Chapter 1
The smell of burning rubber. The screams of people. A tremendous crash. The pain of bones breaking. And heat.
Flames blazing. Heat so intense it felt as though I would melt. An overwhelmingly, unbearably red redness.
Someone roughly pulled me out of the cockpit. The car was so badly wrecked that it was impossible to tell what shape it had originally been.
There was no doubt a red flag had been thrown for this. The race would be stopped.
Of all days, this was supposed to be the historic day when the champion, who had never once failed to win a trophy since his debut season, would receive his third crown.
That bastard is going to swear at me again when he sees this.
âIan, Ian! Damn it, heâs unconscious! Donât close your eyes! Open them! Open your eyes!â
The woman gripping my shoulders and shaking me roughly was Bianca, our teamâs senior manager.
The Italian woman, with her high nose and perpetually haughty expression, had an unusually desperate look on her face.
People began gathering around me.
A thought suddenly occurred to me.
Everyone who had come to the Grand Prix today must be looking at me right now.
I had wanted this kind of attention while standing at the top of the podium.
In the end, I would never make it to the top, not even once before I died.
I had finished second and third, but never first.
âIan, Ian Blanchard! Please⊠donât close your eyes!â
I could no longer feel any pain.
My vision was completely red from the blood I had lost. I pushed away Bianca, who was clinging to me and sobbing, while the frantic hands of the paramedics surrounded me.
They stopped the bleeding, gave me something to take, shouted at meâŠ
But it was useless.
I let out a hollow laugh. There was no pain whatsoever in my lower body.
I had probably alreadyâŠ
âFuck! What the hell is this? Hurry up and do something!â
Through my fading vision, I saw that bastardâs panicked face.
I had a feeling the end was near, but it felt unfair that the last face I would see in my life was his.
My greatest rival in life.
The one who had blocked me at every turn and kept me in second place forever.
âIan! Get up, Kang Ian! You can live. You can survive! Fuck! What are you guys doing?! If my little brother dies, Iâll fucking kill you all!â
My brother.
Looks like that reckless bastard really did think of me as his little brother, after all.
He was always telling me to go back to my country with that woman, calling me a yellow something-or-other, so this was actually kind of touching.
From the time I started karting at ten until the ten years it took me to advance to F1, I had hated my brother for tormenting me relentlessly.
But now that I was about to die, even that hatred seemed to be fading.
I smiled.
Brotherly love between the two of us.
âFuck, this is bullshit⊠Why did this have to happen? Damn it, this canât happen⊠God, please.â
That bastard was even calling on God for me.
The biggest asshole in F1 history, the reckless bastard with a reputation so bad that there had never been anyone like him before.
Percival Blanchard.
The fact that I was really about to die finally sank in.
The scenes of my life were already flashing through my mind.
Coming to England with my mother when I was nineâŠ
Suddenly gaining a stepfather when I was ten, the owner of a world-famous automobile companyâŠ
My chance encounter with karting and my meeting with this damned brother of mine eventually led me all the way to becoming an F1 driver.
âHey! Open your eyes! Open your eyes, you bastard!â
My brother tore away the people performing first aid and grabbed hold of me as I tried to close my eyes.
Listening to my stepbrother’s anguished cries, I quietly closed my eyes.
Ian Kang Blanchard. Twenty-three years old.
Died at the 20â â Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
* * *
I opened my eyes.
ââŠHuh?â
And for a moment, my mind froze at the realization that I had opened my eyes.
What?
Why had I opened my eyes?
Wasnât I not supposed to open them?
Hadnât I died?
I was definitely thinking, yet somehow I couldnât think of anything at all.
I must have been so shocked that, without even blinking or breathing, I desperately tried to make my sluggish brain work.
Could it beâŠ
Was I alive?
I had survived?
Even in the midst of my confusion, I remembered my final moments.
The entire underside of the car had been torn away, so my legs should have been shredded, shouldnât they?
The moment I recalled that, a chill ran down my spine.
No, wait a second.
âSh⊠shit. Then wouldnât it have been better if Iâd just diedâŠâ
It wasnât merely that my lower body hurt.
I couldnât feel my lower body at all.
How was I supposed toâŠ
âWhat is this? Why do I have legs?â
Even though I knew there shouldnât be any, I instinctively tried to move my legs and noticed something strange.
Something that shouldnât have been able to move had moved.
There was something attached below me.
Of course, I was a man, so naturally there was supposed to be something down there, but I wasnât talking about that.
Something else had moved.
In other words, my legs had moved.
My legsâŠ
I had legs?
âWhat the hell?â
I shot to my feet.
On my own two legs.
Unable to believe it, I looked down again.
They were definitely my legs, standing firmly on the floor.
My legsâŠ
They were there.
Amidst my confusion, I retraced my memories.
Could I have been mistaken because of the confusion caused by the accident?
No.
But that couldnât be right.
I had been in such a terrible condition that it was strange I hadnât died instantly.
Even though I hadnât deliberately looked, there was no way I wouldnât have known if my legs had disappeared.
After all, how bad must the accident have been for that bastard to abandon his car during the race and come running to me?
It had been such a huge crash that I could have been torn in half.
Of course even that bastard would have come.
I was still his younger brother on paper, after all.
