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“Why do you have ten jars of pickled onions?” Zoro asked from inside the pantry.
He was just looking for sesame seeds, reluctantly helping the cook with lunch, but the shelves caught his eye.
“Why do you need three swords?”
The reply was playful, but Zoro could sense some tension in Sanji’s voice; he was too quick to answer, too eager to pick a fight. He came back to the kitchen with the seeds, that the cook snatched without a word, and stared at him. Rounded shoulders, hair hanging low, covering his face, as he turned towards the stove.
Zoro could have pried – he wanted to – but he decided to choose the dumb approach, and he launched into an explanation of the merits of three-sword fighting style. Sanji stopped shaking ever so slightly after a while, and he started criticizing his fighting choices, but Zoro didn’t mind.
He watched him, after that, trying to understand what went on behind his curly brows. As far as he could tell, Sanji was not holding out on food, he prepared large meals and snacks – he wasn’t stingy, that wasn’t the problem.
When the cook wasn’t looking, he snooped around the kitchen some more; they had huge amounts of meat because of Luffy, but there were other provisions that made less sense. Seeds, bags and bags of them – dried sunflower seeds and lentils, almonds and raisins. Salt. Vegetables pickled in brine, that Zoro didn’t even recognize. It was almost as if…
“Are you afraid we’ll starve?” he asked one day after dinner, when it was just the two of them in the kitchen.
The cook nearly choked on his cigarette and coughed until he was teary-eyed.
“Aren’t we all?” Sanji finally said, trying to sound nonchalant about it and failing miserably.
Zoro stayed quiet and pretended he wasn’t seeing the tense shoulders and the way the cook’s hands shook a little as he lit yet another cigarette. Zoro knew about hunger, he had experienced it first hand numerous times. But he wasn’t worried about it on a daily basis, not the point of amassing insane provisions.
**
To try and understand the cook’s view about hunger, Zoro went to the one person who complained loudly about it on a daily basis. He found Luffy out on the deck, sprawled under Nami’s orange trees.
“Look!” he said excitedly, extending a hand when he spotted Zoro approaching.
On his finger was a small red insect, the size of a grain of rice, but flat. Zoro made a face, unsure if they should be rejoicing about finding insects around Nami’s trees. He still crouched and looked at it, humoring Luffy.
“It’s a ladybug larva,” the captain explained. “It eats cottony cushion scales.”
Zoro stared at him like he had grown a second head. He knew Luffy loved insects, but not that he knew the proper names and everything. He watched as Luffy carefully deposited the larva on the nearest branch.
“It eats tree pests,” he said again, pointing at little white bundles on the bark. “And then it becomes a ladybug. Those are beetles, you know.”
Zoro didn’t know that. Luffy lay back down and looked at the sun through foliage, and Zoro joined him on the floor because why not.
“Do you ever worry about food?”
“All the time!” Luffy’s immediate answer made him groan, because of course he’d say that. “But Sanji’s the best cook,” he added with a goofy smile.
He started listing his favorite meals, counting his fingers.
“I think Sanji worries,” Zoro muttered, more for himself than anything else.
He thought Luffy too engrossed in reminiscing past meals, but the other suddenly flopped on his front, head on his hands, and stared at him.
“Wanna know a secret?” he told him in a hushed voice.
“Huh?”
“Promise you won’t tell anyone,” Luffy insisted, so Zoro swore on his swords.
“Sanji has secret food stashes all over the ship.”
It wasn’t surprising – that the cook had squirreled food away, and that Luffy had stumbled on it.
“And you aren’t raiding those?”
“I don’t want Sanji to know that I know.”
“Makes sense.”
Luffy smiled a bright, goofy smile and flopped back down, hands behind his head.
**
In the end, it didn’t help put his mind at ease. If anything it made it worse, because the cook’s obsession with food was even more preoccupying than he thought. So Zoro continued his investigations; he snatched one of the cook’s leather-bound notebooks and tried to make sense of it, but it looked like gibberish to him. So he turned to Usopp for help.
“Is there anything strange about this?” he told the sharpshooter, handing him the notebook.
