Naozumi Hiyama X Reader - Tumblr Posts

Overdrive!Mackenyu was something else.

Runaway ~ Chapter 1 ~

Pairing: Naozumi Hiyama x fem reader oc

Synopsis: There's no place for women in the world of racing. Let alone rally. Until you show up - the daughter of a racing legend who lost everything out of nowhere - ready to stir the pot of competition and throw fuel to Naozumi's fire, burning wild in more than just one way. Just how far will you go to take your rightful place in the world of rally, restore the team to its glory and change things for the better?

Genre: racing AU, enemies to lovers, rivalry, suspense, a whole lot of teasing, gender power games, dating in secret

Word count: 4.5k+

A/N: Here it finally is. I can't believe I got to write about one of my passions in this way. Though I love rally, getting the technicalities right was rough but I researched as much as I could on it so it feels like the real thing, though there might be some minor inaccuracies, not really affecting the story.

This one has been in the works for a good period of time and though this first chapter is short and fast-paced, there's so much more coming. Trust the process cause god knows I do. I hope I can make Naozumi justice and I can't wait for you to read the next ones. Enjoy lovelies.

Now Playing: Edge of Seventeen - Wuki

It's not about how fast you go.

It's about how long you go fast.

Fast like-

A knock reverberated against your helmet, interrupting the pre-race mantra before you even finished reciting it, bringing you back to the chaos prior to the race start.

Chaos you wanted to avoid at all costs.

Blinking your eyes open, you took in the smell of burnt rubber and the atmosphere, fully packed with the deafening roars of the crowds in the stands soaring over the music heard all the way to your station. Another voice joined in the noise, demanding your attention.

"Raiko, are you ready?"

Letting out an exasperated breath, you waved off whoever spoke to you and closed your eyes again.

"Give me a minute, will you?"

Okay, where was I?

It's not about how fast you go-

A drilling noise came from your right, annoying the living daylights out of you.

Ah, fuck it. Since we keep getting interrupted...

How about I tell you a little bit about me.

Name's Raiko Suruki.

Yes, that Suruki. Here we go again.

I'm the daughter of the famed Hiro Suruki, five times Japan World Rally Championship winner, consecutively if I may add, proud podium sitter for thousands of times, also kind of a living legend of the primetime of the rally world. The same Hiro Suruki that started one of the best teams in the history of Japanese rally, snatching six more titles under his directory. WRC'S Golden Boy.

After his personal fifth title, he decided he wanted something more. Something that would fulfill him, beside his love for driving at the most insane speeds known to man and having his first and only child - that's me in case you didn't know.

Anyway, without any second thoughts he retired from the sport out of nowhere, changing the fireproofs for the laid-back team principal shirt and a cheap very 'dad' baseball cap. At barely 35 years of age, he took the biggest leap of faith and Suruki Racing was born out of fuel and passion for rally.

He poured everything he had into the team and built it from scratch, taking it so high in his prime that everyone wanted a piece of it, be it driving in a seat for the team, changing parts as a mechanic or simply having shares in it.

It was basically the shit. The pinnacle of the rally series in Japan.

The team became a national sensation. So many influential people, from mere businessmen to politicians, even foreigners were so interested in it and helping it expand. It genuinely felt like the only way for him was up, flying like a rocket towards the legends' hall of fame.

It went like that for a while. He was beaming with happiness, unable to understand where all that luck came from. But like everything good, once he started to question it all, it was like a switch flipped inwards.

And everything started going wrong.

All of a sudden the cars started missing parts the night before races. They had engine failures mid-race in almost every stage, followed by dnf's on every scoreboard. And those aren't even the most shocking things that happened. You name the disaster and it definitely happened to Suruki Racing at one point.

The mess piled up more and more and it showed.

Contract deals with sponsors started falling through, losing funding for a lot of parts and investments in equipment. Then the drivers got fed up with the constant failed races and blamed the car or the team if they felt like it. They terminated their contracts way before their terms were up under the pretense that they wanted different things... which were not related to Suruki Racing. The mechanics chose to stay, well, a few of them anyways, but it wasn't enough.

The team ripped at the seams and slowly but surely ran into the ground and dad couldn't find at least one reason why it happened.

It was like a curse you couldn't get rid of and I saw it happen first-hand.

The late nights he would spend in the garage trying new parts that kept failing with every test on the car. The way he would go as low as begging the drivers to come back offering them money he didn't have because no driver, rookie or experienced, didn't even bat an eye once the name of the team was mentioned.

Lost, penniless and with a heavy heart, he had to watch the one thing he loved the most on earth rust little by little, no matter what he would do to prevent it.

Mom called it karma for his reckless racing days because as talented as he was, the road forgives no one. That you can be God's favourite and still lose everything. And he didn't want to understand that. He never did.

I was too young to help back then. Too young to understand what Suruki Racing meant to him. Too young to do the only thing I could to save it.

Until now.

So, let's try that again, shall we?

Name's Rai Suruki, driver for Suruki Racing 2.0.

Another knock to your helmet, echoing in your head louder than the first, brought you back to the real world for good this time. Mechanics rushed around you to finish the set up on the car before you were called up to take your spot in front of the race marshal, which from a quick glance at the scoreboard would be soon.

Looking to your left, you were met with a set of dull brown eyes, messy jet black hair, a funky moustache and an extremely creased forehead for his middle age, all belonging to your co-driver, Don Tanaka. He's another legend of the sport.

Former training coach for some of the current biggest teams in the WRC, with a CV of experiences surpassing most people that have been in rally for longer. On top of all that, he is an even bigger friend of your father's. When he called him up asking for an old favour to train you, he couldn't say no.

But if it was up to commenting, you'd say he was one of the biggest fools for giving up a lavish salary with so many perks for one favour, especially for your old fart of a father.

Driving with him was great, but training with him was hell on Earth.

"I was doing my mantra," you reasoned, trying to get him off your case.

"Your mantra sucks."

He is an absolute joy to be around, isn't he?

"Well," you turned to him in your seat with a tight-lipped smile, "you're the one choosing to be co-driver to a young adult at your ripe age of 40. If I was you I would've picked something more calming, like gardening."

Bringing his hand to his chin in thinking, he sat in silence for a moment before he spoke.

"That doesn't sound so bad right now," he went on trying to push your buttons.

"Oh, shush," you waved him off, turning back to the wheel.

If there was one thing he liked doing, it was keeping you in check by poking fun at you. He was like that one uncle you could always go to with your secrets or to ask for extra pocket money, but in return he liked to tease the fuck out of you for it. Every. Single. Time.

As much as you hated his antics, you did kind of owe him a lot. He was the one who caught your talent for racing early on, back when you would drive plastic mini cars made from scraps around the team garage like you had years of experience. A few drifting maneuvers around old tires done like a pro at the cool age of 8, and he was sold on you and your potential.

Amongst all the teasing and the pain of having to train like a man, you've spent enough time with him to know you could count on him for literally anything. He was the best co-driver you could ask for and you wouldn't want anyone else in that seat directing your fate for the world.

He knew what it took to annoy you greatly in order to deliver on the dirt track and prove yourself. Especially now, since you were the only woman on highly occupied male territory.

Racing was a man's world.

With as many female advancements in motorsport as there were today, the majority of the community was still not convinced that a woman could drive better than a man or even compete alongside a whole grid of their species. They can regard you, acknowledge your existence, but they would never accept you.

Your father knew your entry to the championship would stir up a lot of unwanted attention, besides the fact that he was basically reviving a cursed team and you happened to be the poster face for it this time around. It sounded like a catastrophe in the making.

Frankly, you were ecstatic to get to drive an actual race car outside of the junior series and helping the team get back to its rightful place, restoring its deserved glory. But you knew it wasn't going to be easy work. Especially, since public enemy number one - the press - was going to try and tear you to sparkly shreds for a lot of reasons. An attack that they started before any official information was out.

A few months ago, when the announcement of Suruki Racing's comeback after ten years of inactivity hit the WRC, the media had a field day with it.

They criticized your father for being a nutjob that didn't know when to quit. They smeared Don Tanaka's name like he didn't make most of the drivers currently selling their dying papers. They even tried to get paid scoops from anyone involved with the team in the slightest.

But the team had one wildcard left to play before pulling the curtains for good and giving them the satisfaction that they ruined it.

You.

The press didn't know about you. No one in the other teams knew about you. Thanks to your father's extremely private life, no one even knew of your existence.

The only people that did were your team in the garage, from the mechanics to your PR agent.

Even walking into the circuit grounds this morning, long hair down over your shoulders, sporting the team gear in plain sight, no one batted an eye at you. Even if they did, they would think you were involved with technical or marketing - though even that was a rarity in this universe - or worse, just another groupie looking to get one of the drivers under your hood.

Your father wanted to give everyone a show they'll never forget by having you drive the first race in the calendar without a proper introduction. No car reveal. No interviews. No pre-race press conference. Just a car and its driver.

This way they would judge your driving before they actually got to judge you for being a woman at the wheel of a three hundred horsepower beast. He trusted you and your judgement on the track far more than the lousy press setting you up for fail. They would get a proper car show and speech after the race anyway.

It was out of the ordinary but that kinda summed up Hiro Suruki and his bipolar personality.

The distorted sound of a megaphone, followed by the voice of the race marshal called you to the start line.

"Car 7, Rai Suruki for Suruki Racing, you're up next!"

You could already see everyone turning their eyes to your station, booming cheers going quiet, turning into sharp murmurs.

Time to get this show going.

Rolling up your windows to block the world, you put the car in gear and drove to the start line, waiting for the green light. Looking out at the lines in the road ahead of you spotting the first hazard ahead, the nerves climbed up your spine faster than your engine could pump the pistons for pressure.

You prepared for this for most of your life, but if you were being honest, it all got a little too real now, sitting with your foot hovering above the gas pedal ahead of the moment that could make or break your career before it even started. The very moment that could be a step forward to restoring your father's name, getting the team back on track in a new age of rally racing. The moment for a change.

No pressure, right?

"Raiko," your co-driver called your name, but you couldn't tear your eyes away from the road, gloved fingers tightening on top of the wheel with a small snap. "Do you remember the course?"

"Yes."

"Good. All set?"

"I think so."

"Raiko, look at me."

"You're not my style."

"Raiko," his voice turned more serious and deep with warning. With another sigh into the small, cramped space for breathing your helmet provided, you turned to him.

"You've got this. Let's prove everyone wrong."

He was right.

Let's prove everyone wrong.

The race marshal started the countdown, walking from the front of your car to the side, each number in the count descending with your nerves. You loosened the hold on the wheel, stretched your legs to the pedals and let out a deep breath.

"3."

It's not about how fast you go.

"2."

It's about how long you go fast.

"1."

Fast like lightning.

"GO!"

A soon as the lights went green, you hit the throttle and took off into the dirt, raising the dust behind you. You skidded off to the side a little due to the gravel but you got control of it before anyone could notice.

Tokai was a pretty difficult course to rally. The later you got the okay to race, the more dust and gravel from other drivers would pile up in front of you, making visibility dangerously low. The corners were way too tight and one second off from Tanaka's directions or a mishap of your footing could cost you and put your car on the sidelines.

"5 left over crest," Tanaka paced you for the upcoming hill and you prepared to release the throttle.

"1 left 100."

Wheels back on the ground, you resumed pressing the pedal as a hairpin portion came into view. The cloud of dust in front of you was chalky and you had to get through it before it raised higher. Putting the car in second gear, you got ready for the drift portion.

You had to be extra careful here. The mechanic in chief told you to go easy as the rear could send you into oversteer, throwing off the balance of the car and fuck up the race completely.

Listening to your gut, you waited for the right time then tapped the brake, cut the wheels and pressed the throttle, sliding across the portion. Loud cheers and whistles erupted as the crowd in the stands got up to watch you complete a perfect drift.

"3 right don't cut."

Reduce pace and prepare for a possible road hazard.

You slowed down and sure enough a bump in the road came up. If you missed that one and took it at 120 kph, it would've projected you off the track, crashing the car hard into the rocky wall like a cereal box. Thankfully, you swerved around it, feeling the car lift off the ground on the left for a bit before it fell back down.

"6 right very long."

Hard left into a tight corner.

"Cut 8 left."

Tight corner requiring you to follow a straight line in the curb.

This was the last and worst corner on the track. You were lucky it didn't rain because this is where your car can skid off into the stands. You caught the straight line pretty fast, cutting a few seconds off your lap time without slowing down.

Following the rest of Tanaka's directions and focusing on the rest of the road, the race finished before you knew it. You liked the state you were in as you drove, mind clear of everything else because as soon as the adrenaline in your body decreased, your brain got bombarded by all kinds of issues.

Did I push the new suspensions too hard? God, I hope I didn't scratch the rear in the hairpin. Was my timing too off on that last corner? I should've practiced it more.

Driving back to your team's station, you sent all those worries at the back of your head and got out to watch the screen showing the score board just as it updated to display the new track times since you were the last to go.

1. Akira Shinkai - Sigma - 1.24.55

2. Naozumi Hiyama - Spica Racing Factory - 1.23.59

3. Rai Suruki - Suruki Racing - 1.23.40

"WE BAGGED THIRD PLACE?!" you yelled throwing off your helmet onto the car seat.

"WE SURE DID," Tanaka high fived you, beaming with energy just like you.

"That's 15 points on the first stage! Well done, lightning strike," he ruffled your hair as you snickered, nose scrunching up with a smile at the gesture you were already accustomed to.

"The car held up a lot better today than in testing. Maybe we lifted the curse," you wiggled your eyebrows at him at which he flicked your forehead. "Ow, what did you do that for?"

"Don't jinx it. We still have two more stages to go."

"But-"

Before you could say anything else, you were interrupted by angry shouting coming from the station next to you.

"I told you to not touch the third gear," yelled a strained voice.

You walked to the side of your station, peeking your head by the team banner, and watched the heated exchange between one of the drivers and his mechanic. Your eyes wandered to the car sitting in the middle, not one hand touching it for the regular post-race check up. From the different strokes of sky blue layered over stark white, the red and blue sponsor stickers and the carbon spoiler, you recognized it to be Spica Racing's.

"It doesn't matter now," shouted another voice, so annoyed and sure of themselves as if they owned the place. "I got a good lap record this time."

"What would you do if you had to retire in the middle of the race?" shot the mechanic, chastising the driver for being careless.

He got up in his face, towering over him though the other was much taller than him.

"We won't win if I don't attack!" he yelled back, throwing his hand in the air to make a point. "The moment I think of being scared I will lose. I won't make that mistake. So just do your job and fix the car."

With that final remark, he rounded the car to walk away from the station until he noticed you in the corner, now standing in full sight just at the line between your stations.

Quickly replacing the scowl on his face with what was probably his natural smirk, he came to you, stopping short of the barrier separating you.

"I don't do autographs, but for you I can do more than that," he added a daring wink, flashing his cocky smile at you.

Ew.

Taking a small step back hoping his vibes wouldn't envelop you, you uncrossed your arms from your chest and lifted an eyebrow at him.

"I don't want your autograph."

Taken aback at your response, he backed up slightly too and looked you up and down, taking in your deep blue and dark gold team fireproofs and the suit tied messily around your waist. The old, way out of fashion colours seemed to ring a bell.

"Suruki Racing...," he started doubtful, "the shithole that revived from the ashes? Are you a mechanic, a co-driver or something for them? If you are, why don't you jump ships? I wouldn't mind having you on my team instead," he finished his speech of intent with another shit-eating grin.

Who the fuck was this guy?

The audacity that wafted off him must definitely make him popular with the ladies.

"I don't think we've met before," you extended your hand out to him, curt and polite, like a normal person would do, introducing yourself.

"Rai Suruki, driver for Suruki Racing," emphasizing your role in the team so he got it through his head that you weren't some bimbo.

If you were, you'd make sure your fist decorated his face in pretty red tones before anything else.

He straightened back, smirk gone from his face in all sense of the word. It got replaced by some kind of curiosity. Looking between you and your palm hanging in the air he looked confused to say the least. He's heard about female racers before and seen some working in technical around the place, he's just never seen one stand against him on track.

Tired of being polite to someone who obviously has never heard about manners, you were about to retract your extended hand when he caught it in a firm grip and pulled it towards him, just holding it instead of shaking it. The move sent you forwards, almost barreling into him when your reaction response kicked in to steel you a safe distance away.

Maybe Tanaka's intense survival program pays off sometimes.

"So," he began and you wondered if he was about to say something intelligent or spew more shit with that mouth of his. He decided to choose the latter. "You're the one driving the Beetle dupe right there?"

Eh, come again?

Your eyes widened at him, looking at where his finger was pointed to confirm that he was pointing at your car and not anywhere else, then you whirled your head back at him appalled.

"B-Beetle dupe?!"

"I thought you were a guy."

Wouldn't be the first time I heard that one.

You took your hand back from his hold, wiping it on the sleeves of the suit hanging on your hips in the hopes that it would wipe off the disgust you were feeling too. It didn't but it was worth a try.

"It's the name," you replied through gritted teeth.

He backed up some more to scan you again, though more attentively this time, like you were some kind of illegality, cooked up from the pits of his imagination. You gave him your best front, hardening your jaw and rolling your shoulders backwards, proving you were more than a pair of boobs and a vagina, which was apparently his deranged first impression of you.

You deserved to be here. No amount of stares from the male specimen, surprised or with sinful intentions, could ever make you back down from this. This was yours to take on. No man could take this from you. Not him anyway.

So, you stared him down too, trying to find something else beside the extreme big dick energy and unsurmountable lack of scruples surrounding him. Struggling to see anything else but some disdain in the way he crossed his arms over his broad chest, a rich prick attitude from how he shifted on his legs like the world owed him golden lingos every time he breathed, and some leftover rage from the screaming match with his mechanic still present in the tick of his jaw, you let your eyes meet his own in conclusion of your very own analysis.

Yeah, there's nothing else in there. An ambulant douchebag. Just like I thought.

Flashing cameras were suddenly thrown in your faces, interrupting the intense stare-down between you. The press and some people, potentially fans of other teams by their t-shirts, surrounded you from every corner of the plastic barrier around the two stations, pushing each other over the race marshals that tried their hardest to keep them away. It wasn't long until they pushed over the barrier.

Too absorbed in the chaos, you didn't notice he leaned down to your ear but when you did, you stilled in your shoes, all blood draining into your pounding stomach. He spoke close and low, so only you could hear his words.

"Don't get too comfortable around here, rookie," he whispered, hot breath hitting the shell of your ear making shivers run down your extremely clothed spine. "Let's see how long you last in here because this season might just be your first and last."

Pulling away with another one of his smirks that were starting to get on your nerves, he regarded you once more before he walked off in amusement to his cool-down room, giving you a full view of his broad back.

Oh, just you wait -

A reporter shoved into the human barrier of orange and green safety vests reaching the railing, yanking it back and forth repeatedly until the poor plastic seal broke off, letting everyone else pool in around you.

Uh-oh. This wasn't good.

They packed around you like wolves on their prey, all shouting different things at you while shoving their big cameras, recording devices and phones in your face. The flashes blinded you, turning the world white and too bright for it to be natural light from the clouded sky above.

Your hands shot up on instinct to cover your eyes from the flaring lights as your ears focused on filtering through the blaring sounds of camera clicks and voices. Then the countless questions registered clear as day, hitting you like a truck at full speed.

