Chapter 24: The First Flowers of Whatever

"Thank-you-for-calling-the-Son-residence-this-is- Goku-speaking."

Goku answered the phone in the over-rehearsed sing-song manner of a seven-year-old. Chichi smiled.

"Hi, Goku. Is Raditz there?"

"Is that you, Chichi? Do you mean here-here like right now, because no he's not, or do you just mean here like during half-term because yes to that one."

"Oh, um, yes. It's me. I just meant over half-term. I was just calling to see if you both wanted to come to the opening of our re-furbished restaurant. There are some seats for friends and I know you both appreciate good food."

"Wait a minute. Chichi. Hold on." He sounded urgent so Chichi stayed silent. "You have a restaurant?"

She frowned, but unfortunately he couldn't see her. "Yes. Remember, we have guest accommodation and hold weddings on the grounds and things. Of course we have a restaurant."

"Wow." He breathed it with such awe Chichi found it hard to stay annoyed at him for either forgetting or never making the deduction.

"Can I take that to mean you'll both be there?"

"There is no way you could keep us out."

"Great." Chichi gave him the date, time and address and hung up. Now even if Lunch and Maron totally screwed up her life, at least for the duration of half-term her father would think she had close friends.

Honestly, though, the way she'd imagined the phone call going had been different. She'd sort of imagined that Raditz would have answered it and she would have coolly and calmly invited him to the dinner, forgetting to mention Goku. He would have arrived in a suit, carrying champagne, and she would have pretended to be surprised Goku wasn't there, like it was all a misunderstanding. They would have had a wonderful dinner, talking and getting along just like they had at that party. After that the dream got a little frisky and didn't really need thinking about during the daytime.

In the middle of the night Chichi awoke in a sweat from a dream of the very non-frisky variety.

Raditz and Goku had come to the dinner and been seated at the table with Chichi and a couple of other teenagers she knew to be the children of investors, critics or local tourism business owners. But instead of one empty seat, for her father to use if he wanted to join them for a bit during his circulation of the room, there were two. Goku had looked over at the empty seat, then back at Chichi with big, sad eyes.

"Where's Haski?" he'd asked.

"We had a fight," Chichi had answered, lamely. "She didn't invite me to a party and now I'm not inviting her."

"She's your best friend and she must be really alone right now."

"We've been growing apart for a long time now, I just didn't see it."

"You don't have to be her best friend for your whole life. Maybe you'll never see her again after high school, but you need to decide what sort of person you are and what sort of friend."

Then he'd smiled and started eating and Chichi woke up.

"Damnit, Goku." Chichi was aggressively composing a polite text message while cursing Goku. Her dream was all the same things she'd gone back and forth saying to herself, but now she had to imagine them being said by Goku while he was looking like a kicked puppy.

Haski probably couldn't even come. Stupid dream Chichi should have just told dream Goku Haski couldn't come. Then awake Chichi wouldn't have to be awkwardly inviting Haski to a dinner while trying to skirt around the whole expulsion thing.

Text finished, Chichi put her phone on the kitchen table and turned to the counter to get started on making her dad some pancakes. She'd just poured the first one when her phone went off. Her father came in just in time to rescue the pancake and make his own breakfast while Chichi went to her room and listened to her big, tough, nothing-can-faze-me friend sob into the phone for three hours.

"What would you do if I dropped out of school?"

Mrs. Briefs laughed. "Oh, Bulma honey! You're so smart, you won't drop out. I know you'll pass everything with flying colours."

Bulma groaned. "Mum! I meant if I dropped out on purpose, like if I just left. Obviously."

Her father put down his newspaper and twitched his moustache thoughtfully. "Well, honey, if you wanted to travel or start a business or move straight on to university instead of finishing high school, those are all options. You're an intelligent young lady and we'll support any choice you make."

"Oh my god." Bulma pushed away her plate and stood. "You are both impossible!" She ran up to her room and hurled herself onto her bed. She lay there and stared at the ceiling, waiting for them to come up and ask what was wrong, even though she knew they wouldn't. She made some loud fake crying noises, but they'd both still be downstairs eating breakfast so they wouldn't hear her.

