"Oh myyyyy, so that's how it waaaas! You're my daughter, and you three are my grandchildreeeen! What a fascinating turn of events this iiiiis!"
"I feel like 'fascinating' doesn't quite do this justice, though..."
"Huh? Huh? Grandma, weren't you supposed to be dead?"
"Well, it's true... Grandpa and Mom both said they didn't know how things ended for her..."
A little time has passed, and right now we're visiting Mama, that is, Sou, at the abandoned ship she's been using as a temporary home.
From what I've heard, she really is... not a lookalike or anything. She's the real Sou.
She was alive this whole time. Even though I'd been told she was dead.
...Well, it's true that nobody actually witnessed her final moments. Just like Alice said.
As a precaution, I also considered the possibility that someone might be impersonating her, so I tested her with facts only she would know. Things from Merveille's research materials and diaries, records from the past.
She answered every single one almost instantly, and every answer was correct. I'm convinced she's the real deal.
Also... this is more of a feeling, but my instinct? My intuition? Something like that is telling me this person isn't a stranger. You really shouldn't underestimate that kind of gut feeling.
"But how are you still alive... and looking exactly like you did back then? I was told you were on your deathbed by the time you gave birth to me. That's what Papa and Dr. Indigo told me."
"Yes, that's absolutely truuuuue! Honestly, I'm baffled by it myself, but somehow I just didn't die and kept on living, so here I aaaam! As for how I look like thiiiis, that requires a bit of explanatiooooon!"
Explanation?
"Before I get into that, mind if I confirm something fiiiirst? How did you all get heeeeere?"
"How, you ask... by ship. There was this Rainbow Mist kind of thing hanging over the sea, and when we sailed into it, we just ended up here before we knew it."
"Ah, I thought sooooo! It seems that 'Rainbow Mist' serves as the entrance to this 'Ape's Concert'! I don't know the exact mechanism, thooooough!"
We'd have figured out that much at least, Mother said, then continued.
"This 'Ape's Concert' apparently has a different flow of time compared to the outside woooorld! One day in here could be a month or even a year out theeeere!"
Wait, seriously?! That's like the Dragon Palace from Urashima Taro.
Which means... we need to escape this place fast, don't we? But we don't even know how to escape, do we? Hold on, isn't this actually really bad? What do we do?
"...By the way, Grandma, you wouldn't happen to know a way out of here... would you?"
"Of course I dooooo!"
"Right, figured as much... wait, you DO?!"
Not just Alice, who had asked the question, but all of us snapped our heads toward her in shock.
Wait, she knows?! How to get out of this Ape's Concert?
"Well, I haven't actually left yet, so it's only a hypothesis, you knooooow! But I've already finished analyzing this space, so I'm fairly confident the method is correeeeect!"
...Wait, seriously? She's finished analyzing this space that's beyond anything remotely comprehensible?
I mean, I'd heard she was a genius, but still, to do it that easily...
"I don't mind explaining it to youuuuu, but before that, let me first answer what you asked earlier about why I'm still alive and here like thiiiiis!"
"Huh? Oh, um, could we maybe prioritize escaping first? We can't afford to stay here too long, right?"
"It's fiiiiine, I won't take that long! Besides, the method can't be executed right away anywaaaaaay! We need to wait a few more houuuuurs!"
"...?"
Well, if that's the case...
☆☆☆
[Third-person perspective]
Thirty-four years ago from the present day.
Having given birth to Sue, Sou entrusted the child to her younger sister Kuu and left that island alone.
She didn't have long to live. She refused to burden her sister with the sight of her final moments. So she set out to sea in a small boat.
Setting out in a small boat on the Grand Line, where Sea Kings roamed freely and absurd weather could strike at any moment, was, by any reasonable standard, suicide.
For Sou, who had never intended to survive, there was nothing inconvenient about that.
Dying of her illness would have been fine. Being attacked by Sea Beasts or Sea Kings and dissolving into sea foam would have been fine too. Anything was acceptable.
But, as if by a twist of fate, she would end up being saved.
A Rainbow Mist happened to appear in the path of her small boat.
Sailing into it, Sou arrived at Ape's Concert.
And there, she would witness something unbelievable.
Wandering through the Ship Graveyard, Sou quickly noticed something.
The ships lying in ruin were from completely different eras.
Some looked as though they'd been built quite recently, while others appeared to be decades, even centuries old. The differences in design and construction left no room for doubt.
Among them, she docked at one that was especially old. She could tell it was ancient, but even Sou couldn't determine what era or nation it belonged to. When she investigated inside, the academic materials stored within left her stunned.
