As the sun gradually sank, its afterglow spread across the sands of Elegia, and Uta slowly fell asleep against Cain's shoulder.
—This was perhaps the most peaceful and comfortable stretch of time she had enjoyed in all these years.
Cain carefully held her in his arms and landed lightly on the ground, afraid of disturbing that fragile tranquility.
Gordon had already been waiting nearby.
Seeing this, he quickly led Cain toward Uta's room.
The moment Cain gently laid her on the bed, Uta seemed to grow uneasy. Almost instinctively, she grabbed hold of Cain's arm and murmured in her sleep:
"Don't leave me, Cain… Shanks…"
"I won't. I'm right here." Cain answered softly. "And Shanks never abandoned you either."
He tried to gently pry her hand loose, only to find her grip unbelievably tight, so he gave up and carefully pulled the blanket over her.
After that, Cain lay down on the floor beside the bed, quietly keeping watch over her.
Gordon took in the scene, silently brought over bedding, and made a place for Cain on the floor.
Looking at the sleeping face on the bed, Cain's heart was full of conflicting emotions.
He understood the pain Uta had buried deep inside, yet he could not bring himself to tell her the truth outright.
Things could not go on like this forever.
He wanted to truly pull Uta out of the darkness, not merely muddle through one day at a time like this.
Lie to her? Absolutely not.
A bond maintained by lies would only breed even sharper hatred once it shattered.
And if he did that, how would he be any different from Shanks back then? In the end, he still would not be saving Uta at all.
Cain turned his hand over and gently held Uta's slender wrist, making a solemn promise in his heart.
'I'm going to save you, Uta.'
...
"NO! DON'T!"
Uta suddenly shot her right hand into the air and woke with a sharp gasp, a thin layer of sweat covering her forehead.
She hurriedly sat up, pressed a hand to her brow, and looked around blankly, murmuring to herself.
"Was it all a dream?"
Then her eyes dropped to the bedding on the floor, and she instantly came back to herself.
She hurriedly put on her shoes and ran into the hall.
Only when she saw that familiar splash of pink did the tight knot in her chest finally loosen, and she let out a long breath.
"Uta, are you okay? Do you feel sick anywhere?"
Cain immediately came over, his face full of concern.
Uta paused, then shook her head.
"I'm fine. For a second, I thought you were gone."
She glanced toward Gordon nearby and saw that he was cleaning up something that looked like a pile of ashes.
At that moment, Cain had already taken hold of her wrist and said with a smile:
"It's good that you're fine. Come eat breakfast. No practice today. Don't think about anything upsetting—just do whatever you want and enjoy yourself."
"Okay."
Uta nodded.
Watching the closeness between the two of them in the hall, Gordon finally let the last of his worry go.
He looked at the ashes in the dustpan, and the final trace of reluctance in his eyes quietly disappeared.
Then he turned and walked outside—he was going to scatter them into the sea and bury the past for good.
Cain caught a glimpse of Gordon's back out of the corner of his eye, then looked at Uta beside him and thought to himself.
'Good. Destroying that score didn't affect Uta after all.'
...
After breakfast, Uta excitedly dragged Cain around the city.
But everywhere they looked there was nothing but broken walls and ruins. Cain did not want her to be constantly reminded of old wounds, so he suggested:
"How about you take me to see the forest in the back instead?"
Uta readily agreed.
The woods were lush and green, but Cain's gaze abruptly fell on several clumps of brush—
They were wake-shrooms, the true culprit behind Uta's tragedy in the future.
He lightly spat.
It was not ordinary spit, of course, but a trace of dragon breath.
With heat like molten magma, it quickly scorched the brush.
Before Uta could turn around, Cain casually smashed apart the charred mushroom remains as well.
"CAIN, HURRY UP!"
Uta, farther ahead, was smiling and waving him over, her eyes bright.
Cain immediately composed himself, put a smile back on his face, and hurried after her.
But in the instant he turned, he cast one last look at the destroyed wake-shrooms, and a flash of unmistakable ruthlessness passed through his eyes.
"HEY, UTA, DON'T GO TOO FAR!"
Cain quickly caught up, his tone edged with urgency.
"There's a waterfall up ahead. We're both Devil Fruit users—if we fall in, it'd be dangerous!"
Uta pulled him deeper into the forest.
A clear spring surged up from underground, rushing down the mountain slope to form a swift waterfall, with cool mist spraying in every direction.
"It's fine!"
Uta turned around, a brilliant smile spreading across her face.
"Even if I really jumped from here, you'd come save me, wouldn't you?"
"I'm not exactly invincible."
Cain shook his head helplessly.
"...But I would catch you."
"Then that's enough!"
The instant she finished speaking, Uta turned and leapt off the waterfall.
Cain could only shake his head with a laugh.
Pink light spread over him, and in an instant he transformed into a lithe pink dragon and dived after her.
Clusters of flame clouds appeared from nowhere and gently wrapped around Uta.
Even when splashing water struck Cain's dragon body, the droplets were instantly vaporized by the heat, leaving not the slightest trace.
Sitting atop the flame clouds, Uta began to sing, her bright voice ringing through the forest.
Cain circled and danced through the air in time with the swaying grass, his dragon body tracing graceful arcs.