She hated coming home for holidays. It wasn't that she hated her home or her life or her parents. She just hated the feeling that if she weren't there nobody would particularly notice or care. This was the sort of mood she got in when she would always, always get back together with Yamcha, just out of boredom or a need to be noticed. She turned her phone over and over in her hands. She couldn't call Yamcha.

She texted Maron and Lunch, but didn't get a reply immediately so she tried Goku, then resorted to Krillin. Twenty minutes and a few more casual friends later she was feeling even more invisible than when she'd started.

"Okay," she told the ceiling. "Last resort. If there is one person in the world absolutely guaranteed to be spending their Saturday at home sitting at a desk with their computer and their phone..."

'hi saw wikipedia article on micropenis wanted to know if u have a fav photo of self to be edited in or i can just choose 1 myself'

"That is my most beautiful work ever," she told the phone, and hit send. Sure enough, her phone pinged almost immediately.

'this is a very transparent attempt to get me to undress for you. unfortunately you have nothing i would want to see in return.'

Bulma laughed. Vegeta was a douchebag but at least he paid attention to her, however hard he tried not to. She couldn't blame him. She was pretty charismatic and irresistible. Except apparently to all the morons ignoring her texts, but whatever.

'true your body is medically interesting bc micropenis but mine is just perfect. what r u doing this fine halfterm saturday?'

'you do a good job making it appear hideous then. my brother and i are out today.'

Well, that was interesting. If he'd just said 'out' she would have assumed he was texting while he ran distance, but the most physically demanding thing Tarble had ever run was a dishwasher. "I'm going to call him," she told the ceiling. Saying it out loud made it sound less crazy. You could call people you knew. That was a thing.

He even answered it and everything.

"Hi," she said.

"Hello." He kind of sounded like he was torn between telling her to fuck off (because he wanted her to fuck off) and being polite (because he'd been so heavily drilled in telephone etiquette).

"Are you really out with your brother? Where are you?"

"Yes. We're in Parsley City."

"That's so close to West Capital. You should come up here!"

"Why would I want to do that." Grammatically it was a question, but his tone left no doubt he was just expressing the utter ridiculousness of the idea. Bulma decided anybody studying Latin should really have more respect for grammar than that, so she treated it as a question.

"Um, because it's awesome? You guys don't get out much, right? So you probably haven't been up here a whole lot. I can show you guys the best places to eat and I bet Tarble would go ape-shit for the art and music supply stores in town."

She could hear Tarble talking in the background. He must have overheard her. Hooked! Now she just had to reel them in. God, she really was desperate for attention, wasn't she.

"Seriously, I'm not trying to make you go shoe shopping with me or anything. I'll just show you guys around with the benefit of my local knowledge. I know where everything is, I swear." She tried to think of something Vegeta might like to see and couldn't come up with anything that wasn't sport or study related. "I know a couple of foreign-language bookstores and I think one of them might be Russian? I don't know if you really have any relaxing hobbies like stamp collecting or shit, but you could get like a fun novel from there and then it's like study as well because you're using your language? I don't know."

He didn't say anything for a while, but she could hear Tarble still chattering in the background. The silence was unfortunate because it gave her time to consider just how pathetic it was that she needed so badly for this friendless prick to come and cheer her up. A friendless prick with whom she had shared the two worst kisses of her entire life, no less. How had sixth form gotten so much more pathetic than fifth already?

"All right. Where can we meet you?"

"You can just park at Capsule Corp. It'll be in your GPS as a landmark."

"We have to take the train. A driver brought us into town."

Bulma made an incredulous expression and thought a few choice things about how over-protected the Königs were before coming to a minor realisation. "This is going to get you two in a lot of trouble, isn't it?"

"My parents won't be happy with me."

Maybe she would be more sympathetic if she'd ever had that problem, but she hadn't, so she wasn't. "Just get off at Central, then. I'll wait right down near where you come off the train because I'm going to guess neither of you has ever utilised metro rail."

Chichi wanted to take her time and do her makeup properly, fix her hair, make sure everything was perfect. She'd printed makeup and hair tutorials from the internet and everything.

Instead, Haski had turned up hours early for dinner, ready to talk. Chichi found some new tutorials and did Haski's makeup, to cover up her puffy eyes and splotchy skin from crying. They did their hair to match, which was cute but meant Chichi didn't look unique and stand out the way she'd hoped. She did her own makeup quickly. This wasn't the evening she'd planned.

