Night ran deep. The heat of yesterday's vows still lingered as the Oro Jackson cut through a hushed sea.
Most of the crew slept heavy with a trace of hangover and a bellyful of fire. Only the watchmen's steps and the murmur of waves moved on deck.
Kael Grylls did not sleep.
He leaned against the rail outside the infirmary and watched the moon scatter silver chips across the water.
The infirmary door creaked. Crocus stepped out with an oil lamp, as if to let the night air cool him. He was not surprised to see Kael. He came to stand beside him and looked into the unbounded dark.
"Can't sleep?" Crocus's voice carried cleanly in the night.
"Mm." Kael answered without turning. "Thinking about some things that have to be done."
Silence held for a few beats.
"I got your request," Crocus said suddenly, meaning the look and tiny signals Kael had sent him during the day. "I checked Roger when I boarded. The man's built like a monster. Aside from old scars there was nothing wrong. Aren't you overthinking it?"
"Monsters get sick too." Kael turned. In the dim, his gold eyes burned. "Please, Crocus. Use the most precise, most thorough method you have and examine him again. Call it a selfish favor."
Crocus studied him. There was no jest in those eyes, only a heaviness that hung close to prophecy.
At last he nodded. "Fine. For tricking me onto this ship, I owe you that much."
The next day, while Roger was laughing as usual and arm wrestling Scopper Gaban, Crocus walked over with his medical case.
"Roger. Over here."
Roger blinked, then thumbed at his own chest with an exaggerated grin. "Again? Crocus, you haven't fallen for this perfect physique, have you? I do not swing that way."
The crew burst out laughing.
"Kūhahaha. Kael, your idea again." Roger won the bout, stood, and clapped Kael's shoulder so hard it rocked him. "Told you I'm fine. My body's tougher than a Sea King."
After the last check Roger had ribbed Kael mercilessly for fretting like a grandpa.
"Make it a routine physical," Kael said. His face was calm, but anyone who knew him saw the steel in his eyes.
"Alright, alright, you win." Roger plopped onto a chest and rolled up his sleeve. "Come on then. Let our ship doctor see what treasure I have hidden inside."
Crocus ignored the jokes. He set his stethoscope in place, his expression grave.
The crew crowded in, grinning, ready to enjoy their captain's comeuppance.
Auscultation, percussion, a look at the fundus. By the end of the run, Crocus looked unchanged.
"See. Told you," Roger crowed.
Crocus did not answer. He took out a peculiar device that looked like a cross between a compass and a loupe and pressed it to Roger's chest with meticulous care.
Everyone craned their necks. Even Buggy leaned in to puzzle over the nested scales.
Seconds ticked. Then minutes.
When the doctor stops smiling, life gets dicey.
Laughter thinned without anyone noticing.
Beads of sweat gathered on Crocus's brow.
His hand on the instrument did not move, as if he had turned to stone.
His face went from professional and placid to perplexed, then incredulous, and finally settled into something he could not hide, a leaden gravity.
The air hardened.
Even the big, breezy Gaban shut his grin and swallowed.
"Hey, Crocus, what is it?" Rayleigh's voice cut the silence. He had felt the shift first.
Crocus raised his head, took off his glasses, and scrubbed them hard as if the lenses were lying. He slid them back on and looked at Roger with layered eyes.
He stowed the instrument. Every motion carried weight.
"Roger," he said. His voice had been raked with gravel. "You have a terminal disease I have never seen in all my years of practice, nor in any text."
Boom.
The words detonated in every skull.
The world went quiet.
Shanks and Buggy gaped, blood draining from their faces.
Gaban's flask hit the deck with a clang and bled out onto the planks. He did not notice.
Taro, Nozdon, Spencer, Pitam. Every face froze, as if the world had told a joke too cruel to grasp.
Only Roger's smile did not shift. He paused for a heartbeat, then
"Kūhahahahaha."
His laugh split the sky again. This time it lacked its old carelessness. Something wild and defiant in it made chests clench.
"So that's it." Roger punched his palm, as if something had clicked. "No wonder the coughing fits felt like my lungs were tearing. I blamed the rum for going down the wrong pipe."
He stood, clapped Crocus's shoulder, the weight still sure and strong. "So. How long."
Crocus stared at the man who spoke as if discussing the weather and felt a shock run through him. He inhaled and steadied himself. "Left alone, three to four years at most. If I push everything I know to slow it, perhaps five. A cure is impossible."
"Five years, huh." Roger rubbed his chin, like pricing a deal. "Tight, but it will do."
It will do.
Do what.
The crew had not even climbed out of the crater of the first shock. Roger's blithe arithmetic knocked their minds clean.
"Captain," Shanks's voice trembled. Tears pooled and threatened to spill.
"You bastard, this is not funny." Gaban lunged, fisting Roger's collar, eyes shot red. "Not funny at all."
"I am not joking." Roger let him hold on. The smile eased a fraction. He looked at Gaban, then at every one of them, eyes more earnest than they had ever seen. "How could I die to a mere illness. If I die, it will be at the end I choose."
On the edge of the crowd, Kael watched in silence.
In the tale he knew, Roger found Crocus after the diagnosis. He had bent the sequence and dragged Crocus aboard early, blowing a little of his cover as a man who knew too much. And still Crocus could not cure him.
He needed the best doctor in the world not to stitch up flesh, but to bargain a little time from the Reaper for his captain.
He had braced for this. Yet hearing it spoken, hearing that laugh that sounded like it meant to crack the heavens, something prickly and sour rose in his throat.
It was not fear or flight.
It was a man who, seeing the line where his life ended, roared his challenge at fate.
Kael's fist closed, nails biting into his palm.
Crocus looked at these people, at this captain who stood like a pillar against the sky, and understood why he was truly here. Finding the Rumbar Pirates was a promise. Buying time for this man, witnessing his last blaze, would be the most crucial and the cruelest campaign of his career.
"Heads up, all of you." Roger shoved Gaban back and planted himself at the bow, hands on hips, voice ringing. "So it is five years. I will live these five better than most can live fifty."
He whipped around. His gaze cut across faces raw with grief, anger, and confusion.
"Listen up," he thundered over the sea. "We do not have time to dawdle on boring islands. Wipe those funeral faces."
"Our voyage from this moment"
"accelerates."
"Make sail. Full speed ahead. We will use what time we have left to seek the last island and turn this world upside down."
"Oooooooh."
Silence shattered into a volcano's roar.
They screamed until lungs burned, as if to vomit out every grain of sorrow and refusal and turn it into the gale that would drive their ship.
Grief did not vanish. It transmuted into something hotter and harder.
The Oro Jackson's canvas snapped full. Her prow knifed the blue and, faster than she had ever flown, lunged for the Grand Line's storm-tossed unknowns.
Their destination had not changed. But from that instant, every soul aboard felt it. The hand of the clock had begun to race.
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