Chapter 10
The contest ended so quickly that it was almost laughable.
The simulators had been designed for practice, so only one person could drive in each race. Because of that, we settled the contest by comparing lap times…
“……”
The atmosphere of the guys who had crowded in while huffing angrily turned ice-cold.
It was so chilly that even I started to feel self-conscious.
Did I go too far? No, but even I didn’t expect it to be this bad…
Even though I had given myself a five-second penalty, my lap time was a whopping nine seconds faster than that second-place guy’s.
Including the penalty, the actual difference was around fourteen seconds.
And that was despite the fact that I had slowed down a little in the middle because something about the atmosphere felt strange when I was driving after him.
This was practically the equivalent of an adult completely crushing a child.
Well, it basically is, in reality.
The problem was that it didn’t look that way from the outside.
If anything, I looked even younger.
Feeling awkward, I wanted to scratch my head vigorously if I could.
But the atmosphere was so stiff and heavy that I felt self-conscious even about raising my arm.
Noel, was it?
Anyway, he wasn’t some rookie who had just started karting. He seemed to be the guy who had been taking first place every time in the Landbury Academy advanced class except when I beat him…
Still, that might have been a little too much… I should’ve driven at a reasonable pace from the beginning.
If I went all-out against children and crushed them…
Wouldn’t that make me just as terrible a person as that bastard Percival?
A little late, I realized just how much of a shock this must have been for him, so I rolled my eyes and looked at him.
And I started to feel a little sorry.
He was standing beside the simulator seat, staring at my record on the screen, and his expression looked hollow, almost a little despairing.
His friends didn’t seem to know what to say, either. They had all taken a step or two away and were simply staring at him.
“That was a good race, Noel.”
Still, we couldn’t stay like this forever.
Pretending not to notice the heavy atmosphere, I amiably extended my hand toward him.
I figured I should wrap things up somehow.
But apparently, he felt differently.
Smack.
The sound of flesh striking flesh echoed through the cold air.
Noel had slapped away my hand.
Just when I was about to admire the fact that his pride hadn’t broken even at a moment like this—
For someone who had so decisively rejected my handshake, he was trembling far too miserably.
“The penalty… is something you get when you’ve done something wrong during a race. It’s about taking responsibility for what you did. But you…!”
His face turned bright red from trembling so hard, and tears finally welled up in his eyes.
“You don’t give a penalty at the start of a race between students. This isn’t a race…!”
When I saw the tears roll down his face, sweat trickled down my back.
Yep. His personality is officially on Percival’s level.
I had grown up and made a kid cry.
What do I do?
What am I supposed to do!?
I’d never comforted a child before, and my back was soon drenched in sweat.
The other guys around us seemed equally troubled, because they merely looked at one another.
Somehow, not a single one of them seemed to know how to comfort the crying kid.
“Ian—Ian Kang, are you here…? Oh, there you are!”
A lifeline came down for me, too.
An unfamiliar adult poked her head through the crack in the door while looking for me.
When she spotted me, she smiled brightly and beckoned me over.
“You were playing with the kids? But you can finish playing with them next time. Let’s go for now. Your mother is looking for you!”
“…Yes.”
Even after answering, I couldn’t bring myself to move easily.
But—
I glanced at Noel once more before finally stepping away.
I thought that, for him, it would probably be better if I wasn’t here.
And so, as I followed the staff member out, I suddenly flinched at the doorway.
Camilla was standing right beside the door.
I had no idea how long she’d been there.
“……”
“……”
As I followed the staff member out of the simulator room, Camilla’s eyes never left me.
And although she didn’t say anything to me, unlike before, her eyes were sparkling with interest.
* * *
“Son, don’t be too nervous. You’ve met Arthur before, so you know he’s not that difficult or intimidating of a person. Of course, I understand why you’d be nervous since this is your first time seeing him at home, but…”
A luxury midsize Landbury sedan.
We were currently on our way to the Blanchard family’s mansion at Arthur’s invitation.
He had suggested that since we were going to become a family, the four of us should have dinner together.
My soul had already completely left my body before I even got into the car, and even after getting inside, I simply stared blankly out the window.
Perhaps Mom was worried about me because of that, because she carefully looked at me before speaking.
I hadn’t been worried about Arthur in the slightest, actually.
I hadn’t even been thinking about him until Mom brought him up.
Besides, this road was also the road to my home… or at least, the home that would be mine for a long time.
Though I had never particularly felt that much like it was home.
I rolled my eyes inwardly while putting on a bright smile outwardly.
“I’m fine, Mom. I’m not nervous. I was just looking outside because everything seemed interesting.”
“Really?”
Perhaps she didn’t quite believe me when I said I wasn’t nervous, because Mom knitted her eyebrows together.
I must have been staring too blankly.
I was about to tell her that I was really, truly fine and that she didn’t need to worry when she gently pressed down on my head.
