Gram Gretcher

Still a baby, Gram wears his brown hair short and surprisingly tidy. The family resemblance to Olka sits mostly in his blue eyes, and after she alters her face for the escape, mother and son end up looking even more alike. Olka herself insists the boy takes after his late father rather than her.

Emotion crosses Gram's face without any filter. Loud noises and sudden violence set off tears, something the repeated attacks aboard the ship trigger more than once, and he absorbs his mother's moods, fussing whenever Olka is frightened and settling once she steadies herself.

Fear never fully crowds out infant curiosity. Being scooped up and carried through Yor's acrobatic escapes thrills him, and he responds warmly to the bodyguard's greetings even amid the chaos.

Gram is named for his grandfather on Olka's side, who once headed the Gretcher family and ran Ostania's underworld by comparatively honorable rules. An internal power struggle killed the elder Gretcher along with Olka's brothers and husband, leaving Leonardo Hapoon in control and a bounty hanging over the two survivors. Zeb, a subordinate devoted to the old regime and one of Olka's closest friends, helped mother and child go into hiding. Wanting her son raised far from the criminal world, Olka accepted help from the Shopkeeper of Garden, who owed her late father a favor: traveling as the fictitious Grey family, the three would board the liner Princess Lorelei and seek asylum abroad, with Yor assigned as their protection.

The voyage tests that protection constantly. Yor sweeps their suite for threats, cuts down a gunman posing as room service, shepherds the family through a masquerade ball in domino masks, and outlasts the sickle-wielding assassin Barnaby in a prolonged duel. Between crises, Olka opens up to Yor about her past, introduces her son by name, and lets the bodyguard hold him, while Zeb clowns through his own panic to keep the baby laughing, prompting Olka to joke that Gram should never grow up like him.

During the escape attempt under the fireworks display, a sniper nearly finds Olka and Gram before Yor pulls them clear, and when a shooter targets the family at a hatch, Zeb shields them with his body, his bulletproof vest saving everyone's nerves. Once the assassin forces are eliminated, the group reaches the storage area where an inflatable boat waits. Olka places her son in Yor's arms in farewell, crediting the bodyguard's bloodstained hands for the future he now has, and Yor remarks on the child's warmth. A bonus page in Volume 9 confirms the family lands safely, showing Gram toddling down a foreign port beside Olka and Zeb.