Chapter Text
Sanji fastened the button of his jacket with exquisite calm.
Not in a hurry, not nervously either. And certainly not with that ridiculous tremor people expected from men who had reached the end of a terrible decision. His fingers moved slowly, almost tenderly, adjusting the dark fabric of the suit against his body as if he were getting ready for an important dinner, an interview, or to greet a crowd waiting for him below with flowers instead of the vast silence of an empty street. He ran his palm over the left lapel, smoothing away an invisible crease, then did the same to the right. The wind blew his blond fringe over one eye, but Sanji didn’t brush it away at once. He let it fall there, like a curtain, like one last concession to disorder.
The rooftop smelled of hot dust, old concrete, and city air. It was a dry, rough smell, late-afternoon air, even though the sky still held a pale brightness that made everything too sharp. The antennas, the ventilation units, the cables tied down with black zip ties, the distant edges of other buildings: everything looked placed with absurd precision, as if the world had arranged itself just so he could cross it one last time without stumbling.
Sanji moved forward.
His footsteps sounded soft, almost polite, against the flat rooftop surface. He didn’t look back. Not because he was brave, but because there was nothing there worth saying goodbye to. That was what he thought, or what his body thought for him, because his mind was strangely clean. There was no noise, no phrases. No memories crashing through him, no voices telling him to stop. Instead, there was a peace so strange it felt borrowed, as if someone had opened a window inside his chest and everything that had been rotting there for years had finally begun to leave.
He stopped a few feet from the fence.
It was tall and metal. Vertical bars protecting the edge of the building and pretending that, at some point, someone had wanted to save anyone who got too close. Sanji looked at it without contempt and without gratitude. He simply looked at it the way one looks at things built for other people.
He adjusted his jacket again, this time with even more care.
He tugged at the cuffs of his shirt until they showed exactly enough beneath the sleeves. Smoothed the waistcoat. Touched the knot of his tie with two fingers and centered it by a single millimeter, even though it was already perfect. Elegance, he thought, was a form of respect. Even when no one would stay to thank him for it. Even when the only witness was the wind.
Then he lowered his gaze to his feet.
The loafers were expensive: black, polished, immaculate. They had been chosen by someone who understood very well the difference between a defeated man and a man dressed so that his defeat might look beautiful. Sanji smiled faintly. The smallest curve, almost invisible, at the corner of his mouth.
He bent down.
He removed the first shoe slowly, one hand on the fence to steady himself. His foot, covered in a thin sock, touched the hot rooftop surface. Then he took off the second. He didn’t leave them tossed aside, didn’t abandon them carelessly. He placed them together in front of the fence, perfectly aligned, their toes facing it, as if they too were waiting for permission to cross.
For a few seconds he simply stood there looking at them.
It was an absurd image. Two empty shoes in front of a railing, two small proofs that someone had been there and decided to go on without them. Sanji thought people liked things like that. The details, the symbols, the idea that an entire life could be reconstructed from a single abandoned object. A half-smoked cigarette. A folded note. A pair of elegant loafers waiting on a rooftop.
There was no note, because he didn’t need one.
He inhaled.
The air went in cold despite the heat of the day. It filled his lungs with an almost painful clarity, and for an instant Sanji felt lighter. Not metaphorically. Not in that corny way bad films talked about liberation. He weighed less for real, as if his whole body had come loose from something. As if gravity itself were starting to forget him too soon.
He placed both hands on the top of the fence.
The metal was hot, but not burning. It was simply alive with the day’s stored heat. Sanji gripped it firmly, lifted one foot, wedged it between two bars, and climbed. The suit pulled a little at his thighs and the shirt stretched across his shoulders. It would have been uncomfortable if his body had decided to care about discomfort, but it didn’t. Sanji vaulted the fence with an ease that was almost beautiful, as if he had been born to move through things he wasn’t supposed to cross.
On the other side, the ledge was narrower.
The world changed size.
The city opened beneath him with immense indifference. Windows, rooftops, streets, tiny cars, the distant wail of a siren, sunlight flashing off a pane of glass. Everything continued. Everything would keep continuing. Perhaps that was the kindest part. That he wasn’t going to break anything important, that there would be no universal silence, no abrupt interruption in the world’s breathing. That the city would not stop for him.
Sanji took one more step and the toes of his feet, inside the socks, brushed the edge.
He had imagined many times that he would be afraid in a moment like this. Not exactly this moment, of course. Not this rooftop, not this suit, not these shoes lined up behind him. But the general idea of a boundary, of a height, of a decision finally becoming physical. He had always assumed there would be something. An instinct, a visceral protest, an inner hand grabbing the back of his neck and yanking him away.
There was nothing.
Well, that wasn’t true.
There was relief, relief so clean it almost embarrassed him.
It softened his face, loosened his jaw, opened his lips into an expression he would not have been able to explain without lying. It wasn’t joy, and it wasn’t sadness or despair either. It was lightness, as if everything he had done to keep himself standing—smiling, caring, talking, cooking, pleasing, working, seducing, obeying, shining—had been clothes that were far too heavy, and someone had just told him he could finally take them off.
Sanji closed his eyes for only a second, then opened them again.
The sky was almost insultingly blue.
What a waste, he thought, and he did not know whether he meant the sky or himself.
