Chapter Text
The boss is a respectable person. She went through a lot of twists and turns before opening her first vivre card store, worked diligently and had many close calls along the way. At first, her entire fortune consisted of a pair of nail clippers in her pocket and several barrels of impure materials. There's no way that she could manage this store—more than one person has joked about that to her, but she ignored them and meticulously tightened her right-hand fingers. The ribbons broke with the snip and the colorful confetti punched on everyone's heads.
Those sayings were reasonable. This is a dull little island. Situated at the far end of the Grand Line, officially belonging to a glorious kingdom, has magnetic fields detectable by log poses as well. What contrary to these traits are the facts below: no stationed navy, no famous landmarks or attractions, no unique specialty products, no notable figures, residents seldom venture out to sea, instead their long-distance communication is achieved through home visits, letters, and Den Den Mushis. But who says a place such immune to the passage of time cannot hold a vivre card shop? She saw an enrollment advertisement on the newspaper, the next thing she knows is that she was filled with determination. That very night, she packed her bags and slipped away to the dusty port. After enduring many hardships in several years, she returned to the capital on the same merchant ship, this time fair and open as a bona fide vivre card expert. From there, it was acquiring a storefront, negotiating with a renovation company, and carrying out publicity that can't bear too many expectations towards it. She persevered through it all, drawing strength from the golden letters of her name on her nail clippers when she was too tired. And when she finally stopped and looked back, she realized she had unknowingly accelerated too much, leaving the unchanging scenery of the town far behind. To the layman, the shop's interior decoration is simple and cozy, the length of the glass counter is delightful, the paper samples are abundant, and the nail clippers, held by a delicate chain, are incredibly easy to use; the expert would notice the beautiful patterns on the clippers' blades, the ergonomic design of the goose quills, the affordable and high-quality pulp and medicine, and the zero-tolerance extraction equipment for impurities. If more attentive, they might also spot the typical old scar caused by chemical burns.
Some things are agreed upon by all those who visit this shop, such as the proprietor's kind and skilled nature and her reliability. Due to the relatively isolated life on the island, her business does not have the expected seasonality, her orders distributed evenly throughout the year generally, so she works all year round. No need to hurry, no need, there's plenty of time, she thought. However, when she sees her carefree friends one by one finding love or having children or both, she still feels sympathetic and often couldn't help but laugh at herself for her tolerance of loneliness.
There are also lawbreakers who come, mostly from the mainland and rarely from the sea. She is not particularly afraid and skillfully collects the required amount of nails into small glass bottles wholesale from the island's glass-blower, writes the names in calligraphy on the labels, and gives health advice. Recently, she has also considered a business card service, and therefore stares at that graduation gift clipper more frequently. She is quite responsible, helds the principle of testing herself before applying anything to others as the prime motto of her life.
She has heard: that on those huge islands and even on the unique red continent, the business of vivre card had other methods of operation. A complete industrial system is formed, and the flow of orders and pollutants like a backwash of seawater. The delicate taste of handmade goods are killed by the hot steam that drives the machinery, and their imitations are quantitatively assigned in the final process. Workers are only responsible for packaging, so good eyesight is no longer needed, even a defect to possess it. She strictly follows the regulations, carefully protects her eyes, always wear gloves when working to prevent sweat from affecting the reactions, and also believes that leather can block bodily fluids, but cannot block the feelings expressed through out her fingertips. However, ordinary people can exhaust all their words before knocking out a radical response against the frontier of civilization from her. Admittedly, small business cannot compete with industry giants, but that beautiful monster is still far away. As long as this is the place where new faces never even show up for three months, she and her shop should not be worried about being forced into a historical museum. At least there will always be time to struggle. Always.
Occasionally she indulges in fantasy also, imagining that one day a quantitative change triggers a qualitative change, and the era reveals its fierce fangs, tosses the world she's familiar with into the endless dark like tossing a coin into a wishing well. Loose thinking cannot last long, and considering that there are always signs before the storm, she should sleep soundly.
However, things have changed. Standing by the window, she thinks to herself with melancholy (but also with more senses of lament). Plenty of time means plenty of delusion, that blinded her to not struggle until she saw Gold Roger on the visual Den Den Mushi. It wouldn't bother if she had started eariler. When she saw that newspaper, or that wanted poster—she keeps tracing back in her bustling and surging memories—when she saw those two boys, she should have started struggling. The scene of that day is still imprinted in her mind. How could this happen? Those two boys. They came, introduced themselves, saw the vivre cards, took them, wrote down their names in secret, and then left. Soon after, the world shook, and monsters swallowed up most things. Ferocity, ambition, and aggression spread like a plague. Familiar faces, like ink, diepersed in water. The navy also arrived, and then, after a while, the port—how incredible, even that port is capable of becoming so impressive—was filled with ships of various flags, each much larger than the one she took as a stowaway. People shed their skin and turned into skeletons overnight, and this pocket-sized island was proudly brought back to its homeland and even to the greater world through the suddenly established dense routes. The great world called the Grand Line, the world in which she found herself. Once again, she asks herself, how could this happen, how many years have passed? One thousand years? One hundred years? Even the leisure time left for this question has run out. And at moments such as this moment, rare days of leisure and good weather which are rare for the New World would extract the past version of her like oil seperating the tenderness of fresh green leaves. She is now a model of craftsmanship and commerce, with sharp senses, courage, and strategy, who wields the long whip of technology, mouthfull of the gamey sweet taste of blood and capital. This version of her seized the opportunity and now owns a company that may not be world-renowned but is dominant in its domain. The company has subsidiaries companies that respectively offer vivre cards, children's vivre cards, (falsely claimed) psychiatric cards that can communicate with the dead, action business cards, amulets, and many more, many more, all of which have helped her accumulate a fortune that could pollute the ocean. The other version of her occasionally emerges, mocks the monster that coexists with her, and roams lightly on the edge of her past life, especially enjoys linger by that day—a day that seemed totally insignificant compared to the beginning of the Great Pirate Era, but ends up delivered her a prophecy in place of the fate. She was too young to take it seriously, and remembered it only as something amusing. She remembers that day's dampened sunlight, the boys' longing faces when they mentioned "captain", all like fully whipped cream that was fluffy and ice-cold, brimming from every nook and cranny. Both looked like they're in their early teens, with distinctive features that made them unforgettable neighbors on land regardless of which piece of it they lived (now, she has one foot in her childhood). That restless temperament only the sea could calm! The one with the straw hat, red-haired, pink almond-shaped eyes, tanned skin, extremely enthusiastic and laughed at her with a joy that could shatter snow and kill ice; The red-nosed, sly and slightly twisted, had his face covered with powder, eyelashes projected onto the powder, a little court jester who had just run out of Mary Geoise. Charming explosives, alcohol, and salt, those young chests were firmly embedded with hearts made up of these. How could they have entered the shop while quarreling otherwise? Those foreign kids.