"Are you Rai Suruki, daughter of Hiro Suruki?"

"Where did your father get the money to restart the team?"

"Is your car even going to last a season?"

"Do you consider yourself a challenge to the rest of the drivers?"

I guess that was it for mystery, dad.

Some of the other teams passed by the ruckus, sparing quick judgmental glances or sending disgusting sneers your way like that was the way they initiated your welcome ceremony at the gates of the jungle.

If this was any other series, you would've been so welcomed by the rest of the grid and treated somewhat better by the media and the fans. But this was the World Rally Championships.

Driving was dirty.

Talk was filthy, full of disrespect and unspoken trials of envy between each driver.

The press competed to see who would get your head on a pike first and parade it as the story of the century.

Respect was fought for, not earned.

It was a different game. One where you needed to play even if you didn't want to so in turn you wouldn't get played. Survival of the fittest truly.

You steeled your gaze, waving the reporters off and digging a hole through the crowd, successfully escaping away to your pit crew. Helping with packing up bits and pieces and taking your own stuff, you headed back to your team quarters, aware of the intensifying stares belonging to the rest of the teams still around their stations, talking about the first day in this season's calendar being an interesting one.

You had a feeling you and the team were the hot topic of conversation since you could feel their eyes searing deep holes into your back, burning hotter and doing more damage than flame-lit arrows aimed straight at you ever could. Tanaka wrapped an arm around you giving you his curled moustache smile, sympathizing with you.

Looking up at the sky darkening in mauve and pink, you let a small smile grace your lips. At least today was done. Your rally racing career has officially started. The team was back in business.

However, this first stage was just one of the many challenges still to come. Who knew what else was on the way?

As you trudged on the warm asphalt, there was one thing you knew for sure.

This is gonna be a long season.

Thank you for reading :) As always leave a like, comment or reblog!

---

Runaway Chapter 5

Pairing: Naozumi Hiyama x fem reader oc

Genre: racing AU, enemies to lovers, sports rivalry, suspense, a whole lot of teasing, gender power games, fluff, some spice. TW: nosebleed, alcohol, light violence

Word count: 52.5k+

A/N: Apologies are in order for going mia. Had a little break away from all things technology over the summer, including my laptop, trying to get my wheels in some kind of rest mode and find my inspiration again. Going home brought some of it back, so gear up for feels, dreams and the next few chapters cause they are a lot (and my absolute faves in this series). I'll shut up now since I know you missed these two as much as I have. This one's a packed ride, figuratively and literally, and I loved writing it so much. Hope I delivered. Enjoy the mess, lovelies.

Raiko's Playlist: Hotel Room Service - Pitbull |CRUSH - Katy Perry | Hit My Heart - Benassi Bros., Dhany | Silence - Delerium, Tiesto, Sarah McLachlan | Cherry Blossom - Empire Of The Sun | What The Hell - Avril Lavigne | Focus - Ariana Grande | Man On The Run - Dash Berlin, Cerf, Mitiska, Jaren | Good Life - G-Eazy, Kehlani | 2U - David Guetta, Justin Bieber | Infinity 2008 - Guru Josh Project, Klass | Dangerous Woman - Ariana Grande | Poison - Rita Ora | Slow Motion - Trey Songz | Run Away With Me - Carly Rae Jepsen | CONTIGO - KAROL G, Tiesto | Destination Calabria - Alex Gaudino, Crystal Walters | Let Me Think About It - Ida Corr, Fedde Le Grand | Every Single Day - Benassi Bros., Dhany | Believe - Cher | Chemistry - Velvet | Release Me - Agnes | Super Bass - Nicki Minaj | Eyes Off You - Pretty Much

Previous

Fuji Highland Masters Day 1 - Friday

The rest of your free week leading up to the rally weekend rolled by as discreet as the brush of the wind moving past your shoulder. Besides the endless training and testing, things have been something sort of interesting since that day. If by interesting you could describe activities nothing short of paranormal. All attributed to a certain dark haired player's spirit, cursed and out for revenge, following you around like a ghost of reason out for your sanity. Nonstop.

For starters, Naozumi did come back for his car. When it was most convenient for him - in the middle of the week as the team garage brimmed full with Suruki Racing engineers, all hands on deck for the final tuning set-up before Fuji. The most difficult round of the cup. But why of course, he must've thought it way more important to disturb the work flow of serious people. He called you out of the blue saying he happened to be in the area, said area being the farthest suburbia from Tokyo's town center in the middle of prime time 5 pm traffic, and that he would soon come to collect his most prized possession. Though you thought that was his pride, but alas.

A little over an hour from that call, he waltzed in like he owned the place, shooting playful smirks at everything that moved in the packed garage space, specifically targeting the few female mechanics on the team busy working on the new chassis axels. They swooned over the way his custom blue leather jacket hugged his pumped up biceps, that by all means necessary he had to take off and flaunt the muscles in his extra short sleeve tee; his slicked back hair, spiky at the ends and lathered in a ton of gel that probably left the city without a hair gel supply; and how good the brown aviator shades suited him as they covered his precious eyes away from the eyes of the peasants. Still above everyone else, low and behold equal to no one. Several team polos popped a few buttons down for him as he walked around, lowering his shades down enough to wink at some of them and pocket a few post it notes with numbers and names hastily written down. Booty calls to add to his collection. All of that while you hid in a faraway corner hoping he would just spontaneously combust out of there with his car altogether.

You weren't looking forward to hitting sights again after the last time you saw him. But you were unfortunately called over to show him the way, since he specifically asked for you. Something told you he would always seek payback and irritation out of you so by all means, you had to comply. Sparing you a few playful remarks about your co-workers, that went completely ignored for the sake of your already crumbling sanity, you very politely showed him to his car at the back of the paint shop and shut his door tight as soon as he got inside, signing him to beat it before this incident too became the gossip of press in ways it shouldn't. All he gave you was a mumbled 'Thanks' as he revved his blue monster out of your garage, leaving tracks on the new flooring. One thing to bill his ass for in the near future:

Moving a little forward to the past few days, insanely weird things started happening. Weird in the sense of freaky shit that thriller movie plots were built upon. You saw Naozumi's face and heard that last conversation the day he brought his car to the garage over and over again, everywhere, like a broken record bleeding your ears dry.

It all started at the gym during one of your training days. Your arms were pushing double your weight while Tanaka spotted your back. Very ironically, that annoying conversation popped up as your muscles tried their hardest to support the weight above you. As if he was right in your trainer's place beside your head, directly saying them to you again, drowning Tanaka's counts out into those wretched, stupid words.

"Come on, a few more and we're done for the day. Twenty, twenty-one...," Tanaka spoke, counting your lifts. His voice faded into that deeper, whiskey-loving voice, throwing off your focus. "Twenty-two, twenty-three."

"One more for a distraction."

You ignored that honeyed voice speaking of sin, pushing the weights above your head with all your might.

"Another one considering you are something interesting to me."

I don't hear him, you blew a breath preparing to lift again. He's not here. He's not real. It's all in my head. My head is fucked up and it's an issue but he's not here. He's imaginary. I cooked him up.

"A third one for being a curiosity," he chuckled amusedly, the deep rumbles of his voice echoing in your mind. "My curiosity."

"SHUT UP!" you yelled, pushing the weights up in anger one last time before letting go of them behind you.

"WHAT THE FUCK!" screamed Tanaka.

Your chest rose with quick breaths, angry and violated by a fucking voice, while your training partner yelled bloody murder. Looking over to your side, you were confused as to why he was crouched on the floor, taking rapid breaths with tears running down his face. Eyes falling on the weight bar you just lifted, currently sitting with one half on the floor then the other, half-supported by its holder, you made the connection instantly. The weight bar you lifted and pushed away in imaginary fury landed on Tanaka's hand and his fingers getting caught underneath the bar holder he was leaning on. Strangled mewls escaped him as his hand turned purple and swelled bigger and bigger with each passing moment. You drove him to the hospital immediately where they iced his hand out until it deflated back to a normal size. Well, a usable size. More or less. It still looked like one of those twisty balloons you see at kids parties, just without the squeaky sounds. Your apologetic smile didn't help his swollen limb at all. And as punishment for your unprofessional behavior, and your laughter as he yelled profanities at his hand, he left you training alone for the rest of the week to recover.

Bad, very bad move. You had no way of knowing how sick and twisted this simple punishment could end up being because the horrors didn't stop there. No, no, no. Nope. Now that you were alone, with no one else to drown your rabid thoughts out, Naozumi appeared even more frequently to you, trying to drive you insane by all means possible.

He was there in spirit as you went on your usual runs up the hills circling the city. You were trying to build your stamina and clear your head. Get some fresh air in. But strangely, each stranger you passed by had jet black hair and his particular muscular build. After you ran past three people, all males, gawking at them, trying to understand if the universe was playing a sick joke on you and you were seeing things, the fourth one turned to you quite furiously with not so nice words at your address, prompting you to abandon the jog and bolt back down to your car. You haven't gone jogging since. But Tanaka didn't need to know that.

He even lingered on your occasional people watching sessions downtown. Walking through Shibuya, looking to get lost in the neon lights, you swore you heard his voice crystal clear in the tumultuous chatter of hundreds of people passing you by on the pedestrian crossings. Feet stuck to the ground, your head whipped side to side like you were chasing the whispers of a ghost out for vengeance with your last few neurons. You found no sight of him at all, but his voice remained a frequent visitor.

The worst one of them all must have been the time he popped up while you were just grocery shopping. That one was a scare pulled out of a horror movie. Shopping for your mother's cooking day, the holy Thursday before the rally weekend, you scoured your list for the remaining items seeing only the milk was left unchecked. You made your way to the cold aisles, searching through the iced foods and meat until you reached the dairy products. Opening the fridge door to pull out a bottle of milk, you closed it firmly only to jump in fright at an imaginary reflection of Naozumi, clear as the fucking day on the glazed fridge glass.

Thankfully, the store was pretty much empty so no one witnessed your high-pitched yelp as you dropped your basket, getting ready to fight a fridge door in the dairy aisle in broad daylight. You blinked in shock multiple times at the image staring right down at you, standing just a few inches away, unable to get it to leave you the fuck alone. One breath away from you, the memory of that day at the garage that gave you brain damage apparently replayed to you once more, against your wishes for it to stop. But there he was again, his face slowly leaning in, lips quirked in amusement at how easily he could toy with you by simply whispering those two damned words with such endearing playfulness, willing you to confront him about it if you had it in you. And all you could do was let him say them, as many times as it took for your fucked up subconscious to process them and get over it before you considered exorcism. Hoping he would stop playing mind games with you, giving those words over to oblivion and praying they would just stop appearing to you. But they never did. Asleep, awake, eating, drinking, training, showering, breathing, just existing, they were always there. Always a reminder that he stirred something deep within you that refused to forget about it.

"A curiosity."

"THAT'S IT. GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD DEMON!" you yelled, forehead crashing with the bark of a tree. "I WILL MAKE YOU REGRET LEARNING HOW TO PEE BEFORE I TAKE YOUR DICK OFF WITH A WHEEL-"

"JESUS CHRIST," yelled someone in shock right behind you.

You turned around and jumped with a scream, just as scared of Akira's presence as was he of your sudden explosion of loud muffled yelling, directed at the poor tree beside you. Confused eyes darted between your distressed racing suit and the bewildered look on your face, as if you've seen a ghost or something.

"Are you okay?"

"Huh, yeah," you say, cleaning yourself up a little, hands rushing to dust off random parts of your suit. "I am, yeah. Good. I'm good. How-" your voice cracked. Clearing your throat a little you gave it another try, hoping to sound more sure of yourself. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Enough to see you head bang the tree," he chuckled, a small rebellious strand of hair falling with the movement to shade his eyes. More of them followed it from under the sunglasses holding his hair back like a make-shift headband.

Looking back at the tree, you noticed your hands were still holding on tight to it. Your nails dug into its sides through the rough cracks in the bark really painfully. If it wasn't a tree, that grip alone was enough to leave indents for ugly scars in someone's skin. Now, you may or may not have imagined that was Naozumi in need of a beating. God knows, maybe some kind of violence would get rid of that annoying smirk of his and those incredibly irritating brown eyes sparkling like shiny diamonds in the sun speaking of tease or whatever. He should consider himself lucky you didn't see him yet or this poor tree could've been him.

From Akira's stand, he caught you having a bit of a moment. Dirt from the tree covered your hands from the tip of your nail to the bend of your wrist, littered in patches of sandy brown as if you went camping. Your hair fell over your face in a mess of tangled locks and cherry blossom petals knotted in between, belonging to the branches above following your little scuffle with the tree. But even with all that mess, he still thought there was not a more beautiful sight to behold beyond you.

"Is this some kind of pre-race ritual?" he asked, taking a step in your direction.

"No? No. Yes? Yes," you said more confidently. "I... was..." you trailed off looking for a good reason why you might be engaging in banging your head into a tree for a recreational activity.

"You were?" he pressed on with a knowing smile, moving to close the distance to you. Your eyes fleeted up to his and you completely gagged on what to say. He stood so close that you thought he could hear your breathing go haywire if he took just one more step closer. One too close.

Think quick, you chewed on your lip. Say something smart for once.

"I was..." His eyes darted down to your lips for the briefest second before going back to your eyes. "Doing some... quick step resistance checks," you laughed nervously, embarrassed as hell on the inside. "Just in case I happened to run into a tree mid-race or something. God forbid I do, but it's good to have a back-up plan just in case."

Quick step resistance checks? HE'S NOT THAT DUMB-

Before you turned around and ran into the rally course like a feral squirrel with a death wish, a little tilt of his head to the side in thinking told you he seemed to buy your little white lies glazed over like sweet doughnuts. He looked at the tree at your side with utmost seriousness now, taking a step closer to place his own palm flat to the tree. His eyes darted up and down its whole length, examining how the slim, sturdy bark of a tree that could barely be a race hazard was of any help in your resistance checks.

"And do these resistance checks work?" he cocked a brow inquisitively, eyes falling back on you.

"They do," you nodded briskly, small leaves and petals falling away from your hair unbeknownst to you. "They're particularly important for improving the blood flow to your head and really healthy for testing how hard your head could smack against this hard bark and still survive a deadly crash..."

As you were talking nonsense about imaginary gimmicks, his hand reached above your head to pick something up. The rest of the words coming out of your mouth stopped somewhere over the lines of incoherent mumbles as his fingers lowered in front of your face. He was holding petals - light pink petals from the cherry blossom tree you were head banging a moment ago.

A brief oh escaped your lips at the sight of the soft flowers teared to pieces. Letting go of those, his hand reached up to get the rest of the petals nestled deep in your hair before your hand could race up and take care of it. His fingers sorted through your locks, picking them out one by one until he gave you the all clear. As soon as his hands left, your own rose up checking for other petals out of instinct, running your fingers through your whole hair, scalp and lengths, until you were sure all of them fell out and you looked more like a normal person rather than someone related to mother nature.

Stepping closer, he reached up above you again. Though this time, when you looked back at him his fingers held not just a petal but a small amber twig. From the tip to its end, it was filled with cherry blossom flowers, each little pink bloom happily facing a different direction as if in greeting of all the light surrounding it with warmth. Brushing your hair behind your ear, he placed the small branch atop of it, securing it with a loose lock of hair around it so it wouldn't fall.

"You can test the durability of your head without hurting the tree," he said, his fingers working to get the branch looking like it was part of your hair. He stepped back taking you in with a small smile. "Good luck out there."

One swift nod at you making his shades fall down to shelter his eyes from the sun and he left, smile widening along the curves of his mouth the farther away he got. Your cheeks bloomed as pink as the flowers beside your ear, feeling warmer than normal at the touch. Way too warm.

Why do I keep blushing around him? you wondered, slapping your cheeks together. Not like this is the first time a guy does something nice to woo me. Maybe it is, but I don't want it to boost his pride.

You slapped your cheeks multiple times as you tracked back to the team paddock. A few feet away from entering your pen, you just had to bump into the very devil that's been haunting your life for the past week shamelessly, strolling around freely without even knowing one single shred of the nightmares he's provoked. Smirking at you in his usual way of greeting once you were in sight, he then eyed you oddly, his eyes narrowed on your face.

"Did you have a practice run through the woods?" he asked, taking in your slightly messy state. Though that wasn't his main focus of tease, his attention fell more on the small branch of flowers covering your ear. The accessory looked so girly on you that it had him do a double take.

"What are you talking about?" you asked, wondering what was his problem now. He gestured to your ear wordlessly.

The cherry blossom branch, your eyes widened. I must look like a teenage girl that likes picnics on the field for lunch and picking wildflowers for her wooden basket. This is the shit people do when they have a crush or something.

Your fingers reached up to take the flowered branch off when he stopped you. His fingers brushed over yours right next to your ear. You were so set on taking it off that you didn't notice how close you stood to each other. All it took was one stumble and it was all sealed in a kiss that had no place to happen here, with him. Not with him.

"Don't." He blinked at you, hand pulling back from yours to fall back at his side, moving away to put that leveling distance between you again, just as fast as he closed it of his own initiative.

"It looks good on you."

You blinked back at him, taken aback.

Was that a compliment? Instead of a joke or a tease like on the usual? He was capable of saying nice things too? Or was it just a quick response already hotwired on speed dial when he saw a woman and flowers in the same combo? Clueless about his intentions, the gesture still made your cheeks flush more furiously than they already were.

Turning to pass by you, his boots stopped right beside yours. Lifting his eyes up to you once more, he eyed the flowered branch, no smirk, no cocky remark of his, then he was gone, leaving you completely and utterly confused with your feet stuck to the ground once again. All it took was a few words dropping out of his mouth and that loaded look of his, and your brain short circuited on the spot.

It looks good on me?

Man what the fuck-

"Welcome to Fuji Highland Masters, the fourth game in the Seiko Cup Rally Series!" spoke the main TV presenter for the live rally broadcast show. "I'm your host Ruki Hanoda, joined here in our studio by my amazing friend and colleague, our in-house expert and former racer turned engineer, Ken Nakamura!"

"Thank you, thank you! So good to finally be back here," sighed Nakamura. "It feels like time flew by since the last round."

"It has, hasn't it? We are getting closer and closer to the packed summer rounds. The race for the champion seat is catching speed now, and the potential winner should start rising forth within the next few rounds."

"While that's true, there are several changes to be announced soon that may or may not shift the course of the current Championship standings. I hear there is a surprise round on the way, very different in format from what we're used to seeing in rally, that's set to replace one of the rounds ahead since a course is pulling out of hosting the cup," comments Nakamura. "The federation hasn't let on too much about it yet, but sources confirmed they are preparing to make an official announcement very soon."

"Surprises aside, since we can't talk about that right now," laughed Hanoda, "let's talk about the drivers running up for big points in the Driver's Championship. There's a lot of young talent pooling in this series unlike ever before."

"There sure is," chuckled Nakamura. "The old dogs in YM Works and TOP RANK have reasons to watch their backs this season."

"You're an old dog now too," teased Hanoda with a snicker. "Who would you be looking out for?"

"First off, Akira Shinkai from Sigma Academy. After just one year with the team, he knows the car like the back of his hand. He proudly holds the second game victory back in the Shimanto Round. He's stood on the podium for three consecutive matches so far and is currently placed first in the point rankings. Motorsport media considers him a beacon of hope for rally and I mean, how can you not love this guy?"

