Vice Admiral Tsuru's arrangements were so efficient and considerate that it was almost frightening.
Renzo's title as "Special Strategic Consultant" sounded lofty and important, but in truth, it came with no mandatory daily duties whatsoever.
His rank was set as Captain, assigned under the Logistics Department, specifically, to a painfully idle subdivision known as the Office for the Promotion of Archive Digitization. A department that had existed for three years yet had only managed to digitize 0.3% of records. It was so forgotten that it might as well have been a retirement club.
His theoretical duties included "overseeing the progress of digitization" and "ensuring data security during electronic conversion."
In practice, it meant showing up once in a while to a dusty corner of a storage building filled with old paper documents, where he was the only staff member, just to mark attendance, a step he often skipped, and then enjoying total freedom.
Freedom, in Renzo's case, meant going back to his room to sleep or wandering to the mess hall to wait for mealtime.
He couldn't have been happier with this arrangement.
No training. No drills. No, having to face Akainu's face that looked like the world owed him billions of Berries, though he hadn't actually met him yet.
Not even the need to deal with too many people.
His daily rhythm quickly solidified:
Wake up naturally, long after sunrise.
Lie in bed until he got hungry.
Call an orderly for food or, on rare occasions, drag himself to the cafeteria.
Eat.
Go back to the dorm or find a sunny corner to space out or nap.
Eat again.
Repeat spacing out or napping.
Then sleep.
And so, the cycle continued, day after day. Renzo was truly living the ideal "eat, rest, repeat" Navy lifestyle to perfection.
After a few days, a rumor began circulating through Marine Headquarters about "the Sleeping Beauty Vice Admiral Tsuru brought back."
They said he was so lazy it was unbelievable, and that being near him somehow made people sleepy too.
Most people treated it as a joke. After all, weird people were nothing new in Marineford.
That afternoon, Renzo slowly drifted awake from a dream about an all-you-can-eat barbecue.
The emptiness in his stomach reminded him that nap time was over, and that it was now time for afternoon tea or, realistically, an early dinner.
"Hmm… kinda want something sweet…"
He murmured half-consciously as his lazy brain began to turn.
The call bell was right beside him, but today, he recalled yesterday's ice cream, half melted by the time it arrived, and felt a faint dissatisfaction.
"Desserts… taste better fresh…"
That thought alone was already an uncharacteristic display of diligence and pickiness for Renzo.
After a brief but intense inner struggle, which consumed most of his daily energy reserves, he decided he would personally go to the cafeteria's dessert section!
Of course, "personally" meant spending twenty minutes just to roll out of bed, ten more to slowly put on his jacket, not bothering to fasten all the buttons, and then trudging toward the cafeteria at a majestic speed of five meters per minute.
Marineford's cafeteria was enormous, serving snacks and drinks even outside of regular mealtimes.
Guided by his keen instinct for food, Renzo ignored all the curious, amused, or bewildered looks along the way and sleepwalked straight to the dessert counter.
His eyes immediately locked onto the last piece inside the chilled display, an irresistibly tempting milk pudding that quivered under a drizzle of golden caramel.
Its glossy surface and silky texture seemed to radiate a divine calling.
At the same moment, another hand, gloved in white, reached from the side, moving at a similarly unhurried, almost lazy pace, toward the very same pudding.
Both hands froze simultaneously above it.
Renzo slowly, very slowly, lifted his head to see who the rival was.
The other person also turned their head at the same languid speed.
The newcomer was tall, dressed in a yellow-and-white striped suit, wearing odd sunglasses, with a drooping mouth that carried an expression of faint, world-weary boredom.
Renzo felt the man looked familiar, but he couldn't be bothered to think about why. His mind had room for only one thing right now, the pudding.
Vice Admiral Borsalino, Kizaru himself.
Kizaru studied the messy-haired, half-dazed young Marine before him, jacket askew, eyes half-shut. He recognized him at once, Vice Admiral Tsuru's "interesting little find."
The air between them seemed to thicken, as if even time itself had decided to move in slow motion.
"Hmm~~~~" Kizaru drawled, his deep, magnetic voice carrying that unmistakable lazy rhythm.
"How scary~~~ Young man, you like this pudding too?"
He didn't sound scared at all.
Renzo blinked sleepily, reacting a beat too late.
Something about the man's aura made him feel strangely comfortable, familiar, even. They were of the same kind… both slow, both unmotivated.
"…Such a bother…" Renzo muttered instinctively, voice weak. "There's… only one left…"
His gaze drifted between the pudding and Kizaru. The sheer effort of competing over food with a stranger felt unbearably troublesome.
"…You can have it…" he murmured, withdrawing his hand sluggishly. "I'll… wait for the next one…" Not that he knew when the next one would appear.
Behind the sunglasses, Kizaru's eyebrow lifted slightly.
He was giving up, not out of fear of rank, the kid clearly hadn't recognized him, but purely because… it was too troublesome?
Such pure, unpretentious laziness stirred in Kizaru a feeling he'd rarely experienced before, a sense of kinship.
"Mmm~~~" he hummed meaningfully, rubbing the short stubble on his chin. "Well~~~ no rush anyway~~~"
He, too, couldn't be bothered to argue over a pudding, even if he'd spotted it first.
And so, in Marineford's cafeteria dessert corner, a bizarre scene unfolded.
One of the Navy's strongest Admirals and an unknown lazy Captain stood before a single piece of pudding, politely insisting the other take it, both moving and speaking at a glacial 0.5× speed.
The surrounding cooks and a few soldiers stood frozen, barely daring to breathe.
Eventually, Kizaru seemed to conclude that this stalemate was even more troublesome. His threshold for "bother" was higher than Renzo's, but still.
"Well~~~ forget it, forget it~~~ You're young, still growing, eat up~~~"
With that, he yawned, shoved his hands into his pockets, and strolled away with his trademark slow, swaying gait, probably heading off for some coffee.
Renzo watched the man's retreating back, taking a few seconds for his brain to process the fact that the pudding had been given to him.
"…Good guy…" he mumbled, and without hesitation, carefully picked up the precious dessert.
Too lazy to find a table, he leaned against the cold glass of the display case, lifted a small spoon, and began enjoying his spoils with slow, deliberate focus.
The pudding melted instantly on his tongue, its caramel bitterness perfectly balanced by smooth sweetness. He closed his eyes in quiet bliss.
That little episode, to him, was nothing more than a minor, happy step in his food-acquisition process. He had no idea he'd just interacted with one of the Navy's three Admirals.
After finishing the pudding, he licked the spoon with faint regret.
"Hmm… next time… I'll just ask the orderly to grab it…" he decided. "Doing it myself… too much effort…"
Satisfied and content, Captain Renzo left the cafeteria at his usual slow-motion pace, heading back to his cozy nest for another nap.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, Kizaru stood by a window, coffee in hand, watching the sluggish figure below shuffle down the path like a sleepwalker.
A faint, amused smile tugged at his lips.
"The Sloth Fruit, huh…?" The name Renzo had listed on his ability registration.
"How~~~ interesting a power that is…"
"Granny Tsuru really picked up quite the little monster this time…"
He took another sip of coffee, feeling that Marineford's sunlight somehow looked a little more pleasant today, perhaps because of this new, unexpected kind of laziness.