Night did not fall on King Kai’s planet. The empty space it hung in didn’t contain a sun, so the small rock did not have days, nights, months or years. There was no sense of time there. When one was hungry, one ate. When one was sleepy, one slept. There was no guidance from the world itself.

The inhabitants of the world, however, did feel the usual strains of life, despite being dead.

They felt hunger, fatigue, weariness, pain. They could not die (death for the dead is impossible, unless something really drastic happens to your spirit), but they came to learn that death is painless, pain itself is not.

Due to the complete lack of time from either a sun or a moon, most visitors to the planet followed the time zone they had been in when they died, or where they lived normally. When Tien, Chiaotzu and Yamcha were stuck on the planet for days after Piccolo was wished back, they fell back into their normal sleeping patterns.

Yamcha’s day seemed to be on a time-zone six hours behind Tien and Chiaotzu’s. This was hardly surprising, and it meant that there were six hours a day when they didn’t have to deal with each other. Tien and Chiaotzu, however, were basically inseparable.

Then Yamcha was wished back to life, when Tien had said he wanted to stay and train and Chiaotzu had refused to go if Tien wasn’t, leaving the two of them alone to train with King Kai, Bubbles and Gregory.

According to their time-zone, it was very late at night, though the sky was still bright, and Chiaotzu had succumbed to exhaustion hours before, retiring to the house to sleep. Tien, always one to push himself, stayed awake, training until what would have been early in the morning. Eventually the need to sleep claimed him and he dragged his feet inside.

There was a room separated from the main room, and this was one that had been darkened by thick blankets in front of the windows for those who wished to sleep. As soon as Tien was inside his eyelids seemed even heavier, the ten-times normal gravity dragging down on his tired muscles.

Chiaotzu was a small huddle on the double futon, the blanket pulled up around him, his eyes peacefully closed. He was still dressed in the clothes he had died in, and Tien felt a pang every time he saw them. Tien collapsed onto the other side, lacking the energy to even move from his sprawled position. His eyelids were almost fused shut he was so tired, and he felt that nothing could wake him.