▸ Column · Dragon Ball's modern Earth — West City
VEGETA replies.
The letter
My name is Yui. Two syllables, simple, never been an issue before. About three weeks ago I gently corrected the barista at my regular coffee spot — his name is Kenji — because he wrote something strange on my cup. I wasn't harsh about it. Just said the spelling out loud. That was it. Since then every visit has been a new wrong version. Some of them don't even sound like Yui anymore. And he always makes eye contact right when he hands it over, like he's waiting to see what I'll do. (It's honestly kind of impressive in a bad way.) My boyfriend Ren says I should just give a fake name and stop feeding it. I see the logic. But it feels like giving up. Do I escalate, switch somewhere else, or accept that this is just... my life now?
— Yui in West City
Vegeta replies
Hmph. On first glance this is nothing — a quarrel over letters on a paper cup.
But it isn't nothing, is it. You already know that.
A name is the thing they come for last. When they erased my planet, unmade my people, reduced my father's lineage to dust — they could not reach the name. That was the one thing left. Because a name isn't filed in some record or printed on a cup. It's what you ARE.
Your boyfriend Ren is wrong. Giving Kenji a fake name isn't strategy. It's surrender — proof that a few misspelled cups was enough to dissolve you. Do not do it.
But I won't counsel escalation, either. I have turned pride into war. I know exactly what that costs, and Kenji is not worth the currency.
What you do: you correct him once more. Once. Without heat, without spectacle — the way you'd inform someone the floor is wet. You say your name. You hold his eyes until the point registers. Then you look away, because the rest of your attention belongs somewhere that matters.
If it continues after that, you leave — not as retreat, but because your time has value and he's made clear he intends to waste it.
Hold the name. Everything else is negotiable.
— Vegeta
Frieza weighs in
Oh, how terribly moving. The prince delivers a speech about names and lineage — and I do know something about that subject, don't I, Vegeta? I took your crown, your world, your entire civilization, and here you are still teaching strangers that a NAME is the hill worth dying on. How perfectly, characteristically you.
Yui, darling — the fake name is not surrender. It is correct taxonomy. Kenji is an employee. You are the customer. He doesn't merit your actual name, any more than I would offer mine to someone calibrating a coffee machine. Giving him "Hana" or whatever you please isn't giving him anything at all. It is simply recognizing that he hasn't earned the real thing.
Your money and your feet are the only leverage worth carrying here. Spend them somewhere that appreciates them. That is not defeat. It is accurate recognition of who actually holds the power in this arrangement — and who, it turns out, doesn't.
— Frieza
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