The screen switched from the studio to show images of Akira walking over to the fans sandwiched on the safety barriers of his pen, all decked in the red and black team gear from head to toe. Signing their caps and taking pictures with some of them, he wore that bright smile on his face like the trophy was already in his hands. He aimed that killer smile at a girl at the front of the crowd and she completely froze when he added a wink to the combo. Stuck in her starstruck moment, the shirt she was holding out for him to sign fell over the safety barrier. Like the gentleman he is, he walked to her spot, kneeled and picked the shirt up, signing it before he handed it right back to her with a wider smile. She gasped in utter shock at the interaction, high fiving her friend at her side in joy.

"The ladies sure do love him," chuckled Hanoda. "Look on the screen. His pen is filled with Sigma Racing gear waiting to be signed. A real gem he is. But even so, the neighboring pen is just as full for his competition."

"Love him or hate him, all eyes are undoubtedly on Spica Racing's Naozumi Hiyama," says Nakamura, lips curling at the mention of rally's finest. "He's finally stepping up from the Australian Junior category to fight the big guns. He's quite the rally star to have your eyes on, having competed in almost all rally events in the country and a good handful outside of it. Known as the man who lives on dauntless courage, he's got charisma and that old thrill for speed you rarely find these days. One look at him and you'd agree he's racing in flesh and bones."

"One of our reporters is currently in the press area for a quick interview with him. Let's watch what he's got to say on the weekend so far."

The camera panned to Naozumi, fired up to answer reporters with that one business smirk right at home on his face. Head to toe, he looked like the epitome of racing and the cameras loved him. Even though he's had previous experiences with reporters that left a sour taste in his mouth for their kind, he's never declined their attention if it happened to benefit him. Anything if it meant no more negotiation nonsense with his publicists about talking to the press.

"How's it looking out there so far, Naozumi?" asked a female reporter.

"It was a splendid stage," he spoke, his eyes ever so lightly glancing at her. "But the car lacks a bit of power since the set-up is all new and it behaves differently to the other off-road courses we've been on so far. We hope to make up for the lost points and the limited time on the clock as we go along the stages with hopefully much more power."

"Even with this year's point rankings, you are behind Sigma Racing that have been the absolute champions over the last editions of the cup," she denotes, subtly referring to his previous race mishaps that amde him fall out of the cup before. "Do you have confidence that you can take over their spot this year?"

"Of course," he answered right away, flashing her one of his cocky smirks. "If I didn't, I wouldn't be here fighting for the title."

Another reporter rushed in, pushing his mic over her before she could ask anything else. "But it definitely won't be easy to win since your opponent is Akira Shinkai," he shouted.

That one sentence was all it took to shatter the remainder of Naozumi's patience for the day, draining it below zero. Not that his levels were high before it but they were decent enough not to prowl away from the mass of cameras tha now blinked at him uncomfortably. By the looks of that smug grin and the bold glint in the reporter's eyes, he was one of those stingy tabloid journalists looking to throw him under the microscope and pick out the rotten from the good, much more busier berating him about his personal life choices rather than interviewing him about his driving.

"Shinkai doesn't drink or smoke, partying with celebrities all night long. And it seems like he even stays up late with his engineers to understand the car better, as do some of your other peers," the man adds, ignoring the warring tongue pushing through Naozumi's cheek impatiently. "Don't you think that the difference in your lifestyles in that sense is directly related to the difference of the current points?"

Naozumi simply looked at him like he's grown a head. If this wasn't belittling at its finest, courtesy of the media, he didn't know what else it could be. What this man implied was that his personal way of life came between him and his abilities as a driver. He prayed on the difference between someone who's been handed a seat at first glance and someone who's worked twice as hard for it. Just like the press to always chase the differences. They didn't care about the endless hours of training it took to become a good driver. The countless days spent trying to figure out a mid-field car and make it work like oiled all the time. They only cared about the best results, the growing fan counter, and most important of all about what happened when there were cameras present. Like now for instance. Always looking for an already burning flame to fuel, no matter who it belonged to.

While Naozumi's first instinct was to browse his inner book of smart replies, and get the fuck back in the car, the effort was a lost cause the minute the reporter opened his mouth once more. Just enough to willingly tip his whole canister of oil into a fire that was past the safety line already, catching speed in Naozumi's veins and heading his way with ire.

"There's also that fable," the reporter paused to recall, lips curling with goading. "The hare who thinks he's a genius and just played around for fun, but in the end the tortoise outsmarted him-"

Naozumi didn't let him finish that sentence. His hands wrapped around the front of the man's press vest in a split second, pulling him to eye level like he weighed nothing. He stared him down with an intensity that would make even a professional wrestler back down from a paid fight, daring him to wave his hand above the flames some more if he had it in him. The reporter paled at the slightly violent gesture, his hands falling on Naozumi's wrists with a trembling grip. He certainly did not expect the sudden shift in power, suddenly out of words or questions to ask or say at his address. Naozumi's eyes pushed him to say more, maybe the words would sound just as idiotic to him too. But the man clasped his lips shut like a fish.

"What kind of reporter are you?" growled Naozumi wild as a wolf, his eyes turning dark, piercing deep into the man's soul to see just where he found the audacity to be a natural piece of shit.

His publicist and other press officials rushed to try to get him to loosen his strong hold on the man. They couldn't make him lift a finger off his vest. That man woke pure fire rage and no one just backs up from that. Not Naozumi. The cameras moved quickly back to the studio before the audience witnessed a televised disaster, showing the commenters staring at the screen on the side with shocked expressions on their faces.

"Yeah, he's certainly a character. Moving away from these two experienced youngsters," Hanoda cleared his throat. "In terms of new and upcoming competition, what do we think of the unexpected revival of the season?" he asked, a smug smile tugging at his mouth.

"Suruki Racing coming back was probably not on anyone's calendar anywhere in the near future," spoke Nakamura, still bewildered at the news. "After an eight-year break, they're back and looking better than ever. They have the car, crafted in the home factory from scratch, running as smooth as a car that's seen dirt for way longer. They've also got a pretty solid team under the directive of the man, the legend, rally's original golden boy, Hiro Suruki."

"Aside from Hiro kickstarting his career again," spoke Hanoda, taking the words out of Nakamura's mouth, "the biggest surprise to me personally, was seeing the Robert Don Tanaka take a co-driver seat after being a personal trainer for top teams in the country for the past fifteen years. Rumor has it he refused a big gig for an overseas WRC team for a favor to his old friend. They've been buddies since their start in rally decades ago."

"Eh, let rumors be rumors," said Nakamura. "I'd refuse it too when they're doing so well in such a short amount of time. It's probably the most promising comeback we've seen so far in all my years in rally."

"They're in the points too, thanks to none other than super rookie Raiko Suruki," added Hanoda, chuckling at the play on words.

"A sight to see is this young lady," breathed Nakamura as if hit by some divinity. "She's freshly out of the homeland Junior WRC Series that earned her the spot in the cup and reigning champion of the Tokyo City Rally for the past three years. With her eight-year long karting career and the few cups she's entered and won just recently, she's got the driving resume that we used to dream of having back then. To top it all off, she's also the youngest female driver that's ever raced a Japanese rally series with her participation in the cup. Her passion for rally seems to be almost genetic."

"Now," Hanoda motioned his colleague to lean in, his voice dropping a little lower for secretive effect. "Since we're on gossip hour, another rumor has it she saved the team a horrendous loss on the Tokai Round, taking over a damaged oil filter like a professional mechanic. She did miss the first run of Day 3 but she finished on the scoreboard high enough to climb into the championship standings."

"All excellent things to hear from a competent driver that loves both the car and the game. But," Nakamura paused as your face came up on the screen, cameras zooming in on you talking with the engineers before gearing up to get in the car.

Noticing the camera crew enter the pen, you waved at them with an awkward smile before turning back to your own business. You seemed to be on top of the situation, looking over data as the mechanics explained more about the functions of the new set-up. Nakamura's comment fell through his open mouth into complete oblivion, so stolen by your charm that Hanoda had to tap his shoulder to get him to continue his point. He blinked a few times, rewiring his words back like a robot that suffered a slight malfunction.

"Does she have what it takes to complete the season?"

"That remains a mystery to unfold over the course of the cup. For one, I'm truly excited to see where she can take this brand new Suruki Racing. Hopefully not back to the scraps again," laughed Hanoda.

"Enough with the popularity chit chat. Let's get to the more practical stuff. How's the course looking?"

"Rough," breathed Nakamura with a heaviness only a racer would know. "On both the cars and their drivers. These teams have found themselves facing the fury of all rally courses, heavily seasoned into one round this early in the cup."

"That's right," agreed Hanoda with a tight-lipped smile. "It's a rough course of almost 200 kilometers in total, ranked pretty high on the difficulty scale. They will run for three days in eighteen special stages, spread across double tracks that they will attack twice across Day 1 and Day 2, and three individual separate tracks over Day 3."

"Not just that," interfered Nakamura, "but they'll be competing with their total times on a course like no other in the world. Fuji is like a snake crawling in the ground through rifted valleys, rising through the open hill mounds only to slither back down into the ground and up into the off-road terrain again. A mountain road with no curves and no breathers for the cars or the drivers at the helm. No wonder it's called 'The Rally of the Heavens' locally."

"Indeed," picked up his colleague. "This intense special features highlands of ups and downs that would scare off the average driver, having them take pauses at each scintillating turn to check for damages. But unlike the ordinary driver that lives with the fear of frequent service visits and car insurance brokers, these drivers have a bit of extra help in this round that might just prove crucial to completing the rally weekend with the car in one full piece."

A drone flew over the car paddock, giving the audience watching a bird's eye view of the park nestled atop of a hill. Since the course ran between outer hill slopes and rough terrain, the public had a better chance at seeing the action right from the screens placed around the paddock than being stationed along the course for single turns.

"The car paddock bustles with energy and they have all the reason to. This time around, changing the settings on the cars is totally permitted at any point between stages. The engineers can regulate the car set-ups after a stage, in case of pre-race mishaps, though they have a short limited time to do so since the stages are grouped quite close together."

"In this case, the team has to work quick and accurately to minimize the damage on the cars under the pressure of the clock," adds Hanoda. "Maintenance skills are necessary and team coordinating strength is the key to ruling the game."

"Raiko Suruki just started her second stage of the day," pointed out Nakamura. "Team Suruki's new set-up is looking good so far. The grip on the asphalt is top notch down the straights, much better than any other car running the course at the moment. But their new suspensions seem to have a bit of trouble adjusting to the serpentine hills of Fuji. If they want a chance at a higher placement on the scoreboard, they need to fix that issue and fast."

BANG.

You landed on the road with a trembling thud that shook the car and everything inside as you swerved down a rough hill portion. The car leaned left and right like a speed boat on high water, turning your driving messy and shaky. All your built up focus was lost from the first hazard in the race - a stupidly high jump. Trying to keep the brand new suspensions in check, with the car in a constant up and down tremor is not just difficult. It's hard as fuck. The control it takes just to keep your hands fixed to the wheel and the car on the road without skidding off into a field of wheat was something you and the team underestimated in testing. Big time. And it sure came back to bite you in the ass now.

"5 right long then another jump," paced Tanaka, thighs clamping the pace notebook as best as he could, hands holding tight onto his seatbelt.

And there I thought it would be a stroll through the hills, your nostrils flares, focusing on taking the next hill. This is the road to hell. All it's missing is some fucking flames on the side announcing your arrival to that horned dude.

"RAIKO!" wheezed Tanaka. "FUCK'S SAKE."

Taking the hill, you whizzed between the higher and lower gears and tapped the gas, accelerating on the slope up. A shrill of nausea lodged itself in your stomach as the car lifted into the air perfectly. But you hopped off the hill way too quickly with the gathered speed, smashing onto the straight dirt road with another forceful thud. Tanaka swallowed his upcoming pace notes in a choked gasp. That hop probably sent his lungs to near spontaneous combustion as it did to your already crunching stomach.

"Sorry!"

You scrambled out a quick apology before taking another tall crest rising from the ground with potholes on its upper slope that you couldn't avoid driving over. The car leaned left and right with the weight of a tank. Keeping to a higher speed as you took the jump, the suspensions pushed too hard on this landing, forcing the car to bounce up and down uncontrollably on the road, nearly swerving off it again.

"Last one. 6 right very long and a big jump."

Wide turn then another freaky jump. Awesome.

Corner already in sight, you pulled the brakes and pushed the acceleration, turning to let your rear in for a little drift. Rub a few seconds off your time. Once you were out of the turn and approaching the last jump, you slowed down to avoid a few potholes then pressed the gas flat out again before climbing the jaggy slope into the jump. Before you knew it, the wheels left the safety of ground.

You felt this one push deep down in your guts, pulse thudding muffled in your ears. The car went airborne below the big race banner stand, the ecstatic cheers of the crowd completely swallowing the mechanical tug of the clutch letting free. On your descent, you prayed to find some control at least on this landing. But all your prayers went silent as the rear lifted up into the air first and the car tipped forwards dangerously, the dusty ground becoming the only view in the windshield. Its nose hit the left side of the road hard before the back wheels could land, sending your heart pumping wild in your throat. A horrifying crunch followed as the side fenders and the front bumper scattered to flying bits and pieces before your very own eyes.

You'd be lying if you didn't think that was it for you. Where it would all end for good. But you had one more ace up your sleeve to play before the game was over.

Reacting quickly, your hands found the wheel and steered hard to the right. The leftover bumper crunched and the tires bit harshly into the road as you pushed the high speed gear back in to get the car running normally again. Scrapping a good part of your front off on the road and driving over it, the steering stopped the violent swerving of the car and you managed to get the car to stop. Slowing it down, you passed the marshals, completing the stage with a whole smoke cloud of dirt raising behind you. Among with pieces of your car left in a trail of broken parts.

Bringing the car in the pen, you parked it as fast as you could to let Tanaka out for some fresh air before he threw up in the car. His face was a mix of pale and green as he threw off his helmet, stumbling out to sit on the neat ground that wasn't moving up and down. Kate rushed to him with a bottle of water right away, patting his back softly. Pulling your helmet off as well you leaned back in your seat, taking a breather to settle your upset stomach and the rushing nausea crawling up your throat. Any longer and your stomach was going to start fist-bumping your lungs. Finishing up this stage alone was a challenge, switching so much between the gears that your organs most certainly switched places inside your body too. You weren't looking forward to driving that course again in the afternoon.

The scoreboard upfront updated to display your total track time over stage one and two combined. Your eyes rushed to it instantly ignoring the nausea.

9th place - Raiko Suruki - 4:55:32

We're not fast enough, you sighed, leaning your head back on the headrest with closed eyes. Middle of the bunch was not where you needed to be. Not after Tokai. If you wanted to keep that Top 5 spot in the Drivers' Championship, you had to give it way more. But considering that all that set the drivers apart in the first ten places was differences of tens of seconds, you had to pray for a miracle to get back on track and be faster than the current car set-up could take you.

The team gathered together around the hood when you got out, analyzing the damage on the bumper already getting replaced and browsing ideas on what to do to fix the system set-up so the car could take the aerodynamic forces better without you having to slow down and add to your track time. Sentaro and Akio argued heatedly about the height of the car while everyone else added one or two other issues into the deafening mix of angry yelling. Pulling your glove off with your teeth, you slapped it on the hood before putting two fingers in your mouth to whistle loud and clear. All shouting ceased with the noise, eyes from both your pen and outside of it now looking at you confused.

"Sorry. What do you think, Raiko?" asked Sentaro, rubbing his forehead distressed. He looked to be in dire need of a different opinion that didn't match his own or his mechanics team, all hellbent on taking the car apart again.

"Well, can I be honest?"

All heads nodded your way.

"The new suspensions don't work at all." A wave of sighs and huffs hit you as shoulders sagged downwards. "I don't know if it's the components or the entire inboard section. But they've been on the car for testing and two stages so far and they still refuse to break in when they receive the shocks from the jumps to soften the impacts."

"The new shocks are useless," sighed Sentaro, brushing away at the bags under his eyes.

A murmur of collective grunts of agreement resounded over the hood. The team tested those damn suspensions so much, calibrating the rods, the springs and the height to the point of exhaustion, but they're too rigid on the car to work properly, especially with the ridiculously high jumps on this stage alone.

"There were too many nosedives on this part of the course where I could feel the car lurch forward on the breaks. That and the stiff grip on the off-road parts feels like the car's running on boulders at barely the city speed limit," you added.

"It's too bouncy for me to give her the pace notes without busting a lung," piped in Tanaka, nursing some mineral water to get over the sickness your last run gave his insides. You patted his back in another silent apology that he waved off with a small reassuring smile, telling you not to worry about it.

"Can we get the other pack back on the car?" you asked.

The previous pack was changed before Tokai. The shocks mounted on those ones took the impacts as they should and the grip in the corners was way softer. The only disadvantage was that you would be slower and you'd fall in the middle of the scoreboard, losing some points. Not like you didn't lose enough of them today. What was a few more with a safety insurance this time around?

"We could, but they're used," said Sentaro, shaking his head, ruling out the possibility. "If they break off, you risk crashing at high speed. I don't really want to take that risk. Plus the fact that we don't have time to change the suspensions now. I can pull out the new suspensions and try to play around with the compression settings some more to balance them. But we don't have time for it until tonight."

Consider poor Tanaka in a fight with his guts for the rest of the day. There had to be some way to at least make the car run a bit firmer on the road without slowing down too much. Glancing up at the screen on the other side of the pen with the corner your bottom lip between your teeth, the service time gave them less than fifteen minutes until the third stage to make some kind of helpful change. Just then an idea popped up into your head that had the potential to work.

"What if we split them up later during the longer service break? We put the old ones on the front to take the first shock and the new ones on the back to absorb the impact. Would that work?" Sentaro tilted his head considering it. "We can work on the front springs to make them a tiny bit softer for the rest of the stages today so the front can have more flexibility to move."

"That I can do," he nodded. "Your idea is a good one that we can actually test today since you've got four more stages to get through until you're back to this one again. For now, I can dampen the compression to soften the landings a bit, but you'll have to take them with the new pack. It might just break them in better. But either way, we'll sort it out by tomorrow."

"Great," you smiled, feeling hopeful that you could save some time on the clock. "Also, the gear box has been acting funny since that nosedive earlier. Can you have a quick look at it?"

"Sure," said Sentaro, passing you a quick smile that barely curled his lips before heading off to his mobile desk. You knew that smile, the kind of pained encouragement that hung on the precipice of fatigue. He's been working overtime to make the car run smoothly and all his efforts seemed to crack with the pressure.

"Thanks," you quipped behind him more optimistic than you felt, trying to kick his spirits back up. He just sent you a thumbs up then got down to work.

"Why am I here when you're doing pretty well leading the team all by yourself?" spoke a voice from behind you.

Turning around to the driveway into the pen, you found your dad sitting on the side with his arms crossed waiting to be noticed by his very own team. You thought he was back in Tokyo taking care of recruiting more team members. Judging by his relaxed attire, much more at ease than his usual tailored arsenal made for corporative business, he's been out of the office for a good while. Nonetheless, you were happy he was finally here with the team, so you ran up to him for a quick side hug.

"Dad?!" You squeezed him tight but he squeezed you tighter making you break into a fit of giggles. "How come you're here? When did you even leave the city?"

