At three o'clock, the bell rang through the school corridors. The classrooms were immediately flooded with the dragging of chairs, the zipping and unzipping of bags and the footsteps of teenagers eager to escape from another day of lectures. In a certain class, a blue-haired boy wrote hastily his last notes of the day.
"Hey, Traffy," said a sunshine boy behind him. "D'you wanna go stone skipping?"
The other boy shook his head. "I'm going to take this homework to Eustass," he explained. "And I've already told you a million times not to call me 'Traffy'."
"Can I come?" His friend ignored the boy's look of disapproval.
Trafalgar Law was not the best at making friends. He was sullen, rude and barely talkative—at least when he did not feel comfortable with those around him. But he had found two exceptional classmates on his first day of class one year ago and, although he still came across as sullen, rude and barely talkative to them, they could see past all this and appreciate the words behind the sharp comments and the nasty looks.
Law sighed and shrugged.
On their way to their friend's house, Law stopped several times to look back and see his friend falling behind, turning his attention to all kinds of irrelevant trivialities—a horned beetle that he cupped in his hands until the little creature got bored with peeking at the world through the holes between the boy's fingers and flew away, a tin can that he kept kicking with a surprising capacity to not hurt his bare toes and an even more surprising terrible shot. Law put an end to this activity when he was accidentally hit on the ankle with the can and threw it away in the nearest garbage can. Luffy, the sunshine boy, stopped one last time to buy himself a bag of chips and then followed Law down the street leading to Eustass Kid's home.
It was a small apartment organized around a long, narrow hallway, with several doors on both sides. Kid's room was the one at the far end, behind a wooden door with a black and red sign on it reading 'Beware of the punk'.
Law opened the door slightly and he and Luffy peeked inside. Kid was sitting on his bed making a botch of what looked like an alarm clock.
"What's that?" Luffy shoved Law aside and got into the room.
"What the fuck?" Kid almost jumped out of his bed.
Luffy leaped onto the bed and started examining the clock as Law entered the room behind him.
"What are you fiddling with now, Eustass?" the blue-haired boy asked.
"What? Why are you fuckers here?" Kid cried out.
Luffy was still examining his friend's invention as Law approached a desk against the wall opposite Kid's bed.
"I've brought you your homework."
Kid watched his friend put some sheets of paper on the desk. "Anything for tomorrow?" the red-haired boy asked.
"Almost everything," Law replied, flicking through the sheets.
"Then throw them away." Kid waved his hand nonchalantly. "I'm not going to school tomorrow."
"You know we have an exam, don't you?" Law looked at him with his ever-tired eyes.
"Precisely."
Luffy moved his eyes away from his friend's clock for the first time since he had stepped into his room and examined the red-haired boy. Everything seemed normal in him—from his particularly pale skin to his baggy clothes. He had even felt like painting his nails and wearing his customary red lipstick. Luffy put his right hand on Kid's forehead and moved his face so close to his friend's that their noses almost touched. Kid shoved Luffy's arm away with a quick move of his hand and kicked him away, irritated and flushed.
"Fuck off, Straw Hat!"
Luffy had earned his nickname the first week of school two years ago, when a teacher had asked him to remove his straw hat in class and he had merited a month of detention for refusing to do so. Well, and because he had also broken into the teachers' lounge to get it back.
"You don't look ill." Luffy ignored his friend's words once more. "D'you have the runs?"
Kid rolled his eyes. "No, you dumb fucks. It's all a scheme."
Law gave his friend a strange look and leaned on the edge of the desk, his feet still on the floor. "Will you heat up the thermometer with a bulb?"
Kid flashed a sarcastic smile in his friend's direction. "It's a bit more sophisticated," he explained. "My family won't take their eyes off me with a thermometer—I don't blame them—, so I have to be cautious." He reached across his bed and took a white short-sleeved shirt on his nightstand and turned it inside out. "Look."
Luffy bent over to see what his friend was trying to show them. Law did not move an inch.
"Look what?" Luffy asked.
