The Chronicle

Chapter 14

I woke up as someone was shaking me, who was Sabo. I rubbed my eyes and yawned, Looks like the rain had stopped..

I just realized that the babies were outside, along with Ace and Luffy. I crawled out from the cave and stretched out before sneezed out and coughed.

“You okay, Eri?” Luffy asked, I just nodded and walked toward him.

“So, what’s up?” I asked. Then Sabo take out a drawing—or design—of our hideout and saying that we’re gonna build our own hideout.

“A hideout eh.. Cool!” Luffy said.

“Then where did we get the building materials?” Ace asked, making Sabo grinned and answered, “Isn’t there are many in ‘that’ place?” as he looked to the side, meaning the Gray Terminal. We looked at each other before grinning, meaning that this will be awesome.

We all went to the dump with excited feeling. The boys were jumping around as the gathered some wood boards, nails, a wheel, etc. Because of my condition, I just walked around as I picked up some boards and nails, along with Flame that also helping me gathering some boards and put them in a cart that Ace use to bring the materials. Then we went back to our soon-to-be hideout tree, I was sitting on the cart along with the boards while Ace pulled it. Luffy was so excited the whole time and was bouncing around along the way, making us grinned and laughed at his behavior.

The boys were start cutting the boards and brought them to the higher side of the tree. Me too was sawing the boards along with Ace, I don’t to just sit there without doing anything, it’s boring ya’ know. While the others were take all the fun. I decided to go up and started helping Luffy. As Ace was sawing the end side of the building, he pushed it using his foot and that’s making him off-balance and almost fell to the ground, which was about five feet or more in the air. I quickly grabbed his hands and yelled at the other boys to help as they just laughing their ass off.

As the evening came, the boys were hunting a deer while I just wait at the tree with Takao. Flame decided to go with the ASL and maybe can make him useful. They got back and started skinning the deer off. Sabo and Ace were cutting the meat and I started marinate them with some spices such as salt, sugar and black pepper.

As we all waiting for the meat get marinated, we all trying to make a bonfire but we don’t have anything to make the fire, until something unexpected happened. My little Flame was breathing fire and turned the bonfire on!

We all stared in shocked and disbelieve, until Luffy break all the silence and shouting about how awesome Flame is, which making the pup—surprisingly—flushed in embarrassment and head-butted Luffy, making Sabo and I laughed and commented about the resemblance of Ace and Flame like a twins in different species, making the said twins protested.

We roasted the marinated meat after we pierced the meat on clean sticks that the ASL washed earlier. After a moment, the meats were finished and we eat it happily. It was surprisingly tasted great, for an amateur cook like me. The ASL were complimenting me that the food tasted great, which making me flushed and started acting all tsundere, making Sabo and Luffy laughed while Ace just grinned. For the babies, I already spare some meat for them, which were unflavored and just roasted them. After we finished our dinner, we all started making conversation and stuffs before we went asleep in the cave.

After a few days, my ankle was got better and I can walk properly without too much limping, so I decided to help Luffy to hammering the nails. Then suddenly he hit his own thumb, which making Sabo winced in sympathy, I just laughed nervously as Luffy pulled his thumb up and showed it to Sabo that it was fine, making him sighed in relieved.

Then Ace was trying the wheel and spinning them up, making Sabo and Luffy cheered and I just grinned. As our main hideout was almost finished, we all go to the crow’s nest on the top of the tree to spread out a pirate flag with our name’s initials: ASLE.

Ace’s initial was A letter with red color, Sabo’s initial was S letter with blue color, Luffy’s initial was L letter with yellow color, while my initial was E letter with orange color. We all grinned at the flag and I giggled madly, which I always do when I was super excited and happy.

After a few days, our hideout finally finished. We’re all looking at it from below with happy look while Ace was thinking deeply.

“So cool! I really like this place!” Luffy said, I nodded and replied, “Yeah, this is awesome.. Especially on a huge and the tallest tree in this forest..” with amused tone.

“Right? I told you!” Sabo agreed and he finally realized that Ace was making a serious face. “What’s wrong, Ace?” he asked.

“If this is our hideout.. Then we should make some traps!” Ace said with a grin.

“That would be a great idea!” Sabo agreed.

And for the rest of the day, we spend our time to make a trap and finished at nighttime. We all decided to go to bed because we all dead tired and I got eye bags, making Sabo and Ace mocked me with ‘Panda Eyes’ calls.  As I tried to sleep, I got a nature call and decided to go down to pee. Thankfully, Flame and Takao were accompanying me as I walked into bushes and starting my business here. I washed myself with some water I brought and walked back toward the hideout, only to hear loud crash and a big thing was landed in front of the hideout.

Flame was growling as the thing moved and stood up, only to realize the thing was Dadan, of all people.

“Dadan-san! What are you doing here?” I asked, making her surprised and turned around, only to saw the babies and me.

“E-Erica! I-I’m not doing anything! I’m not worried about four of you at all!” she said. I just laughed nervously and picked the babies up to put it on my head.

“Yeah, yeah, Thanks for worrying about us.” I said and started climbing the rope ladder before stopped in the halfway and turned my head to look at her and said, “Goodnight, Dadan-san.” and continued to climb the ladder. After I arrived at our ‘room’, Sabo and Ace were looking at me and asked, “Where have you been?”

“Nature’s call.” I replied simply and put the babies down. Then I continued, “Oh, just then, I met Dadan-san as I went back here. She was actually worried about us and searching for us the whole two weeks, ya’ know.” and smiled before walked toward Ace and Sabo, pulled their head to kissed their forehead. “Goodnight Ace, Sabo.” And then I walked toward Luffy and kissed his forehead, “Goodnight Lu.”. As I walked to my own bed, I also kissed Flame and Takao on their head and saying goodnight before I lied down, quickly drifted off, fast asleep.

Third person’s POV

Ace and Sabo just stared at the said their lil sis fast asleep, still stunned about the ‘Goodnight Kiss’ she gave to them. Their cheeks were flushed, but Ace was the redder, because of embarrassment. Then they looked at each other, still using their confused face before walked toward their younger brother and sister and then they decided to give them a goodnight kiss too.

While Sabo kissed Luffy’s forehead, Ace kissed Eri’s forehead after brushing off her long bangs and some strains of hair. They were saying goodnight to their younger siblings and decided to go to sleep too. The older boys bid their goodnight to each other and fell asleep, but not with Ace.

He was still staring in the ceiling, his cheeks were still red as he remembered when Eri kissed his forehead. He put a hand on his forehead as he was deep in thought.

What’s with this weird feeling I got?

After a few seconds of thinking, he decided to shrug it off and go to sleep. He can ask about it to Sabo in the next day. He hope that he can get some answers about this feeling..