20demayo Chapter 63: Lingling's Great Adventure
Chapter 63: Lingling's Great Adventure
Chapter 64: Lingling's Great Adventure
The Golden Dawn sailed the first half of the Grand Line in the spring of 1492.
The sound of the Golden Bell, which rang out yesterday to bid farewell to the Golden Dawn, still seems to echo in our ears.
Lingling sat on the ship's railing, enjoying the sea breeze. Lately, she had been troubled, feeling that Oro and Gails were hiding something from her.
Since she and Gayle combined their 18th birthday parties last year.
Whenever the three of them were together, Lingling would feel something was off from time to time.
Gails seems to have become like Taylor in some ways.
Like Taylor, he's hiding something from her, something he's done that she doesn't know what it is, and it's definitely related to Oro!
What could the two of them do in the room that they needed to keep from her?
Why doesn't Oro do the same for her?
Lingling was very distressed. Had she done something wrong?
No, she knew Oro and Gails; most of the things they were hiding from her weren't a big deal, but that only fueled her curiosity.
This conflicted feeling was like a kitten, gently scratching at her heart.
She stood up abruptly, the force of which made the deck creak.
"No, it's been a year! I have to get to the bottom of this!"
She talked to herself, her voice fading away in the sea breeze.
Ask directly? That's pointless, and it probably won't work anyway.
Oro will definitely brush it off with that "you'll see" look.
She decided to find out the truth herself, just like the stories written in Oro's study—an adventure! A grand adventure!
The first step in the adventure was observation, and Lingling began to secretly keep an eye on the movements of Oro and Gale.
She was already 12 meters tall, the shortest of the three, so she wasn't worried about being discovered at all.
Soon, in the afternoon after lunch, she saw Gails carrying a large roll of thick paper that looked like blueprints and quickly walking into Oro's captain's cabin, glancing left and right before going in.
Lingling immediately held her breath and hid herself in the shadow of the mast.
"Just like I expected, the two of them locked themselves in their room behind my back—what are they doing?"
Lingling was even more puzzled. What was it that she couldn't know?
She crept closer to the captain's cabin and pressed her ear against the cold wooden wall.
The sound insulation of the Treasure Tree Adam is extremely good. If it were an ordinary person, they definitely wouldn't be able to hear anything, but Lingling is not an ordinary person.
She's a genius with the aptitude for all three types of Haki, including Observation Haki!
Lingling carefully released her Observation Haki through the keyhole.
Low voices could be heard coming from the cabin of the ship, interspersed with words such as "shock absorption," "load-bearing capacity," and "ventilation."
She understood the words individually, but when put together, she couldn't understand what they were saying at all.
"Is this... a discussion about modifying the ship? Are they going to modify the Golden Dawn?"
"But what's the point of hiding it from me?"
As she was thinking, the captain's cabin suddenly fell silent.
Immediately afterward, the captain's cabin door was flung open, and Oro looked at her with a half-smile: "Lingling, what's wrong? What happened? Why are you acting so suspiciously?"
Caught eavesdropping, Lingling blushed instantly and stammered, "I...I was just passing by! Yes, I was just passing by!"
Lingling made up a very hasty excuse, then blushed and ran away. She could even feel Auro's smiling gaze behind her.
After her first attempt failed, Lingling decided to change her strategy.
As evening approached, the opportunity seemed to arrive.
Lingling saw Gails sitting alone in the chart room, writing something in a thick notebook.
She took a deep breath and went inside: "Hey hey~ Gals~"
"Lingling?"
Gails looked up, her face bearing her usual gentle smile: "What's wrong? You don't seem very happy."
"What exactly are you hiding from me?"
Lingling decided to get straight to the point. She analyzed the situation for an afternoon and then realized that beating around the bush wasn't for her: "Auro and you, and Taylor on Jaya Island, why do you always secretly hide from me in your rooms? Is there something I can't know?"
Gails paused for a moment, then her smile became somewhat subtle. She closed the notebook in her hand: "It's not that I can't know, it's just—it's not the right time to tell you yet."
"Hmm—it's just a very ordinary and normal thing, Lingling, I promise."
"Why are you hiding normal things from me?"
Lingling pressed on, her voice tinged with grievance, "Haven't we always been together? Ever since Elbaf, haven't the three of us always been together?"
Gails stood up and pulled Lingling to sit beside her, gently patting her strong arm: "It's precisely because we've always been together that Oro wants to give you—well, someone more mature, more suitable—well, make arrangements. This will take some time to prepare."
"Arrangements? What arrangements?"
Lingling immediately grasped the key words.
"Well—"
Gails winked slyly: "It's better to let Oro tell you himself. All I can say is, you'll find out when the time comes."
She picked up a thick book from the table, which contained some manuscripts: "I'm going to deliver this to Oro now, so stop following me."
"You're a grown woman now. If you really want to know, it might be faster to just ask him directly."
Watching Gails' departing figure, Lingling became even more confused.
A more mature and suitable arrangement? Is it related to her?
Various thoughts battled in her mind: Was it new combat training? Or had Oro developed some new combat method?
Or perhaps—she suddenly remembered that when she was a child in Elbaf, she had heard older giant warriors mention some very important rituals between partners, which seemed to be called contracts.
This thought gave her a jolt.
Are Auro and Gails preparing for that partnership ritual?
Lingling decided to take one last risk, using the most direct method to strike at the heart of the enemy.
As night deepened, only the sound of waves crashing against the hull and the faint lullaby of a violin, recorded by Brook with a detonator, remained on the deck of the Golden Dawn.
Lingling arrived silently at the captain's cabin door, like a giant ghost.
The various anti-theft alarms in the captain's cabin were useless to Lingling, and picking a lock was a piece of cake for her. She gently pinched a spot on the door with her finger, and the latch silently bent and opened.
The moment the door opened, a sound came from the captain's cabin!
It was Gails' voice! And her voice was filled with suppressed, tormented emotions!
"It's an enemy attack! Gails! I'm coming to save you!"
Lingling made a quick decision, shouted, kicked open the door to the captain's cabin, and charged in, swinging her Conqueror's Haki-infused fist!
From that day on, all the unused space in the captain's cabin of the Oroqen was put to full use, and two rooms were vacated on the Golden Dawn.
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