To confirm specific and minute details, she went through the old accounts. It was two ordinary cards in the most common style, expedited. Procedures that she hadn't done by hand in a long time revived before her eyes. Wear the leather gloves, prepare the pulp, preheat the vessel with an alcohol lamp. The younger version of her was accustomed to doing these things while gathering information from customers with risky vocabularies, to obtain something far beyond a single transaction, and the result that day was truly interesting: little court jester sneered at her and said something harsh, but his partner laughed loudly and admitted it, making him look as if he had been struck by lightning. The boys fermented recklessly under the conditions of light and wrestling, with the short fuzz on their faces glinted in the light. She tried to stop them while wondering, what are the names of these two troublemakers?
Later, she learned the name of the red-haired one, as well as his mature look, listed alongside an astonishing number on a wanted poster. The accompanying newspaper exuded a hazy ink scent. Everything was as expected—he had already obtained his ticket in. That name, that unexpected attribution, that answer to the question, that brand-new syllables, inherited the sharpness that dies hard of the devil-like Pirate King, and had recently pulled out bladed buds from the split skin and stabbed into the ears of the bosses and villians bloodily. A face that didn't seem to cry, a smile, three new long scars; the words "DEAD OR ALIVE", spelling of the name, uncreative epithet, style of the typeface, good paper and bad cutting combined that created the tactile sensation of rough edges, proportions of the pulp material that could be known by rubbing it, and the rough location of the printing plant. She let herself sunk slowly into the endless details of that wanted poster, and the two long separated halves of her life merged back into one.
In the following days, she encountered several other incidents, such as kidnapping, opportunities at the casino, people and things Charlotte Linlin had given birth to. On various pirate ships, at time she navigates, at time she make deals. One time, she saw a washbasin filled with phlegm and blood from daily savings, a deep curiosity about this hellish world then sparked in her heart: Does that giant red-sailed ship adorned with mermaids at its bow lack oranges and lemons? The sea is a true mother, giving permissions to three-year-olds of transporting cannonballs and guns, older ones to carry bladed weapons, and even allowing them to pass barehanded, letting them die from internecine battles and raging waves that could shatter their organs, and serving as their burial ground herself. Since that is the case, it is no big deal for someone to disappear from the land or a ship near it. This is just an unnamed small island that borrowed a storm from the East Blue and has not yet returned it today. But who has returned it anyway? The missing person notice of an old friend's only son was printed like a wanted poster as well, and she is too busy with her fledgling career to offer anything but perfunctory consolation to the person whose spine had just been ripped out. He doesn't seem like someone who would actively sought death. Hope he gets lucky and doesn't encounter the next Gold Roger and his Oro Jackson.
But those two kids. There were kids on the Oro Jackson, kids with tough nails and great health. It was regrettable that not a single nail had been left, but even if there had been, it would have been useless. She could only make up for it now. She is determined to handle this encounter like handling a secret. She collects wanted posters, documents, clippings, and photos, and the amount of paper became cumbersome, shredder required. She thinks about it and then her thoughts diverges. Perhaps paper ash disposal is an option. Order a new batch of hexagonal glass boxes, fill them with loved ones and what used to be loved ones, and return them. Other good-hearted options include flushing them down the toilet, scattering them into the sea, planting flowers in them, filling pillows with them, and cooking them for consumption. If even the original owner doesn't want to face them again, then throw them in the trash can and disposed of on a designated day. But why bother finding someone else to do that in the first place? In any case, everyone had to move in the increasingly violent storm, otherwise there might be a risk of being thrown from the air and smashed to pieces.
She died in the warm spring. Before her death, the red-haired had already made a name for himself, and was continuing his unique moves, while the other kid still maintained a kid figure covered in ash, making a final wandering in her fading neurons. When she breathed her last breath, thousands of business cards scattered on the Grand Line burned at the same time, but the wallets of different shapes and sizes were all clean and intact, causing no damage except for the shock. Her wanted posters, documents, clippings, and photos, were burned together as offerings to fate along with her scarred body. There may have been valuable information among them, or they may all be commonplace if looked with a long-term perspective, just like her and her career to this vast sea. Old friend inherited her hot-potato liked legacy and attended the funeral with her son who had lost a leg and face horribly disfigured, uttering a eulogy mixed with the sound of a bell. Newspaper that carried her obituary would spread while defying the resistance of the world of mortals like the vivre cards she made, and those pink eyes in the storm's eye would glance over it casually someday.