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The moment Ritsuka Fujimaru logged into the simulator, an eighteenth-century pirate ship’s cabin unfolded before her eyes.
Heavy timbers lined the walls, polished brass gleamed softly, and moonlight—brighter than any lantern—poured in through the windows. Beneath it all, the steady hush of waves echoed through the room.
“Bartholomew? Are you here?”
At her call, Bartholomew Roberts emerged from the back of the cabin, dressed as ever in his lavish attire. At his chest, a rosary rumored to have been crafted for the King of Portugal glimmered with an unsettling light.
“Oh? Master, have you come to requisition me for a sortie?” he asked lightly. “If I recall correctly, I wasn’t scheduled for tonight’s rounds.”
“No, not really. I don’t have any particular reason.”
“I see. You look tired—was it a daytime Rayshift?” He smiled. “Well, come, sit down and have some tea.”
With a graceful gesture, Bartholomew indicated the space—an interior saturated with his own aesthetic sensibilities. Ritsuka nodded with a smile and took a seat at the table as invited.
“I think I’ll take you up on that. Actually, today’s Rayshift destination was the eighteenth-century Caribbean…”
“Oh? Don’t tell me—you met me over there?”
Bartholomew called out from the back of the cabin as he set teaware clinking on the shelves.
“How unfortunate I wasn’t summoned. Perhaps Da Vinci and Sion miscalculated the Rayshift compatibility.”
“Who knows how geniuses think. This time it was Anne and Mary with me. Still, to prepare for the mission, I reviewed your history.”
“Oh my. Hearing it put that way is rather embarrassing.”
He set two bone-china teacups and a tray of biscuits on the old wooden table, carefully brushed the hem of his coat, and sank into the cushion opposite her. The boots crossed at his ankles were polished to a mirror shine.
Bartholomew settled into the posture of a listener. This, Ritsuka thought, was when he truly felt like an adult man.
Encouraged by those blue eyes—deep and still, like the Caribbean Sea captured in twilight—she continued.
“In the end, my interaction with the ‘other’ Bartholomew Roberts was brief. Just a simple exchange of information. But it made me realize something. That you’re… you.”
“Heh. And what do you mean by that?”
“You love the sea. You adore finery. You’re a pirate who prefers tea to rum. Strict, yet devoted to freedom…”
“Well, of course!” Bartholomew declared, lifting his teacup with theatrical flair. “The thing I loved, the thing I devoted my entire life to, was that wild yet beautiful freedom—salt in the air, wind at my back!”
He took a sip of the richly fragrant tea and continued, his gestures almost stage-like.
“I made my name as a pirate and enforced rigid discipline. I forbade women and children aboard—not out of lofty ideals like justice or morality. No, my ship was the culmination of my aesthetic. I simply refused to have it sullied by wanton plunder or vulgar violence.”
He shrugged lightly. Ritsuka hesitated, her words catching in her throat.
“Um… Bartholomew. You know, people say that rule was because you weren’t interested in women, so—”
“You mean I was gay, or perhaps secretly a woman myself?” he cut in smoothly. “Well… given that I was summoned in this form, the latter is clearly out.”
He spoke as though reading her thoughts, suggesting he had studied the theories later generations proposed about him.
“I’ve heard those ideas too,” Ritsuka said cautiously. “But… is it okay if I ask what the truth really was?”
For a moment, Bartholomew’s expression turned serious—utterly out of place in the warm, relaxed atmosphere of the cabin.
“My, Master. That’s a rather delicate question.” He paused, then smiled faintly. “Very well. I’ll tell you the truth. I was never able to lose myself to anyone.”
He set his teacup down with a composed motion.
“The allure of women waiting at the docks, dressed in their finery. The rugged strength of men of the sea. None of it stirred my heart. What they called ‘love’ or ‘passion’ was nothing more than noise to me. The exhilaration of standing before the open sea, the intoxication of new leather or velvet beneath my fingers, the thrill of discovering a superior tea leaf among the spoils—those captivated me far more.”
“So… you mean you didn’t have romantic or sexual feelings?”
“Precisely!” he said brightly. “I imagine there’s a proper name for it now, but what drove me was pure egoism. I loved the sea. I loved my ship. I loved my reflection well-adorned in a mirror, and the deep, mellow fragrance of tea. Hah—quite the contradiction for a pirate reeking of blood and gunpowder, isn’t it? But I had my own way of loving things. Anything that threatened that aesthetic, I eliminated without hesitation.”
He pressed a hand to his chest, pride evident in his voice.
“I had friends and comrades I trusted. Enemies I hated so fiercely they haunted my dreams. But to desire someone to the point of losing reason, to live for another—I could never imagine it. What I loved was my own aesthetic. To pursue my three ultimate desires to their fullest, without interference from anyone else. That way of life… I am prouder of it than anything.”
There was not a shred of doubt in his words.
“I see…” Ritsuka said softly. “That’s such a Bartholomew way to live. Honest. And incredibly cool.”
At once, his face lit up, a broad grin spreading across it.
“Well now! What a delightful thing to hear, Master! Exactly—gossip and romance or not, my life was a masterpiece of art! Brilliant, fleeting, and shining—right up to the very end!”
True to his self-styled title of Handsome Pirate, he sent her a charming wink.
“I admire it,” Ritsuka admitted. “But I don’t think I could live that way.”
“What nonsense,” Bartholomew replied gently. “The path you’ve walked is one of a kind. Be proud of it. And really—there’s no need to admire pirates. There were people only you, as an ordinary person, could save.”
“Do you think so?”
“I’m certain of it.”
They went on talking as they refilled their cups—once, twice more. Tales of his life before death, records of Atlantis, memories of Chaldea, of Novum Chaldea. Perhaps the unspoken sense that the journey’s end—parting—was near made them more talkative than usual.
When Ritsuka glanced up, the simulator’s moon had already begun to sink.
“Well then,” Bartholomew said, rising and extending a hand. “It’s nearly lights-out, Master. You know my ship’s rules well enough.”
“As you know, I’m hardly the strongest Servant. Even so, having been summoned, I wish to be of use. I stand beside you, Master, foolishly continuing the dream—coat fluttering, hair tousled by the sea breeze.”
She took his sun-tanned hand and stood, stretching slightly beside his tall frame before whispering,
“Thank you. Leave the preparations for departure to me.”
“Oh! Bravo!” he exclaimed. “That’s exactly what I hoped to hear! Come now, Master—we must devise a new coordination for the final voyage. Have you finally decided to commission a new mekakure Mystic Code for the grand stage?”
He said it teasingly.
“Haha. I’ll pass on that.”
“Such cruelty! After all that sympathy for my aesthetic?”
“Not falling for it. Thanks for the tea today.”
A soft laugh echoed, and the lights of the cabin dimmed. In the darkness, the ornate rosary at Bartholomew’s chest gleamed faintly as he waved farewell.
Plunder and aesthetics. His own way of loving things. Even without romance.
Ritsuka returned the gesture and left the simulator behind.
Only the sound of the sea remained.