Then he let himself fall.
He didn’t jump violently. He didn’t throw himself forward like a man fighting the world one last time. He simply tipped his body into the void, arms hanging loose at his sides, and allowed the emptiness to receive him. The air hit his face, his stomach lurched, the ground vanished, and the city turned into a vertical blur of light and noise. And for the first time in a very long while, Sanji had nothing left to hold up.
Not a smile, not a promise. Not even a tolerable version of himself.
He fell with his eyes open.
The wind ripped his fringe out of his face and filled his mouth with air. The suit flared around his body in broken elegance, his tie floating upward like a black shadow. Sanji did not scream, did not clench his fists, did not regret it. His expression, in those seconds, was one of such absolute serenity that it would have seemed obscene to anyone seeing it up close.
Perfect lightness. Unbearable peace.
And then the world hit him.
Not against asphalt.
Against an enormous dark-blue crash mat, thick as a small building laid out flat across a fake street.
The impact knocked the air from his chest with a dry sound. His body bounced once, awkward and human, very far from the elegant silence of the fall. His back sank into the padding and his arms spread open at either side. For a second, all Sanji saw was sky, a rectangle of sky cut across by the metal arm of a camera crane.
“Cut!”
Robin’s voice cut through the air with calm clarity.
And the world came back all at once.
It wasn’t an empty street. Not really. It was a set contained within barriers, lights, cables, screens, technicians with headsets, assistants with clipboards, and cameras pointed at the building from several angles. A crane rose over the fall zone, two operators moved beside the monitors, the stunt safety team was already hurrying toward the mat, and several people seemed uncertain whether they should breathe, applaud, or pretend that what they had just seen hadn’t chilled their skin.
Sanji blinked.
It took a second for the air to return to his lungs, but it did, because it always did. One of its small cruelties.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows before the stunt coordinator could touch him. Someone called his name, someone else asked if he was okay. Sanji raised one hand, not to ask for help but to refuse it with almost automatic elegance.
“I’m fine,” he said, though his voice came out a little lower than intended.
He sat up on the mat. Touched his chest, then his shoulder, then the back of his neck. Nothing broken, nothing out of place. Just the ordinary ache of impact, his body reminding him it was still a body. And that irritated him more than it should have.
Around him, the set remained suspended in a strange kind of silence. Not the silence of concentration before a take. Not the satisfied silence after a brilliant scene. Something else. Awkward, dense, as if everyone had accidentally seen someone naked and now didn’t know where to put their eyes.
Sanji smiled.
Because that was what Sanji did when people didn’t know what to do with him.
“Come on,” he said, rotating his neck until it cracked. “It wasn’t that bad.”
No one laughed.
That was strange.
Normally someone always laughed. A technician, a makeup artist, an extra who shouldn’t have been listening. Usopp most of all. Usopp laughed even when he was on the verge of fainting from stress, because his laughter was such an obvious survival tool that Sanji generally respected it. But this time he heard nothing.
The stunt coordinator offered him a hand. Sanji took it, because refusing would have looked more dramatic than accepting. He stepped down from the mat carefully, feeling the residual tremor of the impact in his legs. A physical vibration, like when the body arrives late to an emotion the mind has already decided not to have.
“Perfect, Sanji,” someone behind a monitor said, in a voice too loud and too forced. “That was... perfect.”
Sanji turned his head toward him and offered him the smile of a grateful actor.
“I’m glad my almost-artistic death was to your liking.”
This time there was one laugh, only one, nervous and brief.
Ah, Sanji thought. So that was the tone.
He ran a hand through his hair, swept the fringe back over his eye, and searched for Robin. She was sitting in her director’s chair in front of the main monitor, legs crossed, fingers laced beneath her chin. She did not look startled, though Robin rarely looked startled. She had that kind of calm that came not from feeling nothing, but from feeling everything too deeply for anyone else to see.
Usually, he liked that about her.
At that moment, he didn’t.
Because Robin wasn’t looking at him like a director who had just gotten a magnificent take. She was looking at him as though she had understood something Sanji didn’t remember saying out loud.
Usopp appeared at his side with a bottle of water.
“Here,” he said.
Sanji took it. Their fingers brushed, and he noticed that Usopp’s were cold.
Too cold.
He looked up.
Usopp was smiling, but badly. Crooked, small, tense at the corners. His eyes kept flicking from Sanji to the mat, from the mat to the building, from the building to Robin and back to Sanji. He had the face of someone who had been holding his breath for too long and had only just remembered he was allowed to use his lungs again.
“Are you okay?” Usopp asked.
Sanji unscrewed the cap and took a long drink. The water was too cold and hurt his teeth.
“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because that fall was...”
“A fall, Usopp.”
“Right, yes. Obviously. A rehearsed fall, with a mat, safety crew, and... all that.”
Sanji observed him for half a second longer than was kind.
“Can you hear yourself?”
Usopp closed his mouth.
Sanji sighed, softened his expression, and tapped his shoulder lightly with the bottle.
“I’m in one piece. Don’t make that face, or I’ll start thinking you care about me and everything.”
“I do care about you, idiot.”
The line came out too quickly.
Not the sort of exaggerated comeback Usopp would normally use to keep up with him. There was no dramatic flailing, no grand insult, no improvised story about how he had saved a hundred actors before him. Just that. “I do care about you, idiot.” Dry. Almost angry.
