I spent two years writing this novel. An exaggeration, to be precise, because in the end I had 800 pages and had to split it up ^^'

The idea came to me based on the question of whether someone can learn empathy in retrospect. It's written like an anime, with both lovable and despicable characters, and revolves around Silas. After a three-year relationship, he's cheated on and dumped by Hadrian. The reason:

Silas is emotionally cold and interested in nothing but football. Should he change for a new potential partner?

Disgusting product placement:

JMS Books LLC - Empathy

GENRE: Gay Spicy Romance

LENGTH: 88,626 words

JMS BOOKS LLC

"Be black in chess" is easier said than done for aspiring soccer professional Silas Yanagida. His three-year relationship with Hadrian Nakata ends when Hadrian cheats on him. The reason: Silas is emotionally unavailable, cold, and distant, caring only about soccer, or so Hadrian claims. When Hadrian leaves, Silas’s world falls apart. Is he truly an emotionless monster? Left alone in Tokyo, cut off from friends at university, and without offers from the top league despite his youth national team status, Silas hits rock bottom. In the cafeteria, he meets Aiden Tago, a psychology student returning from mourning his parents. Silas gets a wild idea: Can empathy be learned? And who is better to teach him than Aiden?

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Chapter 10: One of these stones

“Captain? Can I ask you something? Do you… do you think it was right to treat him like that… I mean… weren’t we a little too harsh on him?” The uncomfortable question finally came up as the ship’s watch had been assigned, everyone’s tasks for the next day distributed, and the pirates were walking up from the harbor under the light of the slowly setting sun, down the village street, looking for a decent place to spend at least one night on land before the journey continued.

“Come on, Shachi, don’t make such a fuss,” Penguin hissed into his scarf. “The guy’s totally suspicious and dangerous, too. First you want to post guards because you don’t feel safe at night, and now you come up with this nonsense. Too harsh? We’re pirates!”

“I’m afraid I have to agree with him, Shachi. Why do you say that?” Law asked quietly, so that only the crew members surrounding him like an impenetrable fortress could hear his calm, usual tone. Nothing about him betrayed whether the confrontation with Loki had affected him, or whether he might feel guilty for sending that man—without a chance to save himself—into possible death. No, indifference was a constant companion to his masks, and even today, control would not meet its downfall. Attentively, his eyes scanned accident-prone stalls and old and fresh goods, chalked signs and dilapidated buildings, overpriced offers, and people who glanced at them nervously, avoiding his direct gaze, ducking away, making space.

Few dared to meet his eyes. Oddly, it was only members of the same criminal milieu he knew who did.

“He looked… I don’t know… sad.” “Doesn’t everyone, when they are cast out? Sad? When they feel, again and again, that they’re not needed?”

Chapter 10: Numb

Mike opened his eyes.

Brown. Perhaps more ochre-brown. It felt soft. It smelled familiar.

A smacking sound made him flinch. His eyes began to wander.

Away from the ceiling—was that what it was called?—in front of him and into the room. A room. His room.

His head felt swept clean. There was nothing that could be thought. Movements made no sense.

Only the eyes and what they absorbed. There was a snow-white curtain fluttering in the wind from the open window, a shabby wine-red carpet covering part of the light laminate floor.

The image moved on. Toward the center. There was nothing to think.

A leather armchair facing him, a slight dent indicating that someone had been sitting there not long ago. An empty hook marking the entrance to the walk-in closet. Then another armchair. Was it worth thinking? The chair was wrong. Its real place was on the other side of the room.

Yes, besides, it wasn’t empty and dented like the other one. Someone was sitting in it. Knees drawn up so the feet would still fit on it. A familiar figure.

Why was it familiar?

His brain refused to answer. There was nothing to think.

Chester—yes, that was his name—beamed at him and the smacking sound came again.

What was that?

Chapter 9: End of it all

Summary:

A clash of different wills

Hours could trickle away like sand through an hourglass when filled with nothing but waiting—wrapped in silence, though another person sat close enough that breaking it might have been worthwhile, had pride not stood stubbornly in the way.

Loki pushed the now-cold tea aside without tasting it—a gesture that did not go unnoticed by his host—and spent the remainder of his enforced stay arguing alternately with rage and reason inside his own head, staring out the porthole, and leafing through the book.

A mistake, as it turned out.

The author had never even set foot on the Sky Islands. He merely recounted grandiose speeches from boastful pirates who spun far-fetched tales no sane person could possibly believe. Every story ended with pirate triumph—or, worse, tasteless embellishments of angels abducted and sold as slaves.

