Arman sat in the third row from the back, slouched low in his seat inside the bus. The bus rocked gently as it rolled down the highway, the late afternoon sun painting golden streaks across the scratched windows.
Arman, fixing his half-dangling earbuds, held his glowing phone in hand. He was deep into One Piece, chapter 1150 – the Elbaf arc. He'd been rereading it again, savoring every page like a favorite memory, tracing each expression on Luffy's face, every wild panel Oda had drawn with that chaos-in-motion magic.
He chuckled quietly, ignoring the blur of traffic outside. The world inside his screen felt more real than the one he lived in. It always had.
At 24, Arman had no job worth mentioning, no girlfriend, no real friends anymore either – not since he dropped out of college. No family, because his family had died in a plane crash during his third year. That had also been his reason for leaving college. After that, he lost all will to do anything with his life. He just… couldn't find the spark in anything else. Real life felt like a cage.
But One Piece? That was freedom. Adventure. Meaning. Fulfilling one's dream.
In his heart, he'd always been sailing with the Straw Hats—especially Luffy. That smiling idiot who didn't know the word "quit." Sometimes, Arman would lie awake and wonder what it would be like to live in that world. To be someone who chose their path, and didn't just stumble into failure after failure.
The bus began to slow.
Traffic, he thought.
Arman looked up briefly and noticed a large truck a few meters ahead. It was overloaded with long, thick iron rods sticking out through the back, glinting in the sunlight.
He looked back at his screen. There it was—his phone's wallpaper, where Luffy declared:
"I'm going to be the Pirate King!"
He smiled while reading it.
A shuddering metallic scream.
Glass exploding inward.
Something sharp and fast slammed into his chest.
He felt the air wrench from his lungs. His phone slipped from his hand and flew like a skipping stone down the aisle.
Then—
Everything around him turned into an empty black space.
He didn't know how long he was in that darkness.
He didn't feel pain anymore, just the heavy, echoing silence of something lost.
At first, he thought he was dreaming—a floating kind of dream where time and self-consciousness blurred together.
But then, he began to feel regret.
Not about his death—but about how it happened.
So pointless.
He said:
"I wasted it all."
He had never traveled.
Never fell in love.
Never risked anything.
He just lived like a ghost—even when his family was alive, he was never able to make them feel proud of anything he had achieved. He had only been dreaming in other people's dreams, One Piece most of all.
And what had he achieved in his life?
Nothing.
He continued:
"I wanted more..."
As he said this, he felt wind—a salty, warm wind you could only feel near the ocean.
He inhaled deeply.
With that breath, he opened his eyes.
The sun was too bright for him to see properly at first. When his eyes adjusted, he saw the sky—and it was too blue. Not a normal blue, but One Piece blue.
He stood up. His limbs felt… odd. Shorter. Thinner.
"What the... hell?" he said.
But even his voice sounded different—like that of a small child.
He looked at his hands. Tiny.
He scrambled to his feet and stumbled toward the nearest puddle. There, in the murky water, he saw the reflection of a child. Ten, maybe nine. Messy black hair and wide brown eyes.
It was him—but younger.
His clothes were tattered: brown shorts, a fraying white shirt, no shoes—but sandals.
He started to walk.
Behind him, a dirt road stretched toward a village he could see in the distance.
He walked there. It was a fishing village. Wooden boats rocked gently in a small harbor. There were no skyscrapers, no cars, no cell towers. It was like he had gone back in time, many years.
The only things that amazed him were the seagulls—because it was his first time seeing them—and a faint, distant cry of someone yelling about fresh fish.
"This isn't real," he whispered.
But it was.
The smell of sea salt, the warmth of the sun, the weight of a stomach that growled with real hunger—this all made everything real.
As he explored the village, he found it was bigger than a normal village. It had a market, a hospital, and many houses made of stone instead of wood.
While discovering the area, he reached the far end near a large harbor, where a Marine outpost stood tall. A flag waved high above it with words written on it:
"East Blue."
He dropped to his knees.
Tears spilled before he even knew they were coming.
He wasn't home.
He wasn't alive.
But somehow… he was here.
In One Piece.