Trunks POV
You’re the sun, you’ve never seen the night,
But you hear its song from the morning birds.
Well, I’m not the moon, I’m not even a star,
But awake at night I’ll be singing to the birds…
-Your Best American Girl (Mitski)
***
With those monsters, those heartless androids finally eliminated, there was now some peace in that desolate and destroyed land I called home… or rather, a sepulchral silence.
The object of my greatest admiration and praise, my mentor Gohan, used to tell me stories by the fire about a time when things weren’t like this. Not even the flames we warmed our worn-out hands by could replicate the warmth of the world he described… a world that ceased to exist for no reason, due to the whim of machines that felt nothing but boredom.
He used to say, with his always calm voice, which is forever etched in my mind, that you could hear the birds singing, the murmur of people passing by, the vehicles on roads that no longer existed… He said we had to bring back all those sounds, all that life.
Among all those sounds, the only one I ever knew was his voice, which was like the sun around which my solar system revolved. Whenever I felt fear, I was crushed by the gravity until I reached Gohan. The fire didn’t replicate the warmth of the world my senses never knew, but perhaps, his smile did.
Then… his heart stopped beating. My eyes produced a transparent liquid when they were stimulated by my planet losing its orbit and ending up in the range of a supernova’s explosion, turning it to dust. I floated in the blackness of space, directionless, without light.
But the time came when my mother finished the time machine. I grew stronger as I traveled to the past, and in my hands appeared the possibility of changing my present.
I turned the androids into dust. I completed the mission. But it’s not true, I didn’t, not yet.
I couldn’t waste any more time.
It took my mother and me about fifty-one days to build a spaceship to travel to New Namek. My heart raced twice as fast as normal while I hugged my mother goodbye.
I boarded the spaceship alone, but if everything went as expected, when I returned, the Z fighters and the victims of the androids would be back, revived by the Namekian Dragon Balls.
The trip took about two weeks, five days, and twenty-seven minutes. I spent much of that time keeping my brain busy with logistics. Where would all the revived people go, what would they eat, how would they handle having been dead? According to the plan, after reviving Piccolo, we would use Earth’s Dragon Balls to take care of the basic needs of the ‘new Earthlings.’
The rest of the time, though I wanted to avoid it, I was plagued by thoughts of Gohan. Would he be proud of me? What would he think of the warrior I’ve become? Would his smile and eyes still be as nice to see as always? Would his hair still look so illogically soft?
The idea of Gohan being back with me gave me goosebumps.
***
Finally, the day came when I landed on New Namek. The new Namekian planet, despite being another, looked quite similar to how my mother had described the original place. A green and bright sky, lots of green on the ground as well, tall trees with round tops, mountains and hills, shimmering water… When I got off, I took a moment to appreciate the scenery, closed my eyes, and took a breath in the breeze. I felt the pollen of some nearby flowers enter my nose, and naturally, I sneezed. Then, I opened my eyes, feeling… different. As if I was aware of every part of my body all at once.
But I had to hurry; it was time to find the Grand Elder Namekian.
Finding his tower wasn’t difficult at all. Some Namekians guarding the place gave me a hostile look, which I couldn’t blame them for; they’d had horrible experiences with foreigners like me in the past. I vowed and said I came in peace to request permission to use the Dragon Balls. One of the guards murmured something about not detecting any evil energy, and they let me enter the chamber where the Grand Elder resided. While I walked inside, the one holding the door glanced at me with something in between pity and curiosity.
“Doku no shikaza? Nazu nippon juu koru ka,” he told the other.
“Ura kasha zeta. Ika gila budda oshi, heh…”
What were they babbling about?… Anyway, I wobbled as I approached the throne where the Grand Elder sat, still feeling strange.
“Hmm… greetings, I see that you are… an Earthling?” he asked me.
“Greetings, yes, sir, though I’m half Saiyan.”
“Ah, that’s why you look so affected. Namek’s flora usually has a negative effect on those from Earth.”
“Negative effects?” I asked.
“That’s right.” As the elder said this simple answer, a Namekian entered through one of the arches at the back, carrying a small, delicate white pot with the most beautiful flowers I had ever seen.
I had to take a moment to appreciate them, their triangular, transparent, and shiny petals. That gentle Namekian placed the crystal pot in my hands, and suddenly, all the anxiety I didn’t even know I had bottled up left my throat in a breath. I felt uneasy then, not wanting to ask if it was some sort of drug?
Then, the Namekian smiled at me, as if reading my mind, and explained.
“It’s not. It’s just that, as our Grand Elder said, the flowers have a strong effect on the emotional ki of Earthlings. But this flower, the Raunuka, usually stabilizes it when kept nearby.”
I stayed silent. Emotional ki? What were they talking about?
“Uh… Thank you. Grand Elder, I have come here to request the use of this planet’s Dragon Balls to rebuild mine, which was destroyed when I was just a child,” I explained, “I don’t intend to steal them like those who came before me; it’s just that, with no Dragon Balls left on my planet, I have no other option but to come here.”
After I said the words I had practiced so much, the elder attentively nodded and decided to lend me the Namekian Dragon Balls so I could rebuild Earth.
The sky darkened as if an eclipse had suddenly occurred, and with the help of the Namekian who had gifted me those flowers, the dragon was summoned. Two wishes were made: to revive everyone killed by the androids and to return them all to Earth…
On the trip back to Earth, I felt even more overwhelmed by nervousness than before. However, having brought that beautiful Namekian flower with me, the Raunuka, just looking at it calmed me down.
As I carefully touched the petals with my fingers, and counted them, one, two, three… all kinds of good memories came to mind. That moment of relief after defeating the androids… That moment when my mother and I built the spaceship I was on, something we had no chance to do before… Happy moments were, unfortunately, scarce in my existence, but I knew that upon returning to a world teeming with life, they would multiply. Six, seven, eight…
I was soon able to establish contact with my planet via the communicator on the spaceship’s bridge. I smiled as I saw my mother on the other side of the screen, her eyes brighter than ever with joy.
“Hi! You did it, Trunks! Everyone is here, finally! I’m so proud of you.”
“Really, Mom? Everyone… Everyone is there?”
“Yes, honey. The torment is finally over…”
My mother then moved her communicator to the other side of the room she was in (the living room of the house), and immediately, my heart stopped.
My father, Vegeta… Piccolo… Tien, Chaoz… Yamcha… Krillin, Master Roshi… and my master, Gohan, were there.
“I knew you’d do it,” Gohan said, his smile missing its usual sadness.
He looked just like how I remembered him. Perhaps even brighter than before. I listened to each of his words intently, as if his voice were water in the middle of a desert.
I couldn’t stop my eyes from getting wet, and as I brought my hand to my smiling lips, my chest shook with sobs of relief. All the fear, uncertainty and helplessness I felt every second of my life ran down my face like tears, falling to the white tiles of the floor.
“I always wanted to see you all, and the world, again. And I missed you every day, Gohan… I’m so happy…”
My mother looked at me with a smile, her eyes were red too.
“We are too. Finally, everything is okay… Thanks to you.”
“When you get back, Trunks, we’ll throw a big party,” Gohan said, “We’ve already restored Earth’s Dragon Balls and used them to rebuild the planet… So we’ll be able to eat everything a Saiyan needs, right, Mr. Vegeta?”
My father huffed.
“I haven’t eaten in decades; my appetite is twice as big as that of a Saiyan right now.”
Through my crying, which was already fading, I let out a shaky laugh.
“Oh, Vegeta, you better leave enough food for everyone, or I’ll send you back to the other world,” my mother said.
My father’s eyes widened and he flinched in alarm. As if trying to hide his previous reaction, he crossed his arms.
“Hmph, okay, but only because you asked me to.”
***
During the two weeks of the trip back to my home, I spent my time training my movements, and also my mental strength.
As I sat with my knees touching the ground, my hands resting on them and my back straight, I opened my eyes and looked out the large window of the spaceship, through which I could see the blackness of space. The stars in the distance shone brightly, and I could feel myself connecting with the universe.
Being connected to my mind and emotions, I remembered what the Namekians had told me about ’emotional ki.’ I wondered, once again, what they were referring to with that.
Then suddenly I coughed. I brought my hand to my mouth and my shoulders shook; the coughing didn’t stop for several seconds and it felt like the back of my throat was being scraped.
I inhaled sharply, and afterwards I was able to breathe again.
As I lowered my hand, I felt something brush against my palm. I looked down… and there I was holding a small petal. Its glitter-like shine had spread all over my hand, it was identical to my Raunuka flower’s, but at what point had I torn off a petal?
In confusion, I looked at the potted flower, which was sitting near the control panel buttons on the coaster—its petals appeared to be intact.
The confusion faded as I looked at it; it still had that great effect on my emotions. I quickly returned to my meditation position; it must have dropped a petal while I was watering it, and I only noticed it then.
***
Finally, I returned to Earth after what felt like an eternity. I landed at Capsule Corp, and was pleasantly surprised to see that it had been rebuilt.
The door to the spaceship, which was also the landing ramp, opened, and I walked down it.
Everyone was waiting for me at the entrance of the corporation. My mother, who was holding a bottle of red wine, opened it with excitement.
“Welcome back, Trunks!” she exclaimed loudly as the others clapped and cheered.
But then, a wave of bubbling foam erupted from the tip of the bottle. As if it was an attack, the warriors quickly moved out of the way to avoid being hit by the foam, which began to lose strength and instead began to fall on my mother’s clothes. I ran to help her and grabbed the bottle, which only resulted in my clothes becoming covered in dark red as well.
Eventually, the foam ran out, and I stood still for a few seconds, looking at my stained clothes. Silence hung in the air, with everyone staring at me with wide eyes.
Yamcha was the first to let out a laugh, and then everyone present joined in, with joy spreading throughout the place like the foam.
My mother, meanwhile, was examining her white dress, which now had a red stain that was impossible to hide. She was frowning so hard that a vein on her forehead could have popped, but she couldn’t help but smile too, sharing a laugh with everyone after so much suffering.
“Where did you get this wine, Yamcha?” she said as she turned to enter Capsule Corp, sliding the door open.
***
We walked into the hall, decorated with balloons, fairy lights, and colorful flag decorations. There was a big letter sign that read, ‘Welcome back, Earth!’
I was shocked to see the room was filled with people I didn’t know. Filled with people who hadn’t been alive before.
“Mom, how many people did you invite? Where did all these people come from?”
My mother had already changed from her white dress to a blue suit, and with a drink in her hand, she replied: “I invited the whole city, son, this should be celebrated by everyone. Here, change your shirt for this one, you can’t be at the party with such a stain.”
“Oh… Okay.”
After changing, I leaned against a wall and watched the party for a while. I could hear the murmur of people talking. Laughing. Some were dancing to the music in the background. The music. I was listening to music at that moment.
My throat tightened. Humanity was truly back…
Then, a voice brought me out of my thoughts. I looked up to see who was calling me, it was Gohan.
“What are you doing? Aren’t you going to dance?”