Sanji felt something close very slowly behind his ribs. How inconvenient. He smiled again, brighter, easier.
“Well stop, you’ll get wrinkles, and then Nami will blame me for lowering your value as a manager.”
Usopp didn’t smile, and Sanji decided he was already tired of the scene.
He looked toward Robin and raised his voice.
“Robin, darling, do we need another take?”
The question landed on the set like a cup shattering in the middle of a church.
Someone turned around, someone else lowered their gaze. Usopp made a small movement, as if he wanted to grab Sanji’s arm and changed his mind before touching him. Sanji pretended not to notice.
Robin did not answer immediately.
She reviewed the monitor, or at least pretended to. The image was frozen on the final second before impact: Sanji suspended in the air, suit open, expression serene, almost beautiful, almost happy. From where he stood, Sanji couldn’t see it clearly, but he remembered it. Of course he remembered it. He knew exactly what his face had looked like and exactly what he had felt.
Nothing.
No, that wasn’t true.
He had felt rest.
Robin finally looked up from the chair.
“No.”
One word, clean and final.
Sanji waited for more: a technical note, a “we’ve got it,” a “that was magnificent,” or a “good job.” But Robin added nothing.
Sanji tilted his head slightly, as if accepting an invisible ovation.
“Perfect, then.”
He tried to hand the water bottle back to Usopp, but Usopp didn’t take it, so Sanji kept it. He stepped down from the padded zone, let an assistant drape a robe over his shoulders, and headed toward the interior of the building that had been adapted as the production base. As he walked, the people around him started moving again. The technicians spoke, someone asked for the crane to be lowered, someone else asked about the next setup. The world, obedient and cowardly, recovered its noise.
Sanji walked barefoot to the spot where a production assistant handed him a pair of soft backstage slippers. His real loafers, the ones from the scene, were still up there by the fence, waiting for props to recover them like relics from a saint who dressed extremely well.
He found the image funny, though he didn’t laugh.
In the dressing rooms, everything was easier.
The room smelled of hairspray, makeup, hot fabric, and forgotten coffee. There were lighted mirrors, racks with black garment bags, a narrow couch, half-drunk water bottles, and a tray of fruit no one touched because grapes always tasted like plastic on long shoots. The normality of that chaos suited him. It was a place where everyone had something to do, something to say, some small urgency to cling to.
Sanji sat in front of his mirror and let someone start removing part of his makeup. The makeup artist, Kaya, had red eyes, but pretended to focus on the line of his jaw.
“If you wipe my face this gently, I’m going to think you value it more than my ability as an actor, darling,” he said.
Kaya let out a soft laugh, grateful for the chance not to talk about anything else.
“You think very highly of yourself.”
“I’m beautiful. It’s a burden, but somebody has to carry it.”
“You’re terrible at modesty, too.”
“I can’t be good at everything. It would be unfair to everyone else.”
Across the room, Franky, who played the fire chief in the film and spent more time showing off his biceps than memorizing lines, let out a booming laugh.
“That was super! I almost believed you were humble for five whole seconds.”
“Five seconds is a personal best,” Sanji replied.
The conversation kept going, light and stupid and blessedly so. Someone commented that the scene had been incredible. Sanji replied that he hoped they’d at least let him choose the shot for the trailer. Another actor, Brook, said something about how poetic it was to fall while dressed well, and Sanji answered that some people were born to die in style and others to wear ridiculous hats even indoors.
They laughed.
And with each laugh, the room settled a little more into the place Sanji needed it to be. Here, in front of the mirror, with people talking about wardrobe, cameras, coffee, and whether the catering had included anything edible, what had happened on the rooftop began to become what it should be: a scene. A take. Work. One piece of a long day.
Sanji clung to that with fierce elegance.
Work. Only work.
“The truth is,” said Conis, one of the supporting actresses, walking in with her phone in hand, “it was incredible. We were all downstairs watching the monitor and... I don’t know. It gave me goosebumps.”
Sanji turned toward her with a crooked smile.
“That’s because you have excellent taste.”
“No, seriously. It was... too real.”
The word fell between them with a small awkwardness, but enough.
Too real.
Sanji saw Kaya lower her eyes, Franky go quiet in the middle of a gesture, and Brook pretend to check his script even though he was holding it upside down. With unpleasant clarity he saw that the remark had not been born only out of admiration. There was something else underneath, something viscous. Concern, perhaps. Or fear. Or that early compassion people got before they even understood what they were pitying.
Sanji set the water bottle down on the table.
“Then I’ll have to demand a raise,” he said.
And the room breathed again, but not the same way.
Kaya finished wiping away a fake cut at his temple. It was strange, because the scene hadn’t needed visible wounds, but makeup had insisted on leaving some signs of the character on him throughout previous days: darker circles under the eyes, drier lips, less life in the skin. Sanji had looked at himself in the mirror that morning and thought they hadn’t had to do much. They had only let him stop pretending to look healthy.
What a nasty thought.
He stood up.
“I’m going to get changed before someone decides this suit deserves better treatment than I do.”
“That wouldn’t be difficult,” Franky said. “The suit doesn’t smoke.”
“The suit also doesn’t have to survive twelve hours of shooting a day.”
