The moment Cain screamed for help, Uta reacted.
She rushed forward, grabbed Shanks by the head, and pulled with all her strength, trying to give Cain enough time to escape.
Unfortunately, Cain had only just regained some color.
Even if he managed to stand, there was no way he could escape Shanks' reach in his current condition.
Worse still, Shanks had already pulled open the waistband of his underwear and was only a moment away from exposing everything.
Hongo and Beckman rushed upstairs at that exact moment and walked straight into the scene.
Uta was desperately yanking Shanks backward while shouting, "Shanks, stop this!" Cain was scrambling away in terror, and Shanks wore an intensely serious expression as he pulled open the younger man's underwear.
Both men immediately suppressed their laughter.
After coughing awkwardly, they turned toward the doorway and blocked Makino's view just as she came upstairs to see what was happening.
Beckman took a slow drag from his cigar.
"Miss Makino, this isn't something you should see."
"Exactly," Hongo hurriedly agreed. "The boss has probably spent too long sailing at sea and developed some psychological issues. I'll treat him later. I promise I'll return a perfectly healthy captain to you."
The same thought flashed through both their minds.
'So this is why the boss opposes Cain and Uta being together, yet also keeps entrusting Uta to Cain. It turns out the boss likes—'
"Hey. Stop imagining nonsense, you two!"
After so many years together, Shanks naturally knew exactly where their thoughts were heading.
He hurriedly sheathed Gryphon, pulled the blanket back over Cain, and explained,
"I was examining him."
"Right, right. Of course."
Hongo nodded with an understanding expression.
Privately, however, he thought, 'I've met plenty of terrible doctors who used "examinations" as an excuse to take advantage of their patients.'
The moment that thought appeared, Hongo met Shanks' deeply unsettling stare.
His captain had seen straight through him.
…
After examining himself and putting his clothes back on, Cain glared contemptuously at Shanks while stuffing medicinal ingredients and meat into his mouth.
His complexion had already improved considerably.
"I told you there wasn't any mark on my body. Why would I lie to you?"
"You nearly cut me apart just to look for some mark!"
"Not nearly. I was prepared to do it at any moment."
Shanks frowned even more deeply and made as though he intended to rush forward and strip him again.
"No. We need to inspect you more carefully."
"You could check the front yourself, but you can't see your own backside. Take everything off and let me examine it properly!"
"Are you serious?! Again?!"
Cain retreated in terror, clutching his belt with both hands.
"And what do you mean by 'examine it properly'? Why does that sound so incredibly wrong?!"
Cain knew perfectly well what kind of mark Shanks was searching for.
But he did not have one.
Surely he was not expected to strip completely naked and let Shanks scrutinize his butt from every possible angle.
Fortunately, Beckman and Hongo immediately stepped forward to restrain their captain.
"Boss, calm down!" Hongo urged. "We were only joking earlier, but now I'm genuinely starting to think you're a pervert!"
"Honestly, Shanks, what are you doing? You only want to check him, right?"
Uta came upstairs at that moment after Makino had finished examining her downstairs.
She walked directly past Shanks, stepped behind Cain in full view of everyone, and pulled down the back of his trousers for a quick look.
Then she pulled them back up, gave his backside a firm slap, and squeezed once for good measure.
Cain's entire body went rigid.
"There. There's nothing like the mark you described."
Everyone in the room stared with their mouths hanging open.
Then they hurriedly forced out awkward laughter to smooth over the situation.
"Hahaha! Good. That's good!" Beckman was the first to look away. He turned toward Makino. "How was Uta?"
"There was no mark like the one Shanks described," Makino replied softly.
"Wonderful! Then everyone's happy!" Hongo hurriedly said as he began pushing everyone toward the door.
"Come on, come on. Stop standing around in here!"
Within moments, the room had emptied.
Only Shanks remained, enduring the openly contemptuous gazes of Cain and Uta.
His face shifted between red and pale before he also decided to make his escape.
