"Quite capable, aren't you?"
The old man's voice was flat, showing no real fluctuation.
His attitude was like the soot-covered buildings outside; nothing seemed to stick, and nothing got in.
It was as if nothing in this world—not kindness, not anger, not even a group of armed strangers cleaning his house—could stir his heart.
He shuffled past them.
However, when he stopped in the living room, his gaze snagged on the small table.
One of Dragon's younger members, a girl from the South Blue, had folded a small, intricate flower from a spare page of paper and placed it in front of the faded family photograph.
The old man's cracked, dirty fingers ghosted over the paper flower.
He didn't touch it, but he stared at it for a long, silent moment.
The first flicker of something—not quite warmth, but less than ice—entered his eyes.
"You're thoughtful," he grunted.
He disappeared into the kitchen, the sound of clinking pottery echoing out.
He returned with a stained wooden tray, a rusty kettle, and several mismatched, thick clay cups, which he began to wash with a gray, worn rag.
Dragon and his men, now his "Freedom fighters," sat cross-legged on the floor on either side of the low, square table.
They were a strange sight: hardened fighters and idealists, now sitting like students, quietly waiting for the old man.
"There's nothing much to serve at home," Snow (The old man) said, his voice still rough.
He handed out the cups.
"Have some water."
He filled each cup with steaming water from the kettle.
"This... this is something I've saved. Clean water. Drink it while it's hot, outsiders."
Dragon looked down at his cup.
The water was a pale, murky gray.
He glanced at the old man's face, searching for any sign of malice.
He found none.
Only exhaustion.
He trusted him.
Lifting the cup, Dragon tilted his head back and drank it all in one go.
It was... an experience.
It wasn't just bad.
It was aggressive.
It tasted of metal, of sulfur, of the very ground beneath their feet.
It was thick and had a rough, scratchy sensation that scraped all the way down his throat.
Dragon set the cup down, his expression perfectly neutral.
He didn't so much as grimace. Some of the members behind him, however, weren't so stoic.
A few coughed, their eyes watering, trying to hide their pained expressions.
The old man watched them, a flicker of dark amusement in his eyes.
He lit a long, thin tobacco pipe, put it in his mouth, and took a deep, rattling puff.
"The water tastes awful, doesn't it, young man?"
Dragon shook his head, his gaze fixed on the dregs in his cup.
"It's not exactly awful," he said, his voice measured. "But it does... have a strange taste. It tastes like a long, hard life."
After hearing Dragon's response, the old man let out a sudden, bark-like laugh, revealing yellowish-brown, gapped teeth.
"Hah! How could it not taste awful? Even I find it unpleasant, and I've been drinking it for fifty years!"
Dragon didn't respond.
He simply picked up the heavy kettle and poured himself a second cup, intending to drink it just as he had the first.
The old man's laugh died, and he watched Dragon's hands. He was studying him.
"Sir," Dragon said, setting the kettle down. "My name is Monkey D. Dragon, from the East Blue. Currently, I'm a traveler, journeying around the world with my companions."
It was his standard cover story.
He didn't think this old man, isolated in a dying kingdom at the edge of the North Blue, would know his name or his secrets.
The Marines hadn't even issued any bounty posters for him... yet.
The old man took another long, slow puff of his pipe, the smoke mingling with the smog in the air.
He seemed to fall into a memory.
"Monkey... Monkey..." he mumbled.
"I remember, many years ago... must have been thirty years... there was a marine officer. Big, loud, and more muscle than brains. He also bore the name 'Monkey.' Are you related to him?"
Dragon froze, the cup halfway to his lips.
'You have got to be kidding me.'
Of all the places... He had never, ever expected this old man to have met his father, Monkey D. Garp.
The world suddenly felt dangerously small.
His entire posture shifted.
The casual air of a traveler vanished, replaced by a deep, involuntary respect.
"Sir," he said, his voice lower. "The person you mentioned... that should be my father. May I ask your honorable name?"
The old man tapped the smoldering ash from his pipe onto the floor.
His expression turned complicated, a mix of old anger and even older memories.
"Barnett Snow," he said. "The name's Barnett Snow. You can call me Uncle Snow."
"Uncle Snow," Dragon said, his voice firm. "I'd like to learn about your country, the Eryojaku Kingdom. Why is it so... completely different from what's written in the books?"
"Different?" Old man Snow's face twisted into a mocking sneer. "How's it different? Is the pollution much worse than you imagined? Did the books not mention the part where we're all just dying for their profit?"
Dragon nodded gravely.
