When my eyes slid open, I was there. I didn't remember anything. Only… that my name was…

Goku.

Who am I? Why was I here? What happened? My chest hurts. I feel… as if I had lost something important. Yet, I could not remember. The blankness of my mind was frightening. My hands are bound by relentless chains, my feet attached to shackles.

Was I a criminal? I was in a prison, of that I was sure. What else could you call this place where my movements are so restricted? What else could you call this place where bars kept me caged in, and seals kept me weak?

Then, light appeared. A glorious, brilliant flare of warmth. Its radiance comforted me, and filled me with wistful nostalgia. Ahh… I thought. This was surely… the sun.

The sun made me feel all fuzzy inside. Like I was being embraced by the soft clouds which floated along lazily outside my cell. But the sun was cruel. Too cruel.

It was right in front of me, yet I couldn't touch it. I tried. To get closer to that presence. I tried and I tried. But the chains kept me back, choking me. The bars blocked my path, the seals repelled me. And no matter how hard I tried, how hard I reached for it, it remained so far away.

It would leave, and paint the sky in brilliant colors. And I would worry, that the sun had left me for good. But then, it would rise again, and again and again. And I would try, over and over, to get just a little bit closer. But I never did.

It just stayed there, tantalizingly, out of my reach.

But I couldn't bring myself to hate the sun. It was the sun, after all. The only thing that could make me feel. I didn't feel anything else at all. It was just the sun and I.

I didn't feel pain. Even when I saw what I knew was 'blood'. I was bleeding. When I strained against the chains, and my skin broke and tore. Or when I tried to tear off the seals, and my hands were burned, charred black. Even when I tried to escape this place by digging a hole, and my nails broke and were embedded in raw flesh. I just felt that empty feeling, like something was missing, from deep within my chest.

I didn't feel cold. When snow came gushing in, and buried me underneath all the white. When I could see my veins and my flesh turning blue and purple. When my fingers and toes just… fell off because they were brittle. Nothing. It just grew back the next day. And the next, and the next. Until the torrent of wind ended, and I couldn't see my breathe come out as puffs of white air anymore. And I knew yet another winter has ended.

I didn't feel hungry. 'Hunger'. A desire, craving, or need for food. But what was food then? Substance, to sustain life. I heard that one could not survive without food, and one would feel hunger, if they didn't eat for long. But I didn't need food, I didn't eat, and I didn't feel hungry. If so, then… could I really be considered as 'living'?

When the sun wasn't here, I just… existed. Not needing anything, a solitary existence. And I was separated from everything, separated from the world. Just watching as the days past, and the years all bled into a monotonous cycle of repetition.

One day, a little fluffy ball of warmth entered the cave. It made a noise I had never heard before, and it was the same color as the sun. Something deep inside my heart jumped, and I was… happy? I wasn't sure. But it felt… nice, when I cradled the small thing within my cupped hands, and it rubbed its small head against my dirt-coated hands.

Cheep, cheep, the little thing went, hopping between the bars of my cage. I marveled at the way it unintentionally mocked the prowess of my hellhole. It was my friend, my companion. It made me experience so many things I never felt before. And my lips pulled up into a 'smile'.

A hint of coldness all around, omnipresent, woke me, and I climbed out of the snow that had covered me when I was sleeping. Once again, I couldn't suppress the happiness welling up and almost bursting out of me, at the thought that I could feel. Even though deep within me, I knew that I was still cut off from the world, that the coldness or warmth reaching me was muted, it was better than the numbness that swallowed me and threw me into an endless abyss, where everything was black and empty.

Then I noticed something. My friend had come to visit me again. Why was it lying outside? It was lying flat on the ground, it's eyes closed. And I knew, as my mind approached the possibility with mounting dread, that it was….

Dead.

No. Nonononoo…. It couldn't be. I reached for it, desperately, through the bars of my prison. But like the sun, it, too, was cruel. And I couldn't touch it, couldn't do anything, as the snow piled on top of its unmoving body, and wiped away all traces of its presence.

And I hated the utter whiteness which hid everything, even the warmth of the sun. Then water started to escape from my eyes, a crystallization of the sorrow piercing my heart, and I started to cry.

Without anything else to look forward to in my life, the years blurred together again, the seasons coming and going. I still couldn't feel hunger, but most everything else had come back. Just slightly, though. The 'pain' I felt when I cried and my tears froze, was nothing more than a slight tingling, as was the 'cold' I felt when I was surrounded by snow.

The only thing constant, that overwhelmed me and tortured me, was the mammoth amount of loneliness. It was always there, ironically, because it was only there when no one else was. Which was all of the time, anyway.

So I sat there in my cave, and watched the time go by.

I couldn't stop myself from trying, even though I knew escape was impossible. What was I? What was I meant to do? Was I meant to just rot away here, not aging, just existing? What was my existence for?

Was I not supposed to exist in the beginning? Was I something that would taint the world with just my unholy presence? Was that why I was locked up here? If so, then why not just kill me already?

I want to die. I want to die. Why am I still living? Even though I tried. Tried so had to die. Even though I slashed at myself so many times, even though the torment was agonizing. The only thing I could feel was pain, despair, agony, torment… I want to die. Why can't I die? Please, just let me…

…Die…

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500 years after the imprisonment of Son Goku, a lone priest found a boy shut away within a cave deep in the mountains. Without asking anything about why the boy was there, he reached out a hand. And the chains fell to pieces, and the bars faded away.

And the waif thought, as he took his first step out into the world after so long, and felt the warmth of the man's hand, as well as a feeling which he would grow to identify as hunger,

'Surely… this man is the sun…'