"Well, I did a few interviews with potential factory workers to speed up manufacturing yesterday and some other boring administrative stuff. But duty hasn't called today yet. So I took a free day."

"Hope it doesn't call at all. You need some rest too," you looked up at him, rubbing his arm in sympathy. Those dark rims around his eyes were more prominent these days and his overall state of health was starting to worry you a little, though he kept telling you he was fine and never has been better.

"Rest is for the weak. How's the car doing?"

"She's alright," you smiled meekly, lightly scrunching your nose up.

That small nudge, as subtle as it was, is a gesture that didn't go unseen. He knew that little nose scrunch was a big flowy curtain hiding some kind of mess you didn't want him to know about.

"Something's wrong again, isn't it?" he blew a breath that made you frown.

He was so used to the old Suruki Racing and the horrors that never stopped coming, that his super dad-leader-driver tingle sensed issues as soon as they appeared with the new team. After Tokai, he's become more vigilant in the car checks, thing that has been stressing the engineer crew, especially Sentaro. Poor guy looked close to pulling a three week medical holiday on him every time he caught him stalking over to the team garage, and he had all the reason to with how fast the coming rounds will progress.

To balance things a bit between him and the team, you've been working with them day and night to test all the new components coming from the factory and help with installing stuff on the car to make their work and yours that much easier. Being there ended up being for your benefit after all, since you were able to feedback on issues in real time without waiting for testing days to say their word. Time effective and productive. That, and you've been able to ask Sentaro for tips regarding the set-up on your very own jewel, bonding over mechanic and technical stuff. He was quickly becoming your new favorite uncle, close to overtaking Tanaka's spot soon enough. So in true estranged niece nature, you covered for him anywhere you could, trying to get your dad off his back.

"It's nothing too major, just the new suspensions that haven't adjusted to the car yet. But they should be fine by tomorrow. We'll be losing some points today but nothing too bad that I can't catch up on."

"Better safe than sorry," he sighed, patting your shoulder. He looked like there was more he wanted to say, but one look from you telling him to cool it down had his mouth close right back up. "I'll go see what I can do over there before Sentaro blows a fuse that I'm here to breathe down his neck again."

"Okay, take it easy with him" you laughed. "And dad?"

He stopped, turning around all ears for you. You smiled wide at him yelling, "I'm glad you're here."

"Me too, lightning strike," he chuckled, smiling back wider.

The next two stages ran way better with the springs dampened and the height on the car adjusted lower, overcoming the force of the air flowing under the car way better. One of the tracks ran over an old asphalt road part of the main country lanes, going into long, low tunnels that dove deep through the bigger rocky hills. The other was a low trunk lane moving down up the rough cracks of a valley. Mostly made up of long straights and wide corners, these stages weren't as difficult as the ones you took in the morning, giving you a chance to catch up on your botched timings. By the beginning of the long break, you jumped up from ninth into seventh place. It still wasn't where you wanted to be, but two spots in such a short time following the early results of stage two was way better, changing race predictions for the whole day.

With the one hour long break in tow, it was time for extra work on the car. Most teams and their drivers went over to the food trucks to refill their stomachs, leaving the paddock almost empty. All except for your pen. Not one soul left the Suruki quarters. All hands were in position for work. The engineers went over data gathered over the four stages to make predictions on set-up changes for the leftover four. The other mechanics replaced damaged parts on the body of the car, doing an inventory of what they saw fit to stay some more and what needed immediate replacing. Plying away your racing suit for the more relaxed, loose team gear, you got your hands dirty too. Helping with the engine and oil checks. Filling up on coolant liquid and changing the air and pollen filter, clogged or filled up with dirt. Anything you could help with no matter the department it fell into.

Mid-break, while everyone was focused on their assigned tasks, the scent of food wafted in the pen all of a sudden, hitting your empty stomach like a freight train. Right when you were about to whine about who dared to break the sacred family fasting, your eyes rose from the hood to catch your father and Tanaka coming over with a ton of bags of food and drinks. The sight of food itself, all packed in foil was enough to make your stomach rumble bloody murder from inside, the team staff around you chuckling in amusement. Until their stomachs grumbled one by one and you were the one laughing.

From then on, everyone took a real break. Chucking tools back in their boxes, closing up the hood and their computers, you all walked over to the back of the paddock to camp on an open patch of green land. Tanaka even managed to get Kate out of her mobile office to enjoy some fresh air. As the hill mound curved downwards, it gave you a view of the rest of the evergreen hills around the area. The clouds covered some of the heat of the early afternoon, letting a pleasant breeze card through your hair, rustling it over your shoulders. There was something so filling about eating out in nature with the people you loved. As if the earth filled you with energy and took away your worries for a while. Playful chatter buzzed louder than the bees pollinating clumps of wildflowers. Laughter echoed around you making your heart full, much like a school trip with your colleagues would feel. It was moments like these when life stopped running, stopping her chase after time to just let it pass with the roll of the clouds. Allowing you to be in the moment. At ease.

A grunt came from your side as your father settled down beside you with two cans of sparkling soda. He opened one for you, then handed it over to you. You welcomed the sweet beverage with a smile.

"You know," he started, "I think I did one thing right in my life."

Your eyes ripped away from the scenery to settle on him. He had a look you haven't seen in ages on his face. Peace. Curious about the answer that brought him in this state, you asked, "Which is?"

"You."

"What is up with you and the compliments lately?" you giggled as you shoved your shoulder into his. "It's not like you."

"I'm just finally looking at life for what it is," he justifies, gazing down into the valley below, a million reveries floating through his eyes. "You've grown up so fast, like time just passed by in the blink of an eye and the little girl who used to run around me yelling curses at tires is now a full grown woman, still yelling curses but at a normal sized car."

"So did you," you chuckled, hitting the tip of your boot to the tip of his canopy trainers. "Though mom keeps telling me you're still as childish as ever."

"It's all lies," he shook his head denying the allegations.

You howled a laugh. "Sure it is."

"The factory headquarters called."

Of course they did, you huffed a breath. That meant he had to leave again. He was barely here for a few hours and he had to get ready and drive back on a Friday night of all times to take care of things at the firm. That sentence alone put the weight of this weekend closing in harder back up on your shoulders. As selfish as it felt, you wanted him to be here at least now and catch a race weekend from start to finish.

"Can't you just go on Monday morning?" you shrugged looking down at your soda. "It's almost the weekend."

"I wish I could, kiddo," he sighed. "But if I don't take care of it now, way more shit will pile up in the main office than I have braincells for. I won't stay too long," he tried to reassure you. "Last time I worked over the schedule, your mom drove over to run my ass back home herself," he laughed.

"Okay. You don't have to ask me for permission to go, you know," you say, playing around with the ends of the grass under your palm. "I've got things covered here."

"How the wheels have spun." You couldn't help but snort at his try at a known catchphrase. "My own daughter is sending me away," he chuckled shaking his head. "At least let me finish my can of soda. I haven't had one of these in years."

He sat with you some more, but he didn't say another word. He either felt the combo of dread and slight disappointment oozing off you or he had nothing else to say. But that silence weighed heavy on you. When he was done with his soda, he got up and walked around the team to pass his goodbyes before coming back behind you to crouch down and press his lips to the crown of your head. Your eyes fell shut relishing in the small token of affection that never failed to reassure you a little. Brushing away your hair, he held your chin to him demanding your full attention.

"If you need anything, and I mean anything, be it mechanic or otherwise, you call me right away. My line's open all weekend, day or night, for you. No worry is too small. Okay?"

"Okay, okay," you laughed, tapping his wrist to let go before you got second hand embarassment. "Go get packed up if you don't want to catch the highway traffic."

"Be safe out there, firebolt."

"You too, dad. See you back home."

His hand swiped up your chin to boop your nose as you whined at the childish gesture. Then he walked off. Watching his back retreat away, you felt like the last ounce of peace for the weekend went away with him. The minute break was over, you were back in the car, running it over the last stages of the day, starting with the rough dirt roads again. The car behaved a little better in the jumps, still landing them like it wanted to fall to pieces at every turn. But there were no more nosedives where the car tipped forwards at full speed to give you a flash of your already shortened lifespan. Whizzing through the leftover doubles, you finished the day with a smile on your face. Sacrificing the break with the team was worth it in the end, gaining you an extra spot higher on the scoreboard. There was still a long way from sixth upwards, but it was better than being below the tenth mark.

The team pulled up service overnight. Some mechanics checked the parts stock for the next two days in the parked trailers. You stayed to help Sentaro replace bits and pieces on the suspensions, making the trade off between the old and the new ones, which has been a long process for the past couple of hours. The night already set in darker and darker around the paddock, lights flickering off in most team pens. In yours, a few bulbs lit up the work table beside the mobile team trailer.

"Can you pass me the shock rod?" asked Sentaro, his voice drifting somewhere in your subconscious. No response came from his right where you stationed yourself, so he called your name again, thinking you didn't hear him. "Raiko?"

Still no hand or shock rod in sight, he turned to see you half-asleep on the chair beside him, hand under your chin keeping you from toppling over. With a sigh, he put down his tools. A small shake to your shoulder had you straighten your back like you were just exercising your eyes closed. Definitely not sleeping on the job. You rubbed your eyes of the sleep sitting on your lids, almost ready to take you away to dreamland even in the uncomfortable position you were sitting in. Glancing up, you saw Sentaro looking down at you, a small smile peeking from under his twirly mustache.

"Go get some sleep. You have a long day tomorrow."

"Are the suspensions done?"

"No, but-"

"Then I'm staying," you said determined, getting up from the chair to look in the mess of scattered tools and parts. "Is it the shock rods you asked for?"

He simply sighed, knowing you were as stubborn as your dad when it came to helping. From then on, you sat by his side watching as he handled the bits and pieces on the suspensions. Sight spinning blurry from the bright light above the work table, trying your best to stay awake. Not long after he placed the suspension down on the table, he took to cleaning up the area a little. The movement had you sober up and reach out for some tools too, putting them back in their designated places.

"Done?"

He nodded, stretching his arms above his head with a yawn. "Yeah. I'll have the boys put them on the car in the morning."

"Amazing," you smiled tiredly, holding up your palm to him for a high-five. "Great work, Sentaro. I couldn't have done this without you."

"You too, kiddo," he smiled, high fiving you back. "You didn't have to, but you stayed with us, working day and night on this thing. Your dad should be proud of you."

I hope so, you sighed, the ghost of a smile on your lips. I really do.

Fuji Highland Masters Day 2 - Saturday

You woke up early to go for a run before the tracks opened and the public flooded the wilderness with their noise pollution. Exploring the wilderness around Fuji is something that's always been on your wish list. Doing it now, during the early April spring days as everything came back to life as the cold winter thawed over was bound to be a magical experience. One you wouldn't miss even for an extra wink of sleep.

Taking off from the hotel, you took a course out of the main town area, behind the chain of hotels running along the open village lanes. The loud noise of the city got drowned out by a small serene touch of wild. The clear air was already more refreshing to breathe in, tinged with a hint of an earthy scent from the damp soil still in the air as it rained the night before.

For a few miles, all you could see was timber two-story houses and smaller cabins, spacing themselves out between small, narrow neighbouring pathways. Until you broke out into a patch of forest completely untouched by the hands of the modern world. Green conifer trees decked in long pinecones, poplars with swirly roots climbing out of the earth, and old oak trees with outgrown branches touching the ground, stood tall on the sides of a rocky trail, shadowing over the outermost layer of the forest. They covered the sky almost entirely, letting small slivers of sunlight float through their crowns to dance on the petals of wild blue and pink hydrangea bushes growing beneath them. Butterflies flew around the rays of light tinted golden, birds chirping different songs and calling out to the rest of the forest, turning the mood almost fairy-like. The temperature dropped gradually at the foot of the woods, small shivers running up and down your spine at the rush of coldness around you.

Soon enough, you exited the woods and your path lit up completely with the warmth of the early morning sun. The warm rays touched your exposed shoulder timidly at first, then ran across your face with more friendly heat, warming you right up. But it's the landscape ahead that really put a smile of adoration on your face. There was only lively green and wildlife wherever your head turned, rushing up and down the steep hills to meet the deep blue sky in the middle. The white peak of Mount Fuji rose up behind the hill in front, its rocky side completely drenched in the misty fog of the blue sky. The snowy top of the mountain appeared as a floating cloud that no wind could ever blow, be it a harsh winter gust icing up its snow trails or a hot summer breeze trying its hardest to melt it.

The sandy wheat fields growing from the edge of the dirt road turned to vivid green tea fields and rows upon rows of colorful flowers the further your eyes roamed, stretching all the way over the slopes riding upwards on the low hills like the open petals of a flower you were in the center of. From freshly budded spiky lavender to wild irises at the side of the road and a multitude of imported tulips, there were countless species of flowers in full bloom all around the place. At the edge of the road. Beneath the fields. Everywhere. Tree lines of cherry and plum blossoms grew on top of every hill, their branches stretching up to the sky, cheerfully announcing the true coming of spring. There was even a Naozumi tying up his shoelaces-

Wait a second. Naozumi? you slowed down, glancing behind to see it was really him, crouching down on the side of the road to tie his shoelaces. What is he doing here, all the way in the middle of nowhere this early?

Though you jogged past him, it didn't take him too long to clock you and run after you, settling in beside you on a slower jog. From your peripheral, you caught a tug of a relaxed smile lounging across his lips.

"Good morning," he uttered, sounding rather pleased to see you.

Wishing to keep your run peaceful, and solo, you narrowed your eyes at him before muttering back a quick, "Good morning."

Hoping he would go his own way and leave you to it was poor hoping from the start. From the moment you replied back to his greeting, he was glued to your hip like a Siamese cat. You ran together like that for a while, side by side on the same medium rhythm. He didn't say a word and neither did you. He simply glanced at you from the corner of his eye from time to time, as did you, and you both left it at that to contain the peace of the scenery more than trying to question the heavy silence hanging between you. Because that silence existed and it was one blocking boulder you'd rather not move.

The slow run part was peaceful. Up until a point where you couldn't focus on the beautiful scenes around you at all, struggling to keep your attention on the road and away from him. If you dropped a glance his way that happened to be even a second too long, you knew that your brain would start making up imaginary scary movies again and you needed none of those at the moment.

I don't see him. He's not here. Nope. I am here to admire nature, not natural jerks.

Nature. Butterflies. Grass.

I should touch some grass.

Nature, you gazed at the open tulip fields with a smile.

Butterflies, you watched as a couple of them flew around the irises on the road sitting on the flower's purple petals.

Grass. No grass on your right, but there was a whole lot of grass on your left where he was- No, no, no. Keep your focus on the nature, Raiko. Come on.

The thing with focus however, was that your attention span was cut short instantly the millisecond muscles were involved in the already scenic picture. Taut, bunchy, hard muscles. Naozumi accelerated a little, drawing in front of you by a few steps, just enough to give you a glimpse of his bare arms and the really tight grey tank top hugging his chest better than one of those wretched compression shirts could. Consider your focus all gone to shit from that moment onwards.

His arms flexed as he ran, extending taut and sinew, with all those soft veins popping up, running from the round bend of his shoulder to wrap around the inside of his bicep. Entire strokes of them rippled down the length of his bulky inner forearms, the cannons, cascading in cyan blue waves all the way down to his wrist and around his tightened fist. But those weren't the muscles calling to you. The muscles that your mouth ran dry after, watching as they contracted and moved side to side with his synced steps, were unfortunately stuck to his broad chest and his strong tall shoulders, rounding and running all the way down to his lower back and hips like hill crests your hands inched to ride over.

Worse yet, that damn top turned to a mere cloth collecting the ripples of sweat drenching his entire torso, front and back side. So you looked. Shamelessly. But when you remembered to blink and looked away you realized the big mistake you made.

Like a firecracker being set aflame, the very thoughts you tried to break away from by going on a run flooded in like a wild typhoon, reminding you of your last encounters with him and how much his cocky, know-it-all, professional playboy behaviour pissed you off. With that alone, your rage counter spiked up high to the point his current presence started to piss you off in real time.

"Can I help you?"

The anger in your step made your voice cut through your heavy breaths with a hint of annoyance you dearly hoped reached him and made him feel how unrequested his company is.

"Hmm, nope," he replied.

As soon as that left his mouth, his existence sucked out all the joy brought by the splashes of color around you entirely. All the energy you absorbed from it was gone in all but a puff of dust with that disinterested nope, just like that.

Enough is enough.

Since he didn't understand the concept of personal space, you had to make him understand. Determined to lose him, you sped up ahead of him thinking he would at least comprehend basic etiquette of a solitary jog and fall aside. The plan was good. You just forgot he had no semblance of manner or apprehension of putting distance between you when he happened to be in that teasing mood of his.

You got two steps away before he sped up too, dashing fast to reach up to you again. Fury bubbling beneath your foot soles, you took another bolt ahead. He followed suit in it with barely a pep in his step. Your mouth fell open on a dry scoff. That sprint alone got on your nerves, activating your competitive side. If he thought you were fast in driving, he surely didn't see you run.

I did track in high school, bitch.

Gearing up your already burning calves with a run on the spot that had him eye you oddly, you sprinted forth faster than you've ever ran trying to lose him. Rocks flew from under your quick steps, your nostrils flaring to control your air intake as you took all the corners you could find off the main road, bolting like the locals were on your tail with burning pitchforks. You ran and ran, the only thought in your head to get as far away from him as possible. Charging rapidly until you left the main paved lane behind completely, not once looking back to see if he followed. At one point you tired out and stopped to take a breath. Your head whipped left and right, unable to hear his steps behind or his heavy breathing beyond yours. A victorious smile broke on your face. You did lose him. You secretly wished some ancient forest entity snatched him up on the way as food or something.

But Naozumi doesn't give up from pestering someone that easily. Not when his target arrow was now pointing at you most of the time like your patience was some damn trophy he had to have in his collection. So, for once, he used his brain for a smart decoy, taking a shortcut through the mini side roads to get back to you.

Passing a small tree line as you resumed your chill jogging rhythm, he suddenly bolted up from the left falling in right beside you, scaring the crap out of you while sporting that irritating smirk of his. You took that as a fucking challenge to your already dying patience.

Gearing up your leftover energy for one more sprint, you pushed yourself to the brink of your powers on the straight road, getting several meters ahead of him again. By this point, you ran way more than your legs could take you, lungs burning the more you pushed them.

Please god, tell me I lost him this time or I'll shove flowers down his throat and make sure they grow roots.

You were so close to freedom. You had it right in the palm of your hand. Just when you came up far in front of him, he overtook you in a bolder sprint, smiling like a maniac. His head turned back to you as he was running, his prepared victory shout just on the tip of his tongue.

"I win-"

Famous last words.

He started celebrating way too early - loser's curse. As soon as that celebration shout came out of his mouth, his foot slipped on the gravel at the side of the road and he barreled down the small slope of earthy eeeds, landing on his back into the opening of a flower field. You ran up to him coming to a halt right on the edge at the top of the slope, looking down to see him nestled among clumps of small blue flowers. He blew out one from his mouth. Some of them were in his hair, others stuck to him like fresh oil paint on a canvas, all smudged on his clothes.

