Third chapter. Some truths will be revealed. Enjoy ^^
"Hey, woman! Vivi! Why did you call us on the roof? I'm still hungry!" Zoro grumbled.
"Shut up Marimo! It's not every day that you will be called by pure maidens, so just stay put like a good dog and listen!"
"What did you say?!"
"More importantly, why is Miss Nico here?" Kaya asked.
"Let's just say that I'm the supervisor of this small meeting," Robin told her.
Zoro raised a brow. Every people gathered here were Luffy and Nami's old friends, except Marguerite, Rebecca and Miss Nico. He wondered what this was about.
Marguerite coughed to get everyone's attention. When they all turned to look at her, she started feeling nervous. "W-Well…first of all, I'm sorry to have called you out of nowhere. But we need to discuss about something. More precisely, about Luffy and Nami's relationship."
Usopp blinked. "Why do we have to discuss about that?"
"It's for your sake." Robin answered.
Rebecca asked back to them, "Don't you all think it would be better if you were freed from the mystery surrounding them?"
"Well…yeah," Usopp responded.
Zoro raised a brow again. "I don't disagree but why are you four taking this so seriously? You've only known them for a week…beside Vivi. I doubt you can figure out something we couldn't after all these years."
Marguerite grinned. "But we did! And it's precisely because we are new that we were able to figure it out!"
"What do you mean, Marguerite-chwan?" Sanji asked.
"Who noticed that Luffy and Nami looked like lovers, when they shop together with their arms linked?"
Surprisingly...or unsurprisingly, Sanji, Usopp and Kaya lifted their hands.
Zoro blinked at them. "Are you serious? Those two walked around hand-in-hand since they were kids."
"Well, people normally stop doing that after growing up," Usopp retorted. "It bugged me when I first saw them like that, but since you weren't saying anything, I thought you already knew…?"
"I thought the same," Sanji and Kaya said at the same time.
Robin smiled and told them, "This is why you can't understand them. I guess it's safe to assume that Zoro and Vivi are Luffy and Nami's oldest friends, right? You two don't notice the small yet obvious things between them. And the friends who came after ignore the same things, because they assume that you already know. Which is what created the current situation. If you had shared your thoughts with each other from the start, you might have been able to understand them faster."
"Robin-chwaan~! What a wonderful deduction~! Your intelligence makes you even more beautiful!"
"Well, thank you." The black-haired woman smiled.
Zoro yawned. "So you're saying that if we just tell everything we know, we might be able to get what's wrong with that idiot couple's relationship? Not really interested. It's not like they will die if we don't know."
"Please listen, Zoro-san," Vivi spoke for the first time since the meeting started. "I also had time to think yesterday, and I understood that there was surely some reason for those two to have a relationship like that. Not just because they are dense or don't have common senses. But another reason. If we don't know what it is, they might end up in a weird married life in the future."
Robin nodded. "That reason could most possibly be a certain experience. I can only think of that. For example, they might have learnt something about lovers that traumatized them when they were still children."
"Like sex?" Zoro asked casually as most of the women blushed. Sanji kicked him for being rude like that.
"Not necessarily but that's very possible. And in that case, we have all the reason to worry about their future."
Sanji blew a smoke and said calmly, "I don't think it's that. Leaving Nami-san aside, Luffy is too innocent. He still doesn't even know what dating means. If he learned something shocking like…copulation when he was just a kid, he wouldn't have become innocent like he is now."
Robin blinked. "Then could it be that his innocence is what stops him from developing their relationship? A healthy young man should have desires. He claims to love her and know that she loves him back, but even then he doesn't do anything... It might mean that he just don't know what's beyond the realtionship of friends."
"Ah," they all uttered with their mouth agape.
"It might be that…"
"No, it's obviously that!" Usopp yelled.
Sanji laughed. "What? We knew the answer from the start and we only realize it now? That shitty monkey must love to confuse people. Assuming we cleared the 'mystery' around Luffy, the problem would be Nami-san."
Kaya put a hand under her chin as she whispered, "She may have experienced something alone, or with Luffy, that is stopping her from wanting to become lovers with him."
"I wanted to ask but what are even lovers in your books? They clearly look like lovers if you ask me," the green-haired man said.
They all looked at each other, expecting someone to give an answer. A few girls blushed faintly as they had the answer, but they didn't want to state it openly.
Perona who was sitting close because she was bored, answered for them. "Lovers are obviously people who can do stuff like kissing, cuddling, etc…with each other. Do you kiss your friends? Well, normally you don't. No matter what that rubber-brain and Nami keep saying, if they kiss they are lovers."
Everyone blinked at her, before looking back at each other, as if asking if someone ever saw them kiss each other.
