"You came just to buy shipbuilding materials?"
Harald looked in surprise at the several large chests of Berries on the table.
"For something this small, you only had to say the word. There's no need to pay me."
"That won't do."
York set down the wooden tankard in his hand and said in a deep voice, "As they say, even between blood brothers, accounts should be clear."
"Maybe Treasure Tree Adam is just a common kind of timber in Elbaf's forests, but outside, it's an exceedingly rare material that you're lucky to come across at all. Getting your hands on it can even spark a small war."
"I really appreciate you giving me the lumber for free because of our friendship, but I can't let you take a loss."
"After all, as your friend, I have to think about Elbaf's situation too."
Harald's eyes flickered as he looked at the chests of Berries York had pushed in front of him.
As a responsible king, he was very sensitive to money.
A quick glance told him there was absolutely no less than one billion in those boxes.
Even for all of Elbaf, that was a considerable sum.
Especially now, when Elbaf was under diplomatic pressure from the World Government, a fund like this would make things much easier for Harald.
"Since you put it that way, I won't stand on ceremony."
…
The next day.
Harald led a group of men, hauling a huge wagonload of timber to Idda's tavern.
When York stepped forward to check, he was stunned to find that this lumber had all been specially processed already, not the freshly felled raw wood he had expected.
He looked up at Harald, who gave him a slight smile.
"These are our own reserve materials for building ships. The dimensions are a bit on the large side. If you're planning to build a smaller ship, you can cut them down however you like."
York couldn't help but laugh.
He understood. This was Harald returning the favor, a courteous response to York's words about them being friends who should take each other's circumstances into account.
"Thanks."
There was no need to be overly modest; York accepted Harald's goodwill without hesitation.
Using the huge mirror Harald had specially ordered someone to bring over, the lumber was smoothly transferred into Stussy's Mirror World.
After offering Harald a brief farewell, York returned to Water Seven together with Stussy.
A day and a half passed.
Water Seven was still the same as before, except that another large ship bearing the MADS emblem was now moored beside York's warship.
The four big names aboard that vessel—Vegapunk, Queen, Vinsmoke Judge, and Caesar Courant—had already come ashore and met up with Dragon and Ivankov.
When York and Stussy came back from Elbaf, what they saw was the four of them carousing wildly in a tavern.
Vegapunk, with a big brain like a lit bulb, had a local Water Seven beauty under his left arm and a wooden tankard in his right hand, his face flushed red from drink.
Queen, not yet with the rotund physique he would have in the future, sported a mohawk and wore a biker punk getup. He was standing on the tavern's live music stage with a guitar in his arms, singing and dancing rock.
Judge and Caesar were sitting across from each other at the same table, foreheads pressed together as they noisily argued over their respective research results and approaches.
Dragon sat off to the side, staring at these four men who were nothing like the top scientists he had imagined, his eyes filled with disillusionment.
And Ivankov?
York swept his gaze around the tavern and almost missed him.
The kid was actually up on stage with Queen, dancing along, his position so cleverly chosen that Queen's body blocked most of him from view. That was the only reason York hadn't noticed him right away.
"Honestly."
York sighed softly, unable to keep from raising a hand to his forehead.
He had known these four were not exactly serious types, but he hadn't expected their very first meeting to leave such a vivid impression.
Stussy looked at Vegapunk's hand roaming over the girl while his other hand held a wooden tankard, and her beautiful eyes were wide with shock.
In her memory, Vegapunk had been a total goody-two-shoes.
When they first met, he had perfectly fit the stereotype of a bookish science nerd.
Yet in just a few years, the kid had almost turned into a street thug.
If she hadn't kept following news from the scientific community, she really might not have believed that this was the same Vegapunk she'd once met.
"Ahem! Ahem!"
York cleared his throat loudly twice. The people in the tavern glanced at him, but aside from Dragon, who seemed on the verge of speaking, no one paid him any mind.
However, when Vegapunk saw Stussy, his whole body gave a visible tremor.
He immediately straightened up like a student caught slacking off by his homeroom teacher. Not only did he pull his hand back from the girl beside him, he also set his now-empty wooden tankard down on the table and sat up straight, smiling stiffly.
"L-Long time no see… Stussy… onee-san…"
Those last two words, "onee-san," came out a bit shy, making him look very much like an innocent young man.
Of course, that impression depended on ignoring everything he had just been doing, as well as the lovely woman still sitting at his side.
"Pfft."
In the end, Stussy couldn't hold back and laughed out loud.
"That boy back then who couldn't even talk properly when he saw me has really grown up over all these years."
Vegapunk's cheeks flushed, but since his whole face was already red from drinking, it was almost impossible to tell.
"You're… you're still just as beautiful as you were back then, onee-san. You haven't changed at all…"
"Hardly unchanged. I've grown older in the end."
A trace of genuine melancholy flashed through Stussy's eyes, but then she wrapped herself around York's arm and leaned her whole body into him.
"Fortunately, I've already found my own happiness now, so I don't have to agonize like I used to."
Vegapunk froze, his expression going stiff, and for a brief instant a hint of hostility flashed through his gaze toward York.
York's brow twitched, and he darted a glance at Stussy.
There was clearly something between these two.
Judging by the look of it, though, it seemed to be unrequited on Vegapunk's side alone.
That was not hard to understand.
If York were still his past-life self, seventeen or eighteen years old and encountering a woman like Stussy, traveling together for a while and forming a brief friendship, he too would probably develop some feelings for her.
In the original story, Vegapunk's choice to use Stussy as the template for his first clone might not have been entirely unrelated to a desire to use science to create "their daughter" when his romantic feelings went unreturned, as a form of consolation.
As for Stussy later using cloning methods to create Weevil, that had probably been inspired by Vegapunk.
Thinking of this, York's lips curled up.
It was just a pity that, in this life, he had gotten there first.
There was absolutely no way Weevil would appear now.
As for cloning Stussy…