Sitting up with a grunt, he looked as graceful as a kid running his brand new bike through the nearest rough terrain he could find - clumsy and sort of friendly with the world around him. Definitely not as menacing as the guy that wanted to punch a reporter for throwing a fable at him in hopes of humbling him a little just yesterday.

He lifted a hand to you, wordlessly asking for your help to tow him out. You stared at his hand with a raised eyebrow.

Frankly, you debated leaving him there. A little payback for his taunting so early and disturbing your peace on the daily. Such acts shouldn't go unpunished. But karma made sure she had your back when needed, one exhibit of her almighty power already staring at you with a glint of apology in his eyes. An apology he was too proud to utter. But then again, even a small twinge of regret goes a long way with someone like him. Small progress.

Your hand extended down to him as you knelt down to reach him. You might be vengeful but when it came to helping someone that instinct grabbed you way before any shred of hate ever could. And your parents didn't raise a self-righteous animal for a daughter.

Drawing as close to the edge as you could without slipping, you lowered your arm as close to his as you could. He grabbed a hold of your hand, fingers wrapping securely around your smaller palm. Eyes meeting his in the briefest glance, you caught that loop sided smirk of his and by all instincts going in alert you should've seen it coming - the betrayal. Taking notice of his plan way too late, you tugged him up using all the force you had in you only for him to catch your forearm and draw backwards, pulling you down with him this time.

Judging by his breathy 'Oh fuck', he probably didn't expect you to roll down the slope and fall on top of him with a hard thump. The air got knocked out of you for a moment that he took to chuckle like a moron. For a second you wondered what would've happened if he just choked on that damn flower. Once you could breathe normally, as if your lungs didn't nearly spontaneously combust after a deadly race for life and freedom, and a fall that left your joints ache, you lifted your head from his chest and shot him a deadly glare that clamped his amused lips shut tight.

"Why the fuck are you laughing?" you coughed, moving to get up.

Placing your hands on the side, your palms slipped over the wet destroyed flowers, sending you falling right back into his arms, knocking your head in his jaw. You were sure he felt that one more than your head did. He deserved it after all.

Head tucked in the crook of his neck, you took a breath that let his perfume invade your senses. Overwhelming at first, the accidental whiff you took was followed by another one, more attentive, as you noticed a weird change. That citrusy scent of his turned flowery now, replaced by a much softer aroma falling sweeter than the stingy fruit notes you were used to catching as he brushed by you in passing. Was it the Fuji breeze that had this effect on him? Because you pulled back and saw his eyes catch that same softness as he gazed up at you, stuck under your body.

Your eyes fell on him and his pink lips, darting between the two as they fell open and closed again. All you could see were those brown orbs of his turning a bright amber in the bright rays of the sun as they searched your face, stopping their long race at your lips too, not at all subtle about it. Something about those pillowy pink petals outlining his mouth made your heart race. Shifting them back up the defined arched bow above them, over his tall nose, your breath caught on his eyes again. No longer dark and intimidating but warm and inviting. When your eyes dove back down to his lips, you found a smirk already taking shape on them. They smug smirk.

"You're so gullible."

He loves ruining moments, doesn't he?

Not that there was a... moment there.

"I thought you'd leave me here, stranded in the middle of nowhere with no help," he continued, watching your lips fall open lightly at his confession. His tongue peeked out to wet his bottom lip, thing that brought your eyes back to them. "Guess I was wrong."

"I should have left you here," you coughed dryly, moving away from the warmth of his chest to sit down beside him on the grass.

Turning your attention elsewhere, you gasped as you took in your running gear. It was completely ruined. Previous sunny golden with blue hues in the team colours that you chased online for months, were now full of wet grass and stamped blue flowers all over. Parts of your leggings were torn apart where small green thistles embedded in the material. As were your trainers, all brand new now a mess of green and dirt. All of it courtesy of the leprechaun sitting beside you that attracted troubles instead of pots of gold and just felt like ruining another day for you for his own pleasure.

"Last time I help you," you mumbled more to yourself as you pried off the thistles throwing them at him. The prickly buds didn't even stick to him. "I really should've left and minded my own damn business."

"Then you wouldn't have been able to see this."

"See what, my foot in your face-"

Turning around to see where he was looking at, your threat died away on a breath stolen by something else. A view unlike anything you could ever dream of.

You were looking at one of the most beautiful flower fields you've ever seen, spreading endlessly into a sea of all shades of blue. A flower that you knew all too well. All previous rage slipped out of you in a smile of recognition. The clumps closest to you were of a baby blue so bright, round petals almost pale from the blinding sun, while the others stretched into a lighter blue the further you let your eyes roam over the hill filled with them from top to bottom. The small petals reflected the hues of the sky up above as if you were swimming in a sea of all blue. The kind of peace and serenity you'd find in otherworldly dreams.

A mute wow escaped your lips. What you were looking at was pulled out of a painting hung up in a museum by some famous painter you'd never remember the name of. It didn't even feel real if you didn't touch their little petals, feeling the soft velvety surface on the edges, watching as a breeze of the wind rustled them up in a dance. The childish joy and awe this view made you feel was real. You couldn't find that kind of feeling anywhere else even if you chased seas and lands for it. Not as unique.

"You almost ran beside it," he remarked, just as stuck on the mass of flowers.

"This is..."

You were speechless. Not one word came to your mind to describe it and truly capture the essence of what it made you feel. Until Naozumi came up with the perfect one.

"Beautiful," he said, barely above a whisper.

Looking back at him, you wondered if he was talking about the flowers or something else entirely. His gaze ran behind you, so far away, further than the field could stretch and the sky could reach. A place he could not see with his eyes but somewhere he once knew, cradled in the crevices of his mind, recalling a memory lost in time. You didn't take him for a pensive person until now. Whatever got that reaction out of him must have been important to him.

Not wanting to cut him off from the one true moment of peace you got together, you picked up a few flowers and started braiding them into a crown. You braided shoot after shoot, arranging flower after flower, fingers deftly brushing over the petals. Once you were pleased with the length and your work on it, you tied it together, wrapping the green shoots around until it was a sturdy flower crown worthy of a scouts' badge or the head of a wandering princess.

"They look like cherry blossoms," spoke Naozumi, breaking out of his reverie. He had one of the flowers in his hand, propped up on his knee, twirling it each and every way as if he was examining its deeper meaning.

"They're called nemophila. Baby blue eyes," you said, smiling at the bundle of flowers laying in your lap. He looked at you, brows drawn in confusion as to how you knew about them since it wasn't a common name for a flower and you didn't look like much of a flower person.

"My mom and Kate like these. Kate likes wearing blue clothing of this exact shade," you smiled, fixing the crown a little.

"Is that for her?" he nodded at it, eyes tailing over the neat work you made of the small blooms, not one uneven shoot sticking out of it.

"She's stuck in her hotel room doing remote work," you admit, brushing the pad of your finger over another velvety petal. "I thought it would be nice to take these to her and change the bleakness of that beige desk a little."

"Give me your hand," he asked out of the blue, holding his hand out to you.

Suspicious of another semi-permanent marker incident, or worse, you hesitated. But he held his to you wide open, no tricks up his missing sleeves to be seen, waiting for your palm to sit in it like a shell waiting for its pearl to return in the comfort of its home.

Blowing a breath still unsure, you looked between his palm and those soft eyes of his once more and caved in, lowering your hand in his. He held onto the back of your palm, warmth trespassing from his territory into yours in a speedy crackle of electricity. A buzz that sent your heart fluttering. Taking the flower he plucked and studied so deep in thought, he placed it in the small of your palm, his brown eyes looking at you like he looked at the flower mere moments ago. As if your face was the center of your own microcosmic universe, holding together the petals of your very being. As small as she was, that bundle of joy was able to withstand anything the world threw at her. A catastrophic fall thunderstorm. The deadly freeze of the winter. The burning heat of the summer sun. All of it, just for it to bloom in the middle of spring for all but a fleeting moment, greeting the world with immense joy. Just like you for that matter.

In this moment, silently floating on a lost spring breeze, you understood part of why he said you were a curiosity, watching that same playfulness in his eyes turn into wonder as he gazed long at you. A wonder moving beyond any game he could try to play with you, reaching for sheer honesty. A disarming moment where you were just two people bound by nothing but the need to exist, bare to each other's eyes.

Flower safe in your hold, his thumb traced down its shoot one more time pressing doen to the foot of your wrist before it left your palm. He got up dusting his pants of the grass and the flowers that stuck to his body, holding a hand to you. You smacked it away, less violently this time.

"I am well aware of what happens when someone tries to help you up. I don't want a rematch."

He smirked down at you. "Fair enough."

He pulled his hand away but still offered it after climbing back up on the road. Unable to refuse it now since he was your only shot at being towed out in the middle of nowhere, you grabbed onto his hand and let him pull you up, clutching the small flower and the crown to your chest. One powerful tug had your feet land back on the edge of the country lane. Stumbling into him on unsteady feet, your faces were once again so close. You felt that weird spark again as his hand was still holding yours, wrists pressed into each other, passing warmth around. The longer he kept his eyes on you your grip on his arm turned rigid, clamping on it like he was your lifeline. His thumb absentmindedly stroked the side of your forearm, sending your pulse thumping all the way in your throat. You prayed he couldn't feel it. How it intensified with each breath you took. Eyes landing on your joined hands, you pulled yours a little only to feel resistance coming from him. Cautiously lifting the pads of your fingers off his arm, you let go and he finally did too.

After that, you went back to running together in a silent jog until you reached the city again. You split ways between your hotels without anything else but a glance each other's way as you turned a corner. Padding down the hallway to Kate's room to drop her flower crown, your mind kept replaying that flower exchange, twirling the little bloom between your fingers as you questioned her meaning.

What could a flower this small and unknown mean to Naozumi Hiyama? you wondered. The way he gave it to you, laying it in the palm of your hand so openly, had you think he entrusted you with something of huge importance to him. Could it be he's seen the flower before or that it meant something to someone close to him? You couldn't tell. But from the confusion on his face when you told him what its called he seemed to have no previous recollection of the flower. Whatever it was, you were determined to find out. Soon enough.

Stopping by Kate's door to knock, you noticed the door was left ajar. Why would her door be open? Just as the thought passed through your mind you heard noise and things rattling to the floor. Thinking of the worst, you pushed the door open walking in her suite.

"Kate?" you called her name but no answer came except that weird noise. You turned the wall to her desk, catching a glimpse of long hair. "I brought you flowers- WHAT THE FUCK!"

"JESUS CHRIST!"

Right as you rounded the wall to attack the intruder, you found Kate. And Tanaka. Making out like the world was ending and you didn't get the memo. If making out resembled eating someone's face off. She had him pushed into the wall beside the desk, papers and pens scattered all over the carpet. Your eyes flew up from the mess on the floor to catch her blushing furiously, hands slowly falling away from Tanaka's messed hair. You turned around before you could see any more, holding the flower crown to her behind your back.

"It's barely nine in the morning guys," you groaned, waving the crown around for her to just take it already. "You left the door open too."

"Thank you," she laughed awkwardly, taking it from your hold. "They're my favorites! See, why can she bring me flowers but you can't?" she said, a hint of anger in her voice, all directed at Tanaka.

Slipping out of their hair, you made your way to the door while she continued berating him about not showing her enough attention, avoiding getting caught in the crossfire of a lovers quarrel this early.

"I will be in my room until call time," you said, before slipping out the door, shutting it tight like it should've been in the first place.

My eyes, man, you rubbed them in hopes it would delete the image of Kate pushing Tanaka to the wall. Not even brain damage will help me forget this. Not cool, man. Not cool.

Itchy and extremely annoying. That's how your nose felt all day since you came back from your morning run. No matter how much you scratched it to the point your nose turned pink, blowing it to get rid of the liquid pooling out of your nostrils until you exhausted three packs of tissues, it just wouldn't. stop. itching. Driving with the helmet constricting fresh air from going in only made it all worse.

You got through most of the stages of the day just fine, until a sneezing fit took over you before you got in the car a few moments ago. Currently on your second to last run of the day, you struggled to breathe through your congested nose while maneuvering the car through the first corners. Each itch you couldn't scratch had you tighten your hold on the steering wheel, praying to any higher power listening to take this terror away before you made a mistake or worse, crashed the car with you and Tanaka in it.

"3 right into 6, very long," he paced you.

Tight corner in the right going into a wide one on the coming left. I feel like cutting my nose off.

Going into the first corner, you swerved the wheel quickly sending your shoulder towards the window. The movement only made your nose itch much worse. Shifting gears to take the wide corner running down a hill portion, the sudden change in pressure made it unbearable to keep the incoming sneeze in. Refusing to let it out, you squeezed your eyes shut and pinched your nostrils together, pressing your foot on the throttle a bit too hard. The car lurched forward on a sharp inhale, almost wiggling that sneeze out of you forcefully.

"Raiko, slow down."

"I'm going to sneeze."

"Don't sneeze, we're almost done."

Easier said than done. That fucker crawled down the bridge of your nose faster than you could clench your nostrils together to keep it inside. You had only two corners left. But that stupid sneeze wanted to float outside and explore the world so badly by how fast it made your nose run. Your reflex instinct had the nerves in your arm tingling to lift and brush off your nose just once, hoping it could bring you some relief, but the drift portion coming ahead had you glue your hands to the wheel.

"6 right 50, very long."

The drift portion is right up ahead.

Ah fuck.

I can't hold it in anymore.

Your foot searched for the brake quickly, fully knowing you'll lose this stage. Before you knew it, you sneezed loudly in your helmet, accidentally pressing the throttle.

Shit, shit, shit.

Moving your foot at breakneck speed you recovered the brakes but spun out right in the middle of the corner, car facing in the wrong direction, a few inches away from smashing into the high wall of dried earth at your right. The crowd at the top of the hill looked down with shocked gasps as smoke floated from under the tires from the force of the quick spin.

"Raiko? What happened?" asked Tanaka, worried about the maneuver you just pulled out of nowhere.

"I'm fine-" you got cut off by a bigger sneeze that sent your head spinning more than the car spin just did.

"Jesus. Are you okay?"

Opening your mouth to say something, it fell shut as another sneeze shook you, teeth accidentally biting into your lip. Followed by another one. And another one. No matter how hard you tried you couldn't stop the triple rounds of sneezes from coming. Once they calmed down a little, you felt warm liquid dripping down over your lips and into your mouth.

"I think my nose is bleeding."

Marshals called the truck to tow you back to the paddock since you couldn't drive at all. As soon as you were parked, you pulled off your helmet to take some fresh air only to inhale once and start sneezing again. Tanaka took you to the medical tent right away despite your endless pleas that you were fine and it was just a sneezing fit. Even though the rolling nosebleed said otherwise. The nurse on duty consulted you as he waited right beside you, nudging his bearded chin worriedly that something serious happened. After patching your nose up with tissues and giving you something to soothe the itching, the nurse came to the conclusion you had a wild case of hay fever. Explained the sneezing warcry and the hammering headache taking up a seat.

"She's inhaled way too much pollen from somewhere. It's peak allergy season too and we're in Fuji so it was bound to happen," she said, her eyes landing on you with a question. "Did you perhaps explore the field area recently?"

"I did go on a run around them this morning but I was fine until..." Wait a minute.

The field that you and Naozumi fell in was fully bloomed. Your clothes were smeared with the pollen as much as the blue flowery petals. That, and unlike him, you happened to kiss the weeds on the slope on your way down because he pulled you down. You practically did it to yourself but he was to blame way more.

"Until...," the nurse pressed on with a brow lifted, Tanaka's eyes boring into you just as curious beside her.

"I slipped and fell down in a field of flowers. I must've run my nose against the weeds on the side of it too," you sighed, deciding to keep what actually happened to yourself.

Tanaka's shoulders relaxed with your words, visibly happy it wasn't something much more serious. If he found out it was Naozumi who pulled you in, he would break his legs and cause a scandal none of you needed right now. So you zipped it shut for now.

The last stage of the day was cancelled for you. Both the nurse and your team fell in agreement that you deserved to catch up on some rest. As welcomed as it was, resting only made you stress more. Even with the upgrades installed on the car overnight, the most you managed to climb was up into sixth place, which meant having to pull in way more energy in the last three stages tomorrow to get back into Top 5. Rest was much better welcomed tomorrow afternoon after this hell round finished. But participating in the last run today was out of the question. Tanaka made sure of that with a threat to call your father, thing that would ultimately nuke the whole race weekend for you. So you obliged. Putting up a fight first. But still losing it in the end.

The nurse helped you out of your suit, left in your soaked fireproofs and sat you on a bed with a TV view so you wouldn't miss how the rest of the day went for the other teams. She didn't forget to prescribe you some allergy meds, instructing you on when to take them. Once she was gone, leaving you all by yourself in the tent, you let out a long huff to deflate your disappointment. Laying your head and your aching back on the bed let some comfort cushion you. Maybe a little break was in order after two of the longest days in rally you've ever competed in, body running on nearly not enough fuel as you ran back and forth between sleep and the paddock. Although, watching like this from the sidelines gave you a sense of missing out on things. You hoped this was the last of it, if possible for evermore.

Balancing a cold water bottle on your forehead to get rid of the migraine forming behind your eyes, you focused on getting the pain to go away. All your senses shut off for a while. You tried to relax. Filter through your multitude of thoughts. Drown out the noise from the outside world and what lay beneath it. Not really paying any attention to anything but resting. You didn't hear when he came in, but devil incarnate was sat at the door of the medical tent observing you. He was so silent, you could've missed his presence if it wasn't for your eyes landing on him on accident just as he shifted his weight to lean on the tent's frame. You haven't been in medical for long, so how long has he been standing there gazing at you with that look in his eyes?

Through the blurriness of your irritated pink eyes, you saw his brows furrow in what could only be called concern. Or constipation. Though the first option sounded more plausible. Then he opened his mouth and you wished he was actually constipated.

"You spun out from a sneeze?" he started, chuckling mid-sentence until that infuriating sound turned into maniacal laughing at your expense. Because the nice thing to do for someone you dragged into shit with your own two very idiotic hands was to laugh in their face instead of asking about their wellbeing. Very Naozumi of him.

On impulse, you threw a pillow at him. It landed right by his boots missing him just in the slightest. That pillow didn't reach him, so you hoped a much kinder gesture would - flipping him the bird with both hands. If you could manage your toes individually, you'd show him the little ones too. He took in the pillow at his feet and your middle fingers and snorted. Your head lifted off the pillow, eyes shooting very pointy screws at him. He just continued laughing, slapping his chest as he walked away.

Please don't let me see you for the rest of the day, dear Naozumi. Shifting violently in the bed, you landed back on your back with a frustrated huff. I'm feeling very murderous today.

You preoccupied yourself with analyzing your competition. Watching their runs, you noticed most cars had similar set-ups to yours. A few of them ran quite adventurously on high height, thinking their cars were jeeps, only to plunge headfirst into dangerous dives just like a jeep would. Very revolutionary. Several teams passed on the screen, until Naozumi's last turn for the day came up. Looking at the scoreboard, he's been doing pretty well on the course so far, sitting high up in third, trying to catch up to Akira in second. From what you've seen, the car's been giving him trouble in the horror hill sectors, much like yours has. Though he's been driving more recklessly, chasing after that top spot instead of prioritizing the mental of his team like you did.

