YooHoo! (A One Piece Fan-Fiction)

2. Thief

YooHoo!

-  An arbitrary adventure of the nautcial variety   -

2. Thief

"The robb'd that smiles, steals something from the thief; He robs himself that spends a bootless grief."

-William Shakespeare, Othello

The second time I snuck back into the library and to the mysterious book, I brought a holdall with me. I usually did this once every fortnight when I had to collect a horde of books to analyse - thus, Nut wouldn't question me if I happened to do something 'suspect'. Since my last encounter, I'd pinned the bounty poster to the noticeboard in my dorm room with Bluetack©- trying not to injure the frail paper further. When I woke up, the boy on the poster would smile at me. When I walked past the noticeboard or tried to pin anything up on it; he was smiling. Heck, I didn't even have the confidence to get dressed in my own room anymore; choosing to layer garments onto my body in the tiny en-suit bathroom, which connected to the main body of the room and the dinky kitchenette, because of that grin. It burned into my back just below where my bra hooked together, and when I shifted uncomfortably on my feet or shuffled out of 'its' view, the sensation of being watched wouldn't leave. It drove me mad, as if this cheeky smiling persona was taunting me to go back and investigate further. So after much debating and scheming, I caved and grabbed my holdall, gnawing on my lower lip guiltily as Nut lifted a hand in greeting when I walked into the library, but didn't look up from the volume he was checking out of the library for a nervous looking student. Nut does have that effect on people...  

Wandering down the long isle between rows upon rows of bookshelves, I came to my junction and quickly skimmed through the books I'd need that I'd made a list of in my head this morning just before I'd left- intending for it to be a distraction to the actual task at hand, but then my punctual side took control and before I knew it I had a schedule to keep track of. With each step and scan of the shelves, I plucked out the texts I'd need and ticked them off of the hypothetical list I'd made; one particularly fascinating text on Marine terminology, another non-fiction book covering water currents and different climates, a small pocketbook paperback of oceanic poetry, a piece of swashbuckling prose... the next book I can to however, was directly next to the book.

Feeling quite the larceny, and knowing that from where he was siting about fifty metres away, Nut could probably hear which book I was selecting- and was using his ultrasonic bat-hearing to measure subtle differences of how the air shifted around it, how heavy it was due to the exclamatory grunts of exertion I would release so that he could classify the very book I'd chosen, I slowly pulled the two books out together, softly edging them closer to the lip of the shelf and then carting them away to where I'd left the stack of the other books and my bag; the latter of which I'd left unzipped and ready. I placed the mysterious book in first, lightly assigning it down in the bottom of the bag and then whipped off my hooded jacket I'd put on this morning, so that it covered and concealed the book from Nut's prying eyes. Then after psyching myself up a little for a good five minutes, and scratting at my left arm nervously while I tried to stop the unruly shifting in my stomach- tidal waves of nausea lapping at my conscious when I thought about the many ways in which Nut, along with the rest of the university faculty, could torture me if I got caught in the act, I finally collected my pile of books and tried to casually meander to the front desk, trying to act as nonchalant as possible..  

Nut stops mid stamp and whips his silver comb-ove-erd head up to squint at me above his spectacles. For what the pint sized man lacked in height, he surely made up for and more with his acidic tongue and piercing 'I-am-and-always-will-be-watching-you' eyes. When he casually pats the lumpy brown argyle sweater he's wearing- minus sleeves and revealing a yellowing shirt with worn down elbow patches, I can feel perspiration gather at my temples and monstrous tsunami scaled waves of nervous shivers zip down my back.  

"Oh, it's you" the man says stiffly as I drop the stack of tomes on the counter. Rapidly he takes each one and stamps each one and stamps a return date onto the card inside the front jacket cover, and I scramble to shove them all in the holdall. When he's done I murmur my thanks and slowly step away. 

"Oi!" My heart stops and my stomach drops into the burning torments of the Earth's magma core, the sound of dangerous violins, ominous tolling bells, and a child shrieking whips past me diabolically on a torrential gust of bone-chilling wind as if the noose I'd so dangerously placed decoratively round my neck when I even considered this idea this morning, had been tightened- as if the guillotine had just dropped and the firing squads gun was detonated at point blank range. I'm doomed... 

Hesitantly, I turn to face the head librarian, spine snapping as each vertebrae crackled from the proposed tension in the air, "What's up with your arm?" 

At his simple question I inspect myself. I knew I'd been having some sort of reaction during the past few days since my last visit to the library- a large red splotch coated my left forearm not long after it had come into contact with the foreign substance that forsaken book had chucked at me when I opened it that fateful day. But seeing as the itching had subsided and my arm had been hoodie coated, I'd paid no heed to it, merely thinking it would sort itself out and if not I'd pop into the doctors later on in the week if it got any worse so they could poke and prod at my skin and if it didn't turn out to be some weird new skin cancer or just plain old Sclerosis, they'd refer me to a specialist where I'd spend my time eating and drinking complimentary biscuits and watery tea, reading crappy lifestyle and gardening magazines whilst they debated what to do with the new lab rat squatting in their waiting room unsuspectingly.  

The patch on my arm had original been about the size of a curled fist, after my negligence it had nearly doubled in size, spreading in an orbicular fashion on the top of my lower arm. It looked like an extremely bad rash- deep rouge coloration and a squiggly quality to its undefined edges, so a few pain killers and some moisturiser later and I'd be right as rain.  

A cough wakes me from my reverie and I stutter to answer Nut, "Oh-U-u-uh, bad r-r-reaction!"  

Then I scuttled out of there as fast as I could, just faintly hearing him mutter a 'kids these days' and 'damn tattoos'. I almost had the gall to snap back around and tell him to watch what he was saying because although some tattoos are beautiful, I wasn't one for becoming 'living art', but the fact that I had just something mildly dangerous and irrevocably out of my comfort zone satisfied me enough and I hurriedly scuttled to the lecture hall with five minutes until the seminar began, contently patting the side of my holdall and smiling demurely at the secret it held.