He took a small notebook and a pen from his travel bag, preparing to record the old man's words.
Snow's eyes narrowed.
That sharp, hawk-like gaze returned, pinning Dragon in place.
"Before I tell you a damn thing, you answer me one question. No more traveler crap. What is your true purpose for coming to the Eryojaku Kingdom?"
The air in the room grew heavy.
Dragon didn't back down.
He met the old man's gaze, and Snow saw the unshakeable, terrifying conviction in those dark eyes.
"We..." Dragon began, then paused.
He looked at his companions, then back at Snow. He made a decision.
"We are a group of people who want to change the world. In the first half of our lives, we were soldiers, citizens... we were among the middle and upper classes. But one day, we woke up. We realized..."
He leaned forward, his voice a low, intense rumble.
"This world is deeply unreasonable. The nobles high above... the World Government... they control everything about the commoners, including their lives. And the commoners can only be forced to accept it. They become exploited creatures. Things. Not people."
He tapped his notebook.
"We want to change all of this. This was my original intention for founding the Revolutionary Army. Now... we're traveling across the four seas, trying to find answers. We're looking for a better way."
It was the most honest he'd been to a stranger.
After hearing Dragon's explanation, the old man was silent for a long time.
He didn't say anything.
He just stared at the clean, framed photograph of his lost family.
Finally, he spoke.
"A remarkable idea," he said, his voice flat. "But in my opinion, you're still too green. Just a kid with a big idea."
He gestured to the notebook.
"Before you go searching for answers in this kingdom, this old man can tell you some things. Get your pen ready, boy. You'll want to hear this."
Dragon quickly wrote, gripping his pen so tightly his knuckles were white.
"A very, very long time ago," Snow began, his voice taking on the rhythm of a story told a thousand times.
"Probably during my grandfather's era... this place, Eryojaku, it was an agricultural kingdom. The mountains were green. The sky was blue. Can you even imagine that? Blue."
"My grandfather... he loved going into the woods to catch wild hares. He'd go into the rivers and catch fish. Big, clean, beautiful fish."
"Then, when my grandfather was a young man, Eryojaku changed. The first transformation. An old hunter found some... black stones... up in the mountains. We commoners didn't know what they were. We just knew they were excellent for burning. Better than wood. Some even presented them to the king as a curiosity."
"At first, no one cared. Then a passing merchant... one from the outside world... he revealed the secret. It was coal. A crucial industrial resource that could fetch astronomical prices."
"The noble lords... they saw the profits. They saw the Belly. They ordered the commoners to start large-scale mining. Soon, the first batch was sold, and the king and nobles made a hefty profit. They believed coal yielded higher returns than... you know... food. So they commanded the commoners to reduce farming and send more people into the mines."
"Several years passed. My grandfather worked well in the mines. He became a supervisor. He passed the job to my father. My father passed it to me." Snow tapped his own chest with a sooty finger.
"By the time it was my turn, the kingdom's landscape had shifted again. Outsiders found transporting the coal too troublesome. So, they chose to move their entire industries inside our borders. The king and nobles, who could collect land rents and taxes, welcomed them. The factories were built."
"That," Snow said, his voice dropping, "was when the fate of Eryojaku changed for the second, and last, time."
"Large quantities of coal were transported directly to steel mills, to power plants, to factories that screamed day and night. Each one had over a dozen furnaces, consuming the coal and... releasing this." He waved a hand at the smog-filled window.
"Massive amounts of black smoke. Poisoning the air. Poisoning the water. Poisoning us."
"Originally, the king intended to relocate the factories outside the kingdom. But the merchants offered him... a large sum of money. A bribe. So, he chose to move himself out instead. Him and all the nobles."
"They established a new royal capital on a nearby scenic island. They left us here. They left us to die, relying on the King's Guard and mine supervisors... men like me... to control the mining populace."
Dragon stopped writing.
He understood.
It was the same story, everywhere.
Greedy noble lords who didn't treat commoners as living beings, using violence to force them into labor.
As for the pollution? The death? They didn't care.
Their hearts and eyes were blinded by stacks of Belly.
At this point, Dragon couldn't help but interject.
"Uncle Snow, I have a question."
"Hm?"
"If the king and nobles don't value your lives at all... if they abandoned you here to die... why haven't you... why hasn't there been an uprising? Why haven't you overthrown these wicked nobles?"
Snow's face, which had been lost in memory, snapped back to the present.
The mocking, bitter, humorless expression returned, more intense than ever.
He let out a dry, rattling cackle.
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