The overhead helicopter camera zoomed in on him speeding through the straights of a ramped hill, leaving a rising trail of dust behind him. He got past the tight corners, forcing the gear way too hard till the car bit into the road edges. So far so good on the control front. Then he came up to the last crest preparing for a jump that led him right into a wide corner, perfect for a final drift before finishing off. The first time you saw that turn in the course, you looked at it with knees wobbling. Now, you were a little glad that was something you didn't have to put yourself through today. Especially with deathly sneezing fits.

Curious on how dauntless Naozumi would take it, you glued your eyes to the screen. He tapped in the breaks and cued the gas way too fast, flying over the crest. The nose of his car dove forwards, greedily eating up the dirt with the tip of its hood. Ouch. Then instead of taking the corner wide to the right, he cued in the gear for the drift way before the descent into the curb line. He oversteered, tires sliding off the dry tarmac into the deep ditch at the rim of the scooped up road margins. His right side smashed right into the rock wall on the side of the road, scratching the whole side of the body and paint off entirely until it stopped down at the exit of the curb. Everything stood still for a good minute. There was so much smoke coming out from under the car, a huge cloud of dust engulfing it whole especially on his side of the car. The timer on the screen stopped. Then the transmission was cut off to the presenters.

Soon enough, Naozumi was brought into medical too, settled on the bed next to yours. From what you gathered as the nurse tended to him, he came across issues with the gear box and swerved to the right so his co-driver wouldn't be the one to take the hit. The nurse pressed an ice pack against his temple telling him to rest. His eyes fell shut with a pained groan before she left, shutting the tent flaps closed. Sight falling to your left, a quick scan over his still suited body revealed a swollen bump peeking from under the ice pack, turning a light shade of green on the side of his head. He must've hit his head either in the plastic seat latches or the window. However it happened, it looked nasty. It didn't take from his annoying good looks though.

"What?" he grunted out, sensing your eyes on him.

"What happened?" you asked, curious as to what brought him in the tent as a patient this time around. His head turned to you, wincing at the rapid movement.

"I lost control of the car," he said, pressing the ice pack better on the swollen side.

"How? Did your engine fail again or was it the gearbox this time? You had a pretty good run up until that last turn."

"I just...," he starts, pausing with a sigh. "I sneezed."

Karma sure works in nice ways.

"You lost control of the car because of a sneeze?" you said, trying to mimic the amusement in his earlier remark, throwing it right back at him.

"I guess I deserved that," he breaths out, closing his eyes.

"It's all your fault."

His eyes fell back open. "What?"

"This never would've happened if you didn't pull me in that damn flower field with you."

"I'm glad I did," he smirked amused by this whole situation. "Now we can suffer together."

In the blink of an eye, you were out of your bed grabbing a pillow, stopping by his bedside to beat him up with it. You made sure each hit hurt more than the previous since he sabotaged the rest of your racing day, as well as his, but most importantly all your work and progress for a stupid, idiotic, completely unreasonable motive other than being a self-righteous jackass.

"Ow, ow, ow! Why are you hitting me?"

"How about I send you to fucking hell to see how glad you'll be when you suffer like I did-" you yelled, pushing that pillow in his face fighting against his hands that tried to get you to stop.

"Not the face! Ow. I NEED THAT, YOU PSYCHO!" His hand let go of the ice pack letting it fall splat to the floor, rushing to your waist to tickle you in hopes you'd drop your soft weapon.

"Exactly why I should carve it out and drive over it! Stop playing dirty- WHY ARE YOU TICKLING ME, YOU MOTHERFUCKER-"

"Rai? Heard you were in medical. Whoa, what's going on?"

Hand midway to smothering Naozumi with the pillow as his fingers dug into your waist to stop you, you paused, turning around to see Akira standing a few feet away from you, utterly confused as to what in the world was happening. What he was about to see was Naozumi's crime scene if the tissues shoved deep in your nostrils didn't fly out to let more blood flow out with yet another nosebleed.

He nodded to your nose. "Your nose is bleeding."

Throwing your head back, you shoved the pillow Naozumi's way once more then headed back to your pillowless bed. They were all wasted for nothing. Akira gave you some tissues to pluck up your nose as you laid back down, headache thumping harder in your skull. Naozumi leaned over the edge of the bed to fish his ice pack back.

"Are you okay?" Akira asked again. The question was obviously directed at you, but Naozumi took the courtesy to reply instead.

"Amazing, thank you for asking, though some snacks would do wonders," he said, looking at him with that annoying pest smirk of his.

"Don't mind him." You threw him a look to watch it before you tried murdering him again, unless he wanted you to succeed next time. Your attention then turned back to Akira with a soft smile. "He's just being a moron as always."

Naozumi rolled his eyes, focusing on making the bump on his head be less annoying than the upcoming conversation he was about third wheel.

"Anyways," coughed Akira, ignoring Naozumi's existence to put all his attention back on you, the reason he was here in the first place. "I heard you ended up in medical and didn't participate in the last stage for the day, so I thought something bad must've happened."

Awe, he was worried for me, you thought smiling to yourself about how caring he was. The fact that he was still suited up in his fireproofs meant he rushed over to medical as soon as his own run was over. Fidgeting with the zipper on your suit, you wracked your brain for what to say. His soft brown eyes looked at you in worry, waiting for you to tell him what happened. I can't tell him I quit the stage because of a fucking sneeze. What will he think of me then?

"I just spun out in that last corner. I geared in too soon and went into oversteer," you said with a small smile. It wasn't a total lie because that did happen when you changed between the brakes and the throttle quickly, turning the wheel too fast. Oversteering was a pretty common issue in racing to look out for too. Even though spinning out in a corner doesn't normally give you a nosebleed. Not that sneezing should give you one either. But alas.

"She sneezed," drilled in Naozumi, making you pinch your eyes shut to avoid yelling at him.

Not the time or place to be a fucking smartass, Naozumi, but thanks for your unrequested help. I'll ping you my six figure sanity bill for your continuous unsolicited help soon.

"It's okay," said Akira, trying to take some of the tension away. "Stuff like that happens sometimes. I'm just glad you're doing okay and nothing worse happened."

"Are you all done for the day?" you asked, moving the subject away from you before Naozumi spilled more unnecessary information.

"Yeah," he nodded, sitting on the edge of your bed. "I took some damage in that last jump and fell down to third, behind Tohira and Katsumi. Those old dogs are pushing hard to get their championship points back, man."

"Let them push. Their cars are past the expiration date," you joked, pulling a laugh out of him.

"Realest thing I've heard lately," he smiled back, his eyes crinkling in those little soft moon crescents you took a liking to lately. "They made so many changes in their teams, it's almost like they traded mechanics and they still suck. Their cars are still running on missing parts."

"God," you barked a laugh. "Did you see Tohira lose that rod at the start of the first stage yesterday? It was just sitting in the middle of the road with everyone's eyes on it, except Tohira who was already at the start line. The engineers rushed to pick it up before the cameras could get a good angle on it."

"I did. That was a sight for the history books," he chuckled. He smiled at you, one dimple popping out on the side of his cheek, right above that pair of moles on his chin. "You've had a rough day. I'll let you get some rest."

"Thank you," your smile tilted up. "For coming by."

"Anytime," he nodded.

Passing you another smile and a wary look Naozumi's way, he walked out leaving you alone with the devil who despite being sort of incapacitated and fresh out of a crash, still worked his mouth well enough to annoy you some more.

"Are you two dating or something?"

"What?" you narrowed your eyes at him. "No."

He went significantly silent after that question, thing that had you wonder what worked the wheels in his brain so fast in that direction in the first place. Why would he ask me that? you wondered. You literally had just a friendly conversation with Akira. Not like you batted your eyelashes at him with love hearts shooting out of your eyes in his direction. But this reverent quiet was the kind of quiet that filled the air with turbulent hops. He was plotting something again, deep in that corner of his brain where his factory carved jokes and plans of sabotage in the same budding crate, creating something that leaned more in his favor than yours.

"Why are you asking me that?" you voiced your earlier thought, trying to impend on his train of thoughts.

"No reason," he shrugged. "Why didn't you tell him what actually happened?"

"Because I don't want him to think I'm stupid, Naozumi," you replied, stating the obvious.

"You didn't want him to think of you any less, did you?" he asked, at which you found yourself nodding.

Telling Akira you crashed from a sneeze after playing ditzy in the fields would make him look at you like you were less than what he thought of you. Like you didn't take your job seriously and didn't deserve to be a professional driver. Or that was just your catastrophic overthinking driving the doom bus today. But you were better safe than sorry. Even if that meant keeping stuff away from him.

Glancing at you, he caught you zoning out far away, deep in your thoughts. He's seen that look on your face these days more than he's managed to catch you and annoy you, which was a first. You were getting serious about the cup and it made sense to put your attention into it more. But all he could think about was how that look on your face didn't suit you at all. So, he concluded that he should get on your nerves until it fell away and that murderous look was fierce and right back in your eyes.

"Someone has a little crush," he sang, annoying the shit out of you.

"I don't have a crush on him."

"I didn't say you had a crush on him specifically. You said it yourself," he smirked, making you realize you just confirmed it out loud.

"My god," you laughed dryly, blowing a breath out of frustration as your fingers massaged your temples. "Why do you like being a little shit to me so much?"

"Because I enjoy teasing you," he spoke, his voice dropping an octave in the slightest, glamoured in a tint of softness. The same softness you caught around him back on that damned field.

At that, your head fell to your left to catch him on his side looking right back at you. Something about the silence hanging between your shared gaze didn't feel as heavy as before, at the garage or in the field, or in other previous interactions with him where it all started sweet with a joke and ended sour on the foot of argument.

"You know," he started, propping an arm under his head getting more comfortable on his back, eyes falling shut as he talked. "If he really liked you, he wouldn't think you were stupid."

"You think so?" you caught yourself asking, sounding a little too hopeful.

A small smile cracked on his lips, eyes still shut tight. You couldn't anticipate any of his remarks when he played hot and cold like this. But he really drove you up the wall with this one the second it left his mouth.

"I told you that you have a big fat crush on him."

"I'm telling the nurse to sedate you."

He barked another laugh, cracking an eye open to look at you and point at your nose. "You're leaking again."

"Go the fuck to sleep or something," you growled out, stashing more tissues up your nose.

Fuji Highland Masters Day 3 - Sunday

Somewhat rested and ready to take on the last three stages, you suited up and headed over to the paddock early. Thankfully, Fuji was missing one addition to the already super packed schedule - press conferences. A good thing for your nerves, but a bad thing for your patience. The press was instead left to accost your pen whenever they felt like during the day, much like crows flocking after plastic bags in the wind, making movement around much harder. At some point they came by to get one more interview out of you to put on the Sports TV news roll, but Tanaka did not let them through at all.

Between the last engine checks and shooing them away, it was time to prepare to get in the car. You had a look at the rest of the data the mechanics pulled together with the extra free time from yesterday which was a lot. The calculations saved you time in sectors you definitely needed it. It wasn't a lot, but it was enough to get you back to top five. If all variables sat in their seats and let you drive.

Focused on scaling the findings, your thoughts were ripped away by loud ruckus at the side of your paddock tent. At first, you thought it was the press looking to get run over. Looking up, you caught sight of a familiar face trying to get past a marshal. Before the conflict escalated, you decided to check it out. The long sleek ponytail, her polite tone and that smile on her face once you saw her - you knew exactly who she was. Her smile only got brighter as she saw you coming in beside the marshal.

"I have a press pass," she insisted, showing the man her pass. "I'm here for Miss Suruki. She would know who I am if you simply asked her agent."

"I'm sorry, miss. But you're not allowed in here right now," said the marshal, pointing at the race clock ticking beside him. "The team will be out on track in less than five minutes."

"Let her through," you told the marshal. He gave you a look but once he saw your racing suit he moved aside with a nod, letting her inside your pen. Her shoulders visibly relaxed as she stepped past the roll line that shut back up behind her. "You're Hina, from Daily Times, right?"

"You remember me?" she asked, her dark eyes shimmering like black diamonds, sparkling back at you just as bright as her disarming smile.

"Of course I do! You were the only reporter not out for my head back at the press conference back in Tokai," you joked, making her chuckle.

"That was my first time at a press conference. I've been assigned to rally quite recently, but I do love a good bunch of racing series... And I am rambling again," she laughed nervously. She pursed her lips shyly and held out her hand for you to shake in proper meeting manner. You couldn't help but indulge in the greeting, shaking her hand back.

"To be honest, that was my first time around these parts as well, so having a female counterpart in that sea of vipers really helped. And it's also really lovely to meet you," you smiled at her, finding her smile just as contagious as the good vibes swimming around her. "Heard you've been looking for me. Is there anything I could help you with?"

"Yes, actually. I kinda got lost in the crowd and saw your tent, so I thought of coming by to say hi!" she spoke, her ponytail swinging with the movement.

Seeing such a friendly face this early pumped you up with the kind of positive energy you missed having around. That alone prompted you to do something to conserve it for what you hoped would be long-term.

"Give me a second," you rushed out before running back to the mobile trailer. Throwing your duffel bag open you fumbled for your phone, rushing back to her with the keypad open. "Would you like to exchange phone numbers?" you asked breathlessly.

"I would love to!" she nodded, her eyes crinkling to little moon crescents. She typed out her number into the phone, handing it back to you with her name attached. Just then, Tanaka came by to pat your shoulder in sign that your turn on track was coming, meaning you had to leave Hina all alone. Although, she didn't have to be. Calling Kate over, you introduced the two and they hit it off on the spot, already chatting your ears off about their shared fashion preferences.

"I have to go now, but give me a call when you're in Tokyo so we can go out for a coffee or something."

"Noted," she nodded, lifting her fists to her chest. "Good luck out there. Will be rooting for you!"

Gearing up with your gloves and the helmet, you stepped into the car and turned the engine on with a smile on your face. Things were looking up today. You could feel that optimism coursing through you like a high.

Is it because it's Sunday that I'm getting such a good vibe today?

By noon, you were past the first two stages with flying colors. Despite the chaos of yesterday, DNF-ing a stage and not starting the last one, dropping all the way down to mid-grid in tenth place, you pushed hard and managed to pull really good timings in these two, pulling yourself up all the way back in sixth. The car is finally responding to the upgrades after Sentaro mounted the suspensions using the idea you suggested. The previous day on the course oiled the new parts in too. There was still an increased risk of breaking the old pack since they were supporting the front side and the impacts became much rougher on the off-road terrain, but you prayed they lasted until the last stage was over. Then Sentaro could set them on fire if he wished to while you clapped on the side.

The last stage of the day was a serpentine road going through a caved tunnel beneath a tall hill, followed by raw turns as the road slithered down into the paddock at the bottom of a valley, testing the endurance of the car in tight corners and your reaction time in short corners. This asphalt felt way better under the car, smooth and levelled enough to hasten the grip of the tires. Driving inside the darkened tunnel, the daylight behind you dimmed, consumed by the pitch black. Every few hundreds of meters, incandescent orange bulbs most certainly left from prehistoric times lit the way. The reduced visibility had you slow down the pace, eyes glancing often to your right to keep to the metal barrier running the length of the tunnel. You weren't sure what hazards lay below the darkness but you'd rather be careful, than careless. The low rear of the car scraped the old tarmac, sparking up behind the wheels wherever the road lifted and bumped up. Well past the halfway mark, the bulbs were completely dead. Fun times. As enveloped in warm, protective material as your nape was, icy chills ran up and down the back of your neck. Knowing the dark history of the place, especially the one of the spooky forest nearby apparently crawling with spirits of deceased people who've had worse ends, only added to your growing anxiety. You shared a terrifying look with Tanaka, the man just as spooked as you at the chilly shift in atmosphere. Then all at once, the tunnel lit up with spiky rays of burning sunlight. Soon enough you exited the tunnel in a heavy, tight turn to the left, leaving the poor spirits behind to terrorize the rest of the drivers.

"3 left into 3 right."

Medium turns. Beyond the long pine tree line sheltering the road, sunlight barely filtered through. Shadows and the mist of the deep forest brought those chills back as you swerved over the small patch of tarmac still intact. You amped the speed, lifting back the higher gear to catch up on time lost in the freaky horror tunnel. Ignoring the faded Twilight vibes of the place giving you the peculiar eebie jeebies.

"50 to 4 right into 2 right."

Slightly wide corner running into a tight turn. You badly wanted to drift this one but the car would fall apart from the force of the steering and swerve, hitting a poplar tree. Taking the loose curb without tricks, the tires skidded off the final bits of paved road surface onto a bouncy rocky trail, shaking the car with trembling power. The following rough turn shook the steering wheel under your gloved hands, fingers gripping hard on the leather casing to keep from falling off. Road aligning down the curbs, you started your descent into the valley. The woods gave way to more and more light, save for some grey clouds gathering above. Flickers of the valleys thousands of meters below hid behind the tree line, scattering away to bushes and country fields surrounded by wooden fences as you rushed past them. Glancing to your right made your heart hammer. A huge drop below the interrupted road guardline. One wrong maneuver and your car would swerve right into it, rolling down slopes and fields of wheat until it capsized with you and Tanaka inside it. Eyes back on the road, you willed yourself. Focus on the road.

"50 to 2 right and 2 left. Caution on the jump."

Another tight swerve to the right, followed by a slight jump. The road spiked then ran into a bit of a straight portion before it was nothing but a bumpy pile of rocks and potholes. Your seat wobbled with the unstable tremble of the car. That's not a good sign. Pressing your behind hard on the seat to keep it in place, you struggled changing the gears with the sharp turn, followed by another one much shorter than your lifespan. It forced your steering left and right, muscles in your arm quaking under the heavy pressure and constant vibration. Driving out of the serpentines, you climbed the high dent lifting in the road with winding speed. The car went airborne as you took off in the jump with the memory of that drop imprinted in your mind. The wobbling seat sprung up with you. Fear running haywire, you dove into it with all your force, hearing a haunting click as if it fell right back into place. Like it wasn't secured in when you left the pen. Weird. Landing briskly back on the ground, you released a breath of relief. The tires crunched on the rocky surface, bows springing the car up and down until they balanced themselves on all four wheels again. The timber woods came back to shield your eyes from the depth of the bottomless country void, letting you focus on driving. Just driving.

"Last turn. 6 left 100. Flat out."

Fifty meters left to the last corner - a wide drift portion. Let's go baby. Come to mama.

Taking the last snakes in the road, you followed the faded inner line of the lane until you hit award winning tarmac again. Reaching the last wide corner shaped like a ginormous C, protected by nothing but hard decapitated tree barks and dents on the side, you got ready. Entering the curb, your foot tapped the pedal to make the last switch between the gears, cueing in the breaks. You let all control go to the gods of drift. The car skated on the rocky asphalt smooth like it was ice, barely any bumps rocking beneath the car to throw you off the road. Smoke rose in your mirrors. A few sputters came through the gearbox too. Upon exiting the curb, you straightened the wheel to slide in right beneath the last race banner. The crowd went wild. Cheers and whistles were louder than the revvs of your engine as you completed your final run for the rally weekend. It was done. One by one the horrors ended. The weekend was all history now.

"Oh lord above, it's finally over," you mumbled finally parked, head falling on the wheel with a long ragged breath that you held in all weekend. You glanced up at the tall mound you just drove down on and you felt all those chills finally leave you in a breath of utter relief. Both for not crashing and for ending one of the most tormenting weekends of your life so far. High up there with your first ever karting run.

