Ch4: Meeting Bellemere's family

Since finding a base in the forest a week has gone by. In this time, Caden trained his devil fruit, making various slimes.

One of the more interesting things he found was that the slime had some acidic properties. It came to light when he put a wooden stick inside his slime. After a few minutes, it started to slowly dissolve, getting smaller and thinned until it completely disappeared.

After finding that out he also managed to understand how it works. Natural slime could passively absorb stuff inside it. That also worked on the surroundings but at a much slower rate.

It greatly interested Caden, so he tried to manipulate this newly found property. Getting the slime to do as he wanted was tiring, but the end result was satisfactory.

Turns out that currently it worked the same as slime control, where he can't move slime which he is not in contact with.

Holding it, he made it stop passively absorbing and also managed to make it do so much faster, turning it to an active state. In this way, his slime ate a massive tree branch in a matter of seconds.

It resulted in the slime getting slightly bigger and changing color to a shade of brown, the same as the wood it ate.

Trying the same thing on rocks and ground resulted in vastly inferior effects, where it barely scraped some of it after a few minutes.

"Maybe it only eats organic matter or it might be based on its density. Further testing required" Stated Caden.

Finding it fascinating, he tried to focus only parts of it to try absorbing only where he wanted, which somehow worked, but not very well.

He decided to spend some time training on getting better at this. His goal became to make a hyper realistic figurine, where it would be fully made from just absorbing small parts of the larger stone.

Other then that, his daily routine turned out like this:

7:00 - Get up, wash your face, eat breakfast.

8:00 - Run around the village to increase stamina, next go to the small public library, read some books about the world and talk with the librarian lady.

11:00 - Walk around the village, look for stuff to do, help some people.

13:00 - Eat lunch, either in the orphanage, or with people you helped.

14:00 - Head to the orphanage, finish the house chores, go to the secret base, train devil fruit.

16:00 - After getting tired of playing with slime, train your body, options include running with heavy slime, picking up heavy slime, punching hard slime. Turns out you are still playing with slime.

19:00 - Get back to eat dinner, hang around the village, look for any interesting stuff in the market.

22:00 - Go back, wash your body and head to bed. Oil lamps are expensive, so go to sleep.

So and so the days went, with each one passing like a blur.

One day, while helping out the villagers Caden saw Genzo, heading somewhere with bags full of groceries, barely holding them all.

"Hey Genzo, where are you going?" He asks, looking at the amount of food that is clearly too much for one person.

"Oh Caden, I'm just doing some groceries for a friend. She is busy taking care of her children, so I thought about this to help her out." He answered, showing the bags to the boy.

"Do you need any help with that?"

"Yes, could you lend me a hand or two?"

"Sure!"

After that fast conversation they walked down the road with Genzo showing the directions. Turns out this friend is living on the edge of town.

"You see all these trees we saw after leaving the town?"

"Yes, they look very healthy."

"That's right. Bellemere owns all of them."

"Bellemere? If that's the case, she must be rich."

At that, Genzo visibly shifted for a moment before talking again.

"Not really. You see boy, our town doesn't really need that many mandarins, which is the only fruit she grows. Even then, she is a strong woman, so don't talk bad about her, you hear me?"

"No problem. You mentioned that she has kids, right?"

"She has 2 daughters, Nojiko is your age and Nami is younger by around 2 years. Maybe you could befriend them?"

"Maybe, but how come I never really saw them in the village?"

"That's because they are too young to be left alone to wander wherever they want. In that case, you are very special. No other 5 year old is as free as you. Most of them are still playing around with toys and can't talk very well." He says, looking at Caden as if he was special.

"You on the other hand." He continues. "You are very mature for your age. You can talk without problems, know many words and remember everything we teach you easily. I bet you were exploring the village without getting lost after one day. That's very impressive."

"Thank you, I blame it all on the past that I don't remember."

"Heh, you can blame what you want, it doesn't change facts." Said Genzo.

Few minutes later, they reached the small house from which one could hear shouting.

"Nojiko stop right now! Give me back my clothes!" Screamed a female voice.

"Hahahahaa" Came laughter from a younger girl.

"Looks like there will be another troublemaker in the village after her mother." Genzo said dejectedly, then knocked on the door and loudly said. "Hey Bellemere, It's Genzo, I bought some groceries for you!"

In a moment the shouting stopped and the door opened revealing a beautiful woman with a unique hairstyle, where the sides are shaved, leaving the top and back with long hair.

On the front she had small bangs adored with a sensual smile. Her hair was actually a different shade of red than Caden normally saw around. 'I wonder if they are natural?' He thought, looking from the side.

It seems Bellemere didn't see him, as she stood in the door frame with only a towel around herself.

"Oh Genzo, thank you so much! Is this all for me? You didn't have to! How will I pay you back for all this? Looks like I will have to do it with my body.." She said, dragging her hand from her thigh up to her torso.

