Nami was rather happy with her life.
She was finishing up her degree at one of the best universities in the world, while working a suitably cushy part-time job as the department assistant thanks to her predecessor going on a year-long sabbatical. There was apparently something very interesting about the far reaches of Kazakhstan. Maybe she'd go there herself one day.
The house she shared with her friends, jokingly named Casa de Sunny by Luffy, situated a hop, a skip and a bike ride away from the hallowed halls of academia, was always filled with laughter (mainly Luffy) and someone (usually Sanji) to bully into taking over her cleaning duties on Wednesdays. The town itself was a quaint little thing, one of those strangely magical places that you first couldn't believe really existed if you didn't experience it for yourself (when you spent some time there, however, there was no escaping the experience of reality and all the small details that brought with it. Like the Trash Strike that was going on its third month).
In short, her present was nice and her future looked bright, acceptance into a prestigious trainee programme in hand since summer. And now the whole world was decked in beautiful autumn colours and she finally get those lovely seasonally themed coffees from the corner shop again.
There really was nothing she could wish for.
Other than the absence of one recently hired postdoc.
Once Trafalgar Law started, and got the coveted corner office with the best views, her life became a drag. When normal employees joined their little circle, they usually tried to get to know people, to make some small talk, to try and find the answer on the intranet before asking her about everything from where to find paperclips to how to book lecture halls to whom to send bills for whatever 'major movable equipment' was.
Not Trafalgar Law.
His questions and inquiries approached the absurd, with Nami losing count of how many times she showed him where the office supplies were kept at some point around the end of term. He was usually one of the first at the office, before even the ever-energetic Vivi (who had quickly forgotten about her slight at the Halloween Masquerade in favour of an uptick in the frequency of coffees taken with Koza). He was also one of the last to leave, as Nami heard from professor Nico one day. The door to his office was kept closed and the man himself was seldom seen and never without his friend, the adorable Bepo. When he was seen, he usually stayed silent and acknowledged people with a nod, if at all.
He was, in short, a true annoyance. No matter how cute Vivi thought he was (coffees with Koza notwithstanding, Nami and Vivi held to the belief that one should always appreciate beauty in the human form when occasion calls for it) and however much Nami silently agreed with her.
And, although she wasn't sure if he realised it had been her that he had used so disparaging words about at the party, he had insulted her. While Nami normally wasn't one to hold a grudge for an unreasonable amount of time, for some reason his flippant words were still grating her. She got even more annoyed at her inability to let it go, getting stuck in a, paradoxically named, positive feedback loop of slowly increasing annoyance.
So, naturally, she had made it her mission to make his life hell. Not in any ways related to mismanaging her job, of course. Instead, she had sat down and thought long and hard about what the best way to bother him and make his life as irritating as possible might be. And one glorious morning, she had it.
And that is the story of how she embarked on a mission of sunshine and happiness and puppies and other cute nonsense.
A suspiciously bright-coloured Welcome to the team!-card appeared at his desk, together with a stuffed Hello Kitty-doll she found in a second-hand shop. She always greeted him with the sunniest 'Hello!' she could manage, throwing in a blinding smile for good measure. Whenever there was a social gathering in the break room, she made a point of loudly knocking on their door 'just to make sure you boys don't miss out' and somehow their office had become the go-to place for all plants that were left by previous faculty.
But her true masterstroke was befriending Bepo. This was quite easy to do, as the mink was lovely and exceedingly friendly, although he possessed the lowest self-esteem Nami had ever encountered. That assessment included Usopp, who was the poster-boy for some kind of Schrödinger's self-esteem: he was either magnificent or terrible, but you never knew until you asked him about his day.
But Bepo was befriended and thus her revenge neared completion.
She'd fill Trafalgar Law's days with saccharine cheerfulness, even if it killed her.
Those truly were the days of her life. She was thriving with her self-imposed mission – and truth be told, it was beginning to get a bit funny (and progressively difficult) to try and figure out new ways to spread joy like glitter after a crafts project. She was almost looking forward to the approaching holiday season, when she'd be able to introduce him to the joy of remote-controlled Christmas lights with almost synchronised matching music. She did, however, draw the line at the start of December. No decorations (or tinny 'Jingle bells') before then.
It did become a bit difficult to continue with her evil plan once she heard the news that Luffy had finally gotten a new thesis supervisor.
Who of course just so happened to be one Trafalgar Law.
Nami didn't want to mix work with pleasure with her friends, and she knew that even Luffy would notice her altered work-personality. She might be somewhat of a happy-go-lucky person in general, but she wasn't usually caught humming 'Don't stop believin'' out loud.
Zoro would never let her live it down if he knew her well-hidden passion for pop music.
But on the other hand, Law being Luffy's supervisor gave her so much more ammunition.
It was really quite easy to let Luffy into the offices a few moments before his scheduled meetings started, or to invite him more often for tea or coffee than she usually did (she did value her working hours after all, and work became almost impossible when Luffy was present), just to see the fleeting look of pain and misery that flitted over Law's face when he realised that the hyper-energetic youngster was present.
It really was a sight to be seen.
But soon things found a natural rhythm. Happy greetings were countered with nods and grunts, weird questions about how to order IT-equipment dealt with, and Bepo included in her and Vivi's biweekly afternoon teas, the three of them being the youngest at the department.
"I miss Merry," Nami sighed one bland morning, as she sipped her morning coffee. Vivi looked at her with a perplexed expression as she stirred milk into her own cup of tea. They were currently standing in the office kitchen, having initiated the sacred and ancient procedure of getting something caffeinated into their systems at daybreak in order to be able to properly function.
"I thought it became too small?"
