Hearing this, the sturdy man standing at the door looked Kyoma and Kagura up and down carefully.
Seeing that they didn't look like dangerous pirates, he spoke with obvious pleasure.
"Travelers? We shipwrights at Shipyard No. 53 love entertaining guests. Come in. I have extra rooms at home."
The sturdy man warmly invited them inside and introduced himself.
His name was Neil, a shipwright at Shipyard No. 53.
He'd worked at the shipyard for twenty years and had earned considerable experience among his fellow craftsmen.
Even the factory director respected him greatly and often brought him along when purchasing shipbuilding materials.
People called him Uncle Neil.
The house was quite spacious, with two bedrooms and all sorts of wooden furniture.
It didn't look like the residence of a single man, but rather the home of a family.
When Kyoma spotted a family portrait displayed prominently in the living room, his confusion deepened.
The photo showed three people: two women and a man, all embracing each other happily.
The man was naturally Uncle Neil, and the younger and older women appeared to be his daughter and wife.
Kyoma didn't overthink it.
He asked whatever came to mind.
Completely different from the worst scenario he'd expected, the death of the mother and daughter, there was no sadness in Uncle Neil's eyes.
Instead, there was something complex and lost.
"I don't know who they are. After returning from the New World with the factory director to buy shipbuilding materials, this photo appeared in my home. There were many women's daily necessities in the rooms as well."
"These things seemed to have always been there, exactly matching the environment of my home, as if three people had been living here since I first built this house. But in my memory, I've always lived alone."
Uncle Neil seemed to have kept this matter bottled up inside for a long time.
When Kyoma asked, it was as if something opened up, and he couldn't stop talking.
However, Kagura had heard enough stories for one day.
She was so sleepy she could barely keep her eyes open.
The two had to take her to a bedroom first.
Uncle Neil prepared bedding for her.
As he led her into the room, he mentioned that this bedroom belonged to his "daughter" who may or may not exist.
This sounded rather eerie, like a ghost story told at night.
Kyoma felt a chill run down his spine.
Kagura didn't seem bothered at all.
She walked into the bedroom with a yawn and glanced at Kyoma before closing the door.
"Don't stay up late, Kyo-chan. And when you come in later, be quiet. Don't wake me up."
Kyoma nodded helplessly and waved for her to go to bed quickly.
That's right, Uncle Neil's house had only two bedrooms, which meant he and Kagura would be sleeping in the same room tonight.
Because of their similar hair color, Uncle Neil thought Kyoma and Kagura were siblings.
Since Kagura didn't look very old, he assumed it was fine for the two siblings to share a bed.
But the truth was... well, it looked like he'd be sleeping on the floor tonight.
Kyoma sighed inwardly.
He never expected that he, a billionaire, would not only fail to live in a grand villa but would now fall to the point of sleeping on the floor.
"Kyoma, would you like to drink with me?"
"I've specially prepared a lot of snacks because, according to the diary left by the child in that bedroom, today should be her birthday."
Uncle Neil's voice carried a note of pain.
He didn't know how to express this emotion to others.
After he'd discovered the "strange changes" in his home a year ago, he'd run to talk to his colleagues as soon as possible.
But they all dismissed it, thinking Uncle Neil had gotten drunk and was joking. It caused quite a few jokes.
However, as time passed and he observed the "evidence" accumulating in the house day by day, he felt more and more certain that the people in the photo were real, and that he'd once had a wife and daughter.
"They're real." Kyoma suddenly spoke with absolute certainty.
"Ah? What's real?"
Uncle Neil's body jerked suddenly.
For a moment, he didn't process Kyoma's words.
"Your wife and daughter, of course. Even if everyone, including you, has forgotten them, isn't this room the evidence?"
"Think about it carefully. How could someone leave so many traces of life in your room without you noticing? And who would do something so pointless and unrewarding?"
"So there's only one answer: the memories of everyone who knew your wife and daughter have been tampered with."
"What? Are you telling the truth?" Uncle Neil stood up abruptly, looking at Kyoma with eyes filled with doubt, hope, fear, and other complex emotions.
Before he realized it, tears had already slipped from the corners of his eyes.
In truth, Kyoma didn't need to say anything.
Uncle Neil had already regarded the two women in the photo as his relatives.
"Of course it's true." Kyoma nodded firmly.
Uncle Neil sat down again and fell into silence.
He lowered his head, lost in thought.
After a long while, he suddenly raised his head as if something had occurred to him.
He stared at Kyoma with bloodshot eyes.
"Was it a Devil Fruit?"
As a shipwright in the Sabaody Archipelago, he'd built pirate ships for many well-known pirates over the years.
He'd seen all kinds of people with special abilities.
The moment Kyoma mentioned it, he immediately thought of Devil Fruit users.
"Not bad." Kyoma nodded with a hint of appreciation.
It was easy to talk to smart people. A small reminder was all they needed to grasp the key point.
"Have you been to the New World?" he continued.
"Yes. Some shipbuilding raw materials need to be inspected in person, so I travel to the New World with the factory director several times each year."
"Have you been to the Kingdom of Dressrosa?"
"Yes. Our last stop in the New World was Dressrosa. Since it was the territory of one of the Warlords of the Sea, we didn't dare stay too long. We left in a hurry after buying shipbuilding materials."
Uncle Neil thought carefully before answering.
He was very serious, fearing that any omission might cause Kyoma to miss crucial details and fail to identify who had tampered with his memory.
If Kyoma knew what he was thinking, he would only say, 'Brother, you're overthinking this. Someone like me with all the answers doesn't actually need to review the questions.'
Just knowing that he'd been to Dressrosa was enough.
Kyoma nodded gently, a confident smile crossing his face.
"I'm now fully confident that you lost your memories in Dressrosa." Under Uncle Neil's increasingly anxious gaze, he spoke lightly.
"Could it be that Doflamingo did this to me? But the newspapers say he's the user of the String-String Fruit. I've never heard that he can modify other people's memories."
When Dressrosa was mentioned, Uncle Neil naturally thought first of the king who'd been crowned a few years ago, one of the Warlords of the Sea, Doflamingo, known as "Joker."
"Of course, it wasn't done by him personally. It was done by one of his subordinates. Her name is Sugar. She's a little girl with green hair who possesses the ability of the Hobby-Hobby Fruit."
"Her ability allows her to turn anyone she touches into toys of her imagination. All relatives and friends who knew the transformed person will lose every memory related to them."
"Your wife and daughter were probably turned into toys by her as well. In a way, this is a blessing in disguise; it means… they're most likely still alive."
"So that's it..."
Uncle Neil's expression showed sudden understanding.
His face filled with horror at the cruelty of Doflamingo's methods, yet at the same time, relief flooded through him, knowing his wife and daughter were still alive.