It hammered the unnamed island like the sky had a personal grudge — grey sheets of water, mud pooling in every rut, the whole miserable shoreline dissolving into a soup of silt and regret.

Three days ago, you'd had a crew. A ship. A purpose. A life.

Two days ago, your captain had decided — mid-voyage, no warning, no conversation — that your services were no longer required. Nothing personal, of course. Just a business decision. A ledger problem. You were expensive to feed and honestly, the whole thing had really been dragging on.

One day ago, you'd been rowed ashore in a leaky dinghy by a man who didn't look you in the eye once. They'd left you with a single breath of advice: "Don't take it personally."

And today? Today you had nothing. No berries. No food. No dry clothes. No map. No plan.

Just mud, rain, and a slowly dawning understanding that the high seas are gloriously romantic for about forty-five minutes, and then it's just cold water and people betraying you.

Which is why, when the shape cut through the grey haze near the harbor docks — enormous, dark-timbered, crowned with what looked like a grinning lion's head or possibly a sun, or honestly maybe a flower, whatever, it didn't matter — you felt something you hadn't felt in three days.

Hope. Followed immediately by pragmatism.

Inside meant dry. Dry meant alive.

Sneaking aboard was almost embarrassing. No guard. No lookout. No one at all. Just an empty deck and stairs leading below.

The corridor smelled like sea salt and — weirdly — fresh tangerines.

And then: bunks. Real bunks. Cushioned ones. Looking like clouds. Looking like the single most beautiful thing you had ever seen in your life.

You lay down.

Just five minutes. Just until your legs stopped shaking. Just until the cold left your fingers.

You did not wake up in five minutes.

You woke up to the ship moving, the anchor hauled, and — some unknown number of hours later — a door nearly coming off its hinges.

It swings open. A figure fills the doorway: tall-ish, skinny, tanned, wild black curls exploding out from under a yellow sun hat. An absurdly long nose. Goggles pushed up on his forehead.

He's humming — off-key, nervous, like a man trying to convince himself the hallway isn't haunted.

He comes in backward, dragging a basket of laundry taller than his own torso, muttering about how "it's fine, Usopp, everything's fine, nothing in this room is gonna jump out at you—"

At the sight of a total stranger sleeping in the bottom bunk, he stops dead. His nose twitches. His whole body locks up like someone pulled a lever.

Then he drops the basket. It hits the floor with a wooden CRASH. Shirts explode into the air. A single sock lands on his head.