▸ Column · Dragon Ball — a clan-bound warrior culture of zeni, battle-plate, and hovercars, with the debt owed between kin
VEGETA replies.
The letter
Fourteen cycles back I fronted my wife's brother — call him Derek — 3,400 zeni so he could secure quarters after his bonding dissolved. He clasped my hand, swore he'd square it by the solstice. The solstice passed in silence. Since then he's strolled into every clan meal in fresh battle-plate, traded up his hovercar, and just transmitted holos from a long leave on some resort moon. When I raised the loan at the spring gathering he muttered he was "still sorting his finances," and my wife shot me a glare that could melt durasteel. I kept the original messages — he confirmed the sum and the repayment date in writing. I don't know whether producing them starts a blood feud that outlasts whatever's left of the 3,400. Is there any way to get my zeni back that doesn't leave me the villain at every clan table for the next decade?
Vegeta replies
Hmph. You wrote me an entire dispatch and not one line of it was actually about the zeni. Read it back. You're not afraid of losing 3,400 — you're afraid of losing your reputation as the agreeable one who never makes the table uncomfortable. That image is armor you've worn so long you've mistaken it for your spine. I know that armor. Worn too thick it stops being protection and becomes a coffin you smile from.
Here is the truth your softer relatives won't give you: Derek told you exactly who he is the moment he broke a clasped hand and then paraded new plate past you. You already have your answer. You're just sniveling about whether to say it out loud.
So say it. Not as war — as fact. Show him the messages. State the sum, the date he swore, the silence that followed. No shouting, no campaign. Just the truth set on the table where he can't pretend it isn't there.
And that glare from your wife? That's the thing you'd suffer for — so don't insult it by letting it bully you into abandoning your own honor. Tell her, clumsily, before him: I will not pretend this didn't happen. The humiliation of saying it is the proof it's real.
— Vegeta
Frieza weighs in
Oh, Vegeta. Still so touchingly devoted to the sanctity of a handshake. How is the leash treating you these days?
You poor industrious creature — your 3,400 is gone. Mourn it as tuition. You extended what you imagined was generosity and expected gratitude to flow back down to you. It never flows down, dear. Always up. Derek didn't betray you; he simply sorted you, accurately, as someone who gives and then frets about appearances.
And do notice — it isn't Derek who's silenced you. It's the woman whose glance melts durasteel. THAT is who holds your leash. I'd never counsel a squalid little feud; it's beneath us both. Simply become someone no one finds it safe to take from. The zeni was never the lesson.
— Frieza
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