"I think they're going to send me to one of those hush-hush schools for 'troubled' rich kids," Haski explained as she pulled a curler from her hair. "It's not so much that I'm pissed over getting kicked out, but to end up booted over something I didn't do, when I've orchestrated so much shit for real."

"Some people believe you. They're trying to get you back in." Chichi didn't bother elaborating on the fact that the people who believed Haski seemed to have decided Chichi was responsible, as though she didn't have anything better to do than orchestrate elaborate frame-ups to get rid of people she didn't like. Honestly, if she had the time and inclination to waste her efforts on a scheme like that Haski would be one of the only people left at the school. She'd keep some of the drama club, of course, since she'd need them to stage a production. Maybe even Krillin could stay, he hadn't been so bad lately. And Goku could probably stick around.

Haski shrugged. "I don't want to return and they're glad to see the back of me. I just want to know that my friends don't think I'm a liar and Bulma doesn't think I would genuinely try and steal shit she cares about. And that she didn't intentionally make it up or something."

"I don't know what Bulma thinks. We don't really talk."

Haski laughed and ran a brush through her new curls. Chichi did the same but her hair didn't achieve the same runway volume.

"Goku's going to be at the dinner tonight and he hangs out with her a lot. He might be able to tell you if she thinks you're innocent." This might work out well, actually. Haski could entertain Goku with her aura of conflict and Chichi could entertain Raditz with her sparkling wit.

"Oh, cool. I didn't know you were such good friends with him."

Chichi shrugged. "I think everyone's friends with Goku."

This was amazing.

Tarble hardly ever got to go into West Capital. Their place was out in the countryside, so it was a fair trip to get into the city. Usually, when he or his brother went into town it was just to Parsley City, which wasn't tiny but it wasn't a huge metropolis like West Capital. His parents had properties scattered across the country, including a very nice flat in West Capital, but Tarble never got to stay there for the same reason Tarble never got to do half the other stuff he wanted to do: Vegeta.

Any time Tarble suggested a day or a weekend in town it was 'no, we can't disrupt Vegeta's study' or 'no, Vegeta needs to train' or 'no, Vegeta has competitions this weekend for cross country/track/rugby/polo/one of the other millions of things we are always so busy paying attention to him for'.

And if you'd asked him before approximately right now, Tarble would have always said Vegeta was way too uptight to break schedule and do something fun.

Not that he looked like he was having a whole lot of fun. Tarble was loving the train. He was people-watching, drinking in the differences between the people in this train carriage and the people he normally met. Vegeta was people-watching too, but it was more of a paranoid hyper-vigilance. He was probably expecting them to start committing crimes at any moment, driven to violence and theft by their socio-economic status. Vegeta didn't get out a lot.

"You look weird," Tarble whispered to him. Vegeta was perched on the very edge of his seat, making as little physical contact as possible with the train.

"We get off at the next stop," Vegeta replied, but failed to address the fact that his awkwardness was embarrassing Tarble.

Getting off involved an unusual amount of jostling, which would have bothered Tarble if it hadn't been so amusing to watch his brother trying not to punch any of the jostlers. Their guide clearly agreed, because when they found Bulma she had a big, slightly malicious grin on her face and she tried to pat Vegeta on the cheek.

"Thanks for offering to show us around," Tarble said.

"No problem. Hey, I'm figuring since you guys are here so late we might as well spend the afternoon seeing sights and then we can go to a party. You can head back home in the morning." Tarble's eyes must have lit up because she gave him a thumbs up. "You know, if you're going to get in trouble for coming up here anyway you might as well really enjoy it. In for a penny, in for a pound."

Vegeta started to protest but Tarble cut him off. "That sounds great. We like parties."

Bulma snorted and punched Vegeta in the shoulder. "Sure you do."

"Stop touching me."

Tarble walked a few steps behind them, watching his brother and Bulma bicker. He didn't know Bulma very well. She was one of the more prominent fixtures in the form above his, and he'd noticed her in amongst the ridiculous number of people Vegeta had invited to Tarble's birthday, but up close she wasn't quite what he'd expected.