The most absurd tale, in Loki’s opinion, concerned a sailor named Mont Blanc Noland. Supposedly, he had told his king of an entire city made of gold. When the monarch assembled an expedition to find the legendary place, it was no longer where Noland had claimed. The man excused himself by insisting the city must have flown into the sky.

From that day forward, he was called Noland the Liar—and executed for his words.

Utter nonsense.

With a disdainful sniff, Loki snapped the book shut and set it on the table. Black-and-white clouds—this world’s pitiful imagination of heavenly life—grinned up at him from the cover until he flipped it over, grateful that at least the back bore no promotional drivel.

The rest of the time he killed by staring out the window—and occasionally at Law.

The captain had cloaked himself in an icy aura so complete that no one would dare disturb him. He saw nothing. He heard nothing. To attempt conversation now would have felt humiliating.

So Loki remained silent, stubbornly staring into emptiness, forcing every troubling what-if and future fear from his mind.

Even the longest hours end eventually.

Nearly three hours later, a crackling announcement echoed through the internal transponder.

“Land in sight!”

Chapter 9: Faint

Chapter Text

Mike was asleep.

Chester couldn’t say how he had managed to get him to that point; perhaps it had simply become too boring to keep staring into the singer’s brown eyes for so long without reason and without moving. With a few wary interruptions, he had finally lowered his songs, and after a few minutes Mike’s breathing had grown calmer and his body visibly relaxed.

Chester sighed in relief.

The scent of freshly brewed coffee rose to his nose and he inhaled it appreciatively before opening the refrigerator and releasing the smell of the chilled food. Early that morning he had already broken several of his own records by getting up earlier than ever before—sleeping on his knees in front of Mike’s bed hadn’t exactly been comfortable—loading the dishes from the night before into the dishwasher, airing out every room, and getting rid of the dirty remnants of the previous evening: burning the clothes and scrubbing away the muddy footprints and the handprint on the wall with plenty of water, lots of rising soap bubbles, and a scratchy brush. Only then did he allow himself a proper breakfast, frying three eggs, spreading a few slices of toast, and treating himself to several cups of coffee to calm his nerves.

No sooner had Mike begun to sleep like a marmot—one less thing to worry about—than Chester’s thoughts had started racing again.

The rapper needed rest now, for as long as his body required. It was the first healing sleep after that terrible incident, and it was necessary so that he could wake up again and attempt a new beginning.

Because that would inevitably have to follow.

Chester knew that everyone—Mike, his friends, and even he himself—would divide their lives into two halves and, if only in their thoughts, would speak only of before and after.

The “before” was full of wonderful memories, jokes, and Mike’s laughter that so quickly drew attention. But what the “after” would be like was written in the stars.

And so the next anxious thoughts began.

Chapter 8: Roads Untraveled

“Give me one good reason why I should tell you,” Loki replied coolly to Shachi’s question about the power of his Devil Fruit, stubbornly crossing his arms over his chest. In return, he was met with confused faces and raised eyebrows.

It was a delaying tactic—if the captain decided to pry that information out of him sooner or later, he knew he would—but did he really have a choice? His knowledge of this world was pathetically limited. Aside from snippets he had picked up from overheard conversations and what Law himself had told him—things that aligned with his understanding of the human world—he knew nothing more. One misstep, a single move beyond the bounds of what was acceptable, and Law would expose his lies one by one. If he hadn’t already. That man was anything but foolish. Even now, Loki could say with certainty that the captain harbored a suspicion of a scale that could become dangerous to him. The only thing left was to dig in his heels.

“Give us a reason why you shouldn’t,” Law shot back immediately, just as expected.

That was what Loki had been waiting for. With a faintly regretful smile, he raised his left arm and drew the crew’s attention once more to his obstacle, tapping the bracelet.

“I’ve no idea why you even want to know. Thanks to this thing, I can hardly use my powers, let alone be useful to any of you—or harm any of you. If that’s the reason behind your question.”

“Yes, but—” Shachi cut himself off, frowning deeply in confusion. He caught a meaningless look from Law and fell silent.

Loki did not miss how every crew member’s gaze suddenly shifted to Law—wide eyes full of expectation, mouths half open with unspoken questions that might have offered a better explanation for this obvious secrecy. There was something in the air, a reason he needed to understand but didn’t—and everyone knew it except him. That could spark new discussions, a perfect opportunity to wriggle free, to change the subject and at the same time learn more about the real issue of Devil Fruits. What was he supposed to say? He couldn’t lie; Law would notice the slightest mistake. And to talk his way out of it, he needed more arguments.

With his powers, it wouldn’t have been a problem. Illusions could keep even enraged crowds in check. A small trick played on the captain’s submarine, something to throw them off balance—and the matter would be settled… Yes, too bad it wasn’t that simple.

