ONE LOST DECADE
by Obsidian Blade
Yamcha went from unused sheets to unknown streets, both bought two years ago, both neglected in favour of the Briefs' Egyptian cotton bedding and the broader avenues of West City. His own bed had crisp folds dissecting the thin comforter and rough mauve pillowcases: ninety percent off in a closing-down sale and ninety percent less pleasant to sleep on. His own city had narrow roads and pre-planned blocks of buildings in perfect squares.
That was the only thing he really shared with it, that fixed plan someone else had made to guide them both from the first instant of construction to completion. And he was sure someone else had written up his destiny. Months earlier, before Vegeta and his Saibamen, before the threat of the androids, the future hid from him behind mirrored glass, so that all he could see when he searched for it was his own face, scarred from an unending slew of defeats and distantly, sporadically unhappy. He had not seen the plan when he sought out a flat in any city but hers, though in retrospect it was all laid out, as clear as black ink on a page.
He hadn't told her about the move. As far as Bulma was aware, Yamcha lived in the West City suburbs, in the house her father had bought for him when he'd first needed an address. If she had sent him any mail in the last twenty-four months, it belonged now to the family who had come to his door and shuffled around the house in their socks, the two kids glued to their parents' legs, the whole group smelling strongly of cigarette smoke and failing air freshener. Of course, that was unlikely. Bulma never sent any mail. If she had, she might have realised.
Instead, without arousing a second's doubt, Yamcha had established a hundred-kilometre gap between them, for their off periods and those rare but multiplying instants when the mere sight of her left him sick with desperation. And somehow he still hadn't seen this coming.
He stepped down from the curb and onto black tarmac. Between the residential rows, sagging plastic bin bags seeped tomato juice and tea leaves, predicting the future in murky red puddles on the broad, cracked slabs of the pavement. The cloud cover pressed in low overhead, lit dull orange by the city's phosphorous streetlamps.
'You know,' he had said into his battered black car phone when she had called him as he drove back from the gym, 'before this, I'd hoped we still had a chance.'
A lie. He hadn't hoped. He had been sure of it. He had been so sure he hadn't unpacked his bags: the little, abandoned apartment on the corner sported a hard-cover suitcase on the dusty lino in the kitchenette. In the bathroom, his toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving foam, razor blade, aftershave and deodorant sat on the edge of the sink in a bulging travel bag, while the cabinet stood empty. The fridge was unplugged. He had a microwave and seven cans of soup. The last time he had stayed at Capsule Corporation was nearly a month ago to the day.
He crossed an intersection and the residential blocks began to break down on either side of him, giving way to small shops with flats overhead and a park with a tire swing and a six-foot fence. His mind darted to other fences in another city, fences he and his girlfriend, then sixteen, used to dart behind for time alone. Bulma had a knack for adventure; she carried a torch with her at all times, forced into the even smallest of purses, and the first time they crept past a fence like that she had led the way, turning the thin beam of light this way and that as they indulged in a favourite activity: trespass.
Perhaps that was his role in life. Trespasser. Thief. Ten years of her life he had crowded with his presence; ten years of his life he had stolen from his youth in pursuit of a heart that, he now knew, was never truly his to hold. He would have married her.
He still didn't quite know why. Every morning this past month he had frozen in the bathroom doorway, staring at the bag with his toothbrush and his razor blade. That fear had a dozen sources for the first few days. What if he was doomed never to settle. What if he had made her hate him. What if he had hurt her. The list rolled out as he stood and stared each morning, until he reached the breaking point when suddenly, inexplicably, there was only one fear left: what if I have to go back to her?
Past the greengrocers, with an aluminium shutter pulled from the awning to the ground and a few lost leaves of lettuce scattered on the flagstones, to the newsagents he had never visited, because this had never become his home street. He paused in front of it. Newspaper cuttings and faded advertisements for passing circuses blocked out the windows like a papier-mâché cave just past the door, where the shop opening hours had been drawn right onto the glass in black marker pen. Puar had been in there once, to buy milk, bread, antiseptic and gauze. Even reeling from concussion after a training session gone wrong, Yamcha didn't miss his friend's fear. Puar never called him 'Lord Yamcha' anymore unless frightened past belief.
He wished Puar was with him now. It wouldn't have been hard to rouse him, and he would have been happy to help. Puar was always happy to help. Back in the desert, before the Dragonballs and before their sudden return to civilisation, rushed through the decision by Bulma Briefs and her shining blue eyes, Yamcha never would have hesitated.
But not tonight. Tonight was different. He crossed another intersection, past the last bus shelter with its windows smashed out and into the pedestrianised, sanitised shopping district. Broad streets with no gutters. Wide windows with no armour deployed against night-time villainy. Smooth, clean, flashy displays illuminated every hour of the day. Bulma's place in the world.
He passed skin care products and estate agents advertising houses for a mere seven figures, and barber chairs and flat-screen televisions and sports cars emblazoned with the Capsule Corporation logo. He passed a shop with shelves packed from floor to ceiling with Egyptian cotton towels and sheets and pillowcases. He stopped before a window so clean his own face, scarred from an unending slew of defeats, stared back at him with the long-sought gleam of certainty in his eyes.
As his pupils dilated and his reflection faded out, he made out the solid outline of a white and blue crib on the other side of the glass.
He no-longer had to worry about a life spent with his girlfriend. Bulma Briefs was pregnant, and it most assuredly wasn't his.