kids wouldn’t play with you. Well, technically you did, but you still couldn’t figure out why they were mean.
On the island, you lived with your mother. She had her good days, and she had her bad days. She was really nice to you on her good days, and the both of you would have fun together. You cherished those days, but you also knew that they didn’t last long. On her bad days, she would go to the local bar in town and drink until Makino-san forced her to leave. Even if she got kicked out of the bar, she would move on to find company in the visitors who came to the island. When that happened, you ran far away from home, and often took shelter at Makino-san’s house. Your mother was never the same after your father died. You never met him, but you still hated him for leaving the both of you behind and for turning your mother into such a mess. The townspeople would look at your mother with judging eyes and whisper among themselves. Then they would look at you as well, and assume the worst out of you. Parents wouldn’t allow you to play with their kids, saying how their precious children would get “influenced” by the whore’s daughter. You weren’t anything like your mother, hell, you were just nine-years-old but people didn’t see it that way. Their prejudice towards you and your mother passed on to their own children, thus carrying on the same behavior.
The sounds of the children cursing at you gets louder, bringing you out of your thoughts. Without daring to look behind, you push yourself to go faster. It’s getting harder for you breathe as you kept running, but you couldn’t stop here, not now. Your hand reaches up to grasp the medallion necklace that you kept tucked under your shirt. It was all you had of your deceased father. There were many times in the past when you tried to get rid of it, but you could never go through with it. Whenever you were scared or felt alone, you held onto the necklace as if it was draining away the bad energy. You hated that it was the sole reminder you had of your father, but it also the only thing of worth that you had. It was your treasure now. This necklace was also the reason why the neighborhood children were running after you today. The leader of the group saw the medallion as it slipped out of your shirt when you bent over to pick up a flower. He demanded that you hand it over, and gathered up the rest of the kids to back him up. You fought off as many as you could. You were actually able to beat up the kids your age and give the leader a black eye. The remaining kids called for their older and bigger siblings, you knew you didn’t stand a chance against them so you ran.
Ignoring the pain and fear, you continue to run on and on, further from where you typically stopped. You kept going despite the ache in your body, and despite the demand for air in your lungs. You didn’t dare to look back. It wasn’t until you tripped over a tree root that you stopped running. The ground was cool beneath you, and the sun warmly settled on your face. You could hear the coos of the birds echoing throughout the forest, and the sigh of the wind brushing against the leaves making a “shh” sound. It was heaven to your ears, beautiful and peaceful, devoid of angry screams and taunts. The silence of the forest wrapped around you like a comforting blanket. You were alone, and free. A single tear trickled out from your eye, followed by another and another. Soon enough, you were crying under the base of the tree, unable to hold back your tears. You reach up to wipe your tears and nose, and you wince as your hand brushed against the wound on your cheek. One of the kids had a dagger with them, and sliced your cheek before you even had the chance to fight back. The pain in your chest felt unbearable, why did they have to be so cruel? You wrap your arms around your legs, and curl up as much as you can. You lost track of time, and didn’t know how long you sat there crying.
Then a face appears right before your face, “Hey! Why are you crying?”
You look up to see a boy’s face in front of you except he was upside down, his neck stretched all the way from the tree branch high above you to where you were now on the ground. Shocked by what you saw, you scream and move back until you’re stopped by the tree trunk.
The boy grimaces at your scream and frowns at you, “Hey, why did you do that?”
You continue to blink at the boy, trying to make sense of what’s in front of you, “So-sorry, you really surprised me. Your neck is doing a thing.” You say, pointing towards it.
“Huh?” He tilts his head at you, looking rather confused by what you said.
You watched as his face lit up and he says, “Oh! That’s because I ate the Gum-Gum fruit. I have a rubber body!” His head snaps back to where the rest of his body was, and unwraps himself from the tree branch. He jumps down and lands in front of you. He smiles widely at you as if he’s proud of himself in doing that small feat.
“Wow! That’s so cool!” You smile back at the boy. It was the coolest thing you’ve ever seen. His smile grows bigger and puffs out his chest, “Of course it is!” He steps closer to you and says, “I’m Luffy! Who the hell are you?” You get taken aback by his comment, but he’s still smiling at you so you guess that he didn’t mean anything bad by that.
You grab his hand and say, “I’m F/N.” You release the grip you had on his hand to take your hand back, but he continues to hold your hand and tighten his grip. He pulls you up onto your feet, and releases your hand afterwards. Taking a closer look at him, you see a scar just underneath his eye, and note the string around his neck connecting to the straw hat hanging on his back.
Before you could say anything, you hear two voices shouting the boy’s name. Luffy steps off to the side and yells back, “I’m over here!” Before long, two boys holding sticks are walking over to the two of you. One had a mean look with freckles on his face, while the other one was smiling and wearing a top hat. The one with freckles comes up to Luffy and punches him in the head. You gasp as you watch Luffy fall to the ground.
He rolls around on the ground, whining and shouting, “Ace! Why did you do that?”
Ace scoffs and says, “You moron, that’s for wandering away from us and because I wanted to.”
Luffy gets up right away and pushes his face up against Ace’s, “You can’t hit me just because you feel like it!”
Ace glares back at him, “I can and I already did.”
“Jerk!”
“Stupid idiot!”
You stand there watching this unfold before you, and trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do now. You’re tempted to slowly disappear and move away from them, as you look around, you catch the eye of the other boy. Looking back at you, he smiles, “Luffy, who’s this?”
As if it was a flip of the switch, he steps away from Ace and walks toward you saying, “This is F/N. She’s my new friend!” He wraps his arm around your shoulder and smiles at the other two boys.