But they were all disappointed—and in Loki’s case, surprised. After a few moments of silence, Law merely shrugged and this time gave Loki an unsettlingly knowing look.

Chapter 8: Drawing

Chester stormed into the bathroom and nearly slipped on the fogged tiles. His hand clawed into the shower curtain, which creaked dangerously on the rod under his weight, and he could only avoid falling by stumbling straight ahead—right into the icy spray.

“Have you completely lost your mind?!” He ducked beneath the numbing stream, stretched out his trembling hand, and twisted the shower knob toward warm.

“I said SHOWER! Shower! Not kill yourself! What’s so hard to understand about that?! Mike, you’ve completely—” He broke off when he looked down at the shivering figure.

For minutes he just stared at him, his breath rasping, his heart still galloping wildly from the shock. Then he slid down the wall and waited until the water reached a normal temperature.

Mike kept trembling.

He hadn’t managed to take off any more of his clothes since the last time Chester had seen him, so he was completely drenched. His black T-shirt clung to his body, the jeans had tightened as if about to shrink onto him, and his hair looked as though someone had licked it flat. His arms were wrapped around his drawn-up knees like a small bundle, but nothing else moved. His eyes had fallen back into their old rigidity.

“What were you trying to do?” Chester asked in a calmer voice and crawled closer to his friend. “Were you just trying to numb yourself? Or were you planning to freeze to death?”

He couldn’t grasp it. Couldn’t grasp how damn cold it had been for those few minutes—or how Mike had endured it for almost fifteen. Couldn’t grasp that he had been so stupid. Had he really believed it would be that easy? That Mike, after what had happened—what would burn itself into his memory for the rest of his life—would voluntarily undress? How could he have forgotten how naked someone felt in a situation like that, even with layers of clothes still on?

It had been wrong to believe, to cling to the thought that maybe there was a small chance everything would go back to how it used to be. Not anytime soon, at least.

Chester wrapped an arm around the completely soaked man, pulled him protectively against his chest, and carefully untangled the damp strands of hair.

“I’m so sorry… so sorry… that I wasn’t there when you needed me… and you’ve always done everything, everything for me…” Chester closed his eyes.

Chapter 7: The Scientist

“Got out of bed on the wrong side?”

It took Law less than half an hour to find the fallen god cowering in the darkest corner of his own cabin, after hearing an extremely amusing report from one of the men about how the god had unsuccessfully tried to find his way back to his own bed. Apparently, he had fallen asleep somewhere in the warm safety of a bunk, woken up in the morning, realized the place was unfamiliar, and ended up—after a second failed attempt—in the bathroom, where a couple of jokers had completely drenched him with the showers. From there he had stumbled down a ladder into the engine room, whose noise he could barely endure, pressing his hands over his ears until someone shouted directions at him and showed him the exit. Finally, he had nearly collided with Bepo on his way back, who had politely apologized to him.

The bear had never seen anyone run as if the devil himself were chasing them, he explained to his captain with drooping ears. Law had to make a serious effort to send him back to work with comforting words and only burst into muffled laughter once Bepo had disappeared down the corridor. Someone was clearly having a particularly bad day.

Following the trail of chaos—overturned buckets, loud grumbling, startled exclamations, and belongings scattered everywhere serving as faithful guides—he eventually found the door to his cabin ajar. After a brief discussion with several crew members, who would have preferred to lock their guest up somewhere he couldn’t cause any more trouble, he slipped through the door into his quarters.

Arms wrapped around his knees, face buried in them, the god of mischief—whose name suited him perfectly at the moment—sat in the corner, breathing heavily and seemingly lost in thought when Law addressed him. Slowly, he lifted his head and looked at him with a mixture of anger and confusion that made Law grin involuntarily.

“What do you think?!” he snapped, shifting restlessly over the dark wooden floorboards of Law’s cabin.

Chapter 7: Easier to run

Chester was trembling all over, his sweat-soaked fingers slipping down the metallic handle. The door was made of sandalwood, a frame surrounding the frosted glass panel, so new it hadn’t even begun to creak. Carefully, he stepped closer and pressed his ear against the cool surface.

Inside, it was silent.

But the smell was everywhere. It seeped through the gap beneath the door and the keyhole, making him breathe heavily and hoarsely. What did a person who smelled like that even look like?

Chester knew.

And he didn’t have the strength to wait any longer. With a jerk, he flung the door open, lunged forward just in time to grab the handle so it wouldn’t slam against the wall, and leapt into the room so spectacularly it looked straight out of a movie. No wonder everyone wanted him for funny cameo appearances.

Too bad no one was there to see it.