"My, my. Looks like I was mistaken. An unfortunate misunderstanding."
He laughed awkwardly and edged toward the doorway.
The moment he stepped across the threshold, however, he abruptly turned around.
A red glint of Conqueror's Haki flashed through his eyes as his expression hardened.
"You need to hurry up and improve your Conqueror's Haki."
"Hongo said that with your Zoan constitution and those supplements, you should recover completely by tomorrow, right?"
"Perfect. I'll come for you first thing in the morning."
Without giving Cain or Uta a chance to object, Shanks turned and disappeared down the hallway.
He still had plenty to do.
Aside from personally searching the entire island, he ordered the Red Hair Pirates to scour every suspicious location around Cain's house without wasting a single moment.
'It's over. I knew he wasn't going to let this go!'
Cain cursed inwardly.
'After humiliating himself that badly, he's definitely going to torture me to death tomorrow!'
His mind filled with images of Shanks slamming him into the ground during training, and his face twisted miserably.
But Shanks had no intention of taking revenge.
From beginning to end, everything he did was for Cain's sake.
Even if they had found no mark, Shamrock remained the most likely attacker.
At present, Shanks could think of no safer solution than helping Cain raise his strength as quickly as possible.
"Come on. Stop thinking about it."
Uta comforted him softly while using a fork to feed him piece after piece of fragrant roasted meat.
"Shanks isn't that petty. It'll probably just be ordinary training, like what Yasopp did with you."
"For now, you need to eat and recover. Look, you finally don't resemble a dried corpse anymore."
Cain nodded repeatedly and chewed through the meat.
He devoured every supplement and every plate of roasted food on the table.
Before long, his cheeks looked rosy and slightly greasy, while his condition visibly returned to normal.
At the first light of dawn the next morning, Shanks dragged Cain to an open area near the shore and officially began his high-intensity training.
Uta was not idle either.
Aboard the Red Force, she studied navigation seriously under Snake.
They could not continue floating through the sky every time they traveled. Proper sailing skills were something she needed to master eventually.
Before long, Cain rushed aboard the Red Force in a panic, found Hongo, and dragged him into the operating room while shouting that he needed to remove his trousers.
"Wait. What are you doing, brat?"
"You're a doctor. Why would you be afraid to examine a patient? Hurry and see whether this is going to leave a scar!"
A clearly healed sword wound ran across Cain's tailbone.
There was no need to guess who had left it.
Cain was panicking because he feared that the scar might affect his dragon form.
What if, like Kaido, scales could never grow over the injured area again?
Would that not leave him with a completely unnecessary fatal weakness?
Cain could accept a scar almost anywhere else.
But this particular wound was on his butt.
That was simply intolerable.
Hongo glanced at the already healed injury and answered bluntly,
"Idiot. Unless you were injured while in your beast form, the wound won't carry over to it."
As Hongo explained everything in detail, Cain gradually understood.
Kaido's scars remained because his scales had been directly shattered while he was in dragon form, causing irreversible damage to his true body.
Even when he returned to human form, those scars naturally remained.
But if Cain was injured while human, then when he transformed into a dragon, scales would still grow normally over that area.
The injury would have no effect on his beast form whatsoever.
After hearing that explanation, Cain's anxiety finally disappeared.
He sighed in relief and left the operating room.
Hongo had only taken a single step out after him when he saw Shanks walking inside.
The sword wound on Cain's butt immediately flashed through his mind.
Then he remembered Shanks' nearly obsessive interest in Cain's backside the previous night, along with the jokes about his captain's preferences.
The more Hongo considered it, the more suspicious everything seemed.
He decided that his captain might truly need a proper diagnosis.
"Boss, would you like me to perform a psychological evaluation?"
He paused before adding,
"Or perhaps you should find a woman and get married while we're here?"
Question marks appeared all over Shanks' face.
The crew members crowded around the doorway to watch also stared in confusion.
Even Uta, who had been studying navigation nearby, looked over with a face full of question marks.