"Bellemere stop it! I'm with a kid here! Also, you know you don't have to do that everytime I bring you something." He said quickly stopping her from escalating this further.

Unlucky, she's very pretty, I wouldn't mind looking a bit more.' Thought Caden, becoming the center of attention.

"Oh sorry, I didn't notice him from here." She said, leaning a bit more further.

"Hello there young man, I see some bags in your hands, did you help old Genzo bring all of these here?" She said with a smile before looking at Genzo and smirking.

"What do you mean old?! I'm barely over thirty!" He exclaimed, feeling wronged.

"Yes, it wasn't much trouble. Will you also pay me with your body?" Caden asked, trying to sound innocent, while almost cracking in laughter.

The look of pure embarrassment on Bellemere's face was incredible, she got all red, turned to Genzo who started laughing.

"Ahahahahaa, that was good, kid." He laughed with tears in his eyes.

"Hahahhaa" They laughed together while she tried to get her bearings back.

"Kid, you shouldn't say stuff like that, it's for adults!" She tried to teach him.

"Don't stress over that, he was probably joking, right boy?"

"Ye, don't worry miss, I was just kidding." Said Caden with a bright smile.

"Ok kid, let's leave it behind." She said, smiling again.

"Both of you, come inside, let's unpack all of that."

With that they went inside. The house from here looked even smaller. From the front door to the kitchen was only a few steps.

"Okay, leave these bags here. Genzo, help me unpack all of these." She said, pointing at half of the bags.

"As for you boy, you look close to the age of my daughter, let me introduce you to her and maybe you both can go play together while I work with Genzo, what do you think?" She asked, looking at Caden.

"Bell, I don't think It's a good idea-" Genzo tried to say before being cut out by Caden.

"No problem Miss, I would like to meet her." He said, stopping Genzo from talking.

"Ok, Nojiko, come here! We have a guest!" She shouted.

From the side small steps could be heard and a little girl with light blue hair came to the room.

"Nojiko, meet-" Bellemere paused, before saying. "I didn't catch your name boy, can you introduce yourself?"

"Sure, I'm Caden, hello Nojiko." He said, shaking hands with her.

"Hello! I'm Nojiko." She said looking a bit shy.

"Good, now Nojiko, why don't you take Caden with you to play for a while? In the meantime I will make you both something good to eat."

"Ok mom, come with me Caden, I will introduce you to my little sister, then we can play!" She said, taking him by the hand to her shared room.

"She is such a good older sister." Said Bellemere with a smile.

"Yes she is." Admitted Genzo. After all, how many children put their siblings before them and their playtime?

While both adults were talking about the kids, they reached Nojiko's bedroom.

"Here, you see this is my sister Nami." She said, pointing her finger at the even smaller girl sitting and playing with some toys.

Hearing her sister she spotted the boy next to her and looked a little afraid.

"Hello Nami, I'm Caden." Said the boy in a calm way with a genuine smile.

'So Nami and her family are real here, good to know. Maybe other canon characters are also somewhere in the world?' He thought, happy for the possibility of meeting them in the future.

"Hel-lo!" Said Nami with a childish voice. You could hear that she still struggled with talking.

After the greetings, the children played with their toys.

Meanwhile, Bellemere was talking with Genzo.

"He really is an orphan?"

"Yes, he lives in the orphanage here. I found him alone on the beach a while back."

"That's terrible, how did he get there?"

"We don't truly know, one day he just appeared here. He says that he came here by boat, but after searching for it I didn't find anything." He said, sipping some tea.

"So how is he doing? I remember how you and the caretakers from the orphanage tried to persuade me into giving them my daughters. I hope they treat him well." She said, looking intently at Genzo.

"His situation is special." He said, seemingly getting lost in his thoughts.

"How so?"

"He lives there more like a tenant rather than a child looking for adoption."

Bellemere's face turned into a frown.

"Why?"

"When we came here, you might have not noticed, but this boy is extremely smart, or rather he is much more mature than other children. While they are still trying to remember or understand the world, he already seems to know enough to get by." Said Genzo, still daydreaming.

"He is acting like he's much older than he really is. If I didn't see him I would assume that he's a young adult."

"Is that so?" Said Bellemere, drinking her own tea and thinking of her daughters.

"Yes, also when people come to the orphanage to adopt kids he always runs away. It looks like he prefers the freedom he has now over having parents to take care of him. I don't blame him for this, in his place I would do the same."

"Then why mention it?"

"Because I worry for him. I don't know what he will grow up into. For now he is a good kid, he helps around the village and spends some time in the library reading books."

"That's impressive, knowing to read and even understand books at his age is amazing."

"I know, that's why I worry for him. He has so much time in front of him to grow. It would be sad if he wasted it. But on the other hand, he is also just a kid."

"Genzo, It's good that you care for him so much, but don't worry. Let's ask him later what he thinks about his future, then maybe we can help him somehow, what do you think?"

After a moment of contemplation, he said. "Ok, let's do as you said."

~2108 words