This is my second story! Anyway, it may begin kind of boring, but it'll pick up in a chapter or two; I've got big plans for this story. Thank you to everyone who reads my stories. Hope you enjoy.

Notice Me!

Inspired By: Eichiro Oda's "One Piece"

Chapter 1: It Dawned on Me

The sun beat down relentlessly on the deck of the Thousand Sunny, warming the crew and leaving them overheated and lazy. Not even a full two days had passed after springing up from the sea after the StrawHat crew's adventure on Fishman Island. At first everyone had been ecstatic to be traveling the second half on the Grandline, but after a few hours under the blaring sun, the crew calmed to the point of their eccentric Captain found fishing to be the most exciting thing to do. It was not long until Luffy was joined by Usopp the sharpshooter and Chopper the ship's doctor. The shipwright Franky was below deck tinkering with his toys while Sanji did his job and cooked lunch for the ship's residents. The first mate was busy himself; lifting weights in the gym to prepare him for his next opponent.

In the shade of the tangerine trees, the ladies of the crew rested with the talented musician who was humming lazily. Robin the archeologist leaned back in her chair as she studied her history book; slowly turning pages and occasionally pausing to smile at the three fishing and whacking each other with their poles. Meanwhile, Brook leaned against a tree behind her as he hummed his tunes and made the occasional skeleton joke. Overall, the crew was relatively carefree. There was one though who was not: the navigator. Nami lounged in a chair beside Robin's and was reading a fiction novel; or at least that's what she appeared to be doing. In truth her attention was, in fact, elsewhere. Normally she worried about the ship staying on course and the state of the weather, but at that time she had another concern she was pondering.

Though her book was raised so it rested before her face, her eyes were focused beyond the page and on a certain someone who was causing her a great amount of grievance. She watched his back through the open trapdoor to the lookout tower, which also happened to be the gym, as he lifted the massive metal weights. The angle was bad, but Zoro was still visible to the young woman.

If someone told her two and a half years before that she would fall in love with the swordsman, Nami would have denied it. For as long as she could remember, Nami had always been terrible at understanding her own feelings and even worse at portraying them. For the longest time she refused to even admit she had emotions. If it had not been for the book she had confiscated from the old men at Weatheria after finding them reading under a table with blood leaking from their noses, she never would have figured it out in the first place.

The book, Lovers in the Wind, was something she picked up between her studies to pass the time. The author spun a vast web of emotion and passion so intense that Nami was left confused. She couldn't understand why the heroine would go through so much trouble to be with the hero when she had so many others who cared for her. She must have read it five times before she began to carefully study the descriptions of how the hero made the heroine feel in an effort to figure out what made this one man so much more important than the others she knew. It was through the pages of the book that Nami learned what love was; not love of one's family or love of one's friends, but passionate, heart-stopping true love. It was during her seventh time reading through the book that she realized that she felt the same emotions that the heroine felt for her lover for Zoro. Nami's first reaction was to laugh at the idea; there was no way she could love him like that. Sure she had always found him attractive, but she had easily been able to ignore that fact. Not to mention how attraction hardly made it that kind of love. The more she thought about it though, the more she felt that it was true.

She thought back to the time they first met and how the first thing he did was save her. She remembered how she felt when he came to Arlong Park alone and how every time he was hurt she feared for his life, even though she knew he was strong and would survive. Nami then remembered how she would purposely increase his debt and how she would feel jealous every time he didn't notice her. When she recalled how her heart ached when Kuma made him disappear two years prior though, Nami found her answer. She was in love with Roronoa Zoro. The problem she was now faced with was what she should do about it?

She loved everyone on the crew to some extent, but Zoro had always been special. He had always been the one she trusted to take responsibility in times of trouble, to step up when Luffy wasn't around. Even more than that though, he was the one she respected the most. Yet for some reason Nami had difficulty showing how she truly felt; she always was rough on him and all her friends, often bossing them around, yelling at them, and smacking them when they acted stupid. Very rarely did she ever give anyone a kind word with complete honesty. How could she, a girl who couldn't even express herself, possibly approach him with a confession of love? He probably didn't even like her that much; he never went out of his way to speak with her like he did with the others on the crew.

Glancing at the page of her book Nami realized that that wasn't true; Zoro was a loner and didn't really socialize with anyone that much. Though it did calm her worry about him disliking her, the thought still didn't help much. Treating her like everyone else only meant she wasn't special to him in any way other than as a fellow StrawHat pirate. Her eyes drifted back up to focus on his sweaty back as he continued his training.

"NAMI-SWANNNN! ROBIN-CHANNNNN! I have your lunch ready!" Sanji's lovey-dovey voice suddenly scattered Nami's thoughts. She quickly looked away from Zoro's muscular back and let her eyes snap back to the pages of the book. "The stuff for you apes is ready too." He added disappearing back inside the ship.

"YAY! FOOD!" yelled Luffy, dropping his fishing pole and running to the kitchen. After scrambling to catch Luffy's pole, Usopp left the fishing gear on deck and hurried after his captain and Chopper. Brook soon followed and Nami knew Franky wouldn't be long either.

Placing her bookmark back between the same two pages it had been between when she had first sat down to read, the twenty-year old turned her dark red-brown gaze to Robin as the older woman stood and waited for Nami to stand as well. From the corner of her eye, the navigator noticed Zoro (who was now fully dressed) swing down from the gym and head toward the dining area.

"I'm coming." Nami said closing her book and getting to her feet. After pausing briefly, she left Lovers in the Wind on her seat and followed her sister figure. If there was anything that she learned from the book, it was that nothing hurts worse than a broken heart. Though she doubted Zoro would ever love her back, she figured she would be fine as long as he was around. However, him just passing her by without sparing a glance in her direction made her heart throb with pain.

As Nami entered the kitchen and saw him fighting Luffy away from his plate, she decided that she had to get his attention somehow otherwise she would always have a hole in her heart.