Mom stroked my hair as she spoke.
“There won’t be anything to worry about today. Those people won’t have a chance to interfere like they did back then. It will just be the four of us—your mom, our son, Arthur, and Percival. Our family… Yes, it’ll just be the four of us having dinner together.”
Mom looked cautious and a little embarrassed when she said, “Our family.”
Seeing her like that warmed my heart a little.
I didn’t dislike seeing the different expressions on my mother, who must have been busy and overwhelmed trying to work in a foreign country while raising a child on her own.
“Yes!”
So I grinned and obediently let Mom stroke my hair.
It was a little creepy acting like a child after growing up, but I comforted myself with the thought that, at least from the outside, it wouldn’t look strange.
Only then did Mom seem to relax.
I deliberately swung my legs like a little kid excited to meet a friend and turned my head back toward the window.
Before long, the car had entered one of London’s suburban areas, where expensive mansions lined the streets.
The reason I kept thinking about what had happened earlier wasn’t simply because I felt bad about making a child cry.
Rather…
I feel like I’ve seen him somewhere before.
The platinum-blond second-place finisher named Noel.
Something about him bothered me because I felt like I’d seen him somewhere.
He definitely wasn’t someone who had entered F1 alongside me.
F1 wasn’t a university where all the F2 drivers who had raced together could suddenly advance to it as a group.
Then I must have seen him in F2 or another Formula series…
“Ah.”
“Hm? What’s wrong, son?”
“Ah, nothing! The houses outside are just so pretty.”
“Oh my, it’s too early to be impressed already. Still, I’m glad you like it here. I’m sure you’ll like Arthur’s mansion too. You see, it’s…”
Mom smiled brightly and started talking about how wonderful the Blanchard family home was.
But the point wasn’t really how magnificent, historic, or luxurious the house was.
It was how well Arthur had maintained it.
His effort, his sense of style, his taste, and so on.
At another time, I would’ve rolled my eyes at Mom’s tendency to gush over him.
But right now, my mind was completely occupied by something else.
That’s him!
The Torpedo of F2.
Of course, that wasn’t a nickname I had given him.
It had been coined by fans who mocked him after the accident.
Apparently, there had even been people among the fans who told others not to make fun of an incident in which there was an obvious victim.
The problem was that some trash journalist had used that nickname when reporting on his retirement.
What was the headline again? It was so vulgar that I remember it clearly.
Ah, I remembered.
“The Torpedo of F2 Retires After Completing His Mission.”
That was the kind of headline it had been.
It probably got plenty of views, but it also caused a huge controversy.
Even I had heard about it, despite barely interacting with other drivers and not being someone who spent much time on the internet.
I was disgusted back then.
Thinking about it made my stomach hurt.
Even more so because of what happened to me afterward.
The incident had gone like this.
Near the end of qualifying for the F2 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, he made a mistake while racing and slammed directly into another driver’s car.
It was a massive accident, severe enough to nearly destroy the car.
Fortunately, neither the driver who had crashed nor the driver who had been hit suffered life-threatening injuries.
But…
The driver who had been hit suffered severe injuries to his lower body.
They were serious enough to leave him permanently disabled and eventually force him to retire.
And Noel, that bastard, retired too.
The accident happened in the same year I had just entered F1.
Because of that, I didn’t know the exact details of the accident or everything that happened afterward.
I only heard that the person responsible for the accident himself hadn’t suffered particularly serious injuries.
That probably fueled the reporters and the public even more.
With pressure coming at him from every direction, he must have reached a point where he couldn’t endure it without retiring.
Before all that, wasn’t his nickname the Prince of France?
I’d raced alongside him a few times when he still had that nickname, so I remembered his face.
I just hadn’t recognized him immediately because the adult I remembered and the kid I’d seen earlier gave off completely different impressions.
This is making me feel even stranger.
There had been more than a few drivers who failed to make it into F1 and fell short at the very threshold.
But seeing one of those drivers as a child…
It gave me a strange feeling.
Almost as if I wasn’t the only one who had wanted another chance.
“We’re here, Ian! This is Arthur’s house. Soon…”
Mom trailed off, but I understood what she meant.
This would also be the place that would soon become our home.
The Blanchard mansion stood out even on a street filled with luxurious homes.
It had a vast, magnificent rose garden, so spacious that it made me marvel at the fact that a garden this large could exist in London, and a mansion that looked as though it had been taken straight from a famous painting.
A child seeing all of this for the first time would inevitably become captivated by the mansion.
Just as I had been in the past.
But—
The Blanchard mansion was almost disturbingly identical to the one in my memories.
So familiar that I could picture every part of it even with my eyes closed…
“Uh…!?”
That was why the thing that surprised me wasn’t the mansion.
It was the new quest floating above Percival, who was standing at the mansion’s front entrance waiting for us.
