Anime Girls are Moist

Chapter 1144 1,143: Be Mine...

After the shock—so intense it left her reeling—came something deeper: a confusion and disbelief so heavy it nearly swallowed her whole.

She clenched her teeth and endured the agony that seemed to seep from every crack in her bones. Bracing herself against the cold stone wall behind her, she spent the very last of her strength to force herself upright.

The wound on her back tore with searing pain as she moved, but she seemed not to feel it at all.

Her eyes locked onto Rei Ao.

Her voice was hoarse, as if ground to dust—thick with confusion, incomprehension, and a hint of hysterical self-mockery.

"You… you killed Kaido…"

Her voice trembled badly.

"You killed the strongest monster in the world… with your own hands…"

"Then why did you save me?"

She suddenly raised her voice, her chest heaving as tears surged up beyond her control.

"I'm his daughter! The daughter of your enemy! The 'Oni Princess' that all of Wano wants to grind into dust!"

"You killed him—so you should hate his bloodline the most!"

"You should've killed me too! You should have!"

It was too absurd.

So absurd she couldn't understand it at all.

All her life, she had fought Kaido's tyranny.

For Wano's liberation, she had gambled her life—turned completely against Kaido and fought side by side with Luffy and the others.

Kaido was dead. Wano had been reborn.

Yet she had become a hunted stray—chased by the very people she'd tried so desperately to protect, unable to find even a corner to hide.

And the one who had personally ended Kaido's life—

the one who should have hated everything about Kaido the most—

had descended from the sky at her most desperate moment and saved her.

Rei Ao looked at the confusion and disbelief in her eyes, and at the shattered, almost-fragmented self hidden in the deepest part of her.

The smile on his face didn't fade.

He slowly bent down and reached a hand out toward her.

It was a clean, warm hand—long-fingered, with distinct knuckles.

The nails were neatly trimmed, without a speck of dirt, without a trace of blood.

Against the stench of gore, the mud, the filth all around them, it was an almost brutal contrast.

That hand hovered in front of her, only half a step away.

Like the only light splitting an endless darkness.

His voice carried an unquestionable certainty. Word by word, clearly, it landed in her ears—and drilled straight into the depths of her soul.

"Be mine."

He watched her eyes fly wide, brimming with tears.

His gaze was calm, yet it held a force she couldn't resist.

And he delivered the cruelest—and most tempting—sentence as casually as if it meant nothing.

"Even if I'm the man who killed your father."

The smell of blood and rust, mixed with the salty sea wind, wrapped around every breath Yamato took.

She leaned against a cracked rock wall.

The hakama on her entire left leg had long since been soaked through with dark, dried blood.

From her shoulder down to her waist and belly, several gashes ran across her—so deep bone showed.

Every faint breath tugged at her like a fresh tearing.

Three days and three nights.

Relentless pursuit, without sleep.

From the ruined remains of the Flower Capital to the frozen earth behind Ringo; from the beaches of Kuri to this deserted canyon.

She had snapped two blades in half and burned through the last trace of her Conqueror's Haki.

At last, she'd shaken off the pursuers behind her—only to reach a dead end.

Her cracked lips moved.

She tried to twist her mouth into a self-deprecating smile, but all that came out was a cough—spitting a mouthful of blood-tinged foam.

She had lived by Kozuki Oden's will, fighting with everything she had to tear free from her father Kaido's shadow.

She wanted to protect this country her father had trampled. She wanted to be Wano's guardian.

But the smoke of Onigashima had barely cleared before news of Kaido's defeat spread.

What she received wasn't comrades at her side, nor the dawn of liberation.

It was poisoned blades—and abuse that blotted out the sky.

"Kaido's bastard doesn't deserve to live on Wano soil!"

"She's just like her father—another demon who ruined our country!"

"Kill her! Avenge our dead!"

Those samurai she'd risked her life to shield from Kaido's dragon breath.

Those villagers she'd secretly delivered food to.

Those people she had once longed to belong to—devotees of Oden's samurai creed.

Overnight, every last one of them became enemies who wanted her dead.

They couldn't see anything she'd done for Wano.

They couldn't see her hunger for freedom over twenty years, or the longing for light that lived in her bones.

In their eyes there were only five words, forever: Kaido's daughter.

She had been abandoned by the whole world.

Just as her consciousness began to blur—when she thought she would finally die beneath this cold rock wall—

a figure stopped in front of her.

Then a hand reached out before her eyes…

Yamato froze completely.

Her gaze fell first on that hand.

Clean and slender, knuckles defined.

A faint warmth lingered in the palm.

No bloodstains. No wounds. No calculating sharpness.

It simply waited there in silence.

Like the only light left in an endless night.

She followed that hand upward—

and met Rei Ao's calm eyes.

There was no disgust, no fear, no intent to use her.

None of the hate-soaked stares she'd seen enough of over the past three days.

He just looked at her calmly.

As if he could see past the heavy shackle of the words "Kaido's daughter"—

and see Yamato herself inside it: battered all over, yet still clutching a shred of a dream.

In an instant, her mind turned into a complete snarl.

On one side was a hatred that could never share the same sky:

this man in front of her was the one who had ended Kaido's era with his own hands—

the enemy she should have drawn her blade against.

On another side was the pursuit and betrayal from all of Wano over these three days and three nights—

the people she had once protected with everything she had, now driving the deadliest knife into her back.

On another side was the dream she'd held onto—about Oden, about Wano's liberation—

now shattered so completely there wasn't even a whole fragment left.

And on the other side—

was this outstretched hand, offered with no conditions at all.

The only embrace this frozen world had opened to her.

Her fingers twitched slightly.

As if bewitched.

That arm, numb for who knew how long, actually began to lift—little by little.

Her hand was shaking violently.

Her fingertips were smeared with dried blood; the back of her hand was covered in ugly wounds.

Sand from the fighting was still embedded under her nails.

A glaring contrast to the clean hand in front of her.

For a moment, she hesitated.

Afraid this was another trap.

Afraid that the instant she took his hand, a blade would plunge into her heart.

But she was truly exhausted.

Three days and three nights of running had drained every last ounce of strength from her.

She couldn't hold on anymore.

Even if this really was an abyss, she still wanted to seize this final scrap of warmth.

So, in a daze, she placed her hand into his palm.