“I don’t know… no, I’ve never danced before.”
Gohan gave me a big grin.
“It’s not that different from training,” Gohan extended his hand towards me, “Shall we?”
“…Sure,” I replied with a surprised smile, taking his hand.
As we walked toward the dance floor, I stared at our intertwined hands. His had always been larger, but now, there wasn’t much of a difference… as I thought about it, I realized how much I had wanted to hold his hand all along.
As soon as I got used to that warmth, we reached the dance floor and he let go of my hand to get into position to dance.
“Ready? Just follow my lead,” he said lightheartedly.
“All right, master,” I replied in the same tone.
We jumped and laughed, our feet pounding the floor in time to the music. For a few moments, the rest of the world disappeared, and it was just me and Gohan… but not in a bleak way like before. It was just me and Gohan, and the world was bright and safe, and in that moment, I felt alive as I felt my heart pounding in my chest.
I found myself engrossed in watching Gohan’s smile as he danced with me, so engrossed that I tripped over my own foot, and nearly fell to the floor… before he caught me by the shoulders.
For a moment he held me, said something about how I danced quite well for my first time, but all I focused on was how close we were at that moment.
Blood rushed to my face, making it turn red, and I took a step back. What was it that I was feeling?
Gohan, too, stood still for a moment, looking away and scratching his nose.
“It’s true that it’s not that different from training,” I said to break the silence, “It’s just a lot more embarrassing.”
Gohan laughed.
“Don’t worry, no one’s an expert in dancing here. I’m so happy to be able to share this with you.”
“Me too.”
***
A while later, the music ended, and Gohan and I sat down at a table after ordering some food from the buffet: generous portions of rice, fish tacos, chicken and vegetable skewers, among many other things. Plates piled up on the table as we ordered more things; the menu was free for all for today.
After three rounds, we sighed with happiness, no longer hungry.
“Man, how long has it been since I ate so much delicious food?” Gohan said.
“Same… I won’t have to eat dog food anymore,” I replied while drinking some water.
“…I didn’t know things had gotten that bad,” he said with some concern, then leaned toward me with his elbow on the table. “Hey, Trunks. Before you got here, we were touring Capsule Corp.”
“And what did you see?”
“I don’t know if you know this yet, but you now have a personal movie theater in your house,” he said excitedly, “We’ve never been able to watch movies. I only told you about the ones I could watch before the Androids when we had some quiet time, remember?”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Having been at the party, I hadn’t had time to see the renovation of the building.
“Yes, you were pretty good at explaining the plotlines to me.”
“And now we can watch real movies. You have to invite me.”
“Of course! Do you want to come tomorrow to see one of the movies you told me about?”
“That would be great.”
“Perfect, you deserve a movie night.”
“ You deserve it, Mr. savior of Earth,” he corrected me, pointing to the sign I had seen when I entered the room hours ago.
He was proud of me. It was everything I could’ve ever wanted. I couldn’t help but blush, and cough, once more. I guessed the latter was because of all the pressure of these last days?
“You call me a savior… but I could’ve never gotten this far without you. Being able to bring everyone back one day… and being able to see you again one day, that’s what kept me going. So… thanks, Gohan.”
“You gave me strength too. I didn’t make it to the end like you did, but…”
“…That doesn’t matter. You’re here now.”
“That’s true.”
Then, Gohan put his arm around me, hugging me. Not even the Raunuka flower could have made me feel so much peace.
I knew, then, that this was the beginning of a new life, with no constant despair. A beautiful life.
After a few moments, we stopped hugging. I couldn’t help but keep smiling at the thought that, the next day, we’d be watching a movie. Gohan seemed to be thinking the same, as he stared off toward a spot on the table, fiddling with a strand of hair on his forehead, not saying a word.
It was silly, but I was genuinely relieved he could do that again.
“I already thought of a movie we could watch,” he said, looking at me. ”Do you remember the one about the boy who travels through time and…?”
“…Really?”
“Ah… Is it too soon?” He laughed. “I can think of another, but I don’t know if you like romantic movies. Let’s see, let’s see…”
“Hm. We could watch Titanic. I’ve always wondered why everyone likes it so much.”
“True. Though, honestly, I don’t know how we’ll get the theater to work.”
“We should ask my mom how to project the movie-”
“-But first, we need to decide what movie to watch.”
After a few minutes of planning for tomorrow, Gohan changed the subject.
“By the way, Trunks… don’t you think it’s time you met my master?”
“You mean Piccolo, right?”
“Mm-hmm. I’m sure he’ll be proud. After all, I taught you how to fight based on what he taught me,” Gohan said with a rare smug smile.
***
We searched for Piccolo at the party, but he was nowhere to be found. It didn’t surprise us too much; Piccolo didn’t seem like the kind of person who’d enjoy a party. Sensing his ki, which was faint due to his peaceful state, I realized he was probably somewhere in the yard.
“Seems like he’s outside," I told Gohan, ”Let’s go.”
Sure enough, when we stepped outside, Piccolo was meditating in the air, observing the party lights from above. Gohan raised his hand.
“Mister Piccolo!”
Piccolo opened his eyes at the sound of Gohan’s voice and looked down. Soon, he descended to the ground, arms crossed. He smiled, revealing his fangs, though the smile was so genuine it wasn’t intimidating at all.
”Hello, Gohan. And hello to you, who must be…” He glanced at me briefly. “Vegeta’s son, right?”
I nodded and bowed, with my hair falling over my face.
“That’s right, sir. It’s an honor to meet you.”
Piccolo chuckled.
"Ah, so polite… Nothing like your father."
I smiled nervously as I straightened up.
”Thanks…”
It was true my father had… a temper, but after meeting him in the past, I hoped I could get along with him.
“That’s true," Gohan added, “But don’t you have something else to say?”
“Indeed… I heard you saved our world, kid. You traveled to the past to grow stronger and defeat the androids here, and you and your mother even found New Namek. How are things there, by the way?”
“You could say that. I’m just glad all of you are back, sir. And everything’s fine on Namek; they rebuilt their society quickly.”
“That’s good. And in the past? How… is Goku?”
When he said that last part, his voice softened slightly, and for a moment, I recognized myself in his expression. Piccolo surely missed his old friend.
The younger Gohan from the past knew what had happened. The Goku of the other timeline had also died, sacrificing himself to defeat Cell. I didn’t want to lie, but wouldn’t the truth hurt them even more?
Piccolo narrowed his eyes as he noticed my hesitation, so I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“He’s fine, sir. I gave him the medicine in time, so he won’t die,” I said. My throat tightened as I recalled Goku’s sacrifice, but the words came out anyway.
Gohan’s and Piccolo’s eyes lit up.
“That’s amazing!” Gohan exclaimed with a triumphant smile.
He quickly threw his arms around me in a hug while Piccolo watched, smiling.
“Thank you so much, Trunks! You saved him! My dad… at least, there’s a world where he can keep living his crazy life, taking care of me and my mom…”
I wrapped my arms around Gohan, frowning. It pained me deeply to know none of that would happen… but if Gohan was happy, I would gladly carry the burden of the truth.
Then Gohan let me go, his eyes shining. Had he cried? I had never seen him like that.
Seeing my expression, he seemed surprised too.
“Good work,” Piccolo said, “You plan to keep training, right? And you too, Gohan. We must never let our guard down again.”
I nodded without hesitation.
“Of course. We have to protect this world now that it can finally have happiness,” I said as I closed my fists with determination, and then I looked at Gohan, hoping he agreed.
Gohan remained silent, his expression serious.
“Uh…”
Before Gohan could speak, my mother appeared.
”What are you doing out here, guys?” she called from the door, motioning us to come inside. “I’ve been looking for you. We’re taking a group photo, come in!”
***
We quickly returned to Capsule Corp. The other warriors were gathered under a banner to pose for the picture.
”Trunks, it’s great to meet you,” Krillin said cheerfully as I approached to join them.
“Yeah, you don’t know how grateful we are,” added Yamcha.
Behind him, Tien thanked me as well, and also Chiaotzu, who floated nearby to get a better look at me. My face turned red with embarrassment; I wasn’t used to so much attention.
“Leave him alone, you pests.”
Startled, I looked up. My father had entered the room, arms crossed. Like Gohan, Vegeta stood beside me for the photo. I stared at him for a moment, which irritated him.
“Stop staring at me like that. What, do I have three heads? Pose for the photo!”
Gohan, standing between us, scratched his chin and laughed.
“S-sorry, Father.”
Yamcha stood next to Tien, his arm over his shoulder, while Chiaotzu perched on Tien’s other shoulder, flashing a peace sign. Krillin stood next to Gohan, who had his arm around my shoulder. I grinned awkwardly at the camera, not sure how to pose. Then, my mother set the timer on the camera and quickly joined my father, wrapping her arm around his.
“Say cheese!” my mother exclaimed.
“Cheese!”
Click.
***
And hours later, the party ended.
As the guests left, shuffling their feet over the confetti on the floor, I swept the room with a broom. My mother was exhausted, slumped on the couch as though she hadn’t slept in a thousand years. Considering all we’d been through, that wasn’t too far from the truth.
I was focused on trying to sweep some stubborn crumbs into the dustpan when I felt someone’s gaze on me. I looked up. Once again, it was my father. He was staring at me so seriously that it sent a chill down my spine.
“Trunks,” he began, “You’re my son, and the first time I get to see you properly is when you’re already an adult. Not only that, but you’re also a Super Saiyan who defeated the androids that killed me and everyone else.”
“Yes… It’s good to finally meet you, Father.”
Effortlessly ignoring my response, my father rushed toward me like a bullet, aiming to punch me in the face. In what felt like slow motion, I saw his gloved fist coming towards me and moved aside to dodge it, making sure not to knock over the cleaning tools.
Seeing me dodge his attack with ease, he returned to his normal stance.
“It’s obvious that, as the son of the Prince of all Saiyans, you’d be the only warrior strong enough to defeat those pieces of junk. But don’t get cocky because soon I’ll surpass you!” he declared and then turned to leave.
I stared at him, stunned. Was this his strange way of saying… he was proud of my strength?
“We’ll see. I’ll keep training, and soon, we can have a duel,” I replied with a smile.
He smiled back at me before walking out the door. Through the window, I saw him take off into the sky, probably to start training immediately. I sighed. He really wasn’t going to take a single day off…
And then, I heard footsteps. It was the Z Fighters, who were now drunk and about to leave Capsule Corp.
”See ya,” Krillin slurred, dragging his words. Yamcha was supporting him to keep him from falling and wrinkled his nose as he spoke.
“Ugh, you smell awful, man,” Yamcha said, “Thanks for the party, Trunks. And for everything.”
”It’s my pleasure.”
Tien and Chiaotzu followed behind them.
“Someday we should spar. I’d like to see how strong you are,” Tien said, raising two fingers to his forehead. “Goodbye.”
I waved happily as they left through the door, only to realize Gohan hadn’t left yet. Where was he?
***
I searched for his ki. Like Piccolo earlier (who had left the party before the others out of boredom), he was outside somewhere.