They clearly contained knowledge far more advanced than anything from the current age.
This ship had apparently been used for transporting and temporarily storing materials of academic value.
She wanted to know more. She wanted to understand this field of study more deeply.
The nature of a researcher. She found herself unable to resist absorbing every scrap of knowledge contained in those materials.
Before long, she had taken up residence on that ship, reading through every document she could find, one after another after another. Adding her own interpretations, developing them further, continuing her research.
Simultaneously, she searched for a way to escape this Ape's Concert.
The research still had a long way to go, given the sheer volume of materials, but she found a promising lead on an escape method fairly quickly.
The problem was, it was a method she couldn't execute alone. So she decided to wait for an opportunity. For the moment when someone else would wander into this Ape's Concert.
And then, when nearly two months of this life had passed...
There was a knock at the door.
"Helloooo, is anyone in there?"
And she was reunited with the daughter who had grown up.
☆☆☆
[Sue's Perspective]
"And that's whyyyyyy, because I wandered into this time-displaced Ape's Concert thirty-four years ago, I was able to meet all of you like thiiiiis! Though for me it was only about two months agoooooo!"
...So in other words, we're like people from the future who came to visit Urashima Taro while he's still in the Dragon Palace. The idea that she'd been surviving all this time in a space where time flows differently...
"To think such a thing could happen... the sea truly is a mysterious place..."
"I managed food with preserved rations left in various ships and fish I caaaaught! There's fuel everywhere for cooking, so that wasn't a probleeeem! I did accidentally set an entire ship on fire once, thooooough!"
"That's dangerous! Were you okay, Grandma?!"
"Perfectly fiiiiine! I made sure to do my cooking on a different ship, just in caaaaaase!"
"That's not really what I was worried about..."
"...But Grandma, weren't you supposed to be on your deathbed? You seem awfully energetic for someone in that condition. Or are you still dying?"
Yeah, I'd been wondering about that too.
She really doesn't look like someone with only days to live. She's been talking at full volume this entire time, and she survived two months of Survival living on her own? She seems perfectly healthy.
"That's something I don't really understand myself, you knooooow! All I remember is that when I came aboard this ship and found the research materials, my body suddenly felt incredibly liiiiight! I thought it was just a temporary boost from the excitement, but since I somehow kept not dying, I figured I might as well keep researching while I could!"
The three girls talking with her still had '?' written all over their faces, not really getting it. But something had come to mind for me.
...Isn't that... that thing?
The 'miracle' that Dr. Hiriluk experienced in the Original Work.
Being so moved by a beautiful cherry blossom landscape that something happened inside his body, and his incurable illness went into remission to the point where doctors said he was 'practically healthy.' A phenomenon that defied medical explanation, one that could only be called a miracle.
In the end, his incurable illness wasn't completely cured, just eased, but still... if you think about it extending his lifespan by decades, that's more than miracle enough.
And the same thing might have happened to her when she saw those 'research materials' aboard this ship.
Moved by technology at a level beyond current understanding, her body rallied with the sheer force of 'I can't just die here!' and fought off the incurable disease.
Whether it's temporary like Hiriluk's case or a complete cure, I don't know, but... well. For now, that's fine.
Then Sou noticed something and said, "Ah, it's almost time."
"I think the 'exit' will open in about an houuuuur, so all three of you, get readyyyyyy! We're escaping this Ape's Concert!"
"What?! An exit... what do you mean? There's something like that here?"
"Of course there iiiiis! You all came through one to get here, didn't youuuuu? If you can come in, then you can get out toooooo! The timing is tight, thooooough!"
"Came through... you mean the Rainbow Mist?"
"That's riiiiight! I don't know how it works, but when that Rainbow Mist appears, this space connects to the outside! Or maybe the Rainbow Mist appears as a result of connecting to this place. Either way, it doesn't really matter!"
According to Mama's hypothesis:
The appearance of the mist can't be detected from inside this Ape's Concert. The fog here is already thick enough that you can't see very far, and it's not even clear whether it would be visible in the first place.
But when the mist does appear, that location and this place are indeed connected, allowing passage in and out.
That's why there are Legends of treasure said to have emerged from the Rainbow Mist. Something must have accidentally passed through the mist gate from here to the outside.
And through her research, she had discovered a pattern governing the mist's appearances.
When she showed us to the room she'd been using for her research, the space was extraordinary.
Countless Eternal Poses that had apparently been aboard this ship were lined up in rows.
Normally, these would point to nothing. In a place like Ape's Concert, cut off from the outside world, they couldn't detect any magnetic signals.
