Bulma felt as though her heart were a drum, pounding madly beside her ears. Every sound in the world vanished, leaving only the sound of her own heartbeat.
Bulma could not look away. The whole world seemed to have stopped—what lakeside forest, what Dragon Balls, what intelligence? All of it disappeared. Her mind was blank, filled with only the figure before her.
"Hmm? You're awake." He-El shook his shoulder-length hair in the lake. The droplets he flung off glimmered faintly beneath the sunlight as he looked toward Bulma.
"Ah?" Bulma stared dumbly. When she saw He-El looking at her, her entire face turned red like a boiling kettle. She collapsed onto the ground and stammered in a fluster, "Y-you... y-you... you know me?"
"What nonsense are you talking about? We only agreed last night to look for the Dragon Balls together." He-El glanced at Bulma and walked toward her.
"Huh? ... Ah? ... You're that wild martial artist!" Bulma sprang up from where she had fallen, pointing at He-El with wide eyes as though she had seen something unbelievable.
Looking carefully, Bulma could still tell that the guy making her blush had roughly the same build as that wild martial artist from last night. His voice was exactly the same too.
So it really was that wild martial artist.
"I'm not some wild martial artist. My name is He-El." He-El swam from the lake to the shore, casually reaching out to catch a thirty-pound carp that had wandered to his feet. Carrying the fish in one hand, he walked naked toward Bulma.
"Ahhh! Why aren't you wearing any clothes?!" Bulma screamed, covering her eyes with both hands. Feeling the fish tail He-El carried flick water droplets onto her hands, she could not help spreading her fingers apart and turning to