I found him on the balcony, sitting at a table with a glass of water in his hand, staring at the sky. He was probably still thinking about his father. Guilt hit me, but I truly couldn’t tell him more about Goku’s situation.
“Gohan.”
Gohan lowered his gaze, flinching slightly in surprise.
“Oh, Trunks. Sorry, it’s pretty late for me to still be here, isn’t it?”
“Don’t worry, you’ve stayed here plenty of times before. It’s no trouble.” I walked over and sat next to him. “What’s on your mind?”
“Well...” He paused. “It’s strange to think we don’t have to fight all the time anymore, isn’t it? I mean, of course, we should keep training, but… you know. Without so much pressure.”
“Yeah… That’s exactly what you and I fought for,” I said happily.
Gohan smiled at me, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly.
“And what are you going to do now, Trunks? As for me… I plan to go back to my studies.”
I crossed my arms and looked up thoughtfully. I hadn’t really stopped to think about that.
“Uh… I want to keep training.”
Gohan’s smile turned playful.
“That’s great! But you should avoid being a freeloader like your dad.”
I shrunk into myself, feeling my face flush with embarrassment again.
“Hey… I think I’ve done enough for now,” I protested.
Gohan laughed. He’d said that on purpose, no doubt.
“By the way, how was Namek? Did you bring back a souvenir or something?”
“Actually… Yeah, I brought back a beautiful flower, but I think I left it on the spaceship. I’ll show it to you later.”
“Cool. By the way…”
“Yeah?”
Gohan looked away from me, staring instead at his glass.
“I’ve been thinking… My dad… he’s not alive in the reality you went to, is he?”
“What? Um… I…” I stammered, ”Uh… no, he’s not. I’m sorry. I thought it’d be better if you didn’t know the truth… How did you figure out I was lying?”
“Trunks, we’ve known each other our whole lives. I know when something affects you, when you’re happy, when you’re lying.”
“…I’m sorry.”
”No, I really appreciate it. You value honesty, don’t you? But you chose to lie because it would make me happy… That’s something you wouldn’t do in any other situation. You really are… a great friend.”
My eyes widened, and I smiled.
“Thanks. You are too.”
“I should get going. I had a great time today.” He stood up from the chair. “See you tomorrow night!”
“See you!”
I watched him leave, and then that irritating cough returned. This time, it was more painful, and I felt like I was choking, so I grabbed Gohan’s glass of water. After drinking it all, I set the glass on the table and… somehow, there were transparent petals at the bottom.
There was definitely something strange about that Raunuka flower.
And there was definitely something strange about how Gohan made me feel these days.
I examined the petals. This time, they had definitely come out of my mouth! But how?… I decided to return immediately to the spaceship to examine the flower I had left there.
***
Back on there, the Raunuka flower was exactly in the same spot where I had left it. I took the pot and got off the spaceship, then placed it back into the capsule.
‘This strange thing,’ I thought, ‘Is beautiful, but I don’t know if I should have brought it with me.’
My mother had already been to Namek, rather, to the original Namek. I decided that she was the person I should tell about this incomprehensible event, as she was likely to have noted anything important about Namek, like its flora, when she visited the planet.
***
My mother was sleepily watching a movie on TV in the living room.
“Hey Mom, can I ask you something?”
“Yeah, what’s…?” My mother looked at me, and when her eyes reached the alien pot I was holding, she screamed. “Trunks! What do you have there? Is that a Namekian flower?” she exclaimed, jumping up from the couch.
“Yeah… Is there a problem?”
“Give it to me! And cover your nose and mouth!” she said, taking the pot, doing what she said with her other hand.
I did as she said, confused. She covered the flower with the bowl she had used for popcorn while watching the movie, throwing it onto her precious carpet.
“We’re going to the lab.”
***
And off we went. I stood near the door, watching my mom place the pot on a flat, white platform to analyze it. I recognized this object as the scanner we used to analyze the quality of materials we found to build the time machine, among other things. On a floating, blue holographic screen, she typed something I couldn’t read. All her scientific stuff still made me dizzy, even though I had grown up around it… The flower was scanned all over under a green light, and my mother’s expression changed three times in a row. Negatively, of course.
The scan took several minutes, so I grabbed a chair from a nearby desk and sat down, watching as the scanner light went up and down… Seeing the Raunuka flower still gave me that calming effect, but when the scan ended, and the light turned red as another process began, the effect on me slowly faded and all my anxiety returned, as if what was affecting my emotions was being purged.
“Did you show this flower to anyone else?” she asked seriously, not taking her eyes off the screen. I shook my head, and she continued, “We’re gonna need to do a blood test. I hope you’re not as scared of needles as Goku was.”
“Um… considering your reaction to seeing the flower, Mom, I think a needle is the least of my worries right now…” I said, my stomach in knots.
My mother looked at me with a smile, not of happiness, but of sympathy. She was obviously the person who knew me best in the world, she knew what my biggest fear in life was…
“Don’t worry so much, son, Namekian flowers don’t transmit that serious of diseases,” she said in a soothing tone.
Still, fear slid down my spine like melting ice.
’ Diseases ,’ she said. ‘ Not that serious ,’ she said. Could they be serious in some way? What kind of nature did they have? No, no… anything but an unstoppable disease! What a miserable existence… Negative thoughts appeared in my mind one after another. ‘ I’ll end up dying just like Mr. Goku! Obviously, my good luck wasn’t going to last in this life full of misfortunes—’
My mother realized that my soul left my body after I heard that word, and she turned her back completely to the scanner to look me in the eyes.
“You’ll be fine. Seriously. Your dear mother wouldn’t lie to you about this,” she said, but I had the feeling it was just to calm me down.
“B-b-but what kind of… disease … could I get because of this flower?” I stammered, closing my hands on my lap, my fingers hot with my own sweat.
My mom cleared her throat and crossed her arms, preparing to explain.
“Namekian flowers can transmit a disease called Hanahaki, which is linked to your emotional energy… Like ki, that energy is something we all possess.” She leaned on the scanner as she began her explanation. “These flowers act like a kind of anesthesia for uncontrolled emotional energy. They numb anxiety, pain… but they don’t solve the problems, in fact, they bring more.” To put emphasis, she put one finger up and said, “These flowers have spores that enter your lungs, and they activate when they come into contact with unstable emotional flow. These spores aren’t like Earth’s. Being Namekian, they feed off emotional energy rather than physical nutrients… The spores grow inside the lungs, like flowers, and the flowers will grow faster as your unresolved feelings grow stronger… particularly unrequited love. Eventually, they will obstruct your breathing, which can be fatal if you don’t face those feelings or receive treatment.”
I stared at my mom, eyes wide, jaw dropped, and body paralyzed. I stayed silent. A sepulchral silence, while my heart stopped and my chest grew cold with terror… And then my heart started beating again, frantically, one, two, three, four…
At that moment, I could only formulate one thought.
Why, why did that Namekian give me that damn pot?!
As I breathed heavily, I kept hearing my mom’s words echoing in my mind.
‘The spores grow inside the lungs, like flowers, and the flowers will grow faster as your unresolved feelings grow stronger’… How gross!
‘…particularly unrequited love…’
I inhaled sharply, believing—wanting to believe I found a contradiction.
“…Unrequited love? But… I’m not in love with anyone. So the flowers shouldn’t be growing… I hope.” Before I could finish my last word, I coughed loudly, and my mom looked at me with one eyebrow raised, silently questioning me.
“Well, we’ll see what the situation is when we do the blood test,” she said, starting to gather the necessary things for the procedure from the cabinet. “I see you’ve been coughing?”
I swallowed hard. No… I couldn’t deny the obvious anymore, no matter how much I wished this disaster wasn’t happening…
“Yeah… actually, I wanted to show you the flower because I thought it was strange that I coughed up a petal.”
My mom sighed.
“Oh no, Trunks… It can’t be…” she said, continuing to search. “Tell me, who’s making you feel this way?”
I stayed silent.
Gohan.
“Well…”
Gohan .
“No one.”
My mom sighed even louder. I was about to tell her, embarrassed, what had been going on… until I realized something.
“Wait… how do you know so much about this alien disease?”
My mom took disposable gloves, gauze, alcohol, and a needle from a cabinet.
“I also contracted Hanahaki when I went to Namek…” she began to explain as she placed the things on the desk. “But it took a while before the disease activated for me. At first, it was asymptomatic because I didn’t feel unrequited love for anyone.” She washed her hands at the sink near the scanner and put on the gloves, then sat next to me. I rolled up my sleeve. “And then… I met your father.”
“Ah…” I muttered, clenching my teeth in discomfort.
My mom placed a tourniquet on the top of my arm and cleaned the area she was going to puncture with alcohol.
“Vegeta moved in with me, you were born, all that. But he was always very closed off, he never showed me love… never. And that hurt so much… and triggered the disease.”
Finally, she inserted the needle into the vein for a moment, then pulled it out. She applied the gauze to the puncture and put a small bandage on it.
“And… what did you do to cure it?”
“Your father had to reciprocate my love, and then the flowers disappeared. Shortly after…” Her gaze turned sad. “Your father died while fighting the Androids.”
I frowned, looking at my arm thoughtfully. I didn’t know this part of my family’s history…
“You have to understand, Trunks,” She moved to place the sample in a test tube. “That I almost lost my life because of the Hanahaki. And I won’t let you go through the same. If love’s killing you, then you’ll have to face it like any other enemy, okay?”
“I understand. But I… I’ll be fine,” I said seriously.
My mom smiled at me, holding my face with her hands, then kissed me on the forehead.
“I know you’ll be. Don’t be silly and tell Gohan how you feel.”
My face turned red.
“Mom!” I exclaimed, embarrassed, “How did you know?”
She winked at me.
“It’s pretty obvious. Now, I need to analyze this sample. Depending on how advanced the Hanahaki is, we’ll have to take different approaches to solve it.” Before the panic could finish reaching my heart at hearing her say my feelings were obvious, she added, “By the way, you can take the flower now since I’ve removed any danger from it.”
I scratched the back of my neck.
“Thanks… It kind of terrifies me now, though…”
A/N: Some notes on this version of Hanahaki.After analyzing the blood sample at that moment, my mother concluded that my Hanahaki was not advanced at all and that I still had several options to consider. First, she gave me some pills to slow down the growth of flowers in my lungs, which she had prepared just in case she ever got Hanahaki again somehow. Her prudence, which could even be called paranoia, had saved me. However, there were only thirty pills in the blister pack.
“Well, Trunks, these are your options. One: you use these thirty safe days you have to be honest about your feelings with him…”
“He doesn’t like me that way though… I’d still end up dying, but of embarrassment,” I said.
“That could actually happen.”
“Wait, what?”
“If you confess your feelings to the person causing your Hanahaki and they don’t return your love, the Hanahaki will worsen, which could lead to death… Yes, I’m serious.”
Hearing that, I put my hand to my forehead, feeling my legs weaken from fear.
“Oh my God, what a melodramatic illness… And what’s the other option?”