"Merry was not an 'it'," Nami snapped, it being way too early in the morning to be rational about one's housing decisions. "Maison de la Merry was a lovely little living arrangement that I will always cherish in my heart."
"Merry was lovely, I agree with you on that. But didn't Chopper have to sleep on the sofa in the end as you ran out of rooms, even though I moved out?"
"Details," Nami waved her friend's opposition away. "Who cares about a doctor with a bad back; not themselves, from what I've seen."
"True that, Nami-ya," came a low voice from behind her, as a tattooed hand reached in front of her face to get the milk. Damn that man and his silent ways. Nami might have let out a small yelp of surprise at that. Not that she'd confess it to anyone. Not even Vivi, who was currently looking at her with an eyebrow raised. "Doctors know all too well the myriad little ways our bodies are designed to mess up and how close we are to the brink of dying all the time. We therefore live life to the fullest and engage in all possible vices in the brief time we have in this world."
"I didn't know you were a medical doctor," Vivi asked, brow furrowed. "I thought you were here to work with professor Nico on forensics?"
"I am a doctor," the department's newest addition answered as he took a look at the milk carton, tshk-ed, and swapped it out for the resident plant milk instead.
"How can you drink that?" Nami asked aghast, regarding the container as if it had personally offended her. "It tastes like the broken dreams of produce that could have become something so much better than oat milk, of all things."
"Allergic to soy and lactose intolerant," Law said noncommittally, replacing the carton in the fridge. "And it tastes better in coffee than other non-dairy options. But to answer your question," he continued, turning back to Vivi, "I am a medical doctor, but my speciality is forensic pathology."
"Living people not for you, then?" Nami asked with a demure smile, refilling her coffee cup. For the third time. Within ten minutes. But she felt she really earned it this time, if she had to be subjected to Law's annoying presence much longer.
"I tried working with living people for a while in the casualty department, but they tend to scream too much," Law answered, giving Nami a slow, sadistic grin in the process.
"You, kind sir, are an atrocious human being."
"Am I a good person? No. But do I try to be better every single day?" Law shrugged. "Also no."
"Well, let's try to better that grumpy face with some little student-faculty football!" Nami beamed at him, gesturing to a bright poster next to the fridge, where a cartoony player in the university's colours was seen kicking a ball towards a motivational headline of the importance of good faculty-student connections. "Come on, the last Thursday of the month! It's so much fun to see their sad little faces when they lose."
Law's almost magical disappearance from the kitchen was accompanied by a tinkling laugh from the ladies left to enjoy their morning caffeine in peace and gossip.
Law tried to repress the enormous sigh that clawed its way up his oesophagus.
He failed spectacularly.
This had been the worst day of his life so far, he was sure of it. Well, if he didn't include those horrible years between the ages of fifteen and five-and-twenty, but who did? In his proper, adult life, this was the worst day so far.
It had started off so nicely. Taking a nice, sunlit walk to the office, enjoying the peace and quiet before the rest of the faculty decided to start trickling in. Getting himself a nice cup of joe (the office machines produced surprisingly good coffee) and even trying to be somewhat social with his colleagues. Most of the people here were… acceptable. But even he had to admit that the youngest duo was growing on him, especially after they started feeding Bepo scones and ridiculous blends of tea. Who had even heard of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas Tea"? In November?
Vivi, research assistant in a project of cross-cultural medical exchange, was hard to dislike, being eternally sunny and kind. But Nami… there was something about that woman. She had one of the most cheerful dispositions he'd ever encountered, not intimidated in the least by his dour appearance, countering his sullen character with limitless amounts of liveliness and patience. He'd even tested her limits a bit with how many times he could ask for the route to the supply room, but she never gave up, just showed him the way with a smile.
It didn't hurt that she was pretty as a peach as well.
He was relatively sure he'd seen her in passing at the Halloween party and that he'd inadvertently scorned her; on the other hand, her choice of clothing had been truly atrocious. Well, it didn't seem like she'd heard him, as sunny as she was acting towards him.
Maybe he should take her up on the idea of attending the football game.
But that thought process had to wait until his current nightmare was over.
He regarded the young man in front of him with a weariness originating in too many hours of tutoring and too little coffee. Truth be told, there might not be enough coffee in the whole world for this. The young man in question had been prattling on about all manner of things besides his thesis for the last half hour and hadn't taken one, not a single one, of Law's previous suggestions into consideration. Not even the one regarding proper grammar and punctuation.
"–and that's why horses don't exist. Am I right, Traffy?" the younger man concluded, happy grin in place, as he bounced on the edge of his chair.
"I'm almost certain you're not, but to be fair, I wasn't listening." Law sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Now, if you actually want to graduate at some point, could we get back to your thesis?"
After another half an hour, he could finally dismiss the overly energetic bundle of joy, his work finally having some semblance of direction. Why he was interested in forensic entomology was anyone's guess, as was the reasoning that had made professor Nico deem him to be the most suitable supervisor for such a project. Luffy had some interesting ideas, but Law had severe reservations about his attention span and its adequacy to the task of Finishing His Thesis.
The blessed peace lasted exactly six and two fifths of a minute. Then the heavens opened, proving to Law once and for all, that no matter how horrible things are at the moment, they can always be worse.
Limitations and delimitations:
This chapter uses some translated phrases for artistic emphasis and humour, the authenticity of which cannot be ensured. I sincerely hope that you'll still enjoy this rendition of Merry and Sunny. The choice of Kazakhstan to represent a far-flung place was due to the fact that it's far away from me at the moment and I really want to visit someday.
(I tried linking to more information on limitations and delimitations in research as well as positive feedback loops (also known as self-reinforcing loops), but this site isn't very good at this whole linking thing, apparently)