He took off the jacket, hung it up, unbuttoned the waistcoat. Every movement was clean, automatic, perfect. As if his body knew how to keep performing being fine without anyone having to direct it.
He had just pulled on a comfortable pair of trousers and a light shirt when he saw Usopp in the doorway.
He didn’t burst in or make himself known. He didn’t make any joke to Kaya about invading sacred actor territory or throw his hands up and say he came in peace. He was just there, tablet clutched to his chest, mouth pressed into a fine line.
Sanji saw him in the mirror before turning around.
“If you’re here to tell me I have interviews this afternoon, I’m going to fake an injury.”
Usopp tried to smile, but failed.
“Can you come with me for a minute?”
Sanji went still with one shirt button between his fingers.
“To where?”
“To direction.”
The dressing room lowered in volume behind him. It didn’t fall completely silent, but the voices dimmed enough for Sanji to notice. Or maybe he only imagined it. Sometimes, when a room was paying too much attention to a conversation, Sanji could feel it before he could hear it.
He turned slowly.
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“I’m changing.”
“I’ll wait.”
“I can go by myself. I’m not eight years old.”
“Sanji.”
There it was again.
That tone.
The same one as before. The one from the bottle of water. The one from I do care about you, idiot. Sanji hated it instantly—not because Usopp had done anything wrong, but because he knew him well enough to know when he wasn’t acting. And if Usopp wasn’t acting, then Sanji had to decide whether to keep doing it alone.
How exhausting.
He finished buttoning his shirt, slipped on a random pair of shoes—not the loafers, which were probably still being treated like an archaeological relic by props—and picked up his street jacket.
“Have I done something?” he asked lightly. “Because if this is about calling the sound guy useless, technically he started it by breathing too close to my scene.”
Usopp didn’t answer.
Sanji walked past him and out into the makeshift corridor between tents, cables, and metal supports. The set of that film was enormous, more expensive than anyone said out loud, and yet everything about it still had the provisional fragility of things built to pretend. Facades with no rooms behind them, streets ending in tarps, offices with no ceiling if you looked from the wrong angle. Sanji had always loved that about cinema: the honesty of the lie. Everyone knew it was false, and that was exactly why they worked so hard to make it real.
Maybe that was why it bothered him so much that they were all looking at him like he had lied badly.
Usopp walked beside him, far too quiet. That wasn’t natural. Usopp filled silence with anything: schedules, absurd theories, complaints about budgets, imaginary threats from Nami if Sanji showed up late to promo. If he wasn’t talking, it was because he was weighing every word before using it.
Sanji decided to get there first.
“I don’t want to have this conversation.”
Usopp swallowed.
“You don’t know what conversation it is.”
“From your face, it can only be one of three. Either I’ve been fired, or someone leaked the photos from the scene, or Robin is going to tell me she’s worried.”
Usopp said nothing.
Sanji laughed shortly.
“How wonderful. Looks like it’s the third one. My favorite.”
“Just listen to her.”
“I always listen to women.”
“Sanji.”
“Don’t start with that tone.”
“What tone?”
“The one people use when they think they’re right because they’re scared.”
Usopp stopped for a moment.
Sanji walked two steps farther before forcing himself to stop too. He didn’t want to turn around. If he turned around, he would see Usopp’s face. And if he saw Usopp’s face, he might have to soften. Having friends was terribly inconvenient; they limited a person’s cruelty too much.
“I’m not scared because I think I’m right,” Usopp said behind him. “I’m scared because I think you know something went wrong too.”
Sanji closed his eyes for a second and then turned with a beautiful smile.
“It went so right Robin doesn’t want another take. In this profession, that’s usually called success.”
Usopp looked at him as if it hurt, and Sanji had to look away.
They reached the direction tent without speaking again.
The tent was spacious, too tidy to belong to a real film set. A long table covered in scripts, storyboards, bottles of water, an open laptop, and two darkened monitors. A coffee machine in one corner. A director’s chair beside the table. Several folding chairs around it, though only one was occupied.
Robin was sitting there, not in her set chair but in a normal one, with a closed notebook in front of her and her hands resting on the cover.
No one else was there.
That was the first thing Sanji noticed. No producers. No assistants. No lawyers. Not even Nami reviewing clauses from the hell of efficiency. Just Robin, Usopp, and him.
That was worse.
Big dramas were easy to get angry about. Small, intimate ones demanded more care.
Sanji entered smiling.
“If this is an intervention, you could at least have warned me so I could bring coffee, gorgeous.”
Robin gestured to a chair.
“Sit down, please.”
“I’d rather stand, if you don’t mind.”
“Sanji.”
It wasn’t an order. Robin didn’t need to order. She had that infuriating way of making disobedience seem childish.
Sanji sat.
Usopp remained standing by the entrance for a second, then sat down in another chair some distance away. As if he didn’t know whether he was there as a manager, a friend, or a witness. Sanji didn’t want to think about any of the three.
Robin looked at him calmly.
“The take was extraordinary.”
Sanji opened his hands.
“Thank you. I love it when meetings begin by acknowledging I’m good at my job.”
“It was too extraordinary.”
Sanji’s smile did not drop; it sharpened.
“And what exactly does that mean?”
“It means nobody on set knew how to react.”
