Sanji leaned over the display case, looking, but not touching. In his arms he held bags filled heavy with pink and red supplies. It was only a few short weeks until Lupercalia, and he intended to be prepared.

As a very young child, Sanji's family celebrated the festival from the 13-15th of the second moon of the year. His mother told him it had something to do with diverting evil spirits, promoting health and fertility, and purification. All he knew was that they would travel for days to get to the city, just so he and his mother could line up and get smacked by some asshole in a loin cloth and a scary mask.

When Sanji lost his parents and set out to sea as an orphan cook-in-training on the Cruise Orbit, he missed a lot of things about his family, but the Wolf Festival was not one of those things. Sure, there was dancing, and a feast, but it was hard to get past the generally annoying and somewhat embarrassing parts of the celebration.

Years later, when he found out that the okama of Kamabakka Kingdom celebrated this weird holiday, Sanji wanted to cry. It turned out he was worried for no reason. He should have known the traditions would be different from the ones he grew up with.

Instead of sacrificing goats and dogs, the okama wrote anonymous letters to their crushes. They signed them 'Your Valentine,' in honour of some saint Sanji had never heard of, and they called the celebration Valentine's Day.

Ivankov explained that Lupercalia had been a long standing tradition, brought to them by some famous North Blue okama when she came to live on the island. Over the years, the festival skewed away from one of fertility, and turned into a festival of love. Love, Ivankov explained, was a matter for the heart that went well beyond physicality. Since the vessel itself was not as important as the soul, the okama grew to celebrate the emotion instead of physicality. The letters they wrote to each other were a reflection of that powerful emotion, and had nothing to do with sense or reason.

Sanji could certainly attest to the lack of sense and reason. He'd received quite a few of those 'Valentine' messages. Some of them were sweet, or funny. Not very serious. Some of them made him genuinely laugh. Most of them were downright vulgar. But there had been one…

"Oi, Cook."

The frustrating presence of his ship's swordsman drew Sanji back to reality. He looked back for the source, but didn't have to look very far. Somehow between Sanji's day dreams and his mindless browsing, the lousy bastard had managed to sneak up so close he was almost breathing in Sanji's ear. Sanji jolted back out of the way. He was flushed from his memories, but that deepened into embarrassment for how easily Zoro had taken him by surprise. "Don't go sneaking up on people when they're in the middle of doing business, asshole!"

Zoro lifted a challenging brow but didn't rise to the bait. He looked down at the display case filled with all sorts of fancy lighters and pipes and cases that Sanji couldn't afford thanks to his earlier shopping. Without comment, he shifted his eye back to Sanji. "We're ready to go. Now's not the time for pointless browsing."

Sanji grit his teeth, grumbling at the interrupting cow before turning his attention to the shop keep. Pushing the annoyance away, he managed a polite smile for the stranger. "I guess that's everything for today," he said and gave a regretful nod.

The shop keep looked just as regretful. Sanji had been a good customer, after all, buying him out of all of the cola, spices, and milk that he'd had for sale. He'd been certain Sanji was going to buy one of his fancy lighters, too.

Sanji had to duck to get through the small door of the shop, but that was just one of the seemingly hundreds of shops located in the hold of the Sea Market. Most of the other shops had larger doors, and some of them even looked like they were built for giants. The 'streets' of the market were made of stone, and seemed to go on forever. The ship wasn't anywhere near as big as Thriller Bark, but even the Sunny was dwarfed by the bulk.

The market was fairly busy, considering the ship was in the middle of nowhere. The captain set sail for wherever he decided they needed to be, and his crew always followed without question. It was on no map, and no pose could find it—facts that had both fascinated and annoyed Nami to no end.

Catching sight of the captain selecting an apple from a nearby vendor, Sanji smiled kindly at him. He respected the man for seeing a need in the world, and deciding to go into business as a mobile merchant. He reminded him a little bit of Zeff, only younger. And nicer.

The captain's name was Reddan. He was a large man, somewhere around Franky's size (though without all of the cybernetic enhancements to his arms and shoulders). His hair was blond like Sanji's-a rarer hair colour on the global scale, so it was certainly one of note-but his eyes were big and brown and kind, like Nami's.

Reddan confided in him that someone he cared very much about had died just recently. He went on to say that the way Sanji acted reminded him of that person, except Sanji's sea legs were a lot more steady than his. It made Reddan happy to have Sanji around, and as a result the whole crew was invited to dinner.

After spending a few hours laughing and talking about the similarities between the Sea Market and the Shitty Restaurant, Sanji was more than a little homesick, and it was starting to show in his body language. As though he were making an attempt to cheer Sanji back up, Captain Reddan declared anything Sanji wanted to buy would be at half the price.

After that, Nami decided that Sanji would be doing all of the shopping, while the rest of them did who knew what back on the Sunny.

Seeing Sanji alone with all of his bags, Reddan excused himself and walked over to join him. "Next time I see you, we'll have some of that Aqua Laguna salt you were looking for." The larger man promised, with a bit of a sad frown hidden in his smile. He set a hand on Sanji's shoulder and squeezed just the once. He was uneasy, which made sense; they both knew that in all likelihood, they would never see each other again. Sanji had gotten used to those sort of goodbyes, but something about the way the old man reminded him of Zeff made this one seem somehow sadder.

For a moment, his hand lingered and his grip tightened. It looked like he had something very important to say, even going so far as to lean in next to Sanji's ear and part his lips for words, but none came. Instead, he pulled back and gave Sanji a genuine smile.

"Sanji-kun," Nami said as she and Chopper walked over to join him. "There's a storm coming and it looks like it's going to be bad. If we don't leave now, we might not be able to for another week."

And there was no way Luffy would handle being cooped up on an unmoving ship for a week. He'd go mad, and they'd end up killing him. Or worse, he'd end up wrecking this nice man's ship the same way he'd done to the Baratie. "Of course, Nami-san."

Sanji turned back the captain to finish their goodbye, but he was already gone.

Chopper was sliding half of the packages out of his arms to help carry the load and said, "Was that the captain you were talking to?"

Sanji nodded, though he didn't know why Chopper would ask such a question instead of just relying on his scent. He smiled gratefully at the help.

"He's scary," Chopper said with a shiver.

Sanji frowned in disagreement. A little rough around the edges, maybe, but Sanji thought he came off as quite charming for an old sailor. Then again, Chopper didn't really have a lot of good experiences with those sorts of men. After adjusting his hold on the remaining packages, Sanji turned his head to yell back at Zoro. "You're going to be left behind if you don't hurry up, Marimo!"

Zoro was rubbing his forehead as he exited the smoke shop he'd found Sanji in, and Sanji had a little bit of glee for the notion that he'd hit his head on the door. "Who are you calling a Marimo," he grumbled without any heat to it. "Idiot," he added, almost as an afterthought.

They argued companionably all the way back to where the Sunny was docked off the side of the Sea Merchant.