Imagine: You've known Buggy since childhood. You sailed together aboard Roger's ship, sharing every hardship and joy (Shanks was there too, of course). When you first appeared on board, you were around eight years old. And because Roger treated you well, Buggy had already begun to feel that irritating prick of jealousy. Because of it, he teased you constantly, loved using his very earliest, still-harmless little bombs on you. When they went off nearby, you'd flinch in fright, and that sent both Buggy and Shanks into fits of laughter. You always knew exactly who was behind it. You'd stick your tongue out at the blue-haired boy, lift your chin with quiet pride, and walk on about your business.
Oh, how that drove Buggy mad.
He was irritated by your straight, proud posture. By your hair pulled back in a ponytail, tied with a white ribbon, the way it streamed so infuriatingly in the wind, carrying the scent of peach shampoo across the deck. He was irritated by how you never really reacted to his pranks. By the way you smiled at him even when he was trying to get under your skin, as though you could see something in him, something he kept buried deep inside himself and was so afraid to show.
Of course, that stubborn little clown understood it all perfectly well himself. And as the years went on, he became only more certain of it, that the mere scent of something familiar, something like peaches, was enough to make him turn around, searching, hoping to find you there.
But those carefree days aboard the Oro Jackson were long gone now. Now each of you had their own road to walk.
And yet you both held onto the unshakeable belief that your paths would cross again. And when they did, neither of you would be able to hide it anymore. That what you felt, preserved across all those years, had never been childish. And it had never been one-sided.
titsay
yousharknotpass
janainaart
romaincrisis
areudirty