“Because people adore having opinions about other people’s work.”
“No, Sanji.”
The denial was gentle, which was exactly why it was irritating.
Robin opened the notebook—not to read from it, but to let her eyes rest on something other than him for a second. Sanji wondered whether she was doing it out of consideration or because she was trying not to make him feel scrutinized. So kind. So unbearable.
“The scene was supposed to show a man at the limit,” she said. “Desperate, broken, someone who couldn’t find any other way out.”
“And it did.”
“No, it didn’t.”
Sanji went quiet.
Robin lifted her eyes.
“It showed someone relieved.”
The silence that followed wasn’t long, but Sanji had enough time to hate her several times over.
“That’s a fairly creative interpretation,” he said.
“It’s my job to interpret what I see on camera.”
“Your job is to direct a film, Robin. Mine is to act in it.”
“And that’s why we’re having this conversation right now.”
Sanji laughed without humor.
“Because I acted too well?”
Usopp shifted in his seat.
“Sanji...”
“No, really. I want to understand. I came to set, I did my scene, I hit my marks, I followed safety, I landed on the mat, I didn’t ask for another take, I didn’t delay production, I didn’t throw a fit. And the take came out perfect, but apparently the problem now is that it came out too perfect.”
“The problem,” Robin said, “is that it didn’t look like you were acting afraid.”
“Because my character wasn’t afraid.”
“Your character was.”
Sanji tilted his head.
“Then perhaps you should have directed me better.”
Usopp’s mouth dropped open in horror.
Robin did not flinch.
Sanji felt the impact of his own words a second after saying them. He could have apologized. In fact, he should have. Robin was one of the few directors he genuinely liked working with, precisely because she never treated him like some pretty object to place in front of a camera. But the apology stuck somewhere between pride and shame.
So he smiled.
“Sorry. Was that too aggressive for the worried meeting?”
Usopp leaned forward.
“Stop.”
“You directing me now too?”
“No. I’m asking you to stop attacking the people trying to help you.”
Sanji turned toward him with dangerous slowness.
“I don’t need help.”
“Nobody said that—”
“That’s exactly what you’re saying.”
“We’re saying the scene worried us.”
“The scene, the scene, the goddamn scene, can you stop mentioning the scene every thirty seconds?” Sanji felt his voice rise and immediately lowered it again, because losing control was a vulgarity he had always despised. “It was fiction. There were cameras, a mat, and a stunt coordinator looking at me like my ankles belonged to the insurance company. I didn’t jump off a roof, Usopp. I acted like I did.”
“That’s the point. It didn’t look like acting,” Robin said.
Sanji looked back at her.
“That is nonsense and a passing impression caused by my incredible acting ability.”
“No. It isn’t. And that’s why you need help.”
“You don’t get to decide what I need, Robin.”
“I have a responsibility.”
“You have a movie.”
“I have both.”
The sincerity of the answer disoriented him enough to make him go quiet.
Robin leaned slightly forward.
“I have a movie, Sanji. I have a crew, investors, and a schedule that catches fire every time someone changes a light five minutes late. I know exactly what’s at stake. And that is precisely why I wouldn’t be stopping this if it were only a vague impression.”
Sanji clenched his jaw.
“Stopping what?”
Usopp lowered his eyes. Robin did not.
“The production company has decided you need a psychological evaluation before continuing with the scenes in this block.”
Sanji looked at her.
For a second, he didn’t understand the words. Not because they were complicated, but because they were absurd. A psychological evaluation before continuing, as if he were a car making a strange sound in its engine. As if he were a tool that had shown a fault and needed checking before it could be used again.
Then he understood and laughed, unable not to. The laugh came out clean, elegant, almost amused. He leaned back in the chair and covered his eyes with one hand.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “You’re serious?”
Usopp said his name again, but Sanji no longer wanted to hear him.
“You are completely serious.”
“Yes,” Robin said.
Sanji lowered his hand.
“No.”
“Sanji—”
“No.”
“It would be four evaluation sessions. Not therapy, not mandatory treatment. Just an outside assessment to determine whether continuing with this role could put you at risk.”
“How thoughtful.”
“It’s a safety measure.”
“It’s humiliating.”
“It could be both, but it isn’t.”
That answer made him angrier than any attempt at softening it would have.
“I am not going to sit in front of a stranger so he can decide whether I’m sane enough to do my job.”
“He’s not deciding whether you’re sane.”
“Oh, of course. Just whether I look suicidal enough to scare the producers.”
Usopp went pale. Robin kept her eyes fixed on him, and Sanji knew then that he had used the wrong word. Not because it was false, or because it was true. But because he had said it too easily.
The silence afterward confirmed it.
He felt a sudden fury at them for hearing it. For being there when the word left his mouth. For not having the decency to pretend it had only been dramatic exaggeration, an overreaction, a tasteless joke from a tired actor.
“Don’t do that,” he said more quietly.
“Do what?” Robin asked.
“Look at me like I’ve just confessed something.”
Usopp breathed unevenly.
Sanji stood up.
“This is over.”
“Sit down,” Robin said.
“I’m not one of your extras.”
“No. You’re the lead in my film, and right now I’m trying to stop the film from hurting you.”
“The film doesn’t hurt me. It gives me work.”
“Both can be true.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know what I saw.”