“The whole situation, for starters,” Usopp said, warily taking it. “Is that Sanji’s?” he asked, flicking through the pages quickly.
Zoro just shrugged and sat down next to Usopp’s workshop, eyeing the various hand tools lying about. When did he find the time to gather so many things? There were so many different screws and little bolts.
“As far as I can see, it’s just a regular ledger, products, quantities, expiration dates, that sort of thing. Why do you ask?”
“So nothing out of the ordinary?”
“I mean, all the quantities seem off for just five people, but you know how Luffy gets…”
But Luffy was also excellent at foraging, fishing and getting other people to pay for his food. It couldn’t be the only reason.
“Maybe don’t tell Nami about it,” Usopp suggested, handing him back the ledger. “She gets tense when people spend the ship money without her approval.”
He looked at his tools defensively and Zoro wondered if everyone on that ship was a basket case. Then he wondered if Nami knew about the cook’s hoarding tendencies.
**
She wasn’t in her room, when Zoro slipped downstairs, and he wondered for a second if he should be here alone – then he shrugged and sat on the bed. He checked the big chest in the corner first, but it was empty, with a scribbled note and a smiley face winking at him. If he was Nami, where would he hide his stuff? He checked under the bed, but it was spotless. Too easy, he thought, lying back on the bedcovers.
Very early on, the ship’s navigator had ended up having full control of their finances, and Zoro found that he didn’t care. She was better with numbers than he was anyway, and when he was alone he always drank away his hard-won berries.
One of the boards on the ceiling had a slightly different color than the others. Zoro took off his boots to stand on the bed, feeling foolish as he pried the ceiling hiding hole open and peeked inside. Berries, wads of bills and dull coins, as well as some golden coins and even some rubies or sapphires, he could never tell them apart.
It looked like there was way more than their collective money, and he wondered if it was Nami’s personal stash. But then a golden lump caught his eye, and he recognized the “shiny rock” Luffy had found in the river the other day, which she wouldn’t have stolen. Maybe it was safer in her hands. If it made her feel better to know it well-hidden…
**
He found Sanji in the pantry, the door slightly ajar like an invitation. So he came in and the cook swore when he saw him, focused as he was on counting tin cans of sardines – it made no sense, they were on a ship, they were surrounded by fish!
“Go away, dumb swordsman, I’m busy.”
Zoro ignored him, sat on a crate and watched him painstakingly note everything down in the ledger he had put back earlier. He closed the door with his foot, thinking the cook would want more privacy. He should have expected the violent shudder and the quick, “Keep it open!” hissed through clenched teeth. He complied and then he said, “Why are you so scared we’ll run out of food?”
Sanji sat down heavily and ran a hand through his hair.
“You can’t let it go, can you?”
“Not really.”
Zoro was bored and curious – it was a mystery with dark underlying implications. He had to ask. Sanji didn’t say anything for a long time, focusing on the lettering on a wooden crate beside a stocked shelf.
And then, “There was a storm once, back when I was on Baratie.”
The floating restaurant that had been his home and workplace for years before he joined Luffy’s crew. Zoro nodded and hummed, not wanting to press.
“We were a restaurant for fuck’s sake, our supplies were huge. But the storm wasn’t abating – people didn’t dare leave, we couldn’t sail away.”
He sighed and stared at the shelf behind Zoro.
“We fed everyone for days, ended up rationing, and the supplies kept getting lower and lower. I…” Sanji’s voice broke.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Zoro said lamely. He had asked, after all.
“It was like I was back on that rock and Zeff said it would be alright, but I was sure we’d all starve. It was the rock all over again and I was so scared and…”
He was working himself into a frenzy and Zoro clamped a hand on his shoulder, startling him. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but was interrupted when the door banged against the wall and Luffy barged in, closed fist held above his head, while his other hand stretched and grabbed an empty jar on a high shelf.
“Oh hi, are you having a secret snack?” he asked, nonplussed.
“You know you can’t be here,” the cook reminded him, standing up quickly and brushing non-existent specks of dust on his pant leg.
“I needed a jar, look!”
He held out the glass, which now contained a firefly, bright in the dark room. Sanji recoiled and made a face – he didn’t really like insects, not like Luffy did.