"I've added some copper conductive threads that carry an electric current to these mechanical switches embedded inside the shirt's sleeves. This should do the trick."
Law raised an eyebrow; Luffy's eyes travelled from one friend to the other, as if he expected to infer the meaning of those words from the look on their faces.
"What?" he asked again.
Kid pointed at the different components of his device as he repeated the information in words that would not make his friends frown. "These little friends here connected to these threads will heat up when I tell them to and will trick the thermometer—and my family—into thinking I have a fever."
Law examined his friend's face as if he were trying to solve an unfathomable riddle. Luffy pressed the switches insistently, trying to feel the heat in his fingertips.
"Are you sure about this?" both boys inquired in unison.
"'Bout what?" Kid asked, his eyes skipping from one to the other.
"This is not hot." Luffy sank his forefinger even more insistently in a switch.
Kid stared at his friend's finger for a moment and looked again at Law, who had not averted his eyes from Kid's face.
Law shook his head. "You're not gonna make it."
Kid grinned. "We'll see about that."
xXx
"Hey, Traffy!"
Law stopped his feet on the classroom's threshold and turned his head left to see Luffy rushing towards him.
"Could you lend me a couple of things?" Luffy asked. "I've left my case at home." He finished his request with a big smile on his lips as he stopped uncomfortably close to his friend.
Law sighed. "Fine."
Luffy's smile widened even more, which could have seemed impossible to anyone who did not know him as well as his friends—or his enemies. The sunshine boy started unzipping his friend's backpack as they stepped into the classroom.
Luffy bumped suddenly into Law's back and looked up to see the other boy's nape. He would have asked what the matter was, had he not noticed Law had had his attention drawn to something inside the room. Luffy ran his eye over the room and saw Kid sitting at his desk, his legs leaning on it, his head bent backwards, facing the ceiling, and his chair tilted back on two legs.
Law and Luffy treaded silently towards the place where their friend seemed to be having a nap and sat on their chairs, Luffy next to Kid and Law right in front of him. They remained silent for some seconds, waiting for Kid to say something, convinced that he was aware of their presence but was just willing to ignore them. Law was the first to break the silence.
"You should say something before I tell you that I was right yet again."
Kid groaned as he dragged his feet down from his desk and folded his arms over his chest. When he hung his head, he was visibly annoyed and stared vacantly at his desk. "My gadget shorted."
His friends waited for him to say something more, but apparently that was all his humor allowed him to explain.
"It… became smaller?" Luffy queried. He and Law were not particularly versed in any vocabulary related to technological devices.
"No, you dumb fuck," Kid answered with his usual courtesy. "It started overheating as I was having my temperature checked. I managed to keep my cool longer than I expected, but I had to end up removing my shirt before I got some serious burn. Such a high temp on the thermometer wouldn't have been credible anyway." He stopped for a second. He raised one of his eyebrows and curled his lip, as if an awful idea had just gone through his head. "Come to think of it, a serious burn would have taken me to the hospital… Fuck my lack of endurance," he groaned.
Law rolled his eyes. "I told you it wouldn't work."
Kid eyed his friend, who was sitting sideways on his chair, one arm on the back and the other on his desk.
"Give me a break—," Kid began to say.
"It's always the same old story," Law interrupted. "Not a single one of your inventions has ever worked and in the meantime, you keep failing all your tests because you spend more time working on useless devices and making up fruitless plans than studying." Law's voice always sounded angry whenever he reprimanded his friends, but it also showed hints of worry and care, even if he did not want to. Still, displaying such strong emotions was not the norm in Law, and that prevented Kid from answering back right away.
After a moment, he managed to utter some words back. "That's not true! Remember my gadget to dislocate my arm? It worked!"
"Yeah, you tried it here!" Luffy squeaked. "It was so cool!"
"He actually broke his arm!" Law retorted.
"And I managed to skip two whole days of class. I call that a success." Kid smiled proudly.
"Hell, yeah!" Luffy cheered as he high-fived his red-haired friend.
