One Piece: Lust Haki

I got to the mess hall early because I wanted to be sitting when she walked in.

If she walked in. If she sat at our table. If "tomorrow" and the rooftop and the truth hadn't rearranged the mess hall along with everything else. The table would tell me. The table had been the three of us for eight months, Tashigi's tray organized, Isuka's tray chaotic, mine somewhere in the middle, and the table would either hold or it wouldn't and I needed to be sitting at it when the answer arrived.

I sat. Fish, rice, miso. Chopsticks. The mess hall was filling around me. The egg recruit was two tables over, eating with the careful focus of a man who had not surrendered.

Tashigi arrived first. Tray organized in the correct order: rice center, fish left, miso right, chopsticks aligned with the tray edge. She sat next to me. Pushed her glasses up. "Morning."

"Morning."

She ate her rice. I ate my fish. The mess hall was the same volume it always was. A second-year recruit was trying to trade his miso for an extra fish portion and the kitchen was declining with the blankness of people who had heard the same request four hundred times.

Isuka's tray hit the table across from me.

She sat. Rapier against the bench. The tray was the usual wreck, rice shoved to one side, fish already picked at, miso present but unwanted. She picked up her chopsticks and took a piece of fish and ate it.

She didn't look at me. She was looking at her tray and her chopsticks and the mess hall around us with the same flat expression she'd worn for a week, and for a second I thought the answer was bad.

Then her boot connected with my shin under the table.

Hard enough to feel. Light enough that it wasn't anger. The exact force she'd been using since Month 2, when she'd first kicked me for saying the wrong thing during a meal and it had become the language we spoke when words were too much or too honest for the mess hall.

I kicked her back.

Her mouth pulled at the corner. One side. The smallest crack in the flatness she'd been carrying. She took another piece of fish. Her boot nudged mine again, lighter this time, and stayed. The side of her boot pressed against the side of mine under the table and she left it there.

I left mine there too.

"You seem better," Tashigi said.

Isuka looked at her. "What?"

"You've been tense all week. You seem better today." Tashigi adjusted her glasses. "Did something happen?"

"I figured something out."

"What?"

"What I wanted." Isuka ate her fish. "You going to eat that miso?"

"You don't even like miso."

"I don't like wasting food either." She took Tashigi's miso without waiting for an answer, sipped it, made the face she always made when miso touched her tongue, and put it back. "Still bad."

"Then why do you keep taking it?"

"Hope."

Tashigi retrieved her miso. Isuka stole a piece of my fish. I let her. Her boot was still against mine under the table and the pressure was steady and warm and the mess hall was the same mess hall it had always been and the table was holding.

The egg recruit stood up from his table and walked toward the kitchen with his tray and the look of a man who was about to file his ninth formal complaint and the kitchen staff saw him coming and one of them closed the service window. He stood in front of the closed window. The petition was in his back pocket. He waited. The kitchen stayed closed.

I ate my rice. Isuka ate my fish. Tashigi ate her miso and watched us both with her chin on her hand and her glasses slightly askew.

Gion's training room. 1400. The door was closed. The lock clicked when she turned it from the inside.

She was in Vice Admiral mode today. Coat on her shoulders, Konpira at her hip, her hair pulled back from her face. Heels on the stone. The training room was cool from the ventilation and the stone walls and the morning's sunlight had shifted to the west side of the building, leaving the room in indirect grey light.

"Sustained coating. Both fists. We'll test your duration under combination strikes."

I hardened my fists. The black sheen spread across my knuckles. She struck the first combination, three fast attacks with an open palm, testing the coating's stability under impact. The coating held. My concentration held. She added a fourth strike, faster, and a fifth that came from an angle my Observation had to scramble to catch.

The coating cracked on the seventh strike. She stopped.

"You're distracted today."

"I'm fine."

"You're not. Your Observation response is slow by half a beat and your coating degraded earlier than it should have. I've been testing you for months. I know your baseline." She stood in front of me with her arms folded and the coat on her shoulders. Her eyes were dark, her lipstick was fresh, and the mole below her mouth was where my gaze always landed when she was studying me. "What happened."

"Someone asked me a question I had to answer honestly."

Her arms unfolded. Her hands went to her sides and the coat shifted on her shoulders and her chin lifted a degree. Small movements. Controlled.

"Who."

"Isuka."

"What did she ask."

"If I'm sleeping with you."

The training room was very quiet. The ventilation hummed. The stone floor held the cold. Gion's jaw had set and the line of her mouth had thinned and she was standing very still.

"And you told her the truth."

"Yes."

"I told you to lie."

"I know."

"Hina told you to lie."

"I know."

"The entire operational plan for the next five months depends on nobody knowing."

"She already knew. She heard us through the wall last Tuesday."

Gion closed her eyes. One breath. Two. When she opened them the jaw was still set and the mouth was still thin but her posture had changed. Straighter. Taller. The officer assessing a situation she couldn't undo.

"How much does she know."

"That we're together. She doesn't know about the Haki connection."

"Will she report it."

"No."

"You're sure."

"She asked me if I cared about you. I told her you could ruin your career for me and you've almost done it and I care about you. She nodded and left."

Gion was quiet for a long time. The ventilation hummed. A lamp on the wall flickered once and steadied. Her arms were at her sides and her coat hung from her shoulders.

"She's a good woman."

"She is."

"This is going to get more complicated."

"It already is."

She looked at me. The Vice Admiral was still there. But underneath it there was a woman who'd had Observation Haki for twenty years and could read what lived in a room like other people read handwriting. She was standing three feet from me and feeling what Isuka's name did to the air between us.

She looked at me for a long time and her eyes were dark and her mouth was the thin line it made when she was holding words behind her teeth and her coat hung heavy from her shoulders.

"Resume the drill." Her voice was measured. "Sustained coating. Both fists. We'll see if your focus improves."

I hardened my fists. She struck.

The session ran until 1600. She corrected my technique. She tested my limits. She didn't mention Isuka again. The Vice Admiral ran the drills and the woman behind the Vice Admiral held it all behind her teeth.

At 1600 she called a halt. I stood in the center of the room with my coating cracked and my forearms aching and sweat in the collar of my uniform.

She walked to the door. Checked the corridor. Closed it.

She turned around.

"The plan doesn't change. You graduate. East Blue. The distance buys us time." She walked toward me. The heels clicked. The stride was different from the training stride. "But you need to know that I can feel it."

"Feel what."

"What happens when her name is in the room." She stopped in front of me. Close. The jasmine. The mole. Her eyes holding mine. "I've been able to feel it for weeks. Since before she heard us. You care about her."

"Yes."

She touched my face. Her palm on my jaw, the gesture she saved for locked doors and empty rooms. Her fingers were cool from the stone room and her thumb traced the line of my jaw.

"I'm not asking you to choose." Quiet. Her eyes on mine. "But I need you to be honest with me the way you were honest with her. If this gets complicated, I hear it from you. Not through a wall."

"Okay."

She held my face for another second. Then she let go. Straightened her coat. Unlocked the door.

"Dismissed."

I walked into the corridor. The stone was cool. The door closed behind me. Her heels clicked once on the other side, moving toward her desk.

The corridor was long and empty and lit by lamps that needed replacing. My forearms ached from the Armament drills and my jaw was warm where her hand had been and somewhere in the mess hall Isuka's boot had been pressed against mine and the table had held and everything had gotten more complicated in every direction at once.

I went to the barracks. Ate dinner. The fish was the same. Isuka kicked me under the table and I kicked her back and Tashigi ate her rice and the egg recruit was at the kitchen window again and the window was open this time and the conversation through it was animated.

The table held.