Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Reflection ❯ Chapter 1

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The alarm jars me from another nugatory dream, ousting me from my lonely double bed to stumble to the bathroom for a scalding shower. As the droplets pelt my skin, only to bead together forming rivulets which cascade down my chiseled body until they merge to form my own miniature Charybdis upon reaching the drain, I simply remain unmoving. Yes, I know such inaction is a waste of a precious commodity. Honestly, I could not care less. These moments represent a few of my last minutes of refuge before the world derides my very existence once more.

When I end my personal torrent, I do not rush forth to confront my next task, preferring the solace of my humidly hazy confines a few moments longer. Yet, a wise man once noted, To everything there is a season, and A time for every purpose. I can not hide in my sanctuary of steam in perpetuum.

Gathering my courage, I open the door, reaching for a tattered towel with which to wrap my waist and hips. Without allowing time for deliberation, I approach the faux marble-topped vanity and sink, lifting my eyes to gaze into a stained, chipped and water-spotted mirror. As I peer around the obstructions, I encounter a face; yet, it is not my own. The atramentous eyes and mussy, recalcitrant locks are not mine. The sinewy torso and even the complexion enveloping it, though vexingly familiar, are not my own.

Exactly whom do I see when peering into a reflection? I see him my father.

I see a man who was willing to fight and die for the universe's sake repeatedly. Yet, he balked at the very notion of living with an ardently faithful wife who adored him beyond measure and always kept food and their bed prepared should he meander homeward.

I see a man who cared more for training himself and random strangers in the martial arts, than assisting the mother of his two sons in their edification.

I see a man I never met until I was seven-years-old, because he was too preoccupied with trivial pursuits of fighting pleasure in the afterlife to return to our lowly plane. Of course, before everyone I knew had finished basking in his effulgence, we had traded places I had, along with all other occupants of Earth, died while he gaily entered the greatest competition he had known.

I see a man whose supposed presence was as dearth and loathsome as his years of absence. Though he ate copiously, slept stentoriously and made love chronically to my mother in our home, his involvement in our lives was as ethereal as ever before. Yet, my brother idolized him; my mother indulged him. And I-...? I simply plastered his asininely, insipidly jocund grin onto my own face. And, why not? From my earliest recollections, everyone has averred indefatigably about me being exactly like him.

What was I to think? To be like my father was to be adored, though never recognized as a separate, sentient being, only as a deficient duplicate. Were I not like my father-....? I was always too terrified to consider those ramifications.

Yet, the day arrived when the notion of distinguishing myself became overwhelming. Mother cried for him that day. She desperately attempted to hide that fact from me. I could only hear her tears for a short time before putting aside my college application and going to her aid. As I stepped onto the threshold of their room, her eyes darted toward me. Before her eyes were clear enough to discern a difference, her demeanor allayed. She thought I was him, the one for whom she wept. Confirmation came as she called me by his name.

Disgusted by his inattention and the entire dolor it wrought for those who knew him, I left straightway. I could no longer endure observing the masochistic forbearance, even to the point of worship, which my family and their associates extended to that man. If this was an example of love and how people perceived me, I desired nothing more than to quit them all! I packed a few days' clothes and all the money I had saved, and I left.

I never returned.

Still, as I smear shaving cream from a rusted can onto my face, I know whose image will be awaiting me when I am done.

I may look exactly as he does, but I will never become as he. Perhaps eventually, they will come to see that simple truth:

I am Son Goten.