The question hovered in the small, warm kitchen like a blade suspended on a thread.
"If you aren't the woman who gave birth to me... who is?"
Makima stood beside Tenjin, her hands lingering on his arms to steady him. Her eyes turned slowly from Garling toward the boy she had raised. The weight of seventeen years of silence, of quiet nights in the North Blue watching a child grow under a false identity, hung heavy in her posture.
"Her name is Kozuki Ayame," Makima said softly, her voice carrying a quiet reverence that filled the tense room.
Tenjin blinked, his brow furrowing in confusion. "Kozuki?"
"She is a blood member of the Kozuki clan, Wano's former ruling family," Makima continued, her voice steady and clear. "A daughter of the Kozuki line, and a first cousin to Kozuki Oden himself."
Across the room, Garling remained leaning against the doorframe, his cold eyes narrowing slightly as the name echoed through the wooden house. Shamrock stood motionless, his sharp gaze fixed on Tenjin's face, while Gunko shifted her weight, a subtle flicker of distaste passing over her features.
Tenjin's mind whirled as he tried to process the words. "Wano royalty?" he repeated, a sharp, bitter edge creeping into his tone. He dragged a bandaged hand through his dark hair, his eyes flashing with pure annoyance. "You've got to be kidding me. First I'm told I carry the blood of World Nobles from Mary Geoise, and now I'm related to the most famous samurai in the New World? Can nobody in my family just be normal?!"
Makima let out a faint, sad breath. "Tenjin, this isn't a game—"
"I know it's not a game!" Tenjin snapped, gesturing wildly with his arms, his sudden movement pulling violently against his raw magma burns. He winced, gritting his teeth as pain flared across his chest and shoulders, but his frustration remained unyielding. "I don't give a damn about Wano royalty or Figarland nobility! I don't care about famous names or prestigious clans! I just want to know who she was, why she left me, and why I'm finding out about this seventeen years late!"
Makima hesitated, her fingers tightening slightly against her gray apron. "There is another name you need to know. Pakudo."
Tenjin frowned, his chest heaving against his bindings. "Who?"
"Ayame," Makima explained softly. "Pakudo was the identity she used while trapped in the Holy Land. The records in Mariejois say Pakudo died."
Tenjin's stomach dropped into a cold void. A suffocating tightness gripped his throat as the reality of those words settled into his chest. For seventeen years, he had walked through the world completely unaware that the woman who gave birth to him had been dragged into the shadows of the Celestial Dragons, buried under an assumed name, and written off as a corpse in some classified World Government ledger.
"Then she's dead," Tenjin whispered, his voice trembling as he stared at Makima.
"No," Makima said firmly, her eyes locking onto his with absolute conviction. "Pakudo's death was a lie, Tenjin. It was staged. Ayame survived."
The room went dead silent.
Tenjin stared at Makima, the air freezing in his lungs. For a long, motionless second, the overwhelming absurdity of his dual lineage. The Figarland blood and the Kozuki heritage vanished completely. He didn't care about Wano, he didn't care about the Holy Knights standing behind him, and he didn't care about political titles. All that mattered was a single, staggering reality: the woman who gave birth to him was alive somewhere in the world. Did she know he was alive? Did she know he had grown up in Hakkuro, wearing a Marine coat, bearing the scars of Marineford? Had she spent seventeen years believing her child was dead, or had she been forced to leave him behind to keep him breathing?
"She's alive?" Tenjin asked, his voice barely louder than a whisper, trembling with unvarnished emotion.
"She is alive," Makima confirmed softly.
Garling watched the exchange in cold, silent amusement. The Supreme Commander of the Holy Knights did not interject, nor did he offer any details regarding his own past with Kozuki Ayame or the precise circumstances of her escape from the Holy Land. He simply observed his biological son's reaction, measuring the boy's volatile mixture of rage, grief, and determination.
Tenjin turned toward Makima, taking a sharp step forward, his hands tightening into white-knuckled fists at his sides. "Where is she? Where did she go after Pakudo 'died'?"
"She returned to where she belonged," Makima answered, her tone tinged with a deep, solemn weight. "She disappeared back into Wano Country, the land of her ancestors, sealed away behind natural waterfalls and closed borders."
"Wano," Tenjin breathed. The name rang in his mind with immediate, urgent clarity. Wano was an isolated, closed country in the New World, unaffiliated with the World Government and currently dominated by the Shogun Orochi and the Emperor Kaido.
Instinct surged through him, burning away the exhaustion and pain lingering from Marineford. "I'm going," Tenjin declared firmly, his eyes burning with absolute resolve. "I'm going to Wano."
"Tenjin, you can't," Makima warned, stepping forward and placing a firm hand on his shoulder. "Wano is a fortress. It is controlled by Kaido's Beast Pirates, and the Navy has no authority there. You are a Marine Captain, still recovering from life-threatening burns—"
"I don't care about the Navy's authority, and I don't care about Kaido!" Tenjin shouted, his voice ringing through the small wooden house with ferocious intensity. "I've spent seventeen years living in the dark while my life was treated like a secret! I have a mother who raised me right here, and I have a mother out there who survived the Holy Land and went back to her home! I'm not going to sit around in Hakkuro Village waiting for someone else to tell me who I am!"
Behind them, Shamrock let out a soft, low chuckle. "He's going to throw himself into an Emperor's territory with half-healed wounds," Shamrock murmured, his sharp eyes glinting with detached amusement. "He really is reckless."
"Foolish," Gunko muttered under her breath, her eyes cold. "An insect chasing ghosts."
Garling remained quiet, his eyes flashing with a dark, calculating light as he watched Tenjin. He did not move to stop the boy, nor did he offer his assistance. To Garling, Tenjin's sudden obsession with Wano was merely another step in the boy's inevitable collision with his destiny.
Tenjin didn't give the Holy Knights a second glance. He looked at Makima, his expression softening slightly, but his gaze remaining unshakeable. He reached up, gently squeezing her hand where it rested on his shoulder.
"You're my mom, Makima," Tenjin said quietly, his voice thick with stubborn conviction. "Nothing changes that. But I need to know her. I need to look her in the eye and ask her why she had to leave."
Makima looked at him for a long moment, seeing the unbreakable fire in his eyes. The same wild, unyielding spirit she had spent seventeen years nurturing. She slowly nodded, stepping back to give him room.
Tenjin turned toward the window, looking past the wooden frames toward the distant, snow-covered hills of Welbems Island and the vast, open sea beyond. His body was battered, his chest was wrapped in medical dressings, and the World Government's dark shadow hung over his home, but his path was finally clear.
"I don't care about Kaido, and I don't care about the World Nobles," Tenjin said, his voice echoing through the quiet kitchen like a vow. "I will find Kozuki Ayame."
---
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