Chapter 37: My Brother! Champion!

An hour later, at home.

"Let me recap your month at sea; you confirm for me if I got anything wrong. First, your height suddenly increased by over ten centimeters?"

"Yes, puberty hit; it's perfectly normal."

"You won the Kendo Tournament championship on Light Cherry Island?"

"Yes, I accidentally took the crown."

"And you conveniently thwarted a major conspiracy on the island, becoming a famous figure in the East Blue?"

"Yes, but not that famous; the hype comes in waves and will be forgotten soon enough."

"And then you became a millionaire!!!"

"Yes, four hundred million Berries; I withdrew fifty million, and the rest is still in the bank. Here, the card is right here."

Bell-mère forced herself to take deep breaths to calm down, but looking up at the muscular giant before her, her vision went black, and she toppled backward.

Siano hurriedly caught her. "What's wrong, Bell-mère?"

"I'm fine; let go, let me digest this alone..."

Bell-mère sat cross-legged on the carpet, staring straight at the coffee table in a daze for a long while.

Only after taking the water Siano handed her and draining it in one gulp did she finally, slowly accept reality.

"I told you so, I definitely said it," she murmured. "Your bloodline must be extraordinary; it started awakening once you reached a certain age. Your parents must have been some incredible big shots, possibly even royalty..."

"No, this doesn't seem to have anything to do with bloodline, does it?"

Siano was puzzled. "I just won a championship and made some money; it's all good news. Why is it so hard for you to accept..."

"I'm talking about height! Height! It's great to grow during puberty, but who grows over ten centimeters in a single month!"

Bell-mère angrily pounded Siano's shin with her fist. "What is wrong with you! Do you know that during the month you were gone, I knitted two sweaters for you, three pairs of long johns, plus fingerless gloves and full-fingered gloves..."

"Now none of them fit, they're useless, and I have to unravel them all again. Boo hoo..."

So that's what she's sad about!

Siano facepalmed, then suddenly noticed a thick stack of newspapers accumulated on the wooden cabinet nearby and let out a light "Huh?" "While I was away, you bought newspapers every day?"

"I was afraid you wouldn't be able to buy them all out there and might miss some."

Bell-mère pursed her lips. "Besides, I didn't actually read them; the papers just sat there. Recently, your deeds on Light Cherry Island were making a huge splash; I only found out after hearing the neighbors talk about it, and I didn't sleep well all night."

"What about Nami and Nojiko? How did they react at the time?"

"What do you think?"

Bell-mère replied testily.

She had been both worried and somewhat relieved at the time, tossing and turning all night without sleeping well.

Nami and Nojiko wouldn't overthink things; they were ecstatic, especially Nami, who practically wanted to jump to the sky.

Every day she ran from the head of the village to the tail, showing off, wishing everyone in the village knew that her brother had become an incredible big shot in the East Blue.

She even grabbed the big white dog at the village entrance by the ears every day to tell it several times, until eventually, the dog would clamp its tail between its legs and flee at the sight of her.

As for the two budgerigars kept by the next-door neighbors, needless to say, the phrases they now loved to repeat most were "My brother! Champion!" and "My brother! Hero!"

Siano listened, breaking out in a cold sweat.

For the foreseeable future, the chickens, ducks, and geese in the village would probably look at him with strange eyes.

He shook his head, fetched the stacked pile of newspapers, and sat down on the sofa.

He was just about to read through them to see if there was any news worth paying attention to.

At that moment, the door was quietly pushed open a crack; a small, dirty, orange-haired figure crept in, carrying her shoes, and sneaked from behind the sofa toward the bathroom...

"Come here!"

Bell-mère shouted fiercely. "Do you think I'm blind? I can't see a little mud monkey entering the house, and I can't see the two rows of dirty shoe prints on the floor?"

Oh no! A slip in a hundred precautions! Nami turned her head to look at the two strings of black marks on the floor, slapped her forehead in annoyance, and thought, If only I had known, I should have secretly climbed in through the kitchen window!

"Tell the truth; where did you go? When you left this morning, didn't you say you were going to the bookstore to read?"