She was tacky, Tarble decided. She wore too much jewellery and not enough clothes and she laughed too loud and sometimes snorted and she kept insulting Vegeta, which was not okay with Tarble. The only person who should be complaining about Vegeta (to his face, anyway) was Tarble. Anyone else should just back off, especially girls who made crude jokes and thought it was okay to wear shorts like that with pasty white legs like that.

He was mentally amending his description of Bulma's legs to include some unflattering thigh-related adjectives when she stopped, spun around and grabbed his hand.

"Tarble, this is, I shit you not, the largest art supply store in the country. Do you want to take a look?"

Okay, maybe her legs weren't that fat. Plenty of guys preferred girls that were curvaceous, anyway.

The store was four storeys in an historical old building and Tarble could have spent all afternoon there. Eventually, though, Bulma got bored of posing little mannequins into crude scenes and they moved on.

They visited a lot of places that were exciting for Tarble. Much more so than Parsley City, West Capital was full of art stores, galleries, music stores and quirky little record stores. By the time the sun was starting to go down Tarble was carrying so many purchases he actually protested at the idea of stopping at another store.

"Don't be a whiner, Tarble. Your brother is annoying but he does deserve to stop at one shop that might interest him."

Vegeta sniped back and they bickered all the way down a narrow back lane lined with little shops catering to ex-pats from various countries.

"Here."

They all three squeezed into a tiny bookstore which purported to sell books in Russian and English translations of Russian books. Tarble couldn't fit down the aisles with his bags so he stood uncomfortably at the front and exchanged awkward glances with the man behind the register.

"Our mother was born in Russia but I don't speak it," he said at last, as though he needed to explain himself. The man just nodded and Tarble felt so weird about it he retreated outside and bought a pastry from one of the tiny bakeries. By the time the others emerged from the bookstore the street lamps had come on.

Raditz didn't feel like Orange Star was really right for his little brother, but damn if it didn't net him some good food.

"Great," he enthused.

"Fantastic," agreed Goku.

When they'd been seated there had been little ... what do you call them, like canapés? Anyway, they'd been out on the table just waiting and he and Goku had demolished them. They'd felt a little guilty when the rest of the table turned up but after all, they were sitting with the owner's daughter. Chichi dashed back to the kitchen and in minutes a waiter was out with a new tray for the table.

Ever gracious, the Sons allowed the rest of the table to try the nibblies and instead worked on eating all the bread.

At their table for six there was one empty chair for the owner, in case he dropped by, then there was Raditz himself, his brother, that girl Chichi he'd met at the party, a blonde Goku told him was called Haski and another young man, who Chichi introduced as being the son of some restaurant investors and whose name Raditz had promptly forgotten.

"Do you want to swap seats, Goku?" Chichi was sitting next to him and Raditz assumed Goku would want to sit next to her. He hadn't said anything, but Raditz assumed the first flowers of love were whatever. That was as poetic as Raditz got, but Chichi was Goku's type, physically, and she seemed like a nice enough kid, if a little shy.

"Oh!" Goku spoke first, then swallowed his bread. "Sorry, Chichi. Did we sit in the wrong seats?"

"No, no. Not at all. Stay where you are."

Too polite, Raditz thought. It was silly to be so polite you couldn't even get your guests sitting in the right chairs. "I insist," he insisted. "Goku's your guest, so he should really be next to you. I'm just a hanger-on."

He laughed and Goku laughed and they completed the seat swap. Now Goku could chat with his friend and Raditz could sit next to this Haski chick. She was a little young for him, being one of Goku's classmates, but she had wicked eyes and the neckline to match.

"Raditz." He shook her hand.

"Haski."

"Bread?"

She nodded and fiddled with something silver, rolling it across her knuckles while she held out the other hand for the bread. He reached across the table and his sleeve dragged in the herb butter.

"The fuck?" He looked down at his sleeve, and back at Haski's knuckles. She'd stolen his cufflink. Raditz met her eyes with an incredulous shake of his head. Her smile widened and she closed a fist around the cufflink, dropping both hands demurely into her lap.

Very wicked.

~I wanted to finish all the half-term stuff in this chapter but it was going to get too long. :C Thank you to everyone who reviewed last chapter. You all warm my heart and other sappy stuff like that. ~