“The other option is to manually remove the spores and flowers with nanorobots…”
I lowered my hand to the desk and looked at my mother with hope.
“But…”
I put my hand to my forehead again. Now what?
“…This procedure would permanently affect your emotional ki… it’s likely that by going through it, you would never love again,” she explained.
Who cares about never loving again ! I thought. I won’t allow myself to die; I have to protect the Earth!
“Mom, I can’t risk my life like this… I have to undergo the surgery. Or who will protect all of you if something happens to me?” I said with seriousness in my brows.
My mother, on the other hand, looked at me with sadness.
“I understand that, son, but don’t you think it’s a bit hasty? You can have the surgery immediately, yes. But you wouldn’t love Gohan, me, your father, or the world you want to protect anymore. I’m afraid that without the energy love gives people, no matter what kind of love it is… nothing would matter to you anymore. It would hurt all of us to see you like that…” She crossed her arms thoughtfully. “You might end up like…” She interrupted herself and looked at me.
“…Like Gohan’s mother?”
My mother sighed.
“Yes… she lost everything she ever loved… and you know how depressed she was. Even though Gohan is back and has lived with her these past two weeks… Chi-Chi… I don’t know if she’ll ever be the same. I don’t want that to happen to you. What if Gohan does love you? Why not try that path before risking something… like that?”
I thought for a few moments. I remembered Gohan’s mother… I knew she was angry with my mother and even with me for motivating Gohan to risk his life fighting. Chi-Chi ended up losing everything she held dear… Her life is an example of one without love.
No, I didn’t want to end up like that. But being honest about my feelings was also risky: If I failed and Gohan didn’t see me the way I saw him, I’d die. What should I do then? It seemed as if every path I could take could end me forever…
I had to somehow make Gohan fall in love with me to survive, then.
“Well… I… I’ll try,” I said with no confidence at all, “But if there’s no sign that Gohan loves me before the medicine runs out, I’d better go through with the surgery.”
“Alright.”
My mother hugged me, and I hugged her back tightly. I still had that horrible feeling in my stomach…
“Good luck. Let me know if you feel bad or need anything, okay?”
“Yes, Mom. Thank you.”
I took the first pill, and then I left the lab. It was already quite late. I was exhausted from the party and everything I had discovered… Plus, I had to watch the movie with Gohan the next day, so I needed a good night’s sleep.
***
But I didn’t sleep well at all. In my bed, I lay motionless with my eyes closed, doing my best to breathe calmly. But my fingers were trembling, and I suddenly felt uncomfortable on that mattress. Hours passed and passed, and I saw the darkness of my closed eyes as if I were looking out a window. One thought looped in my mind: I’m going to die… I’m going to die… and I’m going to die in the stupidest way possible…
Then, looping again, I thought to myself: I’ll be fine… I’ll be fine… I have to be…
I tried to calm down, but it was in vain. Why was I still conscious? What time was it?
Restless, I decided to open my eyes, telling myself it was only to check the time. I turned over the clock on my nightstand; it was four in the morning. The sky was a dark orange, and the beautiful flowers in the yard could be seen blooming in that May spring. I pursed my lips. I had never been so disgusted by innocent flowers. But now I knew they could soon be my undoing.
Certain that I wouldn’t fall asleep anyway, I got up and turned on my desk lamp. So… I had to make Gohan fall in love with me to survive, huh? As if those things could happen!…
But… it really, really had to happen for my sake. So I took a notebook from the desk drawer and a pencil, determined to create some kind of plan. I rubbed my eyes as I wrote the title: ‘ Plan to Not Die .’
However, I quickly went blank.
It was obvious that, as a time-traveling warrior, I had never had time for a girlfriend, boyfriend, or anything like that. In fact, I had barely met people during my life. There were no schools; it was too dangerous, so I never had classmates or teenage romances or anything. There were no places to go out or moments to socialize with anyone… In truth, the only person I frequented and mostly knew for sure wouldn’t be dead the next day was Gohan himself… so there was nothing I could base my plan on.
Well… if Gohan was the only one I knew… surely I knew enough about him to know how to make him love me?
I wrote a subtitle: ‘ Things He Likes .’ And then… I went blank again. Gohan and I… when we spent time together, we only trained and did everything possible to survive. He told me stories of a peaceful world, of the movies he knew… to motivate me, of course. But beyond that… I didn’t know much about him. I knew he was strong and brave, yes. But everyone knew that.
Didn’t I know him better than anyone else? And he, me? Did we really know each other well, or…?
I froze. What was I supposed to do?
Then… I saw something shiny out of the corner of my eye on my nightstand. Something green.
On the nightstand, next to the clock, was the Raunuka flower. It was quite small, so it fit as decoration. But now, there was something shiny on the flowerpot. I reached out and grabbed it. It seemed to have something written in Namekian, something that wasn’t visible before.
I put on some sandals and silently left my room with the pot. Then, I went to the lab to look for my mother’s universal translator, which didn’t take me long.
The pot said: ‘ Only with truth will the flower of your breath wither. Balance the scale of emotions ’.
I stared at the inscription for a few moments. What truth was it referring to? Maybe… it had something to do with what I was thinking when I couldn’t write anything about Gohan in my notebook? I wondered if there was something about him I didn’t know yet, something I would have to discover to heal myself, besides making Gohan fall in love with me, of course.
I sighed. That damn flower only made everything more complicated…
A few moments after I translated the inscription, the pot stopped glowing. It was time to return to my bedroom.
Eventually, I managed to fall asleep, but having fallen asleep just before dawn, I wasn’t rested enough for any social situation…
The next day, I showered, had breakfast, and trained. All while feeling sleepy, but also with so much anticipation for the afternoon plan that I couldn’t even take a nap. One less Hanahaki pill, one day closer to either my salvation or my downfall.
My mother took the time to explain to me how the corporation’s movie theater worked. I understood the first steps, but the rest didn’t stick in my head. The theater had new technology with different modes: cinema mode, meeting mode, and… one I couldn’t even remember. It didn’t help that I was terrible with technology and had only slept about three hours.
***
At least, when I went to the control room, I had no trouble installing the movie we were going to watch… Titanic. But that was just the first step; I still had to project the movie on the big screen, adjust the volume…
In front of me was an endless array of buttons, with no symbols or anything to indicate their purpose, just colors. I checked the time on my watch. Gohan was about to arrive, and I still hadn’t started the movie.
I cursed under my breath, trying to recall the remaining instructions. A yawn pushed my jaw downward as… I started pressing buttons at random. I started with the blue ones; it was a nice color. A silly reason, but what else could I do?
Through the window of the control room, from which I could see the theater, I saw the screen was white. That was… progress. I stared at it, pressing my lips together.
Then, an image of a city appeared from an aerial view. The camera zoomed in until it reached the Capsule Corporation building. A narrator’s voice announced, “Look to the future! Buy a Capsule Home!”
…It was an advertisement. Damn it.
At that moment, I heard the double doors open. Gohan had arrived, carrying two buckets of popcorn and two tall drinks on a plastic tray with the company logo. He was wearing a white T-shirt and blue pants.
“Hello! Trunks?”
I stepped out of the control room. The ad was still playing.
“Hey, Gohan!” I greeted him with a nervous smile.
“So, we have to watch ads before the movie starts too?” Gohan asked, sitting in the third row, on the third step. I followed him to continue the conversation but didn’t sit down. “In your own house? Wow.”
I touched my neck awkwardly.
“Uh… no. There were just some… technical difficulties.”
“That makes more sense.”
“Could you wait for me a moment, please?”
Gohan nodded, and I quickly walked down the steps back to the control room behind the screen. As I turned to open the door and go in, Gohan was watching me with narrowed eyes.
Once inside, I stared at the buttons, hovering over them without pressing them. I really should have written down what my mother explained…
”Do you want some help?” Gohan asked from his seat.
”No, it's fine… uh…”
The ad ended on its own, and my mother appeared on the screen.
“If you’re watching this, it means you didn’t understand how the theater works. If you don’t want embarrassing family videos to start playing, do this…”
With every word coming from the speakers, my embarrassment grew. To top it off, the video seemed broken because a blue error screen suddenly appeared.
Damn it.
This time, I was going to press the red buttons.
When I did, all the lights went out for a few seconds… and then red ones turned on. Fantastic .
I stopped out of the control room to see what was happening. Alarms immediately pierced my ears, and the doors locked in an "X" shape.
Gohan and I looked at each other, our eyes wide like frightened cats, and the narrator’s voice returned.
”Training mode activated. Level: Survival.”
“What?!” Gohan exclaimed as he fell to the floor: the seats sank, leaving the room empty.
Then, Gohan got up and quickly came to me.
“What’s happening?”
“I don’t know…”
“Are we locked in?”
I sighed. “It looks like it.”
“And what’s this mo—”
The walls opened with small hidden doors. From them emerged… robots with one normal hand and another shaped like a dagger, with glowing blue, slanted triangular eyes.
So this was the mode I forgot about…
With their mechanical hands, the robots began firing ki blasts. One shot toward Gohan, and he ducked to avoid it, making it head straight for me. I deflected it with a strike of my palm. We were fighting machines again.
I turned back towards the control room to solve the problem at its source.
“Quick, let's go in!” I told Gohan.
But Gohan remained crouched in the middle of the room, right in the robots' line of fire. They shot at him over and over, but he didn’t move.
“Gohan? What are you doing? Come here.”
Slowly, Gohan brought his hands to his head. He stared at the floor, eyes wide, brow furrowed, teeth clenched.
He was terrified.
Worried, I ran to him and practically dragged him with me into the control room, where he’d be safe.
***
The attacks could still be heard outside, and Gohan remained lost in thought. I had never seen him like this… Stupidly, I always believed he wasn’t afraid of anything.
Staying close to him, I noticed a black lever above the buttons labeled Turn Off . I pulled it down, and everything returned to normal. The robots retreated, their doors closing behind them, though the impact marks remained on the walls and ceiling. The seats reappeared, the lights turned white.
Gohan was trembling, clinging to my arm, intertwining his with mine like it was the last floating object in a freezing sea. His breathing was heavy. His clothes were slightly damaged, with burn marks and loose threads. He looked out the window and saw everything was back to normal.
Then he looked back at me, his eyes glossy. He let go of me and ran a hand over his face.
“Are you… okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry. It's just… it brought back memories.” He let out a pained laugh. ”I mean, a wave of ki blasts from machines… that’s exactly how I… you know.”
He didn’t finish the sentence, but I knew what he meant. That’s how he had died. I remembered finding him in a puddle… A horrible memory that resurfaced because of me. That’s why he froze.
”I’m sorry… I don’t know what I was thinking… Well, I do, I thought I could make it work.”
The projector… my empty plan… everything. I had ruined it all in one day because Gohan was on the verge of tears, and it destroyed me.
“I messed up… Do you want to go home? I understand if you—”
“No!” he said, louder than expected. “No,” he repeated, softer. “You said we’d spend the day together… right? And that’s what we’ll do. We don’t need to watch a movie, anyway.”