Once your foot stepped outside the car, you were welcomed like a warrior that saved her country from ruin. Tanaka patted your back as the team applauded your performance loud and proud. Though you didn't even know where you finished on the grid, it felt like a win that it was all finally over for both you and the team. Speech more or less prepared, you were stopped before you even got to say anything, all eyes pointed at the scoreboard. All your total times placed you in third place for Fuji so far, which could be a potential podium if no one else had a faster run than you. Knee bouncing up and down in crippling anxiety, you sat and waited until all drivers had their last run, watching the scoreboard like a hawk for any updates on the timings. You knew how much you and the team gave it this weekend. Way over three thousand percent. They deserved that podium fair and square.

After Top Rank's driver came back, the last human to race the course, an eerie silence took over the whole paddock. The crowd settled. No one blew a breath. Not one beer cup crunched. All eyes were on the screen waiting to see who won this round.

In all but a sigh, the scoreboard turned blank before names started appearing one by one. Heart thumping hard to explode in your chest, you looked for the Suruki name breathless.

1st place - Akira Shinkai - Sigma Racing

2nd place - Naozumi Hiyama - Spica Racing Factory

3rd place - Katsumi Ishibashi - Top Rank

4th place - Raiko Suruki - Suruki Racing

Almost podium, you breathed out. Almost.

The team gathered together for a big circle, each arm supporting another fellow teammate. Even Kate was pulled in the line, tucked into Tanaka's side as she held onto his waist with a soft smile. Your favorite uncles shoved you in the middle between them for the honorary speech. You cleared your throat loud on purpose making them all laugh before you even started.

"I know it's been a wild weekend. Probably our wildest yet," you chuckled. "But it's all done now. You worked your hardest, giving your all to this fabulous car and this hard-working team, without leaving any of us stranded into the nothingness of rage and despair."

"Sometimes, hard work doesn't always take you where you need to be. Or where you want it to. But it's a step forward towards something greater that awaits us somewhere in the future. Somewhere I plan on driving to at full speed with all of you by my side." You let your eyes sweep over each pair of eyes in the circle, including Hina on the outer line. There was an important pair missing, but you knew he was here in spirit. "I couldn't have done this without you all. Small or big, your help saved someone from a therapy visit," you chuckled, some following in tow. "Don't sell yourselves short on your magical abilities to heal other things, beyond patching the car up."

"Lastly, I have something you'd be far more excited for than my speech. A little birdie told me there's talks of a teambuilding trip to Okinawa," you grinned, at which amused smirks and shocked gasps alike broke onto everyone's faces. "I'll put in a word to the big guy that he better make it a five-star beach resort with an all-inclusive."

"Raiko! Raiko! Raiko!" they started chanting your name again, making you blush furiously.

"I say we chant something else," you proposed, extending a hand forward. "How about... Suruki Racing never ends. Suruki Racing always race."

"Suruki Racing never ends! Suruki Racing always race!" They all chanted, several voices a little off timing dashed over with laughter. But the spirit was there within every soul around that circle, burning strong for this amazing family you've all found a home in. A flame that you'd make sure never died out and continued living on.

After your joy-packed team moment, you got ready to finally leave this place. The hotel bed was calling to you more than your unpacked luggage and you wanted to make true by some real rest. Getting your stuff, you passed by the digital placements that were still showing on the screens around the paddock, feet stopping by one of them. Glancing up by chance, your eyes fell somewhere else on the scoreboard and you chuckled to yourself. Naozumi spent all weekend chasing after Akira like crazy only to get second place after that crash and the constant issues with his car. Second was still better than lower fourth. He was still on the podium enjoying the loud cheers of the excited crowds and the load of champagne. But you knew how bad he ran after winning it all. The hit that silver trophy must have brought to his already declining pride must feel pretty sour to quench with celebratory champagne.

Still, you watched as he climbed on that podium with his unwavering million dollar smile, charming the ladies at the front as he sprayed them with sparkling champagne. Then he placed his lips to the rim of that bottle, taking a gulp that left him dry by the looks of it, pursing his lips bitterly as he glanced at the trophy sat on the floor. Getting so close to the podium left you feeling that mad thirst for winning too. Not necessarily for first place. But to finally sit on there to bring the team back the honor it deserved for all the years of hard work. You swore you'd get them there no matter how long it took. And it was a promise you intended to keep. No matter what the road threw at you on the way.

Kate rushed over, breaking you out of your thoughts. Her arms engulfed you in her flowery scent and a sweet, bone-crushing hug, before she pushed something pink and fluffy into your arms. Cotton candy. A little childish for an encouragement gift, you thought. She must've read the look on your face, questioning her intentions.

"Champagne is for podium," she starts, instantly making your eyes roll. "And they are out of alcohol so that is the best I could do. You were almost there and it's just your second weekend here! Be proud of it," she spoke with excitement for your small but big achievements, patting your shoulder softly.

"I am," you said, munching on the top part of the cotton candy. It surely tasted sweeter than the disappointment wedged deep inside the core of your soul. Not sure when you'd get that out. "I just think I could've done better. Eh, there's a next time."

"For sure," she nodded with a sympathetic smile.

"What time are we driving back?"

"We're not," she smirked, acting like there was something she knew and you didn't. "Not until tomorrow afternoon."

You cocked a brow in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"We're staying in Fuji one more day!" she said excitedly. "Well, for work purposes since you're programmed to execute your penalty for that illegal street race."

Out of all times, they decided to throw me off the cliff now, when I came so close to tasting real victory. I hate corporations.

"What does this penalty presume?" you sighed, wondering what they'll have you do to pay the price for unruly behaviour. From what you knew of penalties, they were usually cash or race ban related, so you prayed it was none of those.

"A photoshoot for the Seiko Rally Cup."

"A photoshoot?" you asked, blinking at her empty. "Are they serious? I would've happily done one right away! Why did it take them this long to schedule it?"

"They thought that Fuji was a good place for it so they booked it just before the rally round started."

"If we're not leaving, then where are we shooting?"

"One of their private studios and I know you'll be excited for this one. Fuji Speedway!" she says with a grin.

Your jaw fell open.

Okay, maybe we like corporations.

"The Fuji Speedway that used to host Formula One races for decades?! The circuit at the foot of Mount Fuji, where the asphalt is so smooth that it's like a heavenly myth to get to drive on it, that same Fuji Speedway?" She nodded, her lips quirking up into a cheeky smile. "You're lying."

"I'm not," she laughed at the disbelief on your face. "They want us there at 9 am sharp tomorrow since you'll be doing individual photoshoots, then group ones, and a separate one for a well-known media outlet to promote the cup."

"Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean individual and group shoots?"

"In case you forgot, I'd like to remind you that Naozumi was part of that whole press charade."

Of course he was, you groaned internally. Trust in the universe to avoid giving you a day free of any mention or sighting of the one and only devil assigned to fuck with your head. Either he had a magnet attached to you when you weren't looking so he could follow you everywhere or he just liked to manifest ways to ruin your day in more way than one before sleeping.

"You, Naozumi and Akira will be representing not just the cup, but also the Japanese branch of the WRC in their under 25 campaign to get more people to join the rally world." That made it sound like a pity campaign. "Don't make that face. It's a pretty good opportunity to get the word out about you and the team's comeback with the media involved, as well as bringing more audiences to the cup races since we're close to mid-season. It's a win-win situation."

"Sounds good," you nodded. It didn't sound so bad, though there was one thing that threw you off. "Why is Akira getting dragged into this mess too? He's like the poster boy for exemplary behaviour."

"Well, exactly that. And they thought it would be nice to show the younger generation and the fresh talent in one big exclusive," she adds, driving the point home into your tired brain. "Since it's all about promotion and advertising nowadays, they want to really put their drivers in the spotlight. To do that, there will also be an interview segment with all three of you as well."

Great. This truly reinforces how much I hate Mondays.

"Thanks for letting me know so soon," you smiled bright at her in fake manner. From what you could tell, she's been working on this thing the whole weekend, failing to mention anything about it to you. Not even a word. "Did they swore you to secrecy or something? Why didn't you tell me, I don't know, tomorrow morning like five minutes before nine o'clock?"

"They told me not to say anything until after the round was completely over," she spoke, her smile tipping downwards in regret. "I'm sorry."

"You should be," you said, zeroing in on her with hawk eyes. "But you got me cotton candy so your sins are automatically washed away." That made her sweet smile come back. You couldn't handle her being upset at you.

Fixing your bag on your shoulder, the cotton candy stick and the last wrapped up burger you found at a nearby food van that was still open, you moved to leave for your hotel since apparently, you were stuck in town for another day. You were in dire need of a bubbling, soaking bath and a real fat ten hour sleep to be able to face tomorrow. On the foot to leave, Kate called after you once more.

"Don't you want to explore Fuji some more since we're free for the rest of the day? See the mountain or the flower fields?"

Those flower fields costed me podium.

"I think I did enough of that to last me a lifetime," you spoke with a forced smile, feeling the anger at the troublesome leprechaun that fucked your weekend from behind coming back stronger. "If you need me, you'll be able to find me sleeping like the dead in my hotel room until 8 am tomorrow. But I hope you and Tanaka have a ton of fun," you smirked.

"I'm going alone!" she shouted alarmed from behind you.

"Sure you are," you mumbled. "That's what they all say."

You took the fattest sleep known to mankind. After soaking yourself for several hours to get rid of all the grassy, muddy, disgusting smells attached to your body, you collapsed into bed and fell asleep like someone smacked a pancake pan to the back of your head. You woke up in the same position you slept in, feeling like your whole body was a steel carcass that had rust in every corner. But at least you slept all the way until Kate came by to wake you to get ready, pulling on every ounce of silence you had available until she pried your duvet away.

Arriving at the circuit, you barely set a foot out of the car before you were whisked away by a stylist crew that would become your best friends for the day. They sat you down on a chair and worked on your hair. Untangling the beast of messy bed hair you couldn't tame yourself. Working a little natural make-up on your face to get you looking more alive. To look good and feel alive this early, they were asking for quite a lot of you already. Once they were done, they got you in a pair of denim utility trousers running longer than the heel of your boots, dark in street style manner, and a plain white t-shirt. They explained that they kept the fit simple since the first shoot would be on the circuit grounds with your car. Before they took you over there, Kate all but burst through the door, shoving through the busy bodies in the small room.

"One little addition," she spoke out of breath, bringing over something wrapped in a plastic cover. She placed it in your hands, lips pursed in a small cheeky smile. "Go on, open it."

Wondering what it could possibly be, you took the hanger off and unwrapped the huge plastic foil cover to reveal a leather jacket. Tilting your head in confusion at it, you noticed familiar color hues branded beneath the folded sleeves and you rushed to unwrap it faster. Sandy golden ran over one half of the sleeves while a darker blue wrapped around the other one and the rest of the jacket. Upon reaching the front you realized it wasn't just any leather jacket. A big font spreading from left to right spelled Suruki in all plaque golden, a smaller handwritten Racing sewn below in darker blue. The shoulder pad on the left had a big 5 - your car's number - all in glinty silver. Turning it around to the back, your eyes followed even more smaller silver lines speared by golden strikes of lightning down to the bottom of the jacket, finding your name stitched in handwritten letters on top of the leather. This was your very own team leather jacket. Crafted with only you in mind.

Mouth open in shock at the sudden gift, your wide eyes reached Kate's grin at your reaction. "It's mine? It's really mine? I can keep it?!"

She chuckled with a nod, "All yours."

"We need to get these for everyone in the team," you added. Your fingers traced over the front lettering again, unable to process you were actually holding this treasure. It looked so modern yet so vintage. Right up your alley.

"We will, but now we have to go," she said, helping you wear the jacket. Her hand smoothed down the sleeves, fixing the clipped off biker-style collar before she really took a good look at you. "Looking like a real racing driver now." Your lips thinned in a small, shy smile.

"Okay, so," she started, leading you down the corridor to reach the pit entrance. "The boys are shooting a few duo photos now but should be done soon, so you can take your turn and the photographer can take some with the three of you. After that, it's time for the interview followed by the shoot for it and some promo images. And then we're finally done."

"Not a lot to do at all."

Walking out of the building and onto the circuit grounds, you saw the crew already at work behind the wired fence. The Sigma and Spica cars were parked next to each other diagonally, each nose facing the other menacingly. Much like the boys themselves. The photographer seemed to have taken on the rivalry narrative with them. The two silent enemies stood face to face, holding their helmets in one hand with steel grips. You could feel the tension all the way behind the fence, heavier than a truck. Both pairs of eyes were laced with unspoken threats and taunts, boring into one another's soul. Akira's smug smirk had Naozumi's fists balled with knuckles white. It's barely ten in the morning and someone already got them to look like they're plotting to kill each other. At least it wasn't me.

Following that close mental duel, he had them part ways with jaws and fists twitching, directing them to the hoods of their cars. You couldn't tell if the man felt it, but the air reeked of heavy undisputed conflict that simmered close to boiling and exploding. Who knew what would've happened if he didn't blow the distance whistle. Revising the lighting, he instructed them to pose to the camera the way they each wanted, to act as natural as they can be. And they surely complied.

Akira took it away almost instinctively. The shades holding his hair on the usual were missing, brown hair parted down the sides to frame his face as he pointed his chin up like a true professional model. The sun tinted his eyes in glowing embers as he looked at the camera with a gaze that reached deep into your soul, stringing parts you didn't even feel the existence of before. His body moved like he danced a graceful ballet of sorts, so delicate in technique but strikingly beautiful in form that you couldn't take your eyes off him, always anticipating what his next move would be. Words of praise fell one after the other from the photographer's mouth and the crew, prompting him to show and give way more for his private crowd.

Moving to his other muse, the man had to lower his camera for a good moment to take in the near divine appearance that sat on the hood of Spica Racing's car. Gasps echoed behind you, dragging your attention away from dazingly admiring Akira. When your eyes landed on Naozumi, your breath hitched. The cameras loved him for all but one reason - his roughness. Sitting on the car with one leg pressed to the hood's edge, his other ankle flat on top of his knee and his helmet in his lap as he faced his nemesis, he looked otherworldly. The sun lowered its glinting light on his rugged, solid appearance. A rush of wind rustled the styled spikes in his black hair, picking up speed with the rapid thump in your chest. His strong posture and his worn racing jacket draped him in the bad boy flair. So raw on the edges, just like a diamond in the rough. A hidden treasure that showed itself only to the true believer. Tracing the side of his face falling in a jaw tilt that could cut, running over the steep curve going down his thick neck, you swallowed on dry. This is a man who breaths racing and sex appeal of the explicit kind. Above his looks, that natural air of stardom hung around his shoulders like a cape of unwavering strength, shimmering golden on the face of a winner. Something he's always been fated to be.

Shortly after the boys were done, they parked your car between the two older teams, taking a few of your side profiles before directing you to the hood too. Akira and Naozumi went back to their wordless feud until you broke it. Walking through their line of sight like a wake up call, you stole their attention away from their telepathic tug of war. Those two pairs of eyes unglued from each other to follow you until you sat on the hood of your car. As you passed them up close, you had to look away to not faceplant on the ground from the intensity of their gazing. You had to ignore them, against your deepest wishes, if you wanted to get anything done for yourself. So you sat on the hood, leaning back on one hand, helmet supported by your other on your lifted knee propped against the car, shaking your hair behind to get picked up by the breeze. One look down at the ground had your eyes rise to fall right on the photographer with an intensity that made him drop his camera out if his hand. Thankful for the strap holding it around his neck, he picked the dangling tool back up and got to photographing you like he couldn't get enough. You gave him a relaxed smile, proud and confident in your powers to charm and conquer not just driving but people themselves. The crew whispered about you. You felt the males at your side trail their eyes over you too, one pair burning marks deeper than the other.

"I've never thought I'd find three muses all in one place," squealed the photographer, completely astonished by the power the three of you held together. He took several pictures of just that setting, without any further instructions added since he figured that you all did your own thing better than any of his pointers could direct you.

Not long after, two officials from the cup walked out onto the dark tarmac carrying this year's trophy. Strong beams of morning light rays dressed its gold encasing in blazing shimmering glory. Its empty, soon to be engraved nametag that will carry the honor of a driver and their team glowed the brightest. The gloved hands lowered it carefully onto a tall platform block in front of your cars before they stepped away. The photographer suggested the idea - a photo with all three of you holding onto the cup, the cars and the circuit behind - saying it would make one hell of a photo. Just imagining holding that trophy stopped your brain from functioning. But to imagine a photo of that moment existing would be nothing short of surreal.

Akira walked to it first, placing his hand right below the golden bowl, greedy for the opportunity to hold it. You stepped to it next, carefully wrapping your fingers around the middle part, seeking balance of such great power. Naozumi stalked over to it last, letting his hand slip beneath yours to hold onto the bottom, looking for grounding victory. You all gazed down into that symbol of mastery and success with all but one shared emotion swimming in your eyes - want. The thing you were all racing for, giving your body and soul, long days and endless nights. What you gave all your passion, hard work and ceaseless sacrifices for. Giving it your life. All of it for a golden moment of triumph you held in the palm of your hands for a fleeting minute. By gods if it didn't make you feel worthy enough to lift it. Worthy to rule the road as a true champion.

You've been eyeing the long straight going down into the inner track ever since you walked inside the circuit grounds, badly wishing a lap around it was included in the photoshoot. But to your growing disappointment, it wasn't. Done with the shoots outside, they called you in to prepare for the interview as soon as possible. But you still decided to go up to Tanaka and ask. Maybe, just maybe, they'd be kind enough to let you for one ride around. Some of the mechanics were present too, so it wouldn't be too much of a hassle to get the car ready. You walked up to your dear co-driver, hoping he could make some magic happen and earn back some uncle points.

"Don?" You called his nickname as you approached on tip toes, batting your eyelashes at him. He turned to you with a deep chuckle at the sweet tone that was not a normal custom for you, already catching the scent of the sugary bribery of a favor.

"What does your highness request of me?"

"What do I have to do to get a lap around the circuit with my baby?"

"I'm not sure, but I can go ask the officials and circuit keepers. Though we're quite short on time, they might let you. Sit tight and I'll be right back."

You sat by the pit, leaning on the engineer station, tapping your feet to each other to pass the time. Within a hot minute, he was back with a sad look on his face. All the hope brimming in you dissipated.

"I take it they said no?" you asked disappointingly, looking down at the perfectly carved asphalt lane you'd probably never get to drive on.

"On the contrary," he spoke, a wide grin taking over his fake sadness. At the change in tone, your eyes lifted to his with some hope surging back in your chest. "They not only allow it. They want to shoot it on camera!"

"THEY WANT TO WHAT?"

"Go get suited up, kiddo," he patted your shoulder. "Sentaro will run a few checks on the car and the guys will change the tires, then you're good to go for a warm-up lap."

"Thank you. Thank you. Thank you," you leaned up on your tip toes and kissed his cheek before running for the changing rooms at breakneck speed. He definitely won back those uncle points.

Gearing up as fast as you could, you ran back out to the open pit garage where a few of your team mechanics hooked up the screws on the tires. Getting in, you strapped on the belt waiting for them to be done. Heart pumping in your chest like hit by a rush of adrenaline, you tapped your fingers to the wheel impatiently until Sentaro came by your window for one last check before you drove out.

