Sanji-Zeff Shared Starvation Bond
Status: paid-off · The Sanji-Zeff bond is etiologically grounded as a shared-starvation-survivor bond, not a standard mentor-apprentice arrangement. Both nearly died on the same rock-island; both share the same dream (the All Blue); the mercy is irreducible because no act of restaurant labor can repay self-amputation-and-self-cannibalism.
The seed (recurrence)
Forward-payoff
Every later Sanji-Zeff interaction (the crap-geezer / eggplant-head verbal-affection register, the Sanji-Zeff departure scene in Ch. 68, Sanji’s reaction at Marineford to news of Zeff, etc.) reads through the rock-island lens. The bond is the structural ancestor of all later Sanji-debt-relationships (Lola/Pudding/Vinsmokes).
Cross-link Straw Hat Recruitment Pattern — Sanji is the first Straw Hat whose recruitment-resistance is survival-debt-class, not promise-to-the-dead or village-debt or village-bond.