“Really? You still want to?”
“Of course. After that bad moment… you owe me a good one, don’t you think? Let’s go.”
I smiled at him, surprised but happy. As we walked out, Gohan linked his arm around mine like before. He looked at me for permission, and I smiled at him with my eyes, reassuring him. He was still a little tense.
***
We sat in the same spot where Gohan had left what he brought. I picked up my Pepsi, but the ice had already melted. I wrinkled my nose.
“Eww, it’s warm.”
Gohan laughed while hiding his face in his drink. Then, he looked at me with narrowed eyes again, as if noticing something.
“You didn’t sleep, did you? Your eyes keep closing!”
“Ah… yeah, I just… spent the night training."
“…Right,” he replied, stuffing his popcorn into his mouth until the bucket was empty in one go.
In the silence that followed, I remembered something. Something in my pocket.
“Gohan, I almost forgot to tell you. When I traveled to the past…” I pulled a photo from my jacket pocket. ”I took a picture… with your dad.”
Gohan took the photo, and his eyes lit up. His mouth opened slightly in surprise before curving into a big smile.
“Dad…” he said fondly, “Thanks for showing me. He looks happy… Are you both wearing armor like Mr. Vegeta’s?”
”Yeah, we were training, and we were all dressed like that.”
Gohan nodded in understanding.
“Dad looks weird in it,” he said, laughing, “It doesn’t look bad on you, though.”
He stared at the photo a few more seconds, happily.
“Can I keep it? I don’t have many pictures of my dad… The ones I have are old.”
“Of course, it’s yours.”
“Thanks! You’re the best.”
Gohan put the photo away and we continued talking for a long time. But as I listened, he was no longer that almost mythical figure. Instead I saw the vulnerable Gohan from that afternoon. The truth.
Gohan POV
And the voices that implore: you should be doing more,
To you, I can admit that I’m just too soft for all of it.
-Sweet Nothing (Taylor Swift)
***
Trunks and I spent more time in the movie theater, not daring to try turning the screen back on. The movie wasn’t that important anyway; it was more about spending the day with my friend.
It had been about an hour since the training robots had attacked us… but even though we were sitting quietly now, I still had chills.
In any other situation, I would have left immediately, to some safe place. But being with Trunks, and seeing him smile after everything we went through… hearing that laugh that still sounded the same despite everything… it made me less scared.
He reminded me that I wasn’t in the past anymore, in the danger, in the loneliness, in despair. I was with him, and this time, no one was going to separate us.
When I died because I couldn’t win my last fight, he could have forgotten about me completely. He grew up by himself, became stronger than I could ever become. He defeated the androids, raised a dead world from the ashes. He could have left me behind, like a small stain in a painful past. But he lifted me up as well.
I thought about all the nice things Trunks had told me and everything he had done for me these last days…
‘And I missed you every day, Gohan…’
‘Being able to bring everyone back one day… and being able to see you again one day, that’s what kept me going.’
I failed the world by losing, I failed Trunks. And despite everything… He still thought about me.
He wanted to see me again.
He traveled to the past, took that picture with my father, and gave it to me, bringing me a piece of something precious.
I was supposed to protect Trunks from danger, I was supposed to save the world, but he protected me first, and with everything he did, with all those small actions and words, he was saving me instead.
I was so thankful, I felt so happy, so guilty and…
But I could think about that later, Trunks was telling me about his trip to New Namek.
“And then one of the Namekians watching the Grand Elder’s chamber looked at me and said something like… I don’t know…” He fell silent as he tried to remember. “Dokunoshi kasa… And I think something else. Something like… Nazuni pponjuu. And the other one said—oh, I think I remember this better because the other one was laughing… and I thought it was weird, like was he laughing at me? He said: Ura kaya seta, Ika jida budda oyi. And then he laughed.”
I nodded as I listened. In my years as a warrior, when Mr. Piccolo was murdered, I wanted to have the peace of mind that I was still connected to him despite that, that he wasn’t completely gone, so I wouldn’t go crazy over everything I had lost. So… I decided to learn Namekian, as a reminder. I never became fluent, obviously, learning a language under the conditions I lived in was very complicated, and Bulma, who helped me, also had limited knowledge.
But the phrases Trunks mentioned were somewhat understandable to me. And they were somewhat troubling.
Dokunoshi kasa. I think he meant ‘Doku no shikaza,’ which meant: ‘he’s an Earthling.’ Up to that point, it’s fine.
Then: Nazuni pponjuu. It meant: ‘the flora is’. An incomplete sentence.
Lastly, the clearest phrase. Ura kaya seta, Ika jida budda oyi. It meant: ‘Seems like it. He doesn’t know what’s coming.’
“What are you thinking about?” Trunks asked.
“Well, I know a bit of Namekian, remember?”
“Really? Well, no, I forgot…”
I clicked my tongue jokingly.
“I wonder what you remember about me, then. Anyway, from what I understand, the first Namekian told the other one that you were an Earthling, and something about flora.” Trunks’ eyes widened visibly when I said that, for some reason. “The other one agreed with… the other one, and said that you don’t know what’s coming.”
Trunks’ mouth slightly opened in surprise. He seemed a little upset after realizing what they said.
“Wow… When did you learn all those words? How smart.”
“…Every time I went to your house to eat when we were kids, I read that Namekian lesson notebook your mom made for me.”
Trunks scratched his cheek.
“Oh, yeah, the notebook. I thought it was for your fighting strategies or something…”
I raised an eyebrow.
“But I always murmured the Namekian words to learn them… How didn’t you notice? What was it that stole your attention so much?”
“ What stole my attention? Well… uh…” Trunks fell silent. After a few moments, he stopped looking at his empty drink and looked at me, he noticed I was biting my lips to avoid laughing. “It’s just because you like it when I stumble over my words, right? You don’t even care about the answer!”
I laughed.
“Yeah, that’s true… But it‘s weird that those Namekians said that, right? ‘He doesn’t know what’s coming’?” I said as I took the last sip from my drink.
Trunks played with his fingers.
”Yeah… weird. But, well, it seems nothing happened, so.”
The way he said that made it sound like a lie. Although I couldn’t see any reason why Trunks would lie about something so trivial as a conversation he overheard from strangers…
“Mm-hm, sure.”
”…Why are you looking at me like that?”
I pressed my lips together and decided it just wasn’t important.
”Nothing, nothing. Speaking of Namek… Didn’t you tell me you brought a flower?”
Trunks nodded.
“I did, do you want to see it?”
”Sure!”
”It’s in my room, I’ll go get it.”
“Can I go with you?”
“Okay.”
There was absolutely no way I was going to let him leave me alone in that hellish movie theater… Also, I was curious to see his room.
***
We left the movie theater and went to Trunks’ room. He opened the door; the pot was next to his bed. He went inside and approached the nightstand to grab it, and I stayed at the entrance, looking at every corner.
It was… a little empty. All the objects were on one side of the room, and the other side, the one I saw from the door, had nothing, just the closet. The window was near his bed and led to the yard where flowers grew. There was nothing on the walls, his desk was clear on top… Everything was incredibly tidy, like Trunks never really spent time in his own room.
It was as if his role as the only warrior left on Earth until recently had absorbed everything else, not letting him have his own space to exist besides that.
As I looked around, eventually my gaze landed on his bed. Trunks was next to it, distracted, moving something inside the drawer of the nightstand, a small white box, without showing me the flower yet. I didn’t know why, but it made me a little embarrassed to look at it, for some reason, it made me feel uncomfortable in my stomach. So I looked at the desk again, and…
Wait. What was that wrapped in leather underneath? It looked familiar…
A sword.
Was it… my sword?
Trunks seemed to notice I was staring at everything in silence and nervously looked at me, with the flower in his hands.
“Why are you standing there? Are you the castle’s gatekeeper, or what?”
“Castle? So that’s why you have a sword there… knight?”
Trunks looked at the same spot I was looking at.
“Oh, yeah, it’s… it’s what you think, your sword. Did you know I killed the Frieza from the past with it?”
“So you killed him instead of my dad. But… Why do you have that?”
“Your mom gave it to me.” Before I could keep talking about it, he added, “Don’t you want to see the flower though?”
“Yes, yes.”
Finally, I entered the room and went with Trunks; he handed me the pot. The famous flower was very beautiful, transparent and shiny, like it was made of crystal. My eyes lit up.
“It’s so beautiful.”
I touched one of its petals with my finger and noticed something green and shiny in the pot. An inscription… in Namekian. I quickly translated it, squinting my eyes.
‘True strength lies in the truth. Balance the scale of emotions.’
I tilted my head, and turned the pot to show Trunks the inscription.
“Did you see what it says here?”
Trunks gave me a confused look.
”It doesn’t say anything, there’s just a triangular pattern.”
A second of silence passed, only interrupted by Trunks’ cough. There was… something strange about this.
I swallowed.
“Oh, I thought… it was words. And what’s up with that coughing?”
“I… have a little cold.”
“Hmm.”
I didn’t like that phrase. When my father got sick, we also said he had ‘a little cold’ at first. But of course, I was just being paranoid making that comparison… Right?
Thinking that Trunks would get as horribly sick as him was ridiculous. He currently was the strongest person I knew. He was fine.
But, perhaps he needed some space.
“Well, Trunks… I think I’ve invaded your space enough for today! You need rest, so I should go.”
“Alright. It was nice. Did you have a good time today?”
“Yeah! It was more fun than just watching a movie…”
“Was it really fun? I saw you scared before.”
“Yeah, but…” I paused.
But being closer to you for a moment felt like some sort of achievement…
“…But it will become a funny story!”
Trunks smiled at me. I forced myself to smile back. I felt weird. Was I acting weird? I hoped Trunks wouldn’t notice.
“It was great seeing you! Call me whenever you want, okay?”
We waved goodbye, and I turned to leave. But a moment of hesitation passed. I clenched my fists slightly… Then I turned back, and Trunks looked at me with confusion for the thousandth time that day.
I took two steps towards him and hugged him. I had more than three million things to say to him… but they could be summarized in two.
“Thanks for everything…”
…love you.
But I left that last part unsaid.
Trunks placed his hands on my shoulders, hugging me back.
“You don’t have to thank me for anything.”
I could hear his voice closer when he said that. It was nice. Yeah, it was nice being there with him.
I thought about how strong Trunks was, and I thought about the truth, whatever truth that little piece of Namek was talking about.
Then, as I left… I thought that I was doomed to something I wasn’t ready for. Something I never dared to think about before.
A few days passed. Being back on Earth was strange, but also beautiful. The rebuilt city had new places I didn’t know, but the best thing was seeing the places I did remember from my childhood back.
My mom had sent me out to buy food, so I was flying over the area with brown bags in my arms. I was looking down at the city, and then, I noticed a restaurant I used to go to as a child with my family. Many times, when I went there with my parents, we would spend all my dad’s farm earnings and all of my mom’s wealth in one go because of the incredible amount of food my dad and I would inhale in seconds as Saiyans… back when my dad was still in this world and my mom still smiled.