But once every few hours or every few days, they would briefly regain the ability to point to their destinations.
That was precisely when the Rainbow Mist appeared and connected this space to the outside world. Only during those brief windows would the Eternal Poses fulfill their function, and only if their designated destinations happened to lie in that direction.
Having noticed this, Sou used every Eternal Pose on the ship to survey the timing and direction, and from the frequency of those occurrences, she derived a pattern. She became able to predict when and in which direction the exit from this Ape's Concert would appear.
...She accomplished all that in just a few weeks. This woman is incredible.
And she was doing other research simultaneously? She really is a genius...
"So I figured out which direction to go, but the problem was I had no way to get theeeere! The Rainbow Mist only appears for a short time, and you have to get out before it vanishes, but my little boat was too slow to make it in tiiiiiime! That's why I was hoping someone with a faster ship would show uuuuup!"
"I see... if that's the case... we can manage that."
My ship can accelerate with my Powers, and in a pinch, it can fly.
"So... we can get outside in about an hour? ...Mama, you're coming with us, right?"
"Of course! I'd appreciate iiiiit!"
After that, we prepared for departure in one hour.
Though really, the preparations were mostly Mama's stuff, and we just helped.
We gathered up every last document from the ship Mama had been using as her base, and I stored them all with my Powers. Made sure nothing was left behind for the escape.
There was a lot, but it didn't take that much effort. I do this kind of thing all the time. Did the same thing on the Sky Island, ransacking Enel's storage and everything.
Then the five of us boarded the ship, headed in the direction Mama had predicted, and the familiar Rainbow Mist enveloped us.
Continuing straight ahead, an endless horizon spread before our eyes, and we emerged under blue sky.
Oh... we really made it out. As expected of Mama...
We headed back to the nearby island, the one where we'd just been visiting graves, and from the look of things, not that much time had passed.
The offerings we'd left hadn't changed much in condition, so at most a few hours, maybe a few days at the outside.
After that, we bought a newspaper from a News Coo and confirmed exactly what date it was.
The result: just under two days had passed since we entered the Rainbow Mist.
Thank goodness... that's completely fine. We might have worried our base a little, but...
A few hours later.
Having not only escaped safely but also witnessed Mama's unexpected 'return from the dead,' we decided to make a call to the appropriate parties.
...I was a little nervous, though.
☆☆☆
Rring rring rring... rring rring rring...
Click.
"Hello?"
"Ah, Papa? It's me, Sue."
"Tch, you finally decide to call, you stupid daughter... You said you'd be right back, so where the hell have you been all this time?"
"Sorry, sorry... I sort of got trapped in a place that makes the Florian Triangle look tame until just recently. Just managed to escape."
"You again... This was some dumb adventurous impulse, wasn't it?"
"Urk... y-yes, that's exactly what it was..."
"For crying out loud. Well, you sound fine, so whatever. Still, sounds like you wandered into one hell of a weird place... I've never heard of a Vivre Card not responding properly, so that gave me a bit of a surprise. Though your life force seemed fine, so I wasn't worried."
"Ah, so that's what it looked like on your end... sorry, sorry. Anyway, I'm safe, so I'll be heading back now. Also, there's something I need to report..."
"Hm? What? You got souvenirs or something? Or did you pick up another stray?"
"Hmm... closer to the latter. I mean, it's a top-tier souvenir too, but... it might be a bit much to handle, you know..."
"? What's that supposed to mean?"
"Um... oh, you want to switch? Ah, okay, got it... yeah, it's Papa."
"...?"
"Uh, sorry Papa, she says she wants to tell you herself, so I'm handing over."
"Handing over? Oi, who's there with you? Someone other than my three granddaughters, right?"
"Yeah. Um... brace yourself."
"Huh, what's with that preface? You're freaking me out... Also, why are you acting like just talking to whoever it is would make me keel over? I don't know what this is about, but I'm the guy they call the 'Lion' of the..."
"Hellooooooo!? Is that you, Booooooss!? It's been so loooooong! Do you know who I aaaaaam!?"
"..."
"..."
"..."
"...Boooooooss!?"
Thud.
"""Shiki-samaaaaaa!?"""
"...Miss, my apologies. This is Indigo. Boss just collapsed, so I'll be tending to him. Please excuse us for a moment."
"Ah, yeah... figured that would happen."
"...This... this isn't a prank, is it? It's real? Just now, I heard an incredibly familiar voice... What exactly is the situation? ...No, please tell me everything later. Excuse me."
"Ohhhhhh, that voice is Dr. Indigooooo!? Long time no..."
Click! ...Beep... beep... beep...
To be continued...