"Okay so, we changed the tires to softs and pulled out the tough rims for more mobility. Off the record, I stripped off the anti-lock brakes and disabled traction control," he winked. "Try not to break the new suspensions completely or your dad will kill us both before we even make it back to Tokyo," he added with a chuckle, tapping the hood in sign that you were ready to go.

You gasped, realizing that meant you had complete freedom on track to do whatever you wanted. Drift it. Spin it. Floor it. Complete control. Driving out of the garage, you aligned the car to the pitlane exit. Since you were co-driver-less, it was your duty to communicate with the team during the drive. You cleared your throat, checking in through the loaned comms.

"This is car number 5 at the pitlane exit waiting for release. Do you copy?"

"Copy copy," replied Sentaro. "Free for release."

"Put on something for the road."

"Coming right up."

The moment the first beats of the song played, you drove out of the pit and onto the smooth tarmac. You did a quick lap to get a look at the track outline from behind the wheel and to get the car ready for the real deal - the timed speed lap. Letting them snap some quick pictures before you smoked them like a patty on the grill. Coming out of the last corner for the long straight in front of the pit, you pulled the breaks just enough to let you gear in the throttle, smoothly whizzing past the garage like a rocket.

Time to really test this beast.

Taking the first wide corner on high speed, you forgot all about breaking and let the engine roar to life like it never did before, speedometer already rising past 120. On the second turn you could really feel the change in power. Tremors vibrated through the steering wheel way better than on a rally course since this was smooth, bumpless asphalt. The real ride began. Entering the third corner into a difficult curb bending to the left, you reined in light breaking to slow down. From your previous formation lap, you knew you'd be able to amp back the speed as you went into the next portion - the 100R - a one hundred meter corner taken at full speed with a long, fast turn leading you right into a sharp left turn for the hairpin - your drifting spot.

Naozumi just walked out of the restroom on the first floor of the paddock building. He saw everyone huddled up, watching something on the circuit with mouths open. The crowd included a really dazed Akira that plied himself to the window as if it would help him see better if his breath fogged up the glass. Getting closer to check out what caused that delirious reaction and the wave of shushed murmurs about some car running wild, he glanced ahead lifting a brow in confusion. Indeed, there was a car on the circuit, just running out of the first sector with the speed of a madman. Taking a closer look at the colors of the car, he recognized the sandy golden and the dark blue hues in an instant, eyebrows hitting his hairline.

Down in the car, you drove into the right-handed 100R corner. Slowing down on your quick ascent you hit the throttle in its apex, sliding the wheel swiftly to the right before turning in the opposite side. Angling the car sideways you drifted into the first turn. Smoke billowed from underneath the car as white as a cloud on the sky. Some of it slipped inside through the gearbox as your favorite tune filled your ears - the loud screech of the tires burning off their rubber. This was a dance you waited for so long. Your hands moved in sync on the wheel and the brakes, letting the back of the car swing wide and savage with the wave of smoke rising behind you like a fierce untamed dragon let loose from its cage.

"Is that Suruki?" asked Naozumi bewildered.

"Yep," replied Akira, clearly just as shocked.

Keeping to the racing line almost effortlessly, you let the car lose all its traction in that left corner before pulling the breaks and changing course in the opposite direction, recovering the swinging rear back in control to take the descent into the hairpin turn. The wheel slid beneath your gloves smoothly as you shifted gears, drifting more with the front of the car, scorching the whole track behind as your tires slithered over the asphalt. Thunderous like a storm, the rumble of the engine rose above the noise from the tires burning marks over ground, heard all the way up there on the first floor. You exited the slow, tight bend of the track, tapping the throttle back in to complete the sharp U-shaped turn. Energy coursed through your veins wilder than ever. You were driving with so much excitement, heart pounding wild in your chest with euphoria. As if the long rally weekend you just went through wasn't enough for you and you wanted way more adrenaline. You craved more speed. More danger. Faster thrill.

"She's crazy," laughed Naozumi, shaking his head at the pure madness he was seeing. His eyes followed your car as fast as he could, unable to fathom how that flying tin can could go so fast.

"Crazy good," piped in Akira, completely absorbed by your performance.

Climbing up another turn, you saw the wider 300R corner bending off in the distance. You needed way more speed in this one so you pressed the clutch twice to rev it up one gear higher, putting pressure on the acceleration to the fullest until you took the whole turn and let the rear wild and free once more in another insane drift right in time with the building chorus of the song. This is what you wanted to yell to the world. That music and driving created an otherworldly synergy that nothing else could. A high on life of impossible sorts.

Driving into the uphill part of the circuit, you slowed down to enter a brutal chicane to the right. Quickly veering left before turning right again, you navigated the tight snaked portion in all but a gasping breath of inner focus. Eyes on the red and white track line. Hands tightening on the shifter stick with mighty strength on each curb. Foot pushing the gas pedal to the floor hard. As soon as you exited the climbing hill, a straining left turn pushed you to slow back down into a steadier rhythm, trying to keep up the speed in the run up to your final corner. The one that needed all the speed you could get in a real race. Even if this wasn't a real race, you intended to do right by the experience and that that corner at lightning speed.

Come on, honey, your left hand gripped the brake lever. Let's show them what we're worth.

Going into the last corner, you pulled in the reins for a hard drift, smoking the rubber off your tires to the maximum, getting ready for the epic grand finale. Pedal. High gear. Let it loose. Tapping the clutch twice back into the highest gear the car could take, you pushed the gas pedal to the floor watching the speed increase on the dashboard beyond any testing round you've ever done with the car. She shook upon the command, generating breakneck speed under the hood as she came alive, shoving you into the seat.

Almost everyone upstairs rushed downstairs into the pit garage for your big finish. Sentaro and the engineers monitoring the computer on the car gasped in shock at the results coming out of it. All the testers from your inboard computer, from engine power to how the brakes behaved, all of them rising to the highest performance levels they've ever seen them reach.

Glancing down at the speedometer, you yourself were shocked at the limits you were driving through. The car shook wildly, rattling your seat and your hold on the gear levers. Your heart hammered inside your chest at how fast you were going, the numbers on the dashboard rising until they synced their counter to your wild galloping heartbeat.

190 kmph. 194. 197. 198.

The arrow on the meter kept going until it almost reached the two hundred mark. It wasn't quite there yet, but you kept going on the throttle, pressing hard for that last digit to come through. That one number could change everything the team knew about the car and its performance.

Come on, just one more. I believe in you. Please believe in me too.

The speedometer moved down a few digits making you gasp. You couldn't believe your eyes. The car surrendered to you, moving up well past the 200 kmph mark, as if it heard your small prayer for greatness. This was fucking unbelievable. You only pulled out 172 in testing, and that too was on a rough polygon terrain just outside town, in the middle of nowhere. But this is on a proper racing field. It didn't matter that the meter arrow stopped climbing higher than a few numbers. It mattered that this was a revolutionary step for the team and an unbelievable breakthrough none of you saw coming.

"DO YALL SEE THAT?" you yelled over the radio static.

"WE DO!" yelled Tanaka from somewhere in the garage. "WHAT THE FUCK, SURUKI!"

"You can slow down now," laughed Sentaro overjoyed by the data coming in. "Good job kid. Bring it home safely."

You giggled back, just as taken aback as everyone else in that garage. "Will do. Thank you!"

Slowing down as you approached the first corner once more, you went for another slower lap around the circuit just to take in the sights. The way the asphalt curved up and down with old tire tracks that made history sometime ago, still visible on the edge of the checkered lines. A breathtaking view of Mount Fuji leaning past the old sponsored logo banners. The small forest on the side, adding a touch of vivid green to the dull dark grey. Even the playful glint of the early afternoon sun rising with warmth through your visor. All of these small, beautiful details you didn't get to see while in race mode. You didn't attempt another fast run down the circuit to avoid overheating the engine after the rally rounds its been through. But when you rounded up back on the straight in front of the pit, you dove in with the tires for some smoky doughnuts in front of the garage as your people whistled and cheered you on from the fence.

Finally parked back in the pit garage, you let out a breath of content. That was a once in a lifetime experience you would repeat anytime you had the chance. Or if you happened to just take it yourself. Who knew. Unexpectedly, another surprise awaited after you got out of the car. The helmet came off your head to see Sentaro stare at his computer in absolute shock.

"You pulled a record lap."

"I did what?" your mouth fell open, feet stuck to the glazed floor. "How quick was I?"

He clicked a few buttons and pulled up the lap time of your fastest run on the garage computer screen. You read it once and had to blink twice, reading the numbers once more.

Track Time - 1:28.215

"Ten seconds away from almost surpassing the Felipe Massa driving an F1 Ferrari here just a decade ago. With almost half the engine and specs that rocket of a car had."

"Well, fuck me," mumbled a familiar voice from behind you.

Spinning around, you found Naozumi rubbing his chin wide-eyed, looking between you and the numbers as if he was looking at the second coming of Christ. That flustered look on his face was all your doing and it fueled your confidence so good. So for once in your life, you put a big smirk on your face and took the chance to be as cocky as him, speaking powerfully sure of yourself, lifting up a challenging brow.

"Still gonna call me a rookie now?"

His mouth opened to say something. You waited for a playful teasing remark or anything to keep his stance on you not belonging in the sport just once more. But his mouth just shut back tight. For once, he had absolutely nothing to say to you. Putting a smile on your face, as wide and cheery as a flower that just opened all her petals in full bloom, you walked away to gather the laurels and the thundering claps following your performance like you won the war. Or at least this one battle. Because even one win against Naozumi tasted sweet like honey.

Kate informed you that the last of the photoshoots has been scheduled at the circuit hotel's premises instead of the private studio. And where the interview would take place as well. Back in the comfort of your normal clothes, you made your way into the makeshift studio with a weight in your step, nervous for what's coming. You felt tingly from the tip of your fingers to the way your heart raced, senses buzzed at the maxxed out setting ever since the drive. But that might just be the best mood to be in for an interview.

A grey-walled conference room was turned into a fashionable studio in all but a few hours. Big enough to host a private business event, the swiveling chairs and dull couches were switched for a medium mahogany velvet couch, sat in front of a tall white backdrop getting fixed up for the final shoot. The space wasn't yet illuminated by the professional gear, the foggy weather outside naturally turning it darker and much more intimate for a heart to heart talk with a media official. In front of the couch sat a small coffee table filled with a few mugs of steaming coffee, and another armchair in the same shade, already occupied by someone. A woman.

At the sound of your steps falling near, she stood up walking the rest of the way to greet you with a warm smile. By the ashen streaks in her hair, styled in soft, brushed out brown curls falling down to her waist, she seemed to be close to middle age. You greeted her more formally with a polite smile. Her name fell to oblivion as soon as she uttered it, too focused on calming your nerves to catch it. She introduced herself as the editor in chief of a big lifestyle magazine, a name you instantly recognized to be of global tally, for which she was working within the Japanese division. Her stylish red tailored suit and killer black stiletto heels told you she must be a professional in her field. Even her makeup was striking but a la mode, sharp and elegant, much like the way she carried herself.

You got there at the set time after the lunch break, wishing to keep the punctual etiquette intact. Naozumi and Akira on the other hand, took their sweet time, arriving a good fifteen minutes later. They excused themselves and shook hands with the woman too, exchanging sweet pleasantries, before squishing you between them on the small cushioned couch that was nowhere near being a three-seater. Maybe for a pack of canned sardines.

"Thank you all for coming here today, and to your agents for making this possible," she spoke, dropping an appreciative look back at your agents sitting huddled behind her to monitor the interview. "This exclusive will be all about your start in rally, where you are now and where you might see yourselves arriving in the next couple of years. They're mostly group questions, individual and more developed depending on who is getting them, so feel free to request a turn or placate an answer whenever you feel like it."

"I know you've had a packed day, so I'll try not to keep you for too long," she added, her red lips widening along the stretch of her smile, preparing her recording device and her notebook.

You can tell she was trying to ease the tension in the room. Or more like your growing tension since this was your first official press encounter where you had to speak directly to the press after being chosen to represent the cup with two of the most fascinating people in the world of rally at the moment. If fascinating was able to describe two of the biggest PR haters in the world sitting next to you.

Akira winked at her like five times in the past two minutes, giving her that crooked smile of his that made him popular with the ladies.

Naozumi flashed her his overly confident smirk when he walked in and has been completely ignoring her existence ever since.

I am shit at taking questions even with all of Kate's preparations. You smiled meekly in her direction. They truly couldn't find a better trio to represent a national sports event.

"What drew you to a career in the world of racing?" she asked, starting with an easy one to get you going.

"Can I go first?" you asked, considerate of the two muppets lounging beside you in case they wanted to answer her first. Akira just nodded, getting more comfortable beside you. Naozumi gave you what resembled a low grunt, looking like he could care less about being present. So you took it away.

"As you may know, for me it was family driven," you started, a little unsure of where to take it in terms of origin story. "A good part of my childhood was spent taking part in different motorsport events and getting to see all kinds of cars up close. Rally, formula, moto, imports. Being in the team garage most of the time, tinkering with my own little karting kit on the side while my dad worked on the big rally cars, it didn't take long for me to wish to pursue some kind of racing further."

As you thought of your racing journey, words started flowing out of you more naturally and Kate's thumbs up helped steer you in the right direction. "Since rally has been in the family already, I went with that route, wishing to continue my father's dream as it slowly became my own."

"I had a feeling you would say that," she admits. "I take it tinkering with a car is another thing you've inherited?" she asks, the ghost of a smile on her lips.

"Oh, absolutely," you nodded eagerly, making her chuckle. "There's not a day I don't get my hands dirty on a car, be it mine or the team one. My own car is a custom piece I worked a lot on. Most of my teenage allowance went into buying new parts to replace its old ones, building it up almost from scratch. I also help out with the team car since I drive it and can feel the effect of upgrades first hand, so I can work with the engineers if something's off or not right away." You were getting the hang of it almost naturally now. "I've learned a lot in the garage, tuning and racing manner wise, so it's nice to be able to apply it somewhere else if needed."

"Your father must have been a huge influence in both your professional life and your side hobbies, but it's impressive to hear you took personal initiative," she spoke with a knowing smile.

"However," she interjects, "since motorsport is still not a big scene for female involvement, more so rally, did you ever feel like there were setbacks in reaching further than karting?"

"Karting isn't a complicated scene to join because it's open to anyone looking for both a competitive and fun environment to experience racing. The rally scene though, is highly competitive and hard to break into if you don't race sporadically. But it's not totally impossible," you spoke resolute, reminded of the bittersweet days where you thought you'd be stuck karting until the end of time. "Just because there wasn't much female involvement when I joined the junior series or entered rally events, it didn't mean I couldn't take part. After all, no one puts a sign on the ticket booth at the entrance saying females aren't allowed to enjoy or take part in the sport. It's all about whether they want a career in racing and if they do, they should just go for it regardless of statistics and society telling them not to. Don't let anyone else drive your own wheel," you concluded, happy with the little encouragement you could pour in.

You were aware of who read this magazine the most - teenage, young adult girls and unfulfilled women who were still looking for a chance to catch a dream - and you planned on giving them the boost they needed to reach out for those waiting dreams. They still had time to make them real if they really wanted to.

"Well said," the woman nodded, crossing her legs one over the other before leaning forward with a grin you knew all too well. The offense tactic. You didn't expect her to hide sharp teeth under that scarlet smile. "But that's not what I'm asking." Her eyes glinted fiercely at you. "What I truly want to know, as might our readers, is if you personally had any issues regarding your participation in rally?"

Thinking back to your first days in a rally car, the press element has always been there with the constant nagging for drawing blood publicly in the dirty way. As pressing and intimidating as it felt right now, in this very moment. But you couldn't go directly accusing the media of being miscellaneous with a literal body of the press sitting a few feet in front of you. That would be like calling the venomous viper a milk snake. So you steered the conversation away a little.

"The only thing I can vouch for is entering this series undercover at first, without anyone but the team and the cup officials being aware, to protect the team's image and keep that surprise effect to it," you admit, clasping your hands together, hoping that would be enough for her. But of course it wasn't. It never was, is or will be enough for them.

"You mean your father's image," she hit back instantly, as if this was a premeditated attack.

Naozumi stopped fiddling with the frame of his sunglasses at that, narrowing his dark eyes on her. He profiled her the minute he stepped foot inside the room, pinpointing exactly the kind of journalist she is just from the fake smile on her face. Thing that you most likely overlooked out of lack of experience with her kind or politeness. But he knew her type very well. She was walking a very fine line between getting quotes for her article and feeding into the little cracks of your insecurities, eager to wrap her sharp nails around their roots and wrench them out forcefully. Her kind's favorite sport. No matter how good of a person you were, she was out for your blood. Any hazard you avoided would be replaced by several others until she got you to cave in. Interestingly enough, he wanted to see how far she could take you before you exploded and handed her the key to your very being yourself. By the sound of your hissing breath, you were quite close to reaching that point.

"Your father had quite the impressive career start at such a young age. He's had significant impact on the sport during his glory days." She was simply reiterating things you could find on a google search. "Up until Suruki Racing came to life," she strikes again. You bit the inside of your cheek. "Do you think that creating the team was an asset or a deficit to his career?"

Not this shit again. You took a breath to calm the rage meter inside you that happened to get tickled a little too violently by that question. There's so many other things to ask about but it seems she's out for dirt on me and my dad just like everyone else. Classic and outdated is what this lady is.

"His career continued beyond his racing days," you argued, mirroring her crossed-leg position, back straightening like a cobra facing off another cobra to see whose venom was more poisonous. "Though he hasn't raced for a long time, he continued putting his all into it by leading a team. The most successful I've ever seen him is when he put the first Suruki Racing together and continued his dream, even if it was from the sidelines," you said, fire in your voice and steel in your words. "The team was neither an asset or a deficit to his career, not there to produce revenue or drain it. It was simply the driving force behind his passion for racing. His reason to be someone that took rallying further than the track stretched."

"A passionate man," she smirked, pleased to see you respond to her taunts. But she needed more. "Although, he's been quite private about raising you, keeping you away from the public eye for a good part of your life. Shortly after your birth, he put his all into this dream team. Was it due to the fact that he couldn't juggle both being a father and a team director that it all fell to ruin right at its peak?"

Your fist tightened on top of your knee, squeezing the denim of your jeans in pure anger until your knuckles cracked white. She couldn't be serious, directly attacking your father through you like this. Every question written by that polite impostor hand on her notebook of opinion, had nothing but gigantic seeds implanted about the team's fail record because of your dad's negligence or vice versa. It took you a while to seek out her true nature. The assured serpent slithering her way through life one magazine feature at a time. The vicious smile on her face told you she didn't give a rat's ass about pleasantries and keeping safe to the introductions and boring crap about you. She wanted to dig deep and get a reaction. But she had to dig your heart out to get one from you. Hell would froze over before you accused your father of anything he wasn't.

Avoid all questions about yours or your father's private life with a 'no comment'. Kate's rule jumped out at you now. From the looks of her head shaking rapidly side to side she wanted you to use it. But if you let this woman run her vamp heels over you now, what would other journalists do? Carve your conscience out every chance they'd get to decide that the truth should be served as a lie? Fuck no. So you chose to put her in her place as diplomatically and elegant as you could, despite everything in you screaming for sheer violence.

"He wanted me to have a normal childhood, away from the cameras and the prying eyes. The team was his everything back then and it still is now," you say, each word a declaration of your