ââŠWhat the? But theyâre kind of short.â
Even though I still had no idea what was going on, I sensed something strange.
Both of my legs were perfectly intact, but how should I put it?
They were short.
No, not just a little.
They were very short.
The hand I happened to look down at was the same.
My palm, my fingersâŠ
Even the sneakers on my feet were far too cute and tiny for an adult man to wear.
âTheyâre too small⊠right?â
I looked down again.
This time, I examined them properly.
Still, my legs were absurdly short.
It would be fair to say they were the kind of legs that belonged in childrenâs clothing.
As the sense of wrongness continued to grow, I touched my face.
Something else was strange.
It seemed like I had some flesh on meâŠ
Wasnât my whole body kind of chubby?
Ever since I had lost my baby fat, I had never allowed a single ounce of fat to remain on my body.
So what was this?
I had been an F1 driver.
To drive the fastest cars in the world and finish first, I had never allowed myself to carry any unnecessary weight.
For a body that had consisted of nothing but bones and muscle, my face felt far tooâŠ
Soft.
ââŠWhat is this?â
Only then did I look around.
Until that point, I had naturally assumed I was in a hospital room, so I hadnât seen any reason to examine my surroundings.
But I wasnât in a hospital room.
Far from it.
ââŠWh-what? A toilet?â
The place where I had opened my eyes after dying with a red flag flying over the circuit was, of all things, on top of a toilet.
âIs this a bathroom?â
A bathroom.
And not just any bathroom, either.
It was some public restroom divided into individual stalls by partitions.
A bathroom.
ââŠIsnât this fucking crazy?â
First, I stepped out of the stall and went to the sink.
I didnât know about anything else, but I had to look in a mirror first.
However, the mirror above the sink was positioned far too high for me now.
Humiliating as it was, I had no choice but to stand on tiptoe.
I practically hung from the sink just to reach high enough to look into the mirror.
And thenâ
âAh, this is not easyâŠâ
The person reflected in the mirror wasnât me.
No, it was me.
But it wasnât me.
âFuck, how old am I here? Elementary school? What the hell is this?â
The person in the mirror was me as a child.
Honestly, I had no idea exactly how old I was.
But regardless, it wasnât the present me.
It was me from when I was young.
âWhat? Is this a dream? Am I still seeing a flashback of my life? What the hell?â
âSon~ Are you almost done? Does your stomach still hurt?â
âHuh?â
As I stood there blankly staring into the mirror at this unbelievable reality, I heard my motherâs voice.
I hurriedly turned toward the door, and my mother called out to me again.
âDid something go wrong with the sandwich you ate this morningâŠ? Should I come in? Is someone in there?â
âAh, no! Iâm okay now! Iâll come out!â
After I answered, my mother seemed relieved.
I hurriedly looked around.
I hadnât been able to tell while I was inside the stall, but the bathroom itself looked clean and luxurious, like the kind of restroom you would find in a department store.
It was incomparable to the other public restrooms in England.
But this placeâŠ
I felt like I had seen it before.
A long time ago.
I couldnât remember exactly when.
What was going on?
What year was it?
This didnât feel like a dream.
If it were a dream, everything felt far too real.
I pinched my arm, and it hurt.
So, that meantâŠ
I was alive.
I didnât know what had happened, but that much was certain.
âSooon~ If youâre okay, can you come out now? If we leave at the right time, it looks like you might be able to do the test-drive experience.â
âUh⊠yes, Mom!â
The words test-drive experience brought back a memory.
I remembered.
This was my motherâs company.
The automobile company where my mother worked.
Landbury.
My mother was one of Landburyâs powertrain researchers.
After divorcing my father in Korea and coming to England after being recruited by a headhunter, my mother had always worried about me because I couldnât adapt to the country.
That must have been why she decided to bring me to her workplace.
Landbury, which was also one of the prestigious F1 teams, regularly had a program where employees could bring their children to experience racing and tour the facilities.
And today was the day of that tour.
Then that meant I was ten.
Ten years old.
I remembered this because it was through this test-drive experience that I began racing in earnest.
And a few months after this tour, my mother would tell me that she was seeing a man.
That man turned out to be none other than the CEO of this companyâŠ
âHoly shit⊠Did I go back into the past? What the hell is happening?â
As I muttered while staring into the mirror, my mother called for me again.
âSon?â
âYes, yes! Iâm coming out!â
This was no time to stand around like this.
I had no idea what was happening, but I needed to get out there first.
When I left the bathroom, I saw the spacious, high-ceilinged interior of the world-renowned company Landbury.
My mother, who had been looking anxious, immediately relaxed her expression when she saw me.
She took my small hand and hurriedly led me somewhere, while employees passing by greeted her.
I still had no idea what was going onâŠ
But the sunlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows and the dazzling brightness of the office made me realize that this was real.
There was no room left for doubt.
âOh my, really. We barely made it. The other children are waiting too, so we have to hurry.â
And the place my mother took me by the hand wasâ
A small track that had been simply designed so that young children could experience racing.
âŠI had thought I would never be able to get into a car again.
But the moment I saw the circuit, my heart suddenly began to pound.
I couldnât tell whether it was fearâŠ
Or anticipation.
