Early the next morning, sunlight spilled onto the deck of the eclipse.
“Wipe left, wipe right, damn it, why does This Great Man have to be here wiping windows!” Buggy muttered, holding a rag, while scrubbing the living room’s floor-to-ceiling windows until they shone with all his might.
On the other end of the deck, Sabo was sitting under a parasol reading a newspaper.
Meanwhile, Ace sat cross-legged on the deck, holding a bottle of top-tier sake he had dug out from the temperature-controlled wine cellar.
Pirates should drink sake in big gulps; Ace firmly believed in this.
Ace poured two cups of sake, downed one in a single gulp, and then turned to look at Buggy, who was still frantically wiping the windows.
“Hey, Buggy, come over and have a drink.” Ace raised the other wooden cup filled with sake and called out casually.
Buggy paused, swallowing a mouthful of saliva.
After being tossed around for most of the night, he was indeed parched.
He cautiously approached, took the cup, and looked at Ace with some wariness: “Captain, what kind of trick are you trying to pull now?” “Sit.” Ace patted the deck beside him.
Buggy sat down tremblingly.
Just as he brought the sake to his lips, he heard Ace ask a question out of the blue.
“Back on the oro jackson, who got beaten up more, you or Red Hair Shanks?” “Pfft—!” The mouthful of sake Buggy had just taken sprayed right out.
He widened his eyes, scrambled backward a couple of steps, and pointed at Ace, stuttering: “You…
how do you know This Great Man used to be on Captain Roger’s ship?!
That’s top-secret intel in the East Blue!” Even Sabo, who was reading the newspaper nearby, put it down and looked over in surprise.
He only knew Buggy was an East Blue pirate, but he hadn’t expected this Red Nose to have such an astonishing background.
Ace looked at Buggy’s battle-ready appearance, a soft and casual curve forming at the corners of his mouth.
He didn’t keep him in suspense, but instead raised his cup, looked at the clear sake inside, and said in an extremely natural tone: “Isn’t it normal to know such things?
After all, that man wearing a straw hat, grinning all day long, is my biological father.” The sea breeze seemed to stall at this moment.
“Clang.” The wooden cup in Buggy’s hand dropped onto the deck, spilling sake all over.
He was completely frozen, as if someone had cast a immobilization spell on him.
His small eyes stared fixedly at the black-haired young man before him, his brain completely blank.
“Biological father?” Buggy’s voice trembled uncontrollably, “You…
are you talking about that Pirate King, Gol D.
Roger?!” “Yeah, my mother’s name was Portgas D.
Rouge.
Although I took my mother’s surname, by blood, I am indeed that bastard’s seed.” Ace nodded, his tone lacking the disgust and distortion regarding his origins found in the original work, instead revealing a sense of openness after fully accepting it.
“That’s impossible, the Captain, he clearly already…” Buggy shook his head desperately, but when his gaze truly and carefully fell upon Ace’s face, he suddenly froze.
The contours around the brows and eyes, that fearless gaze, and even that carefree, heartless smile from yesterday while chasing him in the sky that made people both hate and feel helpless.
All the fragments of memory crashed together in Buggy’s mind.
That towering back from back then, standing at the bow of the ship, laughing in the face of the storm, overlapped perfectly with this young man before him at this moment.
“No wonder, no wonder I felt it was so familiar last night.” Buggy’s eyes suddenly turned red.
Large tears gushed out like a bursting flood, mixing with snot and smearing his face, which was painted with clown makeup, into a complete mess.
“Wuwuwuwu—!
Captain!
Captain, you actually have a son!!” Buggy lay on the deck howling without any regard for his image.
As an apprentice of the Roger Pirates, no matter how greedy or cowardly he usually was, his feelings for Roger were genuine.
Seeing the old Captain’s bloodline not only alive in the world but also grown into such a powerful monster, the defense in Buggy’s heart instantly collapsed.
Ace looked at Buggy, who was crying on the ground like a several-hundred-pound child, and didn’t interrupt.
He poured himself a cup of sake, drank it silently, a hint of gentleness flashing in his eyes.