▸ Column · Dragon Ball Earth — West City, modern-day
VEGETA replies.
The letter
I've been running emergency calls out of West City for eleven years. Last month we pulled a toddler out of a backyard pond — same age as my daughter Rin, same dinosaur pajamas. And now every time I put her to bed I see the other kid's face. I've been standing in Rin's doorway at 2 in the morning just counting her breaths. My wife Eriko says I've gone somewhere she can't reach me, which (I don't know, maybe she's right). Last week I bit my partner Tarou's head off over nothing because I hadn't really slept in four days. I keep telling everyone I'm fine because that's just the job. But the bad calls don't stay at the station anymore. They follow me home. How do you stop carrying a stranger's worst day right into your own kid's bedroom?
— Running Rescue in West City
Vegeta replies
Eleven years of calls and you tell everyone you're fine. That sentence is not toughness. I know exactly what it is: armor that became a coffin. I wore one longer than I care to admit.
The creature who destroyed my people trained me to feel nothing. He called it discipline. I told myself I was fine for years. It was not strength — it was obedience to someone who wanted me empty.
Now hear this. You stand in your daughter's doorway at 2 a.m. counting her breaths. That is the thing you would suffer for. Not a symptom — your real strength, announcing itself the only way it knows how. The horror you carry is the cost of caring that deeply about Rin, and I will not tell you to stop paying it.
What I will say is this: stop lying to Eriko. She already knows. She is standing on the other side of a wall you built, and that wall is the actual thing in your way — not the calls, not the pajamas. Tarou carries the same weight. Let him carry some of yours. You are not failing by needing someone to stand with you. Broken things do not knit by willing them unbroken.
Say one clumsy true thing to your wife. Tonight. The humiliation is proof it's real.
— Vegeta
Frieza weighs in
Oh, how precious. My former Saiyan toy — the boy I personally trained to feel nothing, quite successfully for years — now tutors you in weeping. How delightful his arc has become.
But let me offer you something more useful than sentiment. The problem isn't what you carry home. It's that you decided to carry it at all. A stranger's child is not yours. Her pajamas were never your daughter's. The grief that bleeds you dry is a tax the composed refuse to pay.
Do try to be more professional about it. The ones who last in your line of work feel less, not more.
— Frieza
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