"I wasn't lying, Bell-mère; at first, I really did go to read, but that bookstore was too small. I've already read almost everything I'm interested in, like navigation techniques and sea charts... Eh? Brother?!"

It was Nami; halfway through walking with her head down, she suddenly discovered someone lying on the sofa beside her. As soon as she clearly saw that familiar face, her eyes widened instantly, filled with immense surprise and joy.

"When did you get back!"

She cheered and threw herself into Siano's arms, raising both hands to pinch his cheeks. "You didn't even call me to come back; that's so mean... Ouch! That hurts!"

It was just that she rushed forward with too much force; her nose collided with Siano's hard chest, causing an instant soreness in her nose that nearly brought tears to her eyes.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk, you've turned into Buggy."

Looking at her red, swollen nose, Siano teased with schadenfreude.

But when he looked down and saw his shirt covered in mud spots, then turned to look in the mirror and saw two dirty Palm Seals added to his face, his expression instantly darkened, and he could no longer laugh.

"Hee hee, bleh~~"

Nami, her sinister plot successful, made a funny face. "Serves you right! Who asked you to sneak away alone that morning without saying goodbye to me and Nojiko!"

"Wasn't that just because I was afraid you two would turn into little crybabies?"

Siano wiped his face vigorously with a Mao Jin and replied testily, "Besides, I felt safe about Nojiko, but you little troublemaker; if you had followed me to the dock that morning, you might have secretly snuck onto the ship while we weren't looking. I certainly don't want to run around everywhere dragging a burden."

"Who's a burden! I've grown a lot now, and I'm very good at fighting! Just now, two monkeys in the mountains joined forces, and I still beat them until they were running around wildly on the ground!"

"Monkeys in the mountains?"

Bell-mère keenly sensed something, and her anger flared up. "Wait! You got yourself this dirty because you went to the mountains to fight monkeys?!"

"I couldn't help it."

Nami blinked, looking utterly innocent. "I held up the newspaper photo and told them my brother is the Champion, but they just kept eating fruit in the trees, rolled their eyes, and completely ignored me. So I got angry and threw stones at them, and then we started fighting."

This unlucky child!

Bell-mère gritted her teeth, dragged her by the ear to the bathroom, and said, "Go wash yourself clean properly! Really, if there's a next time, see how I deal with you. I'm not even asking you to be like Siano; when will you ever be as sensible as Nojiko!"

Creak~

The door was pushed open again, and Siano on the sofa and Bell-mère at the bathroom door both instinctively turned their heads to look.

A dirty blue-haired girl appeared in the doorway, her face bruised and swollen, her trousers torn in several places, and only one shoe remaining on her foot.

Upon seeing Siano, her eyes instantly lit up with delight, but then she met Bell-mère's murderous gaze, causing her to shrink back involuntarily and offer an embarrassed smile:

"Um, there's a reason for this; I was chatting with the big goose at the village entrance about Brother Siano, but it lost patience halfway through and tried to run, so I fought it; unfortunately, I was just a little short and couldn't beat it..."

Author's Note: The price of Luffy's straw hat in the previous chapter has been adjusted upward; I've seen everyone's comments, and let me clarify that this isn't about temporarily suppressing combat power—the outline was set this way long before the book started, mainly because I don't want the prices of items to suffer from inflation, folks.

Author's Note: Item prices in the Shangcheng won't be set very high; a few thousand points already counts as extremely rare, and the vast majority of goods will be kept in the three-digit range; the difficulty of obtaining the straw hat isn't great either, so if I gave it a price of several hundred thousand or a million points and caused prices to skyrocket, wouldn't that be treating you all like monkeys? T-T

Author's Note: Additionally, thanks to a reader for pointing out that the last two characters of 'Cocoyasi Village' were written in reverse order; I initially thought the mainstream domestic translation version had changed it, but after checking the Japanese version, I realized I had simply remembered it backwards all along; I've even written it backwards in my previous old book for so many years without anyone correcting it, so I declare that everyone is a 'cloud reader'! Me too!

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(End of Chapter)