Chapter 29: Later
They ate in silence. Krillin could see people staring at them with naked surprise, unused to seeing Eighteen in anyone's company but her brother's. Between that and the pressure of not knowing how to make conversation with her, he couldn't manage to do anything but eat and sweat. At least he could blame the latter on the former, as the cafeteria was serving curry.
She neatly placed her cutlery in her empty bowl and looked at one of the exits. This was it. His last chance to make the most of this opportunity and say something scintillating.
"So, um, what's your favourite subject?"
Oh, so scintillating. She looked at him and he could just tell she was thinking how pathetic he was.
"Mine's English literature," he said forlornly. "I've thought about maybe trying to be a writer." She was sure to believe he had a shot after noticing his impressive mastery of the language in her presence.
"Economics."
"Oh." He hadn't expected an answer. "Do you want to be an economist?"
"No."
He looked at his bowl and drummed his fingers on the table. He was obviously going to have to drive this conversation, but she was answering his questions and not getting up and leaving so he might as well just keep soldiering on until she got bored and departed.
"Do you have a particular career in mind?"
"No."
"Your dad's a scientist, right? An inventor, like Bulma's? But you don't want to do that, I take it."
"He is. I have no flair for it."
"What would you do if you could do absolutely anything?" he pushed, looking for some insight into her. "I might not make it as a writer but it's my dream job, do you have one?"
"I see myself as a money manager," she said slowly, "but I would be most interested in doing that within the luxury fashion industry."
"Really?" He sat back thoughtfully. "I wouldn't have guessed that. You're really stylish, but I didn't know you were so interested. That's cool. I think Lunch mentioned once that her stepfather's business portfolio includes a fashion magazine, so if you were ever interested in a tour or talking to some of their senior management I'm sure she could arrange it."
"I don't think Lunch would be interested in setting that up for me." Eighteen looked at the doorway again.
"No, really. Think about it and I can even talk to her if you want. Maybe not right now, while she's in a blonde mood, but there'll be an opportunity again before we graduate. Her stepdad's always trying to get in her good books so it would be no biggie for her."
Eighteen's pale eyes slid back to pierce into him again. "Why would you do that?"
He shrugged. "You don't have to do anything in return. I just thought it might be something you'd like."
"I have to go." She stood up and took her tray.
"Oh. Sure. Let me know if you want me to talk to Lunch, or even one of the other girls with fashion connections. I think Bulma has someone who does custom gowns for her when she goes to fancy shit with her parents, stuff like that." He might have sounded a little desperate, but his window for conversation was closing fast and he didn't know when he'd get to have another talk, such as it was, with Eighteen. Besides, she'd done something nice for Chichi and even though that had just been balancing the books and it wasn't his favour to repay under any circumstances, he liked the idea of someone doing something nice for Eighteen, too. "See you around, I guess."
Eighteen looked at the door then back at Krillin.
"Later."
By the time Goku returned to his dormitory on Saturday evening Vegeta had returned from his visit home and was pulling on his trainers, ready for a run.
"How was your date," Goku teased.
"It wasn't a date," Vegeta said without rancour.
Goku blinked, taken aback by the abrupt about-face from his room-mate's sour attitude all week, but he was quick to recover and jump on the opportunity. "I'm going to run with you, okay? No arguments."
"Fine."
He changed quickly, before Vegeta could change his mind, and soon they were thudding down the trail side-by-side in silence. At their last meet they had crossed the finish line almost together, with Piccolo a few minutes behind. Vegeta was definitely training harder than Goku, at least for this event, but if he could find the time to fit in some more runs to keep up his form over rough terrain, Goku was confident he could take his room-mate over any distance longer than the 1500m, even cross-country. His PB was better than either of them had run last time, and if Goku were honest with himself he thought for probably the first time he'd let his head get in the way of his best performance. When he'd had the chance to pull ahead of Vegeta he'd thought too much about being friends and not enough about winning. He needed to decide whether those were mutually exclusive and, if so, which was more important to him. Not for the first time, he wished they could have played on the same team for something, so that Vegeta would be forced to put aside any resentment over individual events and work together.
Maybe he should learn to ride a horse and take up polo.
Goku had actually talked about just this issue with Chichi earlier in the day, after they'd played tennis with Yamcha and Maron. Chichi was a runner herself, and although she didn't have any close ties at Orange Star she seemed to understand the sentiment to some degree. But after her initial reaction of not caring how Vegeta felt, her suggestion had been for Goku to try entering one of Vegeta's favourite races.
"You don't understand, Chi. I wouldn't do well in an 800m or 1500m. He'd practically lap me."
She rolled her eyes. "That's the point, Goku. You beat him in your events, but he gets to gloat about winning in his. He likes gloating. You wouldn't mind, you're so laid-back."
