"Ah, Mom... Didn't I tell you, I'm going to spar with Vegeta." Son Goku raised his face and grinned, showing his white teeth.
"Are you serious?" Gine quietly wiped his forehead and put his hand down.
"Yes." Son Goku nodded.
"It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter even if he loses! After all, Prince Vegeta is a talented fighter. Except for Mr. Reiz and Broly, no one among us Saiyan should be his opponent." Gine said this, but his tone had softened, as if he was looking for a way out for his son.
"It's okay, I won." Son Goku rubbed his belly, his voice was flat and he didn't mean to show off.
Gine's hand stopped in mid-air.
She blinked and took a while to find her voice. "You... you won?"
"Mom, I'm a little hungry." Son Goku rubbed his belly and changed the topic.
"I'll cook for you right away!" Gine responded almost instinctively, but then, her eyes moved from Son Goku's dusty face to his hands that were rubbing his belly. The phrase "I won" was replayed in her mind, but she couldn't form a reasonable picture.
Kakarot actually defeated Vegeta?
She opened her mouth and swallowed the words again.
She didn't ask, just turned around and walked quickly into the kitchen. The oil pan sizzled a few times, and several dishes were quickly brought to the table, steaming and placed in front of Son Goku.
Son Goku picked up the chopsticks, picked up a large piece of meat and stuffed it into his mouth. His cheeks bulged and he chewed until the corners of his eyebrows and eyes were bent.
"I heard that my mother's cooking was delicious. I didn't realize what it meant at the time, but now I finally understand."
He swallowed the meat in his mouth and smiled at Gine.
"Before?" Gine sat down opposite him, put his hands on the table, intertwined his fingers, and looked at his son's oily little face.
"Yes." Son Goku picked up another chopstick, chewed it twice, put down the chopsticks, and looked a little more serious.
He was silent for a moment, as if considering his words, and then took a breath.
"How should I put it, Mom, actually I am not me."
"What do you mean? What do you mean you are not you?" Gine's fingers on the table unconsciously tightened a bit.
"My real age now is actually fifty-eight." When Son Goku said this, his tone was so calm that he didn't sound like a four-year-old child.
He looked directly into Gine's eyes, his eyes were clear and he did not dodge.
Gine's pupils shrank slightly and he opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
She stared at her son's young face, which had a calmness and determination that she had never seen before.
"I came to this world from our world, although I don't know why this happened..." Son Goku lowered his gaze and looked at his open palm, then raised it again, "But in my world, my granddaughter was already very big, she seems to be about the same age as my current mother."
Gine exhaled slowly, and the intertwined fingers relaxed and tightened.
"You kid, what are you talking about?"
There was a hint of subconscious disbelief in her tone, but more of a cautious inquiry.
"Mom, I'm really not talking nonsense, I'm telling the truth." Son Goku grinned, with a hint of nostalgia in his smile, "Actually, I lived a pretty good life these years on Earth. I had my grandfather, and Grandpa Master Roshi taking care of me... Although I haven't met my parents, my friends were pretty good to me. And I also had Chi-Chi, and later gave birth to two sons."
Gine stared at him blankly, her eyes slowly moving between his brows and eyes, as if she was getting to know a familiar face again.
She could feel that every word her son said carried real weight and was not a fabricated fantasy.
"Kakarot, tell me your story, let mom listen to it."
She took a deep breath, put her hands on the table again, and assumed a posture ready to listen.
Son Goku did not speak immediately.
He picked up the water glass on the table, took a sip, put it down, and cast his gaze on the night sky outside the window, as if searching for a long-distant memory on the dark red sky.
His voice came out from his four-year-old body, low and clear, and one word after another fell into Gine's ears.
He started from the cabin on Mount Paozu, starting with the old man picking up a baby that fell from the sky, telling him chasing wild beasts in the mountains, telling him practicing sweating like rain on Turtle Hermit House at the beach, talking about meeting a girl named Chi-Chi on World Martial Arts Tournament, talking about getting married and having children, the birth of Son Gohan, and talking about how the young warrior in the orange gi grew up in the battle step by step, and how he faced the opponent he still remembers vividly.
Gine listened quietly, his eyes always falling on his son's face.
The corners of her eyes turned slightly red at an inadvertent moment, but she never interrupted his words.
Son Goku suddenly stopped when talking about a certain node.
He lowered his eyes, as if there was a line in front of him that he didn't want to cross.
He didn't continue talking, he just picked up the water glass and took another sip, swallowing the end of the words back into his stomach.
Because he knew in his heart that in the future, he would talk about Raditz.
In that story, Raditz was never resurrected.
Son Goku didn't say this out loud.
He just put the water glass back on the table, looked at the pair of eyes filled with distress and confusion in front of him, curled the corners of his mouth, and gently put the topic aside.
Gine put his hands flat on the table, the veins on the back of his hands were slightly bulging, and his eyes fell on the face of the four-year-old boy opposite who was chewing meat, digesting the long narrative he just said word by word.
She listened for a long time, confirming that the details were perfectly connected. Every name, every battle, and every turn were as clear as if they were engraved in her mind stroke by stroke, and then she finally exhaled slowly and took a long breath.
Kakarot is not talking nonsense.
He really walked into this small body from some future or some other world.
"What happened next?" Gine tucked the scattered hair behind his ears, and his voice was a little softer than before, "Then Vegeta and Nappa came to Earth, and you had a good fight with Vegeta... You said Vegeta was so strong at that time, and you were no match for him?"
Son Goku swallowed the meat in his mouth, placed his chopsticks on the edge of the bowl, and nodded.
"Well, Vegeta was really powerful at that time. With the help of my friends, I barely managed to defeat him, and he finally escaped."
He paused and added another sentence, his tone flat, as if he was talking about something that had happened a long time ago.
"But Vegeta at that time was indeed much better than me."