Being in the city’s center, it was one of the first places to be destroyed by the androids. I remembered being twelve years old and being in denial, wanting to celebrate my birthday there no matter what was happening, even though my mom didn’t want us to leave the house because of the danger.
***
Back then, I was walking down the street, alone, with a cake in my hands. I had to look for the ingredients for months, but I finally had it. The restaurant was ashes, rubble, but it didn’t matter. I was going to turn twelve only once and I was going to celebrate, no matter if that meant sitting in the remains of the place I liked.
My expression was serious when I entered, determined, but when I sat down on a chair with broken legs and full of dust, something in me shattered.
My mom didn’t want me to go to that place alone, she was probably looking for me at that moment.
My dad was just a memory that was moving further and further away from me.
My tears wiped my dirty face as I cut the cake into small pieces as she had taught me. ‘This is how you eat at parties,’ she told me.
I thought of an old song that sounded like what was happening to me and I thought about how you can’t just listen to music in peace anymore and—
Then, I felt a ki approaching, and my hair stood on end. I jumped up and got into a fighting stance. But I quickly realized that it wasn’t an evil ki… It was a familiar one.
The restaurant’s slanted door swung open and quick footsteps could be heard on the cracked tiles. He was running towards me.
It was that boy, Trunks, with his judgmental face.
“Gohan!” he exclaimed when he saw me, “What do you think you’re doing? Your mom told me you ran away from home! Can’t you see that she’s worried about you?”
I hid my face with my arm, looking away.
“Yes… yes, it’s true. I’ll be right back.”
“You better be!” After saying that, he searched for something in the pockets of his sweatshirt. “And happy birthday!”
I looked at him.
“Hmm?”
He found what he was looking for, and took a few steps towards me with what looked like a homemade letter.
“It’s for you!”
Surprised, I took it. It was a sheet of paper folded in two, on the cover it said, in a messy handwriting trying to be elegant: ‘Hapy Birhday.’
I opened the letter, and inside, there was a drawing of Trunks and me. ‘I will be strong like you.’
I didn’t think I was strong at all, but that brought a smile to my face.
On the other page, the last one, Trunks had drawn me with my family. It had been so long since I had a picture of the three of us…
I looked at Trunks, who was looking at me in return with those big eyes of his, full of emotion, waiting for my response.
“That’s what Goku looks like, right? I don’t know if I got his hair right, but…”
“Thanks,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking, “It looks just like him.”
Trunks smiled wider, showing his teeth. I smiled back and stood up from my chair.
“Let’s go now.”
We left the restaurant, and prepared to fly away. Before we did, Trunks turned his head to see what I was holding.
“When we get to your house, can I have some of that?” he asked shyly, pointing at my birthday cake.
***
I remembered saying yes, and we both went to my house, my mom yelled at me and then hugged me, and then they sang happy birthday to me and Trunks and I ate everything and started play-fighting. Things were horrible back then, but the few good things were simpler.
Now that that restaurant was rebuilt, I wanted to go there with Trunks again. But for some reason… I hesitated.
Wasn’t I being annoying already? And Trunks probably didn’t even remember why that place was so important to me. I should just leave him alone and…
But Trunks and I had always been friends, always hanging out together! Why did I suddenly think he might refuse, why did that possibility terrify me?
Eventually, I landed at my house, and I was still thinking about it.
***
I landed on the grass at the entrance of my house, and as I walked down the stone path to the entrance, I checked to see if I had dropped anything from my shopping bags. Sure enough, everything was in its place. I opened the door and walked in.
As always… The silence was devastating.
“I’m back, Mom,” I said. She was sitting at the table, staring out the window.
“Oh, hey. Put that on the counter, I’ll cook.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll do it.”
I thought she would protest, but again she stayed silent, not moving. Meanwhile, I filled our large metal pot with water and put it on the stovetop. I stood there waiting for the water to heat up, glancing at my mom from time to time. She looked more like a statue than a person.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
She didn’t seem to be. She didn’t seem like she wanted to talk about what was wrong with her, either.
Steam started to rise from the bubbling water, so I put the vegetables in the pot. I stirred as I thought of how to break the silence.
“So… I heard you gave my sword to Trunks?”
My mom looked up.
“Yeah.”
“That’s nice.” My mom didn’t respond. “You want to talk to me about that?”
She looked down.
“It was after you died… at the funeral… He was devastated, the poor boy.”
She stopped talking, but I kept looking at her, waiting for her to finish telling the story. My mom sighed.
“He swore to me that he would destroy those machines for you… that he could transform into a Super Saiyan and that he would soon be strong enough. I told him that he needed a weapon. So I gave it to him. It was better than seein’ it collecting dust around here,” she explained, gesturing to the house vaguely.
At that moment, it was tidy and clean, since my mom and I had cleaned it up after I had insisted a lot. On my first day back, I had seen that everything was dirty and abandoned, so that was what she meant.
It hurt to think of all the pain my mom had gone through being there alone for so many years, helpless, scared… But now I was back, and things would get better.
However, it seemed like she wasn’t getting any better.
I wanted to lighten the mood, so I said:
“Did you say Super Saiyan? So that transformation isn’t just a super delinquent for you anymore?”
“Don’t get me wrong… I still hate that your hair turns blonde. It makes you look like you’re in a gang or somethin’.” She made a hmph sound as she crossed her arms. “But whether I want it or not, that’s what saved us. So I can’t complain.”
“Oh, no, complain! I want you to talk more. You know you’re not alone anymore, right?“
My mom smiled slightly as well. That was a victory.
“Yes… thank you, son.” She sighed again. “The world is alive again, but it’s like I can’t get out of the past yet. I can’t stop thinkin’ about what happened to your father…”
My eyes turned sad.
“I know. Me neither. But… he would be happy that we survived. So… let’s not just survive anymore. Let’s live again, now that we can.”
My mom smiled, but it was a forced smile. It was like she wanted to tell me something else, but the words wouldn’t come out.
Soon after, the vegetable soup was ready. I served the food, and we ate in silence. My mom was still deep in thought.
“Gohan… I don’t think I ever got to tell you about how your dad died, right?”
I shook my head.
“No… but Bulma and Trunks told me it was from a heart disease.”
“Yes,” she murmured, “Yes, that’s true.”
Soon, my mom finished eating, and I served myself several more plates. After that meal, we washed the dishes together, and my mom sat down again in silence.
I sat next to her, so as not to leave her alone.
I had the feeling that everyone was keeping something from me lately. Trunks, my mom… I didn’t know if it was paranoia or not.
At that moment, I thought about calling Trunks, I wanted to know if he was feeling better, and if he wanted to go to that restaurant with me. From my seat, I looked at the white phone on the wall, but I didn’t dare call him.
Then… the phone rang. Having no choice, I answered the call.
“Hello, Son house?”
“Hello!” Trunks said. He sounded like he was out of breath.
“Ah, Trunks! I was just thinking about you…” I grimaced, was it necessary to say that? “How are you?”
“I’m fine…” he continued talking as if he was in a hurry.
“Do you feel better? You sound weird.”
“Well, I still have a cold.” He laughed awkwardly. “Hey, do you want to do something today?”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. I was overthinking inviting him somewhere and he ended up inviting me first!
“Of course! I know where we could go, did you have something in mind?”
“Ah… no, you tell me.”
I explained that I had found that restaurant I liked, but I skipped over all the memories I had there with him. I didn’t want to embarrass myself. He told me we would meet there, so I got ready to leave.
My mom looked at me suspiciously and curiously as I fixed my hair.
“Do you have a date?” she asked with a small smile.
I felt a little heat on my cheeks.
“No, no, I’m just going to meet Trunks.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“So why are you getting so ready…?”
I looked at my mom, and then at the mess I had made in my closet looking for the perfect clothes to wear.
“I’m not ‘getting so ready’. It’s normal, Mom. That’s… that’s how it is now.”
“Of course…”
I took all the clothes I had thrown on the sofa and put them back in the closet in a ball that definitely would fall on my face when I opened it again. My mom clenched her fists and frowned indignantly.
“Don’t make such a mess!”
I laughed as I headed for the door, happy to see energy in my mom again.
“Don’t worry! I’ll tidy it up when I get back, bye!”
My mom watched as I flew out the door, fists pumping in the air. Ah, how I loved her.
***
Trunks and I met in front of the restaurant, and as soon as I saw him, I knew something was wrong. His ki had weakened and he was pale, his breathing was heavy and his hair was somewhat disheveled.
“Hi…” he said.
“Hi, are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, like I said… I just have a bit of a cold,” he replied, forcing a smile.
I hated that phrase. I hated it! Trunks noticed my seriousness and added:
“Don’t worry, really. Come on, let’s go in.”
I tried to ignore the cold fear growing in my chest, but it was still there as we walked through the wooden door of the restaurant, which intentionally had a somewhat medieval aesthetic.
***
The food arrived quickly, and as always, we ordered a full banquet for both of us. As we ate, Trunks briefly seemed to forget his discomfort. We talked about trivialities, the reconstructions, how our training was going (neither of us were training enough), what I planned to study when college was ready to open, and how funny it was to see Bulma and Vegeta together once again.
For a moment, everything was fine, and I had the same feeling as on my birthday so long ago, the joy when I chased Trunks around the house to win a game, or when I proudly showed my mom the letter he had given me and she hung it on the fridge…
But then… Trunks coughed. A bad cough, one of those that just by hearing it you know how much it hurts. He ran out of air, which made him cough even more and hold on tightly to the table.
I immediately put down the glass I was drinking and put my hands on his shoulders, he was shaking from coughing so much, closing his eyes tightly.
“Trunks! Trunks, are you okay?”
For a moment, I thought maybe he had choked on his food or something, but then his eyelids became wet from closing his eyes so tightly and from the pain, his face turned red and…
A drop of blood ran down his lips…
At that moment, everything stopped for me. The voices around us faded. The clinking of dishes disappeared. All I could hear was my own heartbeat.
After some moments, Trunks stopped coughing and breathed, he wiped his mouth.
“I’m okay now… Gohan?”
“You were bleeding,” I said quietly.
Trunks looked at me in silence for a moment, more worried about me than him.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not,” my voice shook because of the lump in my throat.
This wasn’t happening again.
Was it going to happen again?
I wasn’t going to let it happen again.
I stood up from the table abruptly. The people sitting around us looked at us.
“I’ll pay, let’s just get out of here quickly, we have to take you to a doctor.”
“No… Gohan, sit down, I’m fine!”
“It’s not true!” I said with more volume than I wanted. “It’s not true… You’re pale, you’re not breathing right, blood is coming out of your mouth! We have to solve what’s wrong with you before—!”
I interrupted myself, and tried to breathe without panic, but I couldn’t. Trunks was still sitting, playing with his hands, he didn’t know what to say to me.
“Before what?”
“…Before you die. I’d rather die again than have something happen to you.”
Trunks looked at me in surprise. A couple moments of silence passed, with just the weight of my words.
