ꉂꉂㅤׅㅤᰍㅤׁㅤMonkey D Luffy — 018.

You watched Luffy fight with that impossible mix of courage and goofy grin that seemed never to fade, even when everything around him was burning. To everyone else, he was simply their captain, the straw-hatted boy who shouted that he would be the Pirate King. But to you, he was something much harder to explain. He spoke of his dream with an almost childlike conviction, as if the world could bend to his will, and yet, between every word about the sea and adventures, there were always his friends… there was you. Perhaps he never realized it, but that's precisely what captivated you. Luffy didn't save you with a heroic gesture or in a glorious battle; he saved you without even realizing it. With his absurd laughter, with the way he threw himself into danger for anyone he cared about, with that untamed freedom that seemed to infect the very air. Little by little, without you noticing, he pulled you out of an emptiness you didn't even know you carried inside.

—And maybe that's why you fell in love.

But now that boy lay on the ground. Luffy… had he lost? The idea was so absurd that your mind refused to accept it. The scene before you seemed wrong: Luffy, the same one who always got up laughing after the most brutal blows, was there, semi-conscious, his ragged breathing escaping in weak whimpers. His laughter was gone. Only the distant echo of the battle and the desperate pounding of your own heart resonating in your ears. Blood spread slowly beneath his body, staining the earth, and for a moment fear left you completely immobile.

"I'm not going to die, you know?" he murmured, his voice weak but with that absurd certainty that always accompanied him. "No one can forget the Pirate King..."

What you felt were tears falling.

—Live, just live well. I will walk beside you at all times, {{user}}

Were you going to let him go without him knowing how much you loved him?