Unfaithful

She loved him. I swear she did, she did, she did; she loved him and her love was pure and true and... no, it wasn't.

The truth is that she didn't know how to love until her heart was broken. She cheated on him. Ruthlessly, and I'm not just talking about that little Vegeta incident.

Oh, she cheated on him. She'd stopped a long while before he'd proposed, but she had a history. Once a cheater, always a cheater, I suppose. But Yamucha was no innocent. I wanted to believe that she loved him, and I guess I wanted to believe she'd found a decent young man to love so much that I overlooked his infidelity as well. I left them to their own devices, I guess.

But the truth is here and I won't omit or overlook any of the facts because she's my daughter, and because I could've loved him like a son. It could've been wonderful, I swear. But they couldn't.

Oh, Yamucha needed my daughter. Very much indeed. Even now he makes passes at her from time to time, shows a lot about his character, I suppose, that he would have the audacity to flirt with Vegeta's wife, mother of his children and cooker of his food.

Maybe it gives Yamucha some sort of sick thrill to smile kindly and shower the woman he couldn't tame with gifts and such silly things. I am of the mind Vegeta doesn't care, and my daughter is better off with the alternative. He either doesn't notice or care that Yamucha still loves his woman.

Oh yes, that night. Is it necessary to set in pretty words for you romantics, you sadists that find a poor young man's pain to be delightful in the most delightfully twisted way? You know what happened. They were having sex.

One minute, she was my daughter and I was the only man in her life. And then as I stared darkly down the window to the blood red glow of the Gravity Chamber, I saw that she is no longer my daughter and I felt like I truly understood what I had done. It was like I could just reach out and suddenly it all made sense, and suddenly I could feel every mistake with her I ever made and this event was just her screaming out to me that this was all my fault, and when she lost Yamucha, I shouldn't say lost, when she gave up Yamucha, that night, I could swear that that was my daughter giving up a part of her life.

Perhaps I should blame myself like her dear mother does. But I don't. If I failed as a father, I don't feel it could possibly be a direct or indirect cause of such actions. She is by far too independent, by the time he was fourteen she had her own set way of thinking. Nothing was beyond her. So I won't be so arrogant as to even bother think that she didn't know what she was doing, or that it's my fault for not teaching her better.

As her employer, as her father, I could've been there more often. But it was no mistake, no, I don't believe it was a mistake at all that Bulma met that Gokou and got mixed up with all that mess. I quite like Son Gokou. Perhaps a bit-simple, uneducated, but he would've made a fine husband for my daughter. Anyone but Vegeta.

I'm stalling, aren't I? I hate thinking about that night. Of course it's no surprise, a sort of unjust punishment that is self-inflicted, that there is not a day since that I cannot remember seeing my daughter and Vegeta. Together. And I sit at my computer desk, and I frown and I rest one hand on my chin, and the other idle with a cigarette burning, and I think, there was nothing poetic about it. There was no love, no compassion, and at these times, I tell myself, I do, "Maybe that's what she needed."

To not feel loved. I say aloud, to myself, alone in my own coldlaboratory, "Maybe she's scared and she wanted to feel nothing." Sort of a final claim to her independence of mind and body before she gave herself to Yamucha.

But, ah! No. Of course not. You'll say, "No! No! She loved him!"

I know better than you do, I promise, but you won't believe me. After all, I am her father. Only her father. My daughter is not capable of loving. At that point, anyway. She had to know what it was to give everything to someone, unwillingly and willingly at once, and then have it ripped from behind her. My daughter was one of the poor, sad few that needed to feel the pain of heartbreak first before realizing love.

I am a scientist. I am not much of a romantic. But I acknowledge the ordeal as best as I can from afar.

I think it would just about break my heart to learn that my daughter loves him. Every day, I think, "It's out of obligation." And a good part of me wants the man she decided to go run off with to be anyone but Vegeta.

So Yamucha didn't work out. How could she cheat on him? Cheating is a dirty business, and I never much cared for it, never much understood it either. She didn't want both of them; she wanted Vegeta. So why keep Yamucha as a treasure pet? He asked her for her hand, and she accepted. I am not so sure when the affair began, no one really knows how things like these start (except of course sadistic Vegeta, he who knows all), not even Bulma herself; and I am not so sure I want to know. But I do know that my daughter is not above cheating.

How could such a woman, so refined at one instant, be so...

Bulma isn't a bad person, but sometimes she can be a very selfish girl.

Maybe one day I'll tolerate his existence. Perhaps even become fond of the lad.

A sigh, I give up. I can't talk about the night. Yamucha, he was a kind boy. And my daughter hurt him, and it is a pain he lives with every day. She is my daughter, and I will love her forever, but it is she that will have to answer to God when she meets him, and I do hope it will not be soon. It is she that will have to tell God, "Yes, I slept with another man, my fiancé saw us, and my mother saw us, and my husband's best friend saw us, and my father saw us, and I did it because..."

-CL