“Sit down, and… and I’ll explain.”
That’s what I did. I was sweating, from nerves and embarrassment.
“When I went to New Namek, I caught a disease from there. But my mom gave me a treatment which has already been proven to work, so even though I look bad now, I’ll be fine. I don’t know if you remember… that when we went to my room last week, I was keeping something in my nightstand…”
Ah, a kind of white box in his room…
“Was that medicine?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I didn’t want to worry you… but I see that it worked backwards. I’m sorry.”
I sighed, calmer now.
“I’m sorry too… I wanted us to have fun today, but I made you have a bad time.”
Trunks smiled at me.
“Well, now we’re even. Me, in the movie theater, you, here…”
I laughed, scratching my neck.
“That’s true. It seems like all our dates are a mess…”
A few seconds passed, and then I realized what I said.
Dates .
Trunks looked at me.
Then I looked at him.
And we looked at each other.
Oh no…
Then… Trunks smiled again and took a sip of his water.
“Yeah, but after that bad moment, you owe me a good one, don’t you think?”
I scratched my cheek to make it less noticeable how red it was.
Maybe my mom was right after all.
‘True strength lies in the truth. Balance the scale of emotions.’ That was the phrase I saw on the flowerpot of Trunks’ flower… the one only I could read. That strange magic, whatever it was, had that message for me.
I always thought that being strong meant having brute strength, hiding my weaknesses, hiding what I felt. Like when I was a child and wanted to celebrate my birthday in this very restaurant where Trunks and I were now having this… ‘date’.
But holding on to that strength only made me feel miserable. Paradoxically, hiding my weaknesses and what I felt made me feel weaker than ever. Maybe that was the truth I had to see: that strength was about other things.
When I was with the people I loved, when I was with Trunks, that was when I truly felt strong. Not when I fought to the death. Not when I sacrificed myself.
Strength was here, in how Trunks smiled at me, in how I could be myself with him. In how our friendship endured the worst hell, even death, until…
Until it stopped being just friendship.
Trunks had changed so much since I first met him, back when he was just my student. He used to be somewhat shy, somewhat insecure. However, something that never changed in him was his determination, which he always had. From the way he spoke, I knew Trunks was determined to get something today. I wasn’t sure what. But I think I wanted the same thing.
So, I owed him a good moment?
As soon as Trunks said that, I would have stolen a kiss right there, but a part of me was afraid. Ashamed.
Who was I to want such an important place in his life after failing him so terribly in the past…?
Eventually, Trunks and I got tired of eating and decided it was time to leave the restaurant. He paid, and we got up from the table, then went to the door. I was still thinking about it, about the word I let slip and how Trunks wasn’t bothered by it.
“What do you want to do now?” he asked me.
“Do you want to walk for a bit?”
Trunks nodded, with a tired smile. His eyelids were darker, his eyes still sparkled.
We left the restaurant and started walking down the sidewalk, which was lit by fairy lights. The whole city had been celebrating for days since it had been rebuilt. I looked up at them, at the sky that had already turned orange, then looked at Trunks.
I hadn’t planned on telling him before, but I wanted to be honest with him.
“Hey… do you remember when we went to that same restaurant as kids?” I asked, without stopping my walk.
Trunks’ mouth hung slightly open for a moment as he thought.
“On your birthday, right?”
I smiled, happy he hadn’t forgotten.
“Yes! You know… I was actually having a really bad time… until you showed up. The card you gave me… I kept it with pride for a long time. It was the best gift I could have gotten.”
Trunks smiled a little, somewhat embarrassed.
“Really? They were just some ugly drawings… Although to be honest, they took me about an hour.”
“Haha, well, I thought they were really well done.”
“That’s good to hear.” He paused, and looked away from me. “I said it before but it’s… nice to have you back. I feel like… in the time you were gone, I wasn’t really living. I was just… waiting.”
I looked at him with sadness. His entire life had been stolen by those machines, his memories were tainted by so much death.
“You didn’t have to,” I said.
“But I had to. I could never have moved forward if I hadn’t waited for you.”
He squinted his eyes for a moment, thinking. Then he said, “Oh, and… were you serious earlier when you said that we were having a…?”
“…That today was a date?”
“Uh-huh.”
I fell silent for a moment. How I responded to his question could change everything between us. And he was looking at me as if he wanted that to happen.
“Yes, but…”
He looked at me intensely, waiting for me to finish speaking as if I were the only sound in the world.
“But… It was unintentional. Don’t take it seriously if you don’t want to. I… I don’t want to be weird and…”
Trunks’ eyes widened as he heard that, and he almost tripped over a step while walking, having stayed in shock staring at me.
“Trunks, be careful with—”
Trunks quickly straightened up and stopped walking, standing in front of me so I would stop too.
“Trunks…?”
“Okay, here goes.”
He grabbed the collar of my shirt and pulled me closer to him. Our eyes met; he had never been so close to me. He looked nervous, desperate. As if this were a life or death situation. Before the blood could reach my face, Trunks closed the distance between us and pressed his lips to mine, right there in the middle of the sidewalk.
My head was spinning, I felt like I was floating and Trunks was the only thing I could hold on to.
His lips tasted… metallic. He seemed to have been bleeding for much longer than he let on.
I couldn’t believe what was happening. I froze for a moment, then put my hands in his hair and kissed him back.
And he kissed me with force, too much force. Then he simply let go of me.
We stared at each other, and he looked just as sick as before.
He looked at himself, he touched his face, put a finger on his mouth and it came out red.
“It didn’t work,” he murmured, his pupils darting around in confusion, in fear. “Why didn’t that work?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Nothing… I have to go.”
Trunks started walking quickly, and I followed him.
“Where are you going? But- why- what are you talking about? Why did you do that? Wait…“
Trunks stopped walking when he heard me. He turned his back to me for a moment, then faced me again, his eyes full of tears.
“Because I don’t want to die…”
He said it so softly. Surrendering. My stomach froze.
“Die? You said you’d be fine earlier.”
Trunks stayed silent, but from his expression, it looked like he had a thousand thoughts running through his mind at once.
“I…” he said with a broken voice, “I don’t know if I’ll be fine… I was supposed to survive if I made you fall in love with me, but… I don’t feel any better, even after you said that and I kissed you.”
He coughed. And coughed. And then coughed more…
I realized what was happening at that moment.
Trunks didn’t have any normal illness from Namek. He had Hanahaki, the same illness that Bulma had had for Vegeta when I was a child… and it was all my fault.
But I didn’t understand… From what I learned from Bulma, Hanahaki was healed when the unrequited love was returned. And I loved Trunks, deeply.
So why was he still sick?
Although… The planet he went to was New Namek. It was a planet similar to the original, not the same one. Maybe, all this time, he had a disease similar to Hanahaki… which however, did not work in the same way.
And now, we had to find the real cure before it was too late.
Trunks was writhing in pain from coughing so much, his lips dripped blood and crystalline petals falled from them, they looked just like the flower he showed me. His ki… was weakening. I remembered all the times the androids attacked, how I could feel all the ki of the innocent people collapsing like buildings.
He was dying in front of me.
I walked over to Trunks and lifted him off the sidewalk, flying with him in my arms to go get help, so he wouldn’t have to waste the little energy he had left.
I didn’t know where to go. The Dragon Balls couldn’t cure diseases. What was I supposed to do?
I decided to go find Bulma, since she had given him some treatment before. I flew at full speed and saw Trunks’ eyes closing, he was trying hard not to faint.
“We’re almost there. Hold on… please.”
Trunks muttered something I couldn’t understand.
***
We arrived at Capsule Corporation in a matter of minutes.
“Bulma! Vegeta! Someone!” I exclaimed as I entered, “It’s Trunks! He’s very sick!”
Bulma and Vegeta appeared immediately, Bulma brought her hand to her mouth in worry and ran towards Trunks. Vegeta stared at him, as if he was having terrible flashbacks.
“Idiot! Just prove that you love him!” Vegeta said.
“I already did that!” I said, my voice shaking. Tears were streaming down my face.
“What…? And he didn’t get cured?”
“No…”
“Hurry, let’s go to the lab. You’ll be fine, son. Hang in there…” Bulma said.
***
We went to the lab and placed Trunks on a bed. His mouth and collar were stained red, the flowers in his throat made his breathing come out in a hiss. He squeezed his eyes shut in pain.
“What do we do?” Vegeta asked.
Bulma thought for a moment.
“We have no choice but to take away the flowers with nanorobots…”
“But if you do that, he’ll never be the same!” Vegeta exclaimed.
"It’s better than him dying!" she replied, with tears in her eyes.
She opened a drawer and took out a capsule, opened it, and from the smoke came out a small box of nanorobots.
“What are you talking about? What are you going to do?” I asked.
They explained to me that they would insert these nanobots into Trunks’ throat to remove the spores of the… ‘Hanahaki’, and the flowers that grew inside him… but that could have terrible side effects. It could affect his emotional ki permanently, and he would never love again.
We knew it was a very difficult decision. But we didn’t want him to die…
Trunks opened his eyes upon hearing that.
“Mom…”
“Trunks… Do you want the surgery?”
Trunks looked at the three of us with a thousand emotions in his eyes. With fear. With sadness. With love. Maybe it would be the last time he would feel that last thing.
He nodded.
“Yes… it is necessary that… I live to protect the world…” His eyes filled with tears. “But I want you to know… that I love you very much.”
“We love you too,” Bulma said.
Vegeta crossed his arms. He still frowned as usual, but not as much.
“She’s telling the truth,” he said.
“I love you too, Trunks,” I answered at last.
Bulma began to prepare things for the surgery… but Vegeta and I looked at each other at the same time as we noticed that Trunks’ ki was weakening even more quickly.
“The boy is dying. Even the weakest humans don’t have such low ki.”
Bulma frowned.
“There… everything is ready. Trunks, drink this.”
Bulma gave him a small bottle of water containing the nanobots, and Trunks drank from it with difficulty.
“We must wait for them to act. It won’t take long.”
The three of us sat around Trunks. Bulma took his hand, and I ran my hand through his hair. It hurt so much to see him suffer like this.
“You’ll be okay,” I said, “I’m here. Nothing will ever separate us again.”
“I…” He pressed his eyebrows together sadly. “I… really… tried to make that true.”
And then… like a candle that has completely melted…
Trunks’ ki disappeared.
There was silence. No ragged breathing. No pulse. Just silence.
“Trunks?” Bulma asked. “Son. Son, please. Don’t close your eyes.”
Her voice cracked, and she continued to beg Trunks to wake up until her words were incomprehensible. It reminded me of my own mother at the moment when—
No. It wasn’t the same. Trunks… wasn’t dead.
He wasn’t dead, was he? That couldn’t be happening.
He was the strongest… this wouldn’t kill him…
Hanahaki was cured by reciprocated love. And I loved Trunks. So he would be okay. He would be okay! Right?
“Trunks! Wake up!” I exclaimed desperately.