"I saw Nami-san kiss shitty Luffy's cheeks countless of times. But beside that…"
"Me too," Vivi nodded.
"I would have been traumatized if I saw them kiss in front of me," Usopp said with disgust. Zoro put on a grimace as he thought the same thing.
"If they don't, they would be at most just friends or siblings," Perona said.
Marguerite leaned her head on her hand. "So it all comes to kissing in the end. Now I feel like we should have asked that in the first place…"
Rebecca laughed awkwardly. "Well, you can't ask something like that out of nowhere either."
"So? Who will go ask them?" Usopp asked.
"One of the girls should ask Nami," Zoro said fast. "If we asked Luffy, he will probably say yes while thinking about the one on the cheek."
"For once, I agree with the shitty marimo. The first time I asked Luffy if Nami-san was his girlfriend, he answered me yes and I got really depressed. It was only one month later that I realized he didn't know the difference between a girlfriend and a girl friend."
Vivi was straining a laugh as she remembered the shock on Sanji's face at that time. She smiled and said, "Well, guess I will be the one to ask Nami-san. I'm her closest friend after all."
"I will come too," Marguerite told her.
Robin sighed. "Looks like it was a pretty simple matter in the end," she said with a slight hint of disappointment. "If Nami say yes, they are lovers. And if she says no, they are just friends. In both cases, I will have to talk with both of them so that they don't confuse people like this anymore. Don't forget to inform me of what the answer was," she told to the girls as she walked away from the group.
"Of course. We will tell you as soon as possible Miss Nico."
Zoro slumped down on the bench and said, "We will be waiting here so come back as soon as you heard her answer."
"Ok," Vivi and Marguerite nodded.
"Nami-san. We have something to ask you," Vivi said as she approached her best friend's table.
Nami blinked. "Is there some problem Vivi?"
"Not really. Me and Marguerite had just something that bugged our minds, so we wanted to ask you."
The orange-haired woman blinked again before she narrowed her eyes. "Don't tell me you want my help again for the math homework? I know you're both weak in that but you shouldn't depend on me so often."
Marguerite scratched her cheeks with a laugh, as she pondered how to ask her about the kiss as naturally as possible.
"It's not about homework. It's…about you and Luffy."
Nami tilted her head. "About me and Luffy?"
Vivi nodded. "Yes. You admitted that you love Luffy right?"
Nami sighed before she took her bag to check on some books as she said, "Why are you asking this again? You should know better than me."
"I wish," the blue-haired woman muttered.
"Did you say something?"
"No, nothing." Vivi laughed nervously.
Nami raised a brow at Vivi's weird behavior before she finally answered. "Of course I love him."
Then, Marguerite suddenly asked, "We know that but how much do you love him?"
For the first time since she met Nami, Marguerite saw a small blush cover the orange-haired woman's cheeks. She seemed to look up in thought before she grinned.
"Probably more than anyone in the world."
Vivi and Marguerite blushed too. The fact that even Nami was a little embarrassed by the answer made them convinced that her feelings were genuine.
"And Luffy loves you back the same way, right?"
"Of course."
"Well, here is the real question…" Marguerite started, taking a deep breath before asking a little loudly, and in a weird way, "Do you often kiss Luffy?!"
The class went silent as everyone present in the classroom looked at them.
"Of course," Nami grinned.
Their eyes widened at her answer.
"R-Really?" Vivi asked.
"Yeah. I kiss him a lot of times and practically every day."
Everyone blushed, and their jaws dropped.
"It's almost like greeting you know. It's been like that since we were kids."
Now everyone blinked. Vivi looked at Nami with half-lidded eyes.
"Wait, Nami-san. You were not talking about the kiss on the cheeks were you?"
Nami raised a brow. "Of course I was. What else would you be talking about?"
Everyone slapped their foreheads so hard that it left a red imprint of their hand. Vivi was about to give up, but Marguerite insisted.
"Nami, we are talking about kisses on the lips! Did you ever kiss Luffy's lips?!"
Silence filled the classroom again for the next ten seconds. The face Nami made at Marguerite's question was something no one in the class, or the whole world, expected. She looked...disgusted! She quickly pressed her hand to her mouth as if her lunch was about to come out.
"Eh?" Vivi and Marguerite could only mutter that at her reaction.
"Sorry. J-Just don't ask me about that. It's kinda…embarrassing."
They may have believed those words if Nami was blushing, but not when she acted like she was about to puke her lunch out. Vivi and Marguerite left the classroom in silence and look at each other.
"So… They are friends...? Or lovers...?"
"...Don't ask me."
Unexpected right? This one was even shorter than the last two, but there was no more perfect moment to end the chapter. Maybe you understood everything with this. Maybe you still don't. Anyway, everything will be made clear in the next chapter ^^