“You saw a performance.”
“I saw a performance that came too easily to you.”
Sanji braced both hands on the table. Leaned toward her with a smile so sharp, so beautiful, and so false.
“Maybe I’m a better actor than you thought.”
Robin met his gaze.
“Maybe.”
He didn’t win.
Sanji felt that with unbearable clarity. He had attacked, smiled, thrown the perfect line, and Robin had not moved an inch. Not because she didn’t care, but because she cared too much to let herself be distracted.
Then Usopp spoke, quietly.
“Sanji, it’s only a few days.”
Sanji turned toward him.
“Don’t sell this to me like it’s scheduling.”
“I’m not selling anything.”
“That is literally your job. You’re my manager.”
“Right now I’m here as your friend.”
“Then leave. At least my manager gets paid to betray me.”
The line came out crueler than he had planned.
Usopp went still.
Sanji felt the impact, and for a moment he almost wanted to take the words back. But Usopp had carried that bottle of water in those cold hands, had looked at him like he’d seen something falling beyond the mat, had led him here like a child who didn’t know where the danger was. So Sanji took back nothing.
Robin closed the notebook. The sound was small, definite.
“If the concern isn’t real,” she said, “then the evaluation shouldn’t be a problem.”
Sanji looked at her with hatred.
Not real hatred, at least not the kind that lasts. A clean, defensive, useful kind. The sort that lets you avoid feeling hurt.
“Nice trap.”
“It’s not a trap.”
“Of course it is. If I refuse, I look guilty. If I accept, I admit there’s something to evaluate.”
“All of us have something to evaluate at some point in our lives.”
“What a beautiful line. Are you putting it in the script?”
Robin didn’t blink.
“If you don’t do the evaluation, you’re out of the movie.”
That was the moment he actually felt something go hollow in his stomach.
He stared at Robin as if he hadn’t understood, but he had. Of course he had. The movie was his. Not just because he was the lead. Not just because he had spent months working on the character. Not just because he knew the role could change the way the industry looked at him. It was his because he had put too much of himself into it, perhaps more than he should, perhaps more than he wanted to admit. He had learned every silence, every breath, every defeat. He had defended the character in interviews, in rehearsals, in script meetings. He had said he understood his tiredness, his way of disappearing from rooms while still being inside them, his inability to ask for help without turning it into a joke.
He had said he understood because he was a good actor.
Only because of that.
“You can’t do that,” he said.
Robin did not look away.
“Of course I can.”
“The contract—”
“The contract includes psychological safety measures for high-impact scenes.”
Sanji let out an incredulous laugh.
“Since when?”
Usopp answered almost in a whisper.
“Since always.”
Sanji looked at him, and Usopp swallowed.
“We just never thought we’d need to use it.”
Something in the sentence went through him. Not because it was harsh. Because it was sad.
Sanji sat down again slowly.
Not because he was surrendering or had been defeated. Because suddenly his legs were tired. That was all. Tired from the fall, from the shoot, from the heat, from Usopp, from Robin. From this ridiculous conversation, and nothing else.
Never anything else.
“Four sessions?” he asked.
Robin nodded.
“Four.”
“With who?”
“An outside psychologist. He doesn’t usually work for the production company, but he specializes in evaluations. His only role will be to assess the risk of you continuing with this block of scenes.”
“And if he says I’m fine?”
“We continue.”
“And if he says I’m not?”
Robin took a second before answering.
“We revisit the role.”
Sanji smiled without warmth.
“What an elegant way to say you’ll replace me.”
“I didn’t say that, Sanji.”
“You don’t need to say it, Robin.”
Usopp leaned forward.
“Sanji, nobody wants to take anything from you.”
Sanji looked at him with sudden calm.
“You already have.”
Usopp closed his mouth, and Sanji liked that less than he expected to.
Robin slid a card across the table. White, minimal, with a name, an address elsewhere on the studio lot, and a time written by hand.
The next day. Ten in the morning.
Sanji didn’t pick it up right away.
He looked at it as if he could set it on fire with enough contempt.
“And if I don’t talk?” he asked.
Robin leaned back in her chair.
“That will also be information.”
What an insufferable woman.
Sanji picked up the card.
The psychologist’s name was printed in black letters.
Roronoa Zoro.
He said nothing.
He should have thought it was a ridiculous name for a psychologist. It sounded more like a bodyguard, an underground fighter, someone who solved problems by breaking them in half. Maybe that was why he let out a small laugh.
“Fantastic. Even this guy’s name sounds like a threat.”
Usopp didn’t laugh, and neither did Robin.
Sanji slipped the card into the pocket of his shirt and got to his feet. This time, no one asked him to sit back down.
“Are we done?”
“Yes,” Robin said.
Sanji went to the tent entrance. Before stepping out, he stopped.
He didn’t know why. Perhaps because his anger needed one last exit. Perhaps because there was something unbearable in Usopp’s silence. Perhaps because if he left without saying anything else, the conversation might hang behind him with too much truth.
He looked at Robin over his shoulder.
“The take was good.”
Robin held his gaze.
“Yes.”
“Don’t delete it. We’ll keep filming in a few days.”
Robin did not answer, which made Sanji smile.
“That’ll be information too, I suppose.”
Then he left.