“That means there is an island nearby,” he said, and he shot out of the pantry, holding the jar above his head like a precious treasure.
“How old were you, during that storm?” Zoro asked, suddenly worried about the answer.
“Twelve. I should have known better.” Sanji smiled wanly in the darkness. “The storm passed. Nobody starved. The end.”
“But the fear remained,” Zoro concluded.
“I wouldn’t say fear. More like uneasiness. You’re blowing it out of proportion.”
“Says the cook with dozens of bags of lentils.”
“It doesn’t hurt anybody,” Sanji ended up saying, shooing Zoro out of the pantry.
And it got him thinking about the harmless things they all did. Luffy squealed over beetles of all sorts. Nami was keeping their money safe and hidden. Usopp, in that regard, looked like the most balanced of the crew, but when you scratched the surface just a little you realized he lived in a parallel world where he was the captain and the crew was loyal to him because of his legendary prowess. But did it hurt anybody? Probably not.
**
“What’s your problem?” Sanji asked him none too gently.
He was putting away a comically large amount of spices in the overhead cupboard – a bargain, he said, he couldn’t leave the market without them. He had nearly made a scene right there, and Nami, against all odds, had given him the funds to buy them. It made no sense, Zoro thought as he watched him from the kitchen table, spices wouldn’t save anyone from hunger.
“I could ask you the same question,” he retorted with a smirk.
“Shut up, it’s a chef thing,” Sanji mumbled.
“Sure.” Zoro laid back and closed his eyes, fully intending to fall asleep.
“Don’t you ever want to…” Sanji started, hesitating “… just own things?”
Zoro opened an eye, trying to understand where the cook was going with that.
“Like, my swords?”
Wado Ichimonji was important to him, being Kuina’s sword, but the others were just metal, replaceable.
“No, I mean… Well, maybe.”
It was getting more and more confusing. He didn’t need to own anything beside some good blade and the clothes on his back. Besides, Sanji’s obsession with food served a purpose, it wasn’t just “things.”
“Shit,” the cook swore, just as a small jar escaped his grasp and started falling.
Zoro’s hand shot forward, grabbing it before it could hit the floor.
“Let me rephrase, because you seem especially dense today,” Sanji said, snatching back the jar without a thank you. “You must have a passion, a hobby, something that makes you happy in the same way a horrible beetle makes Luffy happy, or how feeding people with nice food makes me happy.”
Zoro frowned deeply. He opened his mouth but the cook rudely cut him off.
“And don’t say taking naps.”
It was indeed the first thing that had popped in his mind, so he just grumbled instead. Why did he need a passion? Wasn’t a lifelong dream enough?
“Booze doesn’t count either,” Sanji said before he could.
How was it happening, Zoro thought, fuming. The damn cook was the weird one, not him, so why did he feel like a moron all of a sudden?
**
Material things never mattered much to him, Zoro thought, as he dozed in the shade on the deck. Money, clothes, even weapons came and went – they were just a means to an end. He wasn’t actively hoarding anything, unlike the others. But he enjoyed the cook’s food – more than he let him know. He respected Nami’s ability to trick, bargain, steal and keep their finances afloat. But more than anything he liked seeing Luffy and Usopp giggle like a pair of idiots, running after butterflies or trying out a new fishing rod.
People, he realized. He had never cared much about others, for years. Until Luffy came along and ended his lonely pirate hunter career – the irony – asking him to join his non-existent crew but never really waiting for an answer. Could you consider enjoying your crewmates’ happiness a hobby? Zoro didn’t dare ask Sanji – the cook would probably mock him for it, say he had no personality or something, that he had to steal others’ passions.
And what if he did? He opened his eyes and surveyed the deck of the Merry. Luffy was perched on the railing, surveying a fishing line, while Usopp was deep into a tale of adventures that never happened, complete with fight moves and sound effects. Through the kitchen window, he could see the cook with an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth, a streak of flour on his cheek and a glint in his eye. Nami was on the upper deck with her glasses on, muttering about unexpected expenses.
Really, he thought with a smile, he didn’t need to own anything because he already had more than enough.