▸ Column · Modern grounded comic — Dragon Ball universe (West City, Japan-adjacent present day)
FRIEZA replies.
The letter
Kaito and I have been together — or whatever this is — for almost eight months. Three or four nights a week, his gym bag is basically living in my hallway, my mom asks about him by name. And yet he still introduces me to people as "my friend Mei." I've brought it up twice (which honestly felt like twice too many), and both times he made some joke about labels being "too serious" and pivoted to whatever game was on. Last weekend his sister Hana just assumed we were a couple, and he laughed and said we "keep things loose" — while I sat there smiling with my stomach dropping through the floor. I'm 34. I really don't want to spend another year as someone's undefined Tuesday-and-Thursday. Do I give him an ultimatum, or is the fact that I keep having to ask already the answer?
— Mei in West City
Frieza replies
Oh, you poor thing. Let me spare you the mystery — this is a perfectly legible ledger.
You asked where things stood. He laughed and pivoted. You asked again. He laughed and pivoted again. You're now wondering whether asking a third time — louder, with a deadline attached — might produce a different result. That is not an ultimatum, my dear. That is begging with a calendar.
You asked whether having to ask is already the answer. Yes. Obviously. But not for the sentimental reason you imagine. The moment you needed him to grant you a title, you announced your position in this arrangement. He noticed. He simply hasn't told you.
I have had — I confess — some modest experience with beings I considered wholly beneath my notice who nonetheless managed to make me feel the sting of irrelevance. I never once asked them to acknowledge my worth. I vanished, returned considerably more formidable, and rendered the question extinct. There is a lesson in that, if you're the sort who learns.
Stop asking. It has cost you nothing, which is precisely why he has no reason to answer. Walk — genuinely, not as a gambit, because you've decided you are worth more than an undefined Tuesday — or make yourself so impossible to route around that naming you becomes his idea entirely.
Another conversation on this subject I simply cannot recommend. It is exhausting to observe.
— Frieza
Goku weighs in
Look, I've gotta jump in, because that right there is Frieza's whole problem — he sees everything as leverage and position. (That's, uh, kind of why I had to fight him so many times.)
Mei, asking twice doesn't mean you lost. It means you've been scouting sideways, and sideways is easy to dodge. Ask him straight, once, no warming up to it: "I need to know where we stand — for real." Give Kaito one honest shot to step up. I've handed senzu beans to guys who tried to kill me because people can surprise you when you give 'em a fair chance.
If he steps up? Great. If he laughs again, you've got your answer — no strategy needed.
Eat first, though. Seriously. You can't have a hard conversation running on nerves and no food.
— Goku
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