"You're both idiots!"
The three boys were interrupted by the sound of the teacher's shoes stumbling into the classroom. Law turned round to face the blackboard while Kid snorted in anticipation of the hellish day he would have to endure.
xXx
During the following weeks, Law and Luffy attended a series of morning performances starring Eustass Kid. Not many of them managed to get complimentary reviews, but the boy did not seem to become discouraged. Every failure was like a new challenge for him—he could not use the same invention twice, because his family and teachers knew better than to trust him with something when they had already been fooled.
Before a history test, both friends had the honor of attending Kid's underpants' premiere when a gadget that was supposed to damage the boy's uniform overfulfilled its role and burnt his pants. Kid had been forced to take the test anyway, and Law had taken a different route home that afternoon.
They had also gone through a stink bomb that was supposed to go off in class right before an exam, but which blew up during lunchtime. Surprisingly enough, on that occasion, Luffy was the one to get mad at Kid for ruining his meal. As for Law, he was deeply grateful to him, because he did not have to eat his sandwich that day, although he never admitted it.
Probably his most successful gadget was what he had named 'The Down Runner'. He had taken the wireless battery charger they used at home and had reversed the functioning of the power bank, making it power-hungry and causing the battery of any mobile phone placed on it to drain. He did not have to wait for too long until the day his family had used it over the night to charge the phone they used as an alarm clock. Of course, his scheme had been an absolute success—he managed to skip almost half of his classes that day. Still, he had not been able to use it again and had spent more than a month closely watched.
xXx
The incessant sound of pages turning and pens scribbling kept distracting Kid from his notes. He was not the kind of boy who focused on tiny details, but the library had always had that effect on him—every dragging sound of a chair, every drop of a pen, every puff, every cough coming from a distant table and spreading through an air saturated with confused thoughts and teenage anxiety crammed his mind like words crammed the pages of the surrounding books.
But Law was different. How could he spend so much time reading without getting tired? With his notebook and a pencil next to his book, only his eyes travelled from word to word while his right hand waited its turn to turn the page or note down any useful piece of information.
Kid leaned forward. "Hey, Trafalgar."
Law hummed in his usual tone without moving a muscle. Then he blinked quickly a couple of times, as if he had just remembered where he was and had disturbed himself with his own voice. He looked around, but no one seemed to have paid any attention to him, so he turned his face to Kid and said in a lower voice, "What?"
"What's that you're reading?"
Law looked at the book in front of him, put his eyes back on his friend's face and raised an eyebrow. "Moby Dick. We must read it for language class," he added for good measure.
Kid leaned back again against his chair and said nothing. Law went back to his book, and Kid tried to concentrate on his notes.
He had managed to keep his focus for almost half an hour when he started hearing an insistent clicking. He looked up at his friend, who was struggling with his pen with a frown.
"Hey, Trafalgar," he said with a grin on his face after some amusing seconds, "what are you doing?"
"This pen's not working," Law answered as he kept pressing the plunger, not managing to push the tip out of the barrel.
Kid reached across the desk and took Law's pen, brushing the palm of his friend's hand slightly with his fingertips. He unscrewed the lower barrel and removed the ink cartridge nonchalantly. After having examined the retractable mechanism on one end of the pen, he put the parts back together, pressed the plunger a couple of times and handed the pen back to Law, who had not taken his eyes off Kid's hands during the entire process.
"Here, try it," said the red-haired boy.
Law did as he said. Since everything seemed to be working fine, he gave his friend a half-quizzical, half-thankful look and went back to his book, skimming through the page in search of something.
Kid waited undecidedly for a short while and finally spoke, "Hey, Trafalgar."
"Hmm?" Was the answer again.
"You wanna be a doctor, right?" Kid asked.
"A surgeon, yeah," Law answered right away without looking up from his notebook, as he jotted down a quote from Dr. Bunger.
"And how are you supposed to benefit from knowing about some boring book by some old guy from the Middle Ages?"
