The First Step Toward a Dream

The bulk of this chapter steps away from the present and dwells on Nami as a ten-year-old, eight years earlier. She, her older adoptive sister Nojiko, and the woman who took them both in, a former Marine named Bell-mere, scrape by together on a tangerine grove. Trouble starts when Genzo, the village policeman, catches young Nami trying to make off with a book she cannot pay for. She admits the household has no money, yet insists she needs that navigation guide because she dreams of one day sailing across the whole world. Moved by her, Genzo simply buys it himself and walks her home, where he tells Bell-mere the girl ought to learn some manners. Bell-mere defends Nami and promises to repay the kindness in love rather than coin, then quietly scolds the child for stealing instead of asking, since she would gladly have bought the book anyway. The guide pays off fast, and Nami soon sketches her very first chart of their home island.

One evening Bell-mere hands Nami a worn dress that once belonged to Nojiko, and the girl lashes out about always getting cast-offs and about the three of them sharing no blood. She blurts that she wishes a richer family had taken her in. Stung, Bell-mere strikes her and tells her she is free to walk out and chase whatever life she pleases. Nami flees to Genzo's home, and there she hears the full truth: Bell-mere came back from a war gravely hurt, carrying two orphaned little girls whose parents were gone, and collapsed in the village. With what might have been her last breath she begged the villagers to keep the children alive. Hearing all of this, Nami finally understands that the love binding the three of them runs deeper than any blood tie. Nojiko, who had gone out looking, finds her, and the two head back together.

Nami's flashback is set eight years before the current story. Bell-mere is established as the adoptive mother of both Nami and Nojiko, and as a one-time member of the Marines. The chapter ends in the present day as pirates descend on the island: the fish-man Arlong and his crew come ashore and proclaim that the land now answers to them. A villager confirms an earlier rumor that the Fish-Man Pirates split apart in the Grand Line, with part of the group making its way down to the East Blue. This installment falls within the Arlong Park Arc.