Sato Yamiru checked his eyes several times, confirming that nothing had changed.
He also mentally repeated words like "system" and "Golden finger," but nothing special happened.
Helpless, he stuffed the two coins into his pocket, threw on a jacket, and left the house.
On Dragon Ball Earth, far from the towns, the outskirts were sparsely populated. It was near dusk, and the horizon arched at the edge of his vision, glowing with fiery sunset colors.
"Whoosh... Whoosh..."
Yamiru began running again. After arriving in this world, perhaps due to losing access to many forms of electronic entertainment, or perhaps simply because his physical abilities had improved, he, a former homebody, had actually become fond of the feeling of running. As long as he ran fast enough, his troubles couldn't catch up—he wasn't joking about this. He discovered that by keeping himself busy, he had no time to dwell on things that couldn't be figured out. This was also the reason he had been picking up odd jobs in South City both day and night.
"Whoa\~!"
He ran recklessly, even performing several somersaults when he was in the mood, or mimicking a spinning jump, feeling incredibly cool. He laughed stupidly, his laughter echoing through the empty countryside.
An hour later, Yamiru rushed into South city.
"Hah... Hah..." He panted, slowing his pace, lifting his sweaty shirt to cool off, glancing at the electronic watch on his wrist. "Almost... almost... twenty minutes, haha."
It was now close to six in the evening, and the night life in South City was starting.
Walking on the street, the neon lights of various skyscrapers flickered in a rainbow of colors, and the car lights and honking horns from different vehicles blended together, blurring both vision and sound. It almost made Yamiru feel like he was back on his old Earth... if not for the rat-headed figure stumbling past him.
He smiled. He didn't have to start work until 7 p.m., so he took his time walking.
He liked observing this world.
For example, he had long noticed that although the Dragon Ball Earth had the transforming capsules from the manga, there were no cars without tires, hovering above the ground, or capable of driving on water. Yamiru sometimes stroked his chin and remembered hearing that Akira Toriyama had released a Dragon Ball side story. It was about something called "Galaxy Patrol" and even featured in one of the Dragon Ball movies. Could it be that the anti-gravity cars in the original story were linked to that side story he had never seen? He had also heard about a character who was supposed to be Bulma's sister, though he wasn't sure if that still counted...
Yamiru continued to walk, lost in thought, casually observing his surroundings.
He noticed the subtle discrimination between humans on Dragon Ball Earth.
Walking down the street, it was easy to spot that the more prestigious jobs were mostly held by regular humans. But when he went to construction sites or port docks, nearly ninety out of a hundred workers were different kinds of anthropomorphic animals.
Yamiru casually found a newsstand, bought a newspaper, and flipped through a couple of pages. It didn't take long to find a square-sized news item, usually along the lines of: "At a location XX kilometers from South City, there have been reports of suspected encounters with brown bear people or jackal, wolf, leopard-like beings who are robbing travelers on the road. They are extremely violent and cruel. Citizens are advised to be cautious when traveling." It was always some form of negative report. After all, the invisible societal bias was always aimed at the anthropomorphic beings—whether the rumors were true or not, it was always safe to blame them. The strange thing was, neither regular humans nor anthropomorphic beings found this to be wrong.
Even more absurdly, several years ago, mainstream military and political journals speculated that the notorious illegal military organization "Red Ribbon" was led by a ruthless anthropomorphic being. This infuriated the short-statured leader of the Red Ribbon Army, who paid the press to publish a rebuttal, angrily denying the accusation and demanding the king give an official response.
But Yamiru wasn't too bothered by these biased stories.
He observed these things out of personal interest, but more importantly, these details about daily life gave him a sense of reality about this world, making his occasionally restless mind calm down.
After wandering around for a while, Yamiru returned to the park from earlier that morning but couldn't find the strange old man. He was a bit disappointed.
In the evening, he worked as a waiter in a restaurant for several hours, then ran back to his little broken house in the suburbs under the starry sky.
He had made two round trips between the city and the outskirts that day, covering dozens of kilometers each time. Even with his physical abilities far surpassing those of normal humans, he was still exhausted.
After taking a cold shower in the yard, Yamiru looked up at the moon.
He wondered, at this very moment, was the moon on Planet Vegeta full or waning?
It was the year 735, he thought. I wonder if the Saiyans have started fighting Frieza yet...
And it seemed like only two more years until Goku's arrival on Earth...
He silently reflected, massaging his sore, swollen muscles, before throwing himself onto the bed shirtless and falling into a deep sleep.
"Dad... Mom..." he muttered in his sleep.
The next morning, his biological clock woke him up at exactly 4:44 AM.
He opened his eyes, paused for three seconds, and felt under his back, pulling out two coins. "No wonder I dreamt I was sleeping on a pile of rocks; no wonder it hurt."
Yamiru jumped up from his bed. The soreness from yesterday had almost completely faded.
Sitting at his desk, he placed the two coins aside, grabbed a pen, and opened a cheap notebook with half the pages torn out, preparing to write but unsure of what to write.
"No," he suddenly said to himself, his lips pressed tightly together. "Writing this kind of negative stuff... constantly suggesting negative things to and about myself... I'll end up crazy. No, no, no. I have to write something positive, something bright—even if it's fake. Like, maybe I'm working hard to learn martial arts and eventually become the strongest in the universe? The strongest in the universe sounds a bit arrogant... so how about the strongest on Earth? That still sounds a little cocky. Son Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, Krillin... Damn it, I'm getting insecure again, Yamiru, you little fool! Ahhh..."
He shoved his hands into his hair, scratching and pulling wildly.
"Why am I even writing this? It's not like I'm doing it for anyone else to read. Who am I fooling with this nonsense?" Yamiru buried his head in his hands and pounded the desk.
He really felt exhausted.
"Why did the heavens pick someone like me to cross over? I'm not even qualified to be one of those great transmigrants!"
Every day after waking up, from 4:44 AM to 5:00 AM, he had to find a reason, a breath of life, to keep going in this world.
Yamiru lowered his head, took a few deep breaths, straightened his back, and slowly wrote on the paper: "Knowing, it cannot be done..."
A faint golden light flickered in his eyes and the pen tip hesitated.
He wanted to finish the sentence with "Why bother?" but something in him refused to write it that way.
So Yamiru never finished the sentence. Of course, he didn't notice that the golden light in his eyes slowly faded.
He put the paper and pen aside, put on some clothes, and headed out.
"Ahhh!"
Another uneventful day, another same-old running boy. The old man driving a tractor, smoking a cigarette, sighed again, "Young people sure have a lot of energy..."
In South City, the park.
Yamiru saw that mysterious old man again today. He pinched the two coins in his pocket and walked over.