“Boy, stop this nonsense! Those robots will take your flowers away! Don’t give up now!” Vegeta said.
Trunks had stopped moving. He was no longer tense, as if his soul had already left his body.
“Trunks…” I hugged him, crying. “Trunks, please! I love you… please, please don’t leave us.”
Vegeta was silent.
“It’s too late. He’s already gone,” he murmured, ”I can’t feel his ki.”
“Shut up!” Bulma exclaimed, “T-the robots- they’ll take it away from him! They’ll take it away from him!”
Bulma put her hands on her face and started crying. Vegeta hugged her.
He was right… Trunks was gone.
***
Trunks POV
I woke up on the ground. When I opened my eyes, I saw a blue and orange sky, it was dawn.
I sat up on the floor. I didn’t feel weak anymore, I could inhale and exhale as deeply as I wanted without it hurting. I touched my mouth and my fingers didn’t come out bloody this time.
I remembered the last words I had heard.
’You’ll be okay. I’m here. Nothing will ever separate us again.’
Then… I realized what was happening. I had died… Was this Heaven?
I looked around. I was in a green field surrounded by hills, an endless field. A field full of Raunuka flowers. I clenched my jaw and stepped on them. Those damn flowers had taken everything from me…
“Damn it!” I screamed. My voice echoed and didn’t seem to come from me. “Why? Why…”
I started crying. Nothing I did now could change what happened. I had done everything to save the world, and I couldn’t even live in it. What would happen to my family? Would they be okay?
And Gohan… What would happen to him? I shouldn’t have kissed him. I shouldn’t have left him with that bitter memory before I left forever.
I fell to my knees in the flowers. Horrible, stupid flowers. After a long while of crying like that, I looked around again, wondering what the hell I would do now.
In the distance… I saw a tree with two swings. There were two teenagers swinging in them.
I stood up and walked towards them.
“Hello? Do you know how to get out of here?”
But the closer I got, the further away they got, as if I was walking in the other direction. So I was left with only the image of them.
They were two children identical to each other, but the boy had black hair and clothes, and the girl had blonde hair and blue clothes. They slowly stopped swinging and looked at me. I would recognize those blue eyes anywhere…
I recoiled in fear as I recognized them.
They were Androids 17 and 18, but they looked… younger.
Human.
Then someone put their hand on his shoulder and I flinched, then turned around to see who it was. An orange gi… crazy black hair…
“M-Mr. Goku?”
He smiled at me serenely.
“Yeah, it’s me. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? The last time I saw you was when you were just a baby.”
“Yes…” I looked down. “If you are here… that means I am really dead. Although I don’t understand why the androids are here too, they don’t have souls, and they should go to hell…”
Goku chuckled.
“You’re wrong about those two things, Trunks. Your time hasn’t come yet…”
“Really?”
Goku nodded.
“That’s right. An’ the androids did have souls. They weren’t born as robots, nor to destroy. That’s why I’m here, to explain to you the truth of everythin’ that happened… of why the world was destroyed.”
“And after I know the truth… will I be able to return to life?”
“Exactly! So don’t worry.”
I smiled, relieved. But I was pretty scared by it all.
“Come on. I’ll tell you everythin’.”
The place around us changed. Suddenly… we were in Gohan’s house, but it looked different. The furniture that I had seen worn out was new. We were in the past.
I followed Goku as he led me through the house. He had a glowing aura around him, and I noticed I did too as I looked down at my feet. We were like ghosts.
We walked until we reached Gohan’s living room, and we saw that Chi-Chi was sitting there alone. She had a hand on her face, and she seemed to be thinking about something.
“I’m sure you already know Chi. She was my wife… an’ she was like that the year I spent on planet Yadrat, after defeatin’ Frieza. She spent that year without seein’ me, only with Gohan.”
As I listened to Goku’s explanation, I noticed that there was a flower on the table. It was a normal flower, but some of its petals… had become transparent.
“When I went to Namek, I also got Hanahaki. When I returned to Earth, Chi had already gotten used to my absence. She didn’t love me anymore… you should know what that means.”
“Was… was the disease that killed you…?”
Goku nodded with a sad but accepting smile.
“That’s right. I died because of Hanahaki. Love is like a plant, you know? Once it grows, it will stay just as tall. But that doesn’t mean you should stop takin’ care of it.” Goku looked at the Chi-Chi from the past. “I never blamed her for what happened to the Earth after I died. But she knew why I got sick, and she never stopped blamin’ herself. She let herself fall into sadness thinkin’ that was all she deserved. Which isn’t true.”
“You’re right.”
“I can’t tell her that because I’m here, but she really needs to hear it. When you come back to life, could you tell her?”
I nodded.
“Of course.”
Goku smiled at me. Then, the scenery in front of us changed again.
We were in a completely unknown place for me. A small house that was nevertheless full of life. There were toys lying around, walls painted with crayons, drawings stuck on the fridge… There was a woman who seemed to be a mother of some children according to what was around her. She was reading while humming. But rather than seeming calm about it, it was as if she was forcing herself to remain calm. Her true nervousness was noticeable in the way she kept looking at her wristwatch.
“They should be home by now,” the black-haired woman muttered.
“Don’t be paranoid, they must be talking to the neighbors’ kids,” said a blond-haired man, “They’ll be back soon.”
“Androids 17 and 18 were once humans,” Goku said.
I stared at the scene in shock. So they were the parents of the androids…
“They were called Lapis and Lazuli. Twins. But one day… they were kidnapped.”
The scene changed, now we were in a dark street. Lapis and Lazuli were running from someone, holding hands.
“We’re almost home!” Lapis said, trying to comfort Lazuli.
“No… I don’t think we’ll make it…”
Men in military uniforms with an emblem with two R’s blocked the children’s path.
“You’re coming with us! The doctor needs someone to experiment on.”
“No! Please! We want to go home!”
But the Red Ribbon men didn’t listen to them. They knocked them out and took them away as if they were nothing.
And suddenly, Goku and I were in Doctor Gero’s laboratory. The teenagers had become the bloodthirsty androids I knew because of his experiments.
“Doctor Gero created those androids to kill you, right?” I asked Goku.
“That’s right. He took the lives of those children in an attempt to take mine… not knowin’ that I was already dyin’ of Hanahaki. They couldn’t finish me off because of that. Doctor Gero hadn’t programmed what the androids should do if a situation like that were to occur. So because of that programmin’ error… they didn’t know how to continue with the existence that had been forced upon them. They lost all purpose, and…”
We were in a destroyed world. In a city on fire.
“What happened, happened. Lapis and Lazuli’s parents never saw their children again. Not until they came back as androids and killed them, without recognizing them. The doctor took all their humanity out of them.”
I fell silent. I had always thought the Androids were pure evil, but at one point, they were just scared children like me.
“Love is like a plant, an’ when you don’t take care of it, somethin’ else can grow… cruelty. An’ a world full of cruelty destroys itself. This is somethin’ you must never forget, Trunks…” Goku looked at me with a serious expression. “A hero must not only be strong in battle. He must know how to love. He must know how to stop cruelty… because that, an’ the lack of empathy, are what already destroyed the Earth, and could destroy it again.”
I nodded seriously.
“I see. So that’s the truth that the Hanahaki wanted to show me… this was what I really needed to see, not just a reciprocated love. Thank you very much, Mr. Goku.”
We returned to the place where I woke up: the Raunuka flower field. In the distance, I could still see Lapis and Lazuli. I looked at Goku.
“Go with them.”
That’s what I did. This time, when I walked towards them, I managed to get close. They looked at me sadly. I bowed to greet them.
“Hello…”
“Hello… Trunks. We’re sorry… for everything we did. Our souls weren’t in control of our own bodies… only our programming,” Lazuli said.
“I know that nothing can take away the pain of the damage of what we did… but we are happy that at least you were able to rebuild what we broke,” Lapis concluded.
I smiled with a lump in my throat.
“It’s okay. I’m sorry you lost your normal lives. I… forgive you.”
The twins smiled at me. Then, they began to glow and fade. Their souls could finally rest…
The swings they were sitting on became empty, and they turned into a deep blue flower. I carefully took it in my hands and looked at it. It was beautiful.
It had the scent of every beautiful thing on Earth, every happy moment, every fight won.
I smiled, tears in my eyes, and seeing a shadow on the grass, I saw that Goku was in front of me. I looked at him.
“It’s time for you to go back home.”
“Alright. It was nice meeting you, Mr. Goku.”
Goku smiled at me, and put his hand on my shoulder. His hand started to glow, and everything started to blur. My soul was slowly returning to my body.
“Same here. Tell my family and friends that I love them.”
***
Gohan POV
Trunks still didn’t move, and I kept holding him, not stopping crying for a moment. Then… I felt a ki. His ki.
I let go of him, and stared. I stayed still to see if it was real or if I had imagined it.
Slowly but surely, he started breathing again. After a moment, he inhaled sharply and sat up straight. He put his hand on his chest, and all the petals in his mouth turned into glittering dust and disappeared.
“Trunks!” we all exclaimed, “You’re alive!”
Trunks was crying too.
“I am!” he said happily, then grimaced. “Mom, what did you give me?”
“I had given you the nanorobots…”
He touched his throat.
“Eugh. It feels weird.”
“Just throw them up or something,” Vegeta suggested. He wiped his eyes with embarrassment.
“Guys… when I was on the other side, I talked to Goku. He told me the truth about everything…”
“Really? What did he say to you?” I asked.
“Well, first, I think you should tell your mom and the others to come here.”
***
Later, we were all gathered around Trunks. He told us that Goku had died from Hanahaki, and that the androids were teenagers who were kidnapped by Doctor Gero and turned into these monsters due to a programming error.
“We must never let cruelty grow like that again on this new Earth,” Trunks said determinedly, “And the last thing Mr. Goku said was… that he loved you.”
My mother, Piccolo, Vegeta, Bulma and I smiled.
“And to you, Mrs. Son… he told you that none of what happened was your fault.”
Chi-Chi sniffled. Her eyes shone brightly, as if she too had died and come back to life.
“Oh, Son Goku…” She smiled. “You don’t know how calm it makes me feel that he said that.”
“Mom…”
I gave my mom a hug. We were finally going to be okay…even if things wouldn’t be the same as before. But we would find a new way to be happy… surrounded by our loved ones, without having to fight to the death. Not anymore.
***
Now that Trunks was okay, we all left the lab. Trunks stayed behind for a moment though, as he was wiping the blood off his clothes. I waited for him at the door until he came out.
We looked at each other with a smile.
“So… Nothing will ever separate us again?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I replied, and intertwined his fingers with mine. “I love you, Trunks.”
“I love you too.”
He kissed me again, but not out of fear, not to survive. It was a soft kiss, with confidence. When we parted, I put my forehead on his, just feeling his presence for a little while longer.
If this was going to be the rest of my life, then all the pain was worth it.
art by realidadcaotica
***
Deep blue flowers and Raunuka flowers grew in the garden of Capsule Corp, where we would celebrate my birthday… the first in a long time to not take place in the midst of destruction.