Uta moved lightly between the clouds and his back, her dancing steps nimble, her singing full of unrestrained brilliance.
The sight of it was like a living painting, beautiful enough to take one's breath away.
After they had played to their hearts' content, the two of them lay on the grass at the highest point, gazing out over the verdant wilderness and enjoying the rare stillness.
"Cain," Uta suddenly said.
"Mm?"
"Even though we're both devil fruit users, I've never properly told you what my power is."
She turned her head, her eyes shining with anticipation.
"So listen carefully, okay?"
With that, Uta opened her voice and, activating the power of the Sing-Sing Fruit, began to sing a melody with a strange rhythm.
Cain already knew what the ability did, but he still closed his eyes and listened quietly as his consciousness gradually sank into sleep.
"This is...?"
Looking at the scene before him, Cain felt both shock and understanding at once.
This was a world filled with colors and musical notes, dreamlike in every corner.
"So? Welcome to Uta's music world!"
Uta appeared out of nowhere.
Her clothes were no longer the plain outfit she usually wore, instead, they were adorned with sparkling decorations—fashionable and glamorous, as though she were a completely different person.
"This is the mental space created by my Sing-Sing Fruit," she explained with a smile.
"In the real world, you're still lying asleep on the grass. Only your consciousness has come here."
"So this counts as some kind of dream?"
Cain could not help asking.
This fruit, originally created to support the big boss of the movie, had only ever been shown rather superficially in the original work.
But if its power could truly touch the core of "dream manipulation," then the upper limit of its potential was almost immeasurable.
Uta tilted her head.
"I don't know. After I got a decent handle on my ability, you're the first person I've ever invited in here."
'Shanks and the others don't count,' she added silently in her heart.
The moment she finished speaking, Uta's song changed abruptly, and several enormous paintbrushes and boxes of paint appeared out of thin air, flying toward Cain.
Cain casually caught one of the brushes and steadied the floating paint box, then looked up at Uta.
"Hey, Cain—just like before, let's draw together!"
As she spoke, Uta's giant paintbrush had already begun splashing brilliant colors through the air.
Cain instinctively took half a step back and swept his hand through the air.
With a flash of light, several strange soldiers holding paintbrushes appeared and began circling him in midair.
—It was less a battle than a dance, full of rhythm, lively and joyful.
As the two of them played, they painted the world around them, as if they had returned to the carefree days of childhood.
They lay on this "grass" woven from notes and colors, gazing up at the brilliant picture they had created together in the sky—
It showed Cain, Uta, and Luffy, smiling idiotically.
Then Cain suddenly spoke.
"Hey, Uta, have you ever thought about what would happen if, inside this mental world of yours, you used your ability on me one more time?"
If Cain's guess was right, then there was something he absolutely had to let Uta see with her own eyes.
The Sing-Sing Fruit's power was extremely strange.
Aside from pairing with the movie's big boss, it touched the domain of mental control, seemed faintly connected to the level of the soul, and yet outwardly resembled a dream so closely that the boundary was maddeningly vague.
If the underlying logic of the ability really worked the way Cain suspected—if its true core was "dreams"—then perhaps the structure of those dreams was also exactly what he thought.
He himself had never deeply studied dreams. But a movie from his previous life, Inception, had given him a bold hypothesis—Could Uta, through her ability, enter a dream constructed by the subconscious?
At present, all she could do was pull people into the mental space she herself created.
She was still far from truly complete control.
But what if the process were reversed? What if she entered a dream created by someone else?
Though full of confusion, Uta chose to trust Cain.
She took a deep breath, and inside this music world, once again activated the Sing-Sing Fruit on Cain.
The next second, both of them opened their eyes at the same time.
Before them stretched endless towering bookshelves lined with enormous picture-book catalogs, each one as large as a door.
Looking at the familiar images, Cain immediately knew for certain—This was his dream.
More precisely, it was the first layer of his subconscious dream.
Inside these books were hidden the countless stories he had once read.
"Cain, what are all these? Where is this? And also..."
Uta suddenly froze, feeling an odd lightness run through her whole body.
Normally, maintaining the Sing-Sing Fruit's mental space consumed a huge amount of her stamina.
But now, that heavy burden had suddenly been cut by more than half. The exhaustion she felt was now so slight it could almost be ignored.
Hearing her questions, Cain thought for a moment, quietly sensed the state of his own body, and only then slowly replied.
"This is my dream. It seems the stamina cost of maintaining the world transferred over to me this time."
Uta nodded in understanding, then curiously walked toward the giant catalogs.
With a flick of her fingers, one of the door-like picture-book volumes opened at once.
A thought struck her—so even inside Cain's dream, she still retained control over this space, just as she did in her own music world.
Cain, likewise, had gained authority over the dream as well.
The two of them each held half, and both could influence this world built from the subconscious.
Then again, on second thought, they had only entered this dream because of Uta's power in the first place.
In that case, this shared control did make sense.
"The Beginning of Adventure… One Piece? Is this Luffy? Is this Luffy's story?"
She pointed at one page, her face full of curiosity.
Cain hurried over, his right hand sweeping quickly across the huge books with a rather suspicious air of concealment.
Finally, he stopped in front of a book marked with a four-character title and opened it.
"We can look at that later. For now, let's start with this…"
—Naruto.