Chance Encounter with Gine at the Restaurant, Bardock's Family is Coming Over for a Free Meal

"Gine?"

Gou Kong's fingers, which had been resting lazily on the armrest, suddenly froze. His pupils contracted slightly, and the casual expression on his face instantly stiffened.

He truly had not expected that here, in this high-class restaurant far from the palace, the server taking his order would actually be Bardock's wife—the future mother of Son Goku and Raditz—Gine.

"Oh my gosh! Mr. Gou Kong!"

Gine's cry of surprise was even louder than his.

She hurriedly pressed the ordering tablet to her chest, lightly patted her forehead with her other hand, and a soft, bright smile bloomed across her face, like a rare shaft of sunlight on Planet Vegeta.

She waved hard at Gou Kong, her tail swaying happily behind her. "I knew it was you! What brings you here to eat, sir? Don't tell me you stopped being combat personnel and switched to inspecting logistics?"

Gou Kong looked at her familiar, slightly excited manner, and his tense shoulders slowly loosened. The corner of his mouth also tugged into the faintest smile.

This was actually a good thing.

He had known before that Gine, due to her low combat power, had transferred from combat personnel to Non-combatant status. He just had not expected that tight-lipped Bardock would actually arrange for her to work at the finest restaurant on all of Planet Vegeta.

Compared with those meat-processing plants where dust filled the air, or the front-line supply stations reeking of blood, this place was practically paradise.

It seemed that though Bardock usually spoke little, he was remarkably attentive when it came to his family.

"Yeah, I only transferred here a few days ago." Seeing that Gou Kong did not speak, Gine puffed out her chest on her own initiative, a little pride in her tone. "Fighting and all that really doesn't suit me. Hehe, I've only just started, but I'm already working very hard to adapt. Look, I'm doing pretty well, right?"

Gou Kong nodded, his gaze sweeping across her face.

When he had seen Gine at the front line before, she had always carried a timid pallor. Now, however, her face was flushed with healthy color, and her mental state was more than just a little better.

It seemed this logistics job really did suit her. Without having to spend every day on edge facing space monsters and hails of gunfire, naturally her complexion had recovered.

But now was not the time to catch up. Gou Kong's stomach was still protesting with a "growl, growl," making his head ache from the noise.

He had just opened his mouth to order when Gine seemed to suddenly remember something. She lightly clapped her hands, her eyes sparkling. "Oh, right! My shift is ending soon. Bardock will bring Raditz over to eat in a bit! He's on leave today, and it's been so long since we all got together. Why don't we eat together? Raditz was still talking a few days ago about wanting to see you!"

"Really? They're coming over now?"

Gou Kong raised an eyebrow, his fingertips unconsciously tapping against the tabletop.

He quickly calculated it in his mind. There was nothing inconvenient about it.

Bardock got along with him well. Both of them were the type who disliked wasting words, so even if they sat together, they would not make a racket like other Saiyans.

Besides, although that little fellow Raditz was only three, he was a genuine "little battle maniac." It was normal for him to be curious about someone popular at King Vegeta's side.

Most importantly, with this Royal Guard uniform of his sitting here, no one would be foolish enough to come over and disturb his meal.

"Fine. Then let's eat together."

Gou Kong agreed readily.

He was fairly familiar with Bardock's family as well.

Although Bardock had been born a low-class warrior, he possessed a terrifying combat power of over ten thousand. Even many elite warriors could not compare to him, making him a famous figure among Saiyans.

King Vegeta had summoned him many times to ask about battlefield conditions. As a personal guard, Gou Kong had often run into him in the palace, and after meeting enough times, the two became friends who could exchange a few words.

Gine had naturally met him through Bardock. As for Raditz, the boy had heard his father mention this "Uncle Gou Kong" since he was little and had long wanted to meet him in person.

Speaking of Bardock, the guy was only twenty-one this year.

When Gou Kong had first learned his age, he had truly been startled.

With that weathered, sharply defined face and its conspicuous scar, he looked like a veteran ruffian over thirty no matter how you looked at him. Who could have imagined he was only in his early twenties?

But after thinking about it, Saiyans were a race that aged in a hurry, and age simply did not match appearance. From now on, when meeting them, he absolutely would not dare guess age by face.

According to the timeline, Bardock would be exactly twenty-two the year Kakarot was born.

In other words, there was still a full year before that "Son Goku" descended upon Earth. Right now, Kakarot did not even exist yet.

But his and Gine's first child, Raditz, was already three years old and had reached the Saiyan age for "going to the battlefield."

Gou Kong had seen Raditz train before. The little body barely reached Bardock's knee, yet he could hold an energy gun taller than himself with great steadiness. When he slammed a fist into the alloy wall of the training ground, he could leave a clear dent.

Although his current combat power was only a little over three hundred, that fierce unwillingness to admit defeat was practically cast from the same mold as Bardock.

However, compared with Raditz, what Gou Kong found even more interesting was the bizarre growth pattern of Saiyans.

The development mode of this bunch of battle lunatics was practically tailor-made for catching people off guard.

After Saiyans were born, they did not slowly grow up like Earthlings. Instead, they first had to soak for two or three years inside a cultivation pod filled with high-concentration nutrient fluid.

By the time they came out of the pod, although their biological age was only two or three, their minds and language abilities were already fully mature, and their combat power was sufficient for the battlefield.

Just like the current Raditz. He looked like a little toddler, but in reality, he could already follow his father into battle and kill enemies.

Even more outrageous was that over the next ten years, their body size would barely change, remaining in the "child" stage the whole time.

If an enemy underestimated them and thought they were facing some easy-to-bully little brat, they would be dead wrong.

Maybe the moment you put down your weapon and tried to tease him, that "child" would suddenly complete his transformation, growing into a two-meter-tall brawny man within just a few days, and one punch would blast your spaceship to scrap.

Who knew how many ignorant cosmic races had been tricked by this innate advantage of "playing the pig to eat the tiger."

The military had even issued a report before. Some lord of a border star system saw the "child soldiers" sent by Frieza and pointed at Frieza's nose, cursing him for insulting him.

As a result, the moment his words fell, that "child" completed his growth on the spot and shattered the main cannon of his flagship with one punch, scaring that lord so badly he knelt and begged for mercy right then and there. From then on, he paid tribute every year.

It was precisely because of this leap-like growth that Saiyans had no concept of "adulthood" at all.

The line between age and appearance was blurred to the extreme. Some Saiyans still looked like children at fifteen or sixteen, while others had already grown into burly men by ten.

To them, as long as their bodies had developed enough, they could marry if they wanted to marry and have children if they wanted to have children. They were completely free of Earth's ethical restraints.

Take Bardock, for example. He was only twenty-one, and Gine was probably around the same age as him, yet she had given birth to Raditz at eighteen. On Earth, that would have been a textbook case of puppy love and early marriage, but among Saiyans, it was perfectly normal.

After all, most of this warrior race treated reproduction as a duty to continue the species. Once mating was over, they went their separate ways, tossed the child into an incubator, and called it done. There was basically no concept of "family."

The overwhelming majority of Saiyans lived their entire lives alone. They did not even care who their mate was, let alone look after their children.

Across all of Planet Vegeta, Saiyans like Bardock and Gine, who had a sense of familial affection and were willing to form a family, could be counted on one's fingers. There were definitely fewer than ten.

It was precisely because they were so rare that this faint sense of family had not been completely erased.

Sometimes, when Gou Kong watched Bardock's family of three gathered together, he even felt a faint, absurd sense of emotion.

These lunatics who had battle carved into their DNA actually had people among them who understood what "home" was.