Chapter 6:

Taking Stock

One Piece: The Black Ledger

New chapter is live.

Settle in, take your time, and let's see what waits in the dark 🖤

✦

Corvin was not pretending to be confused.

Sunny had simply chosen a strange moment to ask the question.

Seeing the confusion on his face, she added, "Arthur's hand."

"Oh. That."

Corvin looked at her, still unsure what she wanted.

After a pause, he set down the mop bucket and slowly reenacted the way he had dodged Arthur's grab.

Once he finished, he looked at Sunny and asked, not entirely certain, "Like that?"

Sunny fell silent.

A few seconds later, something dropped behind the counter.

Corvin glanced down. A sliver of gun grip showed beneath the counter, and he went still.

Right on cue, Sunny said, "The gun slipped. Don't mind it."

She bent down, picked it up, and set it casually on the counter.

"I didn't catch the move you just showed me. Do it again."

Corvin looked at the flintlock lying across the counter. The barrel was, intentionally or not, pointed in his direction.

He thought about it for a moment and decided he was not going to perform that meaningless motion a second time.

He still did not know why Sunny cared so much, but he clearly could not keep brushing her off.

"I didn't use any special method. I was already on guard, so I reacted in time. Besides, it wasn't that impressive, was it?"

Sunny watched him quietly.

After a long moment, she nodded.

"No. It wasn't."

Her voice was calm.

"Keep working."

Corvin had nothing to say to that.

In silence, he added another label to Sunny in his mind: strange.

Then he carried the mop bucket into the storage room.

When he returned to the shop, Sunny was still sitting where she had been.

The flintlock that had been lying on the counter was gone. In its place was a sheet of coarse paper pinned down by a pencil.

Corvin glanced over the paper and pencil.

"Can I go back to my room now?"

Sunny nodded, pulled the paper out from under the pencil, and gestured for him to come take it.

He understood, walked to the counter, and accepted the sheet from her.

A few lines had been written on it.

At a glance, they seemed to be rules or reminders.

'She wrote all this down for so little?'

Corvin had questions. Many of them.

He put the paper away. From the corner of his eye, he noticed the pencil, and a thought stirred.

"Sunny, can I take this pencil back to my room?"

"Suit yourself."

"Thanks."

Corvin took the pencil and left.

Sunny watched him go. Then she took a notebook and a newspaper from a drawer beneath the counter.

She set both on the counter.

She set the newspaper aside and opened the notebook to the middle.

The page contained notes interspersed with several names.

Sunny glanced at it, then turned another page.

This one had writing too. In the upper half of the page, Kid's name stood out clearly.

She did not linger on it. After turning a few more pages, she finally found a blank one.

Then she took another pencil from the drawer, looked over the newspaper twice, and began writing in the notebook.

A few minutes later, Sunny stopped.

The page that had been blank was now more than half full.

At the very bottom of the notes sat Corvin's full name, followed by a large question mark.

After one last look at his name, Sunny closed the notebook and pushed it, along with the pencil, deep into the drawer.

"I should talk to Sol."

She spoke under her breath.

Corvin returned to the room where he had woken up.

He was still a little surprised by how easily they had accepted him.

Then again, he could tell Sol, the person who made the decisions here, was fairly casual about this kind of thing.

Maybe the old man really had brought him back simply to put him to work in the shop later.

"Settle in first."

Corvin muttered the words to himself, locked the door, and dropped into the dust-covered chair. Only then did he study the paper Sunny had given him.

[Do not leave the building, day or night. Stay inside and behave.]

[Do not touch anything on the shelves.]

[The basement is off-limits.]

[There are ingredients in the kitchen refrigerator.]

[Everything else can wait until tomorrow.]

Corvin finished reading with mixed feelings.

For a list this short, couldn't she have just said it aloud?

He shook his head, unable to understand the way Sunny operated. Then he tossed the paper onto the equally dusty table and picked up the pencil he had brought with him.

[Hunter's Ledger]

The black ledger appeared at his summons.

He casually turned to a blank page, closed his eyes, and tried to recall everything he remembered about One Piece.

To organize and reinforce those memories, he planned to write them down slowly, sort through them, and copy them again several times afterward.

The quill attached to the black ledger had no ink, but only that quill could leave permanent marks inside the ledger.

Other writing tools were different.

The pencil in Corvin's hand, for example, could write or draw anywhere on the ledger's pages.

But the moment he dismissed the black ledger, those words and marks would turn into graphite dust and fall to the floor.

That made the pencil perfect for strengthening his memory without permanently cluttering the ledger.

Those memories, once turned into usable information, could one day become fuel for his growth.

'The ones I remember most clearly are the Straw Hat Pirates...'

'Makes sense. They're the main crew, so the story revealed more about them.'

'But they don't truly become strong until two years after the story begins.'

'That's too far away.'

'Judging by Kid's current age, there should still be several years before the story starts.'

'And there are plenty of better targets. No need to fixate on them.'

'Right. The Arlong Pirates. I wonder if the Hunter's Ledger works on fish-men. Giants too.'

'If it does, the potential is hard to imagine.'

'The Arlong Pirates are in the East Blue, though, and this is the West Blue. Can someone even sail from here to there directly?'

'Kid was from the South Blue, if I remember right. If he can reach the West Blue, getting from the West Blue to the East Blue should be possible too.'

'No point thinking that far ahead yet.'

As Corvin sorted through his memories, he wrote and sketched across the page.

He knew nothing about navigation, but that did not stop him from thinking farther ahead.

Immersed in the work, he lost track of time.

In Sol's room, several candles burned on the windowsill, the bedside table, the desk, and other corners, filling the room with enough light despite its size.

There was a perfectly convenient electric light available, but Sol never used it.

It was one of the many things Sunny had never understood.

"You came to me specifically to say Corvin isn't normal?"

Sol sat cross-legged on a large double bed, his gilded, slender pipe in his right hand.

Smoke curled around him, sharp enough to sting the nose.

He studied Sunny through the smoke.

"You know I never care about that sort of thing."

"Sol, Corvin is different from the others."

"Different how?"

Sunny could not answer for a moment.

Sol rubbed the pipe stem lightly between his fingers.

"Then again, you're right. He is different."