Law looked at his friend with a raised eyebrow. He knew Kid was a very clever boy―he could easily grasp the functioning of any kind of device with just a little bit of information and tamper it despite not having seen it before. Still, Kid was also convinced that was all he needed. "I don't know," Law finally answered, "but I know it can make me no harm."
Kid scrutinized his friend's face unblinkingly, as if trying to read his thoughts through those tired eyes that had caught his attention so powerfully the very first time he had seen them. He then shrugged. "You're a total weirdo, Trafalgar."
"You know I am."
xXx
"Hey, Traffy," Luffy said behind his friend, who was going over his notes one last time before the exam. "What's the difference between a clause and a sentence?"
Law turned around to help his friend when Kid ambled into the classroom and along the aisle that separated the rows of desks and chairs on which his friends sat, whistling merrily as he hung his backpack on the hanger and sprawled out on his chair. Law and Luffy exchanged glances for a moment, and the latter finally opened his mouth to say, "Won't you study anything?"
"Don't need to."
"Are you finally writing it off as a dead loss?" Law asked as curt as ever.
"Nope," Kid retorted without losing the smile on his face. "I've got the ultimate gadget that's going to spare me from all of my duties." He suddenly lifted his shirt to expose his belly. Law averted his gaze slightly startled and Luffy leaned forward curiously. Kid waited proudly for his friends to say something. Luffy moved his hand closer to poke his friend's abdomen, but Kid immediately slapped it away.
"The belt, you moron!" he cried out.
Both friends curiously regarded Kid's belt, which looked like a perfectly typical one.
"How does it work?" Luffy asked, not sure if he had to trust Kid this time.
"Well, it should have already taken effect… but it's undoubtedly my most ambitious project until now and we still got one hour until the exam, so I won't be losing my shit."
"Yeah, but how does it work?" Luffy reiterated.
"I've been repeatedly told that I totally suck at acting. Well, with this belt, that won't be necessary. I will get a stomachache for real."
As usual, Luffy eventually became really interested in his friend's invention and Law just whispered some swear word as he turned around to face the blackboard while the teacher got into the classroom.
As he listened to the teacher's lecture, Law kept hearing his friends constantly murmuring behind him and, once the class was over, he turned around to find Luffy with a half-amazed half-worried face and Kid grinning with a frown.
"What's wrong, Eustass?"
"It's finally working," he giggled as he pressed his lower right abdomen with his hand.
Law was really surprised to see that it was working in such an effective way. It was not that he did not believe that Kid was perfectly able to create any kind of sophisticated gadget, but he could not fathom what type of mechanism that belt had to have such a powerful effect on his friend's health.
"You haven't told us how it works," Law inquired.
"Oh, it's quite easy," he boasted. "I've attached some electrode pads to the belt and hacked an EMS machine. That stands for 'electric muscle stimulation'," he added.
"I know that," Law said impatiently.
"Of course you do," Kid groaned as big drops of sweat began to run down his forehead. "Well, they send an electric charge into the muscles, charging the muscles fibers and causing a contraction." Kid writhed in pain again with a nervous smile.
Law got up and walked hurriedly to his friend. He squatted next to him and lifted Kid's shirt, startling both Luffy and Kid and making the latter blush, and began to unfasten Kid's belt.
"Traffy, what are you doing?" Luffy asked letting out a guffaw but convinced that he would have done the same if the situation had gone on for ten more seconds.
"Yeah, Trafalgar, what the fuck's wrong with you?" Kid blurted out, his blushing beginning to spread across his ears.
"There's no way this shit's causing such a great pain," Law stated as he tore the belt off. "Does it hurt you if I touch you here?" Law pressed Kid's lower right abdomen with his fingers.
"Argh!" Kid yelled. "Fuck you, Trafalgar! I already told you this is what the belt's supposed to do."
"You wanted to get a stomachache, and this is definitely not where your stomach is."