The rest of the day unfolded the way things do after a private humiliation: with offensively ordinary normality. The set kept running. People kept eating, adjusting lights, checking schedules, asking for silence, moving cameras from one place to another. Sanji did what was expected of him. He smiled at the right people and joked with those who looked nervous. He let them retouch his hair, change his shirt, ask about his availability for the following week, even though everyone would soon know the following week had just become uncertain.
He didn’t bring up the evaluation again, and neither did Usopp.
At the end of the day, Sanji went home, showered so long the mirror fogged over completely, and ordered delivery he didn’t eat. He opened the script to the character’s next scene. Read it three times, then read the previous one. Then he went back to the rooftop scene.
One line in the margin was marked in pencil.
He didn’t remember underlining it.
For the first time, the thought of having no future did not hurt.
Sanji shut the script.
He lit a cigarette by the open window even though he had promised to quit, or cut down, or at least not smoke indoors. Some vague promise Usopp had squeezed out of him after seeing a magazine photo where Sanji’s fingers looked slightly yellowed. So dramatic. So absurd. People always chose small worries because they were easier to name.
Smoking killed, lack of sleep killed, drinking too much killed, working until you no longer knew what day it was killed. Even being loved only when you were useful killed, but that didn’t come printed on cigarette packets.
Sanji stubbed out the cigarette halfway through.
He slept three hours and dreamed of empty shoes.
The next morning he arrived on set at nine thirty.
Not because of the evaluation, of course not. He arrived because he always arrived earlier than necessary when he was shooting, even if that day he wasn’t scheduled to film until the afternoon. He came wearing sunglasses, a white shirt open at the collar, dark trousers, and an irritation dressed so well it almost looked like style.
The sky was overcast, and that annoyed him. After falling under a sky that perfect, any cloud looked like a continuity error.
Usopp was waiting near the main entrance to the lot.
Sanji saw him before Usopp raised a hand. He was standing beside a production table, checking something on his tablet, with an untouched cup of coffee next to it. He had dark circles under his eyes—not dramatic ones, but they were there. Sanji felt a brief stab of guilt and crushed it efficiently.
“Don’t tell me you’re a chaperone now too,” he said as he approached.
Usopp put the tablet away.
“Good morning to you too.”
“Good mornings have to be earned.”
“Then we’re doing terribly today.”
Sanji stopped beside him.
For a moment, it almost felt like they could go back to being themselves. Usopp exhausted, Sanji unbearable, a long day ahead. But the illusion didn’t last. Usopp glanced toward one of the side buildings, away from the main noise of the set.
“The office is set up in there.”
“What a generous word for a borrowed room.”
“It’s private.”
“How luxurious.”
“Sanji.”
“Don’t start.”
Usopp tightened his jaw.
“I’m just walking you over.”
“I know how to walk. And I know this set by heart.”
“I know.”
“Then I don’t understand the guided tour.”
“Because if I don’t walk you over, you’ll vanish until eleven.”
Sanji put a hand over his chest.
“I’m offended you have so little faith in my professionalism.”
“Your professionalism isn’t in doubt. Your willingness to cooperate is.”
Sanji looked at him sideways.
“I’m sure you practiced that line last night.”
“A little.”
“It shows.”
Usopp laughed briefly, but it faded too fast.
They walked together toward the side building. It wasn’t far, but the walk felt ridiculously long. They passed catering, where someone was preparing trays of coffee and cut fruit. They passed a group of extras dressed as office workers, smoking with their credentials still clipped on. They passed the structure of the building Sanji had jumped from the day before. From the ground, it didn’t look as tall. Or maybe everything looked shorter after you had already fallen from it.
He didn’t look too long.
Usopp did, and Sanji pretended not to notice.
The room was at the end of a makeshift corridor created with white panels. It didn’t look like an office. It looked like a temporary workspace, which was worse. At least a real office would have had the decency to feel foreign. This, instead, belonged to the same universe of folding chairs, bottled water, and cables hidden under carpets as the rest of the shoot. As if even his supposed mental health had to fit itself into the production budget.
There was a sheet of paper taped to the door.
Private evaluation. Do not disturb.
Sanji laughed through his nose.
“Subtle.”
Usopp checked the time.
“It’s three minutes to ten.”
“Look how punctual I am.”
“Go in.”
Sanji took off his sunglasses and looked at the door.
There was nothing special about it. Pale wood, metal handle. Just a door. And yet suddenly it felt deeply offensive. Behind it was a stranger hired to look at him with permission. To listen to his answers and decide whether they were acceptable. To turn him into a report. To write neat, professional words about whatever he thought he saw under Sanji’s skin.
Sanji put the sunglasses back on.
“I’m going to smoke.”
Usopp closed his eyes.
“Sanji.”
“I have three minutes.”
“It’s not a good idea to be late on the first day.”
“I have three minutes, Usopp. The universal god of punctuality has granted them to me. Don’t blaspheme.”
“Don’t smoke now.”
“How authoritarian you’ve become since deciding to betray me.”
The line stayed between them.
Usopp didn’t answer.
Sanji would have preferred it if he had. A comeback would have been easier. A fight would have been cleaner. But Usopp only looked at him with a tired sadness Sanji didn’t want to deserve.
So he turned and stepped back out into an open area between the building and an unfinished set wall.
