Hearing this, the burly man at the door looked Xiang En and Kagura up and down. Seeing that they didn't look like dangerous pirates, he said happily:
"Travelers? We shipwrights at Shipyard 53 love to host guests! Come on in, I have a spare room at home."
The burly man warmly invited them inside, introducing himself in the process.
His name was Ben Niel. He was a shipwright at Shipyard 53 and had been working there for twenty years. He had high seniority among the shipwrights; even the factory manager respected him and often took him along to purchase shipbuilding materials...
His friends all called him Old Niel.
His house was large, with two bedrooms and complete furniture. It didn't look like the dwelling of a solitary man but rather a setup for a family of three.
When Xiang En saw a family portrait prominently displayed in the living room, he became even more confused.
It was a photo of three people: two women and a man, happily embracing. The man was naturally Old Niel, and the women—one young and one old—must be his daughter and wife, right?
Xiang En didn't overthink it and asked whatever came to mind.
Contrary to his worst assumption—that the mother and daughter had died—Old Niel's eyes held no sadness, but a complex, wistful feeling.
"I don't know who they are. After returning from the New World once with the factory manager to purchase materials, this photo appeared in my house, and many women's personal items were added to the rooms."
"And these things looked like they had always been there, perfectly consistent with my house's environment, as if three people had been living here since I built this house. Yet, in my memory, I have always lived alone until now!"
Old Niel seemed to have bottled up this matter for a long time. Once Xiang En brought it up, his floodgates seemed to open, and he talked nonstop.
However, Kagura had heard enough stories for the day and was truly too sleepy to keep her eyes open.
The two had no choice but to take her to a bedroom first.
Old Niel prepared the bedding for her. As he led her into the room, he mentioned that this was the bedroom where his "daughter," whose existence he wasn't sure of, resided.
The whole thing sounded a bit eerie, like a ghost story told at night.
Xiang En felt a chill run down his spine listening to it.
Kagura, however, was unfazed. She yawned and walked into the bedroom. Before closing the door, she gave Xiang En a deliberate look.
"Don't stay up late, Xia-chan. And when you come in later, be quiet so you don't wake me up!"
Xiang En nodded helplessly, quickly waving her to go to sleep.
That's right, Old Niel's house only had two bedrooms, meaning he and Kagura would be sleeping in the same room tonight.
Because of their similar hair color, Old Niel assumed Xiang En and Kagura were siblings, and given Kagura's young appearance, he felt it was fine for them to share a bed.
But the reality was... sigh, it looked like he would have to sleep on the floor tonight.
Xiang En sighed internally.
He never expected that he, a billionaire, wouldn't get to sleep in a big villa and would instead be reduced to sleeping on the floor.
"Little brother Xiang En, would you like to join me for a drink?"
"I specifically prepared a lot of snacks to go with the liquor. According to the diary left in that room by the child, today should have been her birthday."
Old Niel's voice carried a hint of pain. He didn't know how to express this feeling to others.
When he discovered the "anomaly" in his home a year ago, he immediately confided in his colleagues, but none of them took him seriously. They thought Old Niel had gotten drunk and run into a ghost, which earned him a lot of teasing.
But as time went on, and he looked at the "evidence" left behind in his home day after day, he became increasingly convinced that the people in the photo were real, and that he truly once had a wife and daughter.
"It is real!" Xiang En suddenly said with absolute certainty.
"Huh? What is real?"
Old Niel's body shook, unable to immediately process Xiang En's words.
"Of course your wife and daughter are real! Even if everyone, including you, has forgotten them, isn't this room evidence?"
"Think about it: how could someone leave so many traces of life in your room without you noticing? And who would do something so meaningless and unprofitable?"
"So there is only one answer: the memories of everyone who knew your wife and daughter were tampered with!"
"What! Is what you're saying true?" Old Niel abruptly stood up, his gaze at Xiang En filled with doubt, hope, fear, and various other emotions. Unconsciously, tears were already running down his cheeks.
He didn't need Xiang En to tell him; he had long since regarded the two women in the photo as his own family.
"Of course it's true!" Xiang En nodded firmly.
Old Niel sat down again, falling into silence, his head bowed, pondering what to do. After a long while, as if suddenly remembering something, he snapped his head up again.
He looked at Xiang En with bloodshot eyes: "Was it a Devil Fruit?"
As a shipwright on the Sabaody Archipelago, he had built pirate ships for many well-known pirates over the years and had therefore encountered various Devil Fruit users.
Now that Xiang En had given him a hint, he immediately thought of a Devil Fruit user.
"Yes, not bad."
Xiang En nodded slightly in appreciation. Talking to a smart person was simple; a single hint was enough for the other party to grasp the key.
"Have you been to the New World?" he continued to ask.
"Yes, because some shipbuilding materials need to be personally inspected, I go to the New World with the factory manager a few times a year."
"Then have you been to the Dressrosa Kingdom?"
"Yes, our last stop in the New World was Dressrosa. Because it was a Warlord's territory, we didn't dare stay too long, we just bought the shipbuilding materials and left in a hurry."
Old Niel pondered for a long time before answering. He thought very seriously, afraid that any omission on his part would cause Xiang En to miss a crucial detail and prevent him from determining who had tampered with his memory.
If Xiang En knew what he was thinking, he would only say, Brother, you're overthinking it. A "cheater" like me doesn't need to overanalyze the question.
All I needed to know was that you went to Dressrosa.
Xiang En nodded gently, a look of self-assured realization on his face. Under Old Niel's increasingly anxious gaze, he spoke flatly:
"I'm fully confident now: you lost your memory in Dressrosa."
"Could Doflamingo have done it to me? But the newspapers say he's a String-String Fruit user; I haven't heard that he has the ability to modify people's memories?"
When he thought of Dressrosa, Old Niel naturally first thought of the King who had ascended the throne less than ten years ago, one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea—Donquixote Doflamingo, the "Heavenly Yaksha."
"It wasn't done by him personally. It was one of his subordinates, a little girl with green hair named Sugar, a user of the Hobi Hobi no Mi (Hobby-Hobby Fruit)."
"Her ability allows her to turn anyone she touches into a toy of her imagination, and all relatives and friends who knew the victim will lose all memories related to that person."
"Your wife and daughter were likely turned into toys by her. This should be a blessing in disguise, though: they are very likely still alive."
"So that's what happened…"
Old Niel was suddenly enlightened, his face full of horror at the cruelty of Doflamingo's methods, but simultaneously grateful that his wife and daughter were still alive.