▸ Column · Present-day West City, the Dragon Ball world of Capsule Corp and capsule communicators
BULMA replies.
The letter
My husband left his communicator face-up on the counter while he showered, and it lit up with a message that opened "last night was unforgettable" — from a contact saved as "Plumber — Greg." We have never owned a plumber and I have never met a Greg. So I opened the thread and found four months of nightly messages to a woman named Sloane, plus hotel confirmations on the exact Tuesday nights he swore he was stuck doing "late inventory" at the warehouse. I photographed all of it on my own device, then set his back down screen-down, exactly as I'd found it. Now he's in the next room humming and scrambling eggs, and I've got the whole thing sitting in my pocket. Do I let him finish flipping the eggs, or do I detonate the kitchen this second?
Bulma replies
First — breathe. And hear the most important thing before anything else: the smartest move in this whole letter already happened. You photographed it and put the communicator back screen-down, exactly how you found it. That's not panic. That's stripping the drama off a problem and looking at the machine underneath before you react. Honestly? I'd have hired you on the spot.
Now I have to be straight with you, because I'm the woman who's always telling people a proud, sulky, difficult partner is something you out-stubborn, not something you flee. I married a man who pouts like it's an Olympic event. But "difficult" and "lied to your face nightly for four months" are not the same machine, and I won't pretend they are. You don't manage this one. There's nothing here to out-stubborn.
So: do not blow up the kitchen. A blowup is noise, and noise tips him off before you've got your blueprint — the lawyer, the accounts, those photos backed up somewhere that isn't a pocket. Let him flip the eggs. Eat them. Smile if your stomach allows it. Then go see someone who makes sure you walk out with everything that's yours and nothing that isn't. You confront him holding the plan, not the frying pan.
— Bulma
Frieza weighs in
Bulma. But of course. The woman who builds the machines and then lectures us all about dignity over breakfast. How charming.
Your clever inventor has the frying pan right — vulgar, put it down — and the rest wrong. "Everything that's yours"? Oh, you sweet thing. A court is no more a ledger of fairness than the universe is; "owed" is the favourite word of those already losing. What you hold is the only thing of worth: he does not yet know that you know. That is a throne. A man who files his mistress under "Plumber — Greg" is too small to destroy and too dull to mourn. Don't confront him — outgrow him until the divorce is mere paperwork and his name is one you forget. I've built empires on less leverage. Savor the eggs.
— Frieza
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