"And where is it?" Kid giggled. "In my head?" He looked at Luffy and both boys laughed nervously, but Law was not in the mood to show even the slightest sign of exasperation. His grave face made Kid start seriously worrying about the situation.
"The pain should've stopped right after removing the belt. What other symptoms can you feel?" Law asked looking into Kid's eyes.
Kid swallowed anxiously. "Well, I feel a bit nauseous—"
"And maybe a bit feverish," said Luffy, who had placed his hand on Kid's forehead, suddenly becoming serious, as he always did when his friends were in trouble.
Law moved his lips as if he were repeating some kind of soundless spell and finally whispered, "Appendicitis."
"What?" Kid looked terribly troubled.
Law rose to his feet and shot to his backpack on the hanger.
"What did you say, Trafalgar?" Kid whimpered while his friend rummaged in his bag.
Law took his phone out, dialed some number and waited. Kid and Luffy would not stop staring at him. A few seconds later, Law was calmly explaining his friend's situation on the phone.
xXx
Law and Luffy waited inside the hospital room for their friend to wake up. After calling for the ambulance, Law had hurriedly explained everything to the teacher, who had accompanied them to the school's front gate. The ambulance arrived in ten minutes and, after a brief examination by the paramedics, they had taken Kid to the hospital. After class, Law and Luffy had headed there, where they had met Kid's family and were told that Kid had been operated on. Kid's family thanked both boys for their diligence and warned them that Kid was sleeping at the moment, but they could go in and wait for him to wake up.
They were both sitting on a couple of chairs opposite Kid's bed. There was another bed in the room, but it was not occupied. Luffy unwrapped a chocolate bar and started to eat it. Law reminded him not to jump onto Kid when he woke up and took his notebook out of his bag to start working on his homework. He pressed the plunger on his pen, but the tip did not come out of the barrel. He sighed tiredly and tried again. The pen did not seem to be working, but he kept pressing the plunger, hoping it would magically fix itself.
"I wonder how you manage to fuck up all your pens," said an amused voice.
Law and Luffy raised their heads and saw Kid looking back at them with a smile and a frown on his face.
"Hey!" Luffy run to his friend but braked before he reached the bed, suddenly remembering Law's words. "How are you?"
Kid groaned and started mumbling something while Law got up and stepped next to the bed, across from Luffy. He handed his pen to Kid as he listened to his grumbles and light jokes. Kid unscrewed the barrel to repeat the same procedure he had followed the other time.
"How did you know about this disease?" Luffy asked, much more relaxed now that he saw Kid was in high spirits again.
"It's one of the first diseases I studied," Law answered. "It is also very common in teens and young people, so I thought it was a good idea to know about it, in case I had to diagnose myself at some point."
How did he do it? Kid was fixing Law's pen with his eyes fixed on it, but he could not stop thinking about what had happened. Law was always so bad with mechanics and had never understood Kid's inventions. Hell, he did not even know how to fix a simple pen. Still, he would always listen to his explanations and try to understand them, even though he clearly thought Kid should be filling his time with other occupations. And he had even asked him how that belt worked to help him. Apparently, some medical knowledge would have been useful in helping Kid know what his mechanical device could and could not achieve.
Kid let out a deep groan. His friends stopped their chatting and looked at him.
"I guess having broader knowledge of things other than mechanics would help me work on more efficient gadgets." He stopped for a second. "Maybe I should take a break from inventing things for a while. Not like they have been actually working, anyway."
Luffy's tone of voice made his disappointment clear as he started raving about how Kid's gadgets were one of the few things that could make school tolerable.
Kid did not pay much attention to his friend—he knew he would be happier if he could spend time at school with both of them and that he would soon forget about the gadgets. The red-haired boy looked at his other friend out of the corner of his eyes. Law had not let out a single sound or moved a finger since Kid's words.
"You weirdo," Kid whispered.
He could not tell if he had heard Law chuckle or if he had just imagined it, but it made him turn his head to his friend anyway. He would have sworn it was the first time he had seen Law's teeth behind such a heartfelt smile.