But he would mind. He would mind a lot, and it was bugging him that she didn't see that. Maybe she thought he wasn't even bothered about having come twelfth at their last meet while she was in the top ten of her own event. He could be a laid-back, friendly guy and also be a winner.
That's right. He could. And he was going to prove it. He was going to make everyone be friends and his team was going to win the Under 18s football championship in May, and he was going to record a PB over 5000m by the end of the school year and he was going to beat Vegeta in the cross-country and he was going to ask Chichi if she wanted to try contesting some competitive events as a tennis partnership.
He was going to kill it.
Goku looked down past his shoulder at Vegeta, slowed his pace for a moment to take a deep breath, and pressed the accelerator, inching past his running partner as they crested a small hill and started down an easy part of the path. He heard Vegeta pick up the pace just behind him and responded in kind. He had to make it back to the boarding house first, and he'd deal with the interpersonal ramifications as they came.
Surprisingly, Vegeta had been relatively casual about the results of their training run. He'd grumbled, of course, but after muttering something about having a long day, he completely let the whole thing drop and Goku hadn't heard a word about it since. He decided it wouldn't be a good idea to run with Vegeta every day and keep beating him, but it was good to know he could do it without completely psyching himself out.
"Gross!" Maron cried, and threw the crusts from her sandwich at Oolong. "Only you."
"Every guy," Oolong insisted, sticking with his story that, from the perfect angle, it was possible to stand in the corridor outside some of the girls' toilets and see under the door of one of the stalls and every male student knew exactly which ones it was and where to stand.
"I've never thought about it," said Yamcha.
"It's not true," Krillin explained.
Bulma gave their piggish friend a look of disgust. "You might be interested in that sort of thing, Oolong, but a real man would never care."
"What would you know about a real man, Bulma? Virgin."
Everyone sighed. Oolong loved to needle Bulma about her lack of experience, as confirmed by Yamcha's lack of contradiction, because her reaction was always so comically outsized.
Today, however, she laughed smugly and tossed her hair around a bit but made no real protest.
Oolong looked lost. Yamcha's jaw dropped.
"B?"
"Hm?"
"You're dating again? And you already-? Who?"
She slung her satchel over her shoulder, settled her sunglasses on the top of her head and stood up, giving Yamcha an imperious look. "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about. I'd better go, I want to get some stuff done in the workshop before my next class starts. See you all later."
She walked off, leaving Yamcha gaping.
"Don't worry, Yamcha," Maron said in a soothing tone. "Some girls still think it's romantic to wait for the right person to come into your life. Maybe it's time to move on."
"Yeah…" he looked kind of sad, and Goku guessed he must still be carrying a torch for Bulma, even if it had mostly gone out by now. "I should be off, too. I promised Puar I'd help with their programming assignment because I did well on the same one last year."
He trudged off in the opposite direction from Bulma and the rest of the group approached the rest of their lunch with a somewhat puzzled mood.
"Hey," Goku said after a few minutes.
"Yeah?" Krillin replied.
"Would any of you object if I asked Chichi to sit with us at lunch from now on? She's my partner for one of my classes and I think we're going to start playing tennis together seriously so it would be really helpful for me, and I don't think she has a group now that Haski's gone."
"More eye candy's always welcome," Oolong said.
Maron shrugged and Lunch said she didn't think Chichi was any worse than the rest of the idiots already sitting there. Goku looked at Krillin, who had taken a new bite of pasta salad when Goku asked and was taking his time to chew extra long.
Finally, he swallowed, and Goku increased the pointedness of his looking.
"I know you-"
"No," Krillin said. "You know what? I'm okay with it. For real. Maron and I might even appreciate having another theatre nerd around the place, hey Maron?"
She shrugged again. "Chichi's kind of a pain but you know, whatever. I guess I'd feel bad if she was just on her own all the time and she probably won't get in the way."
"Great!" Goku jumped to his feet. "I'm going to go find her right now!"
"I found you," said Bulma, nowhere near the workshop. "Do you always practice through lunch?"
"I eat," Vegeta said, leading a horse back into its stall. "It doesn't take the whole break to eat."
"Is that how you did it?" She inclined her head towards the horse. He looked at the animal and back to her. "Falling off, I mean. Your bruises."
He looked away. "No. It's none of your business."
"You haven't talked to me all week."
"Do we usually talk?"
The horse snorted and Bulma shuffled away from the stall. "We normally talk in the wood, but you haven't been smoking. Don't you think we should talk?"
"No. I don't like talking."
"You don't like anything," she teased.
"That's right."
"You should tell me what happened. I already saw the bruises so if you don't tell me I'm going to assume the worst."
He eyed her suspiciously. "What's the worst?"
"That your dad hit you."
"I told you-"
"Tell me about this." She reached out and touched his chest where she'd seen bruises before. He grabbed her wrist.
"Stop touching me."
"You liked it befo-" he manhandled her into a forceful kiss and as much as her brain wanted to know the truth, her body wanted to know what it was like for him to take the initiative. She could always ask her questions later. She wrapped her arms around his neck and parted her lips for him, trying to ignore the smell of horse, and was surprised when he responded by pushing her up against the stall door and grinding his hips into hers.
She let out a startled "oh!" and pushed him away.
"You don't want to?"
"Um." She blushed, embarrassed that she kind of did want to, even though this was a public place and had a weird smell. "I only had one condom I kept in my wallet and we already used it. Do you want to, or are you just trying to avoid my questions?"
He scowled, but she was used to it.
"Tarble said you went away for the rest of half-term, to stay with Mr. Frieza."
"Tarble doesn't know how to keep his fucking mouth shut."
Bulma leant back against the stall door and crossed her ankles over one another. "I don't think he realised it was a state secret."
"It's not, I just… have you ever met Frieza?"
"Um." She tapped her cheek with her index finger. "I don't know. I've heard of him, he attempted a hostile takeover of Capsule Corporation when it was smaller, so I might have met him as a child, but probably not."
He looked at the floor. "Lucky," he spat.
She uncrossed her ankles and stood up straight. She was filled with the urge to hug him, but if she wasn't offering anything more than sympathy he'd probably just push her away. "You should tell an adult," she said softly. "If he hurt you, people can help. Your parents can help you, or even a teacher. The police?"
"I can look after myself."
"Everybody needs help sometimes." She took his hand and he snatched it back. "If you want to talk I won't tell anyone unless you want me to, but I really think you should tell someone who can actually help. Even the school counsellor, maybe."
He gave her an evil look. "I don't want to talk. That's pathetic."
"It's not pathetic."
"It's humiliating." There was a long pause in which the only sounds were the soft noises of horses in their stalls and the occasional creaking of the old stables building. "I'm a coward."
"Oh, I don't think so." She was startled to hear a statement like that from Vegeta.
"I didn't fight back."
"I don't think anyone expects a seventeen-year-old boy to have to fight back if a grown adult is beating them up."
"I'm not a little boy."
She rolled her eyes and put her fists on her hips. "I didn't say you were little, Vegeta, I pointed out that you're seventeen. Look, if you won't tell anyone then that's your decision but you can't go around thinking it's your own fault." Truth be told, Bulma had no idea what had actually happened. For all she knew, Vegeta had taken a swing at Mr. Frieza and there had been a fight that was as fair as possible between a teenager and a man in his prime, but she doubted it, even knowing that Vegeta's temper had gotten him into fights before, and she didn't think that would make it right anyway. She was no expert, but it looked to her more like someone had grabbed him by the wrist and beaten him around the side while they had him restrained. She'd seen (she flushed, and pretended it was with indignation) all of him and his injuries were very localised. It was an educated guess, but she felt pretty confident in making it. Maybe she was going about communicating it in the wrong way, she was no psychologist either, but she thought it was ridiculous for him to be ashamed of something like that. Mr. Frieza was the one who should be ashamed.
"If I ever do meet him I'll beat him up," Bulma added hotly.
Vegeta snorted, and a little of the tension dissipated. "You couldn't punch your way out of a paper bag, let alone fight an actual martial artist, even an amateur like him."
"You don't know, maybe I'll take it up. Swap tennis for MMA." She curled her hands up into fists and held them in front of her in a boxer's stance.
He smirked, just slightly, and she felt warm. "Even if the school did offer that, you're a terrible athlete, you have no discipline." Less warm now.
"I have discipline." She punched him in the wrong shoulder, he winced, she dropped her fighting pose and hesitated, unsure if she should apologise or pretend it hadn't happened.
"Your reputation in tennis is legendary. Have you ever won a game?"
Okay, ignore it. It was easy to rise to his bait instead, if that's what he wanted. "It's not my fault, the calls just never seem to go my way."
"I don't play often, but I'm given to understand the calls go your way more often if you actually hit the ball inside the white lines."
"You're a jerk," she said, but laughed. Then she felt guilty, because she shouldn't be laughing and playing around and thinking about cute smirks and rough hands and nice butts when he was still in pain from a traumatic experience. She should be offering her support but giving him time and space, that sounded more like it.
She must have had a visible change in expression on this thought, because the tension rose back into his shoulders and his own expression flattened back out. "I have to get changed," he said abruptly. "Class starts soon."
"Oh, okay." What was the appropriate way to end this conversation? A reminder that he should tell an adult what happened to him, or a playfully mean jab like she'd normally say seemed like the main options. She opted instead for "you look nice in your riding clothes," and promptly felt embarrassed to have done so, making her retreat from the stables burning red in the face.