He lit the first cigarette exactly at ten o’clock.
Slowly, with deliberate bad manners. Pulled the pack out, tapped the filter against the top, set it between his lips, and lit the lighter while shielding the flame with one hand. The first hit of nicotine entered his body like a simple answer to a complicated question.
Good. That was something he understood.
He smoked leaning against the wall, watching the smoke unravel in the grey air. Usopp stayed a few yards away inside the corridor, visible through the open door. He didn’t press him or say his name again. He simply waited with his arms crossed and a patience he had probably learned from Nami through fear.
Sanji took six minutes to finish the first cigarette.
He crushed it carefully underfoot and lit another.
That was when Usopp came outside.
“Seriously?”
Sanji inhaled.
“I’m managing my stress autonomously.”
“You’re provoking.”
“That too.”
“It’s been seven minutes.”
“Good thing the evaluation isn’t about math.”
“Sanji.”
“What?” he snapped, louder than necessary. “What do you want me to do? Run in there? Sit down like a good little boy and tell Mr. Roronoa that sometimes I feel sad, but it’s fine because I have emotional tools and a support system? Would that make you all feel better? A new performance, only with worse lighting?”
Usopp went still.
Sanji regretted the last sentence as soon as he said it, but didn’t show it. He just kept smoking in silence.
The second cigarette tasted worse. It always did when he smoked out of pride instead of desire. But it was already lit, and Sanji never abandoned a statement of intent halfway through. He finished it slowly, looking everywhere except at Usopp.
By the time he dropped it and crushed it under his heel, thirteen minutes had passed since the session was supposed to begin.
Not fifteen, because fifteen would have been too obvious. Ten might have looked like losing control. Thirteen had a certain spiteful precision to it. He liked that. It was stupid, but he liked it.
Usopp opened the door without saying anything.
Sanji walked past him.
“Don’t make that face, I’m going in.”
“I’m not making any face.”
“You’re terrible at lying for someone who lies so much and works with me.”
“And you’re terrible at pretending not to care for someone who gets paid to pretend.”
Sanji stopped with one hand on the handle. That one had actually hurt.
Not much. Just enough.
He looked at Usopp over his shoulder.
“Careful. Robin’s habit of thinking she’s profound is rubbing off on you.”
Sanji opened the door.
The first thing he saw was green hair.
It was absurd that this was the first thing, but it was. Green, short, and badly styled in a way that didn’t look careless so much as openly defiant toward any human attempt at order. Then he saw the shoulders, broad beneath a black T-shirt far too simple for a man supposedly hired to evaluate him on behalf of a multimillion-dollar production. He saw the arms, strong in a shamelessly obvious way, resting on the armrests of a chair that looked too small for him. The neck. The jaw. A thin old scar near one eye cutting across a sharp, serious face.
Roronoa Zoro did not look like a psychologist.
He looked like someone hired to physically prevent problems from escaping a room.
And, against all odds, Sanji felt something inside him spark with amusement.
Ah. Interesting.
The original plan had been simple: walk in, sit down, say absolutely nothing for an hour. Or forty-seven minutes, at this point. Turn the evaluation into an administrative funeral. Give the psychologist silence, indifference, and a wall so polite he’d have nothing useful to write except resistant to cooperation, which wasn’t exactly a diagnosis.
But Roronoa Zoro was attractive.
Not attractive in a polished, comfortable, easy-to-use way. Not attractive like actors who knew they were beautiful and moved across a set like the light owed them money. Attractive in a more irritating, solid, physical way. Like a locked door. Or a fight that hadn’t started yet.
Sanji smiled inwardly.
Good. He could work with that.
If the man was as serious as he looked, even better. Serious men could be irritated. Attractive men could be flattered. Men who thought themselves above charm could be shown, with enough care, that no one really was.
Sanji closed the door behind him.
The room was small, but not unpleasant. They had tried to make it neutral: two armchairs, a low table, a water jug, tissues Sanji immediately decided to hate, a closed notebook on Zoro’s lap, and a window with the blind half drawn. No diplomas on the wall. No motivational quotes. No dying plants trying to radiate peace.
That almost counted in the man’s favor.
Zoro did not stand, and he did not smile.
He looked at the wall clock, then at Sanji.
His eyes were dark and as direct as they were irritating.
“You’ve wasted almost fifteen minutes of the session,” he said.
Sanji let his smile rise slowly.
Not the fake one from the dressing room. Not the bright one for interviews. A smaller one. Sharper. More dangerous.
He took off his sunglasses calmly and hooked them into the open neck of his shirt.
“Good morning to you too, doctor.”
Zoro looked at him without changing expression.
“Roronoa is fine.”
“What a shame. Doctor sounded more fun.”
“Sit down.”
Sanji moved toward the empty armchair without taking his eyes off him. He sat down slowly, crossing one leg over the other, comfortable, elegant, as if the room belonged to him by simple aesthetic superiority.
“And what if I’d rather stay standing?”
“You’ve already spent thirteen minutes deciding to come in. I’m not wasting another two arguing about a chair.”
Sanji blinked.
Then his smile widened, just a little.
Ah, he thought.
What an insufferable man.
And for the first time since Robin had said the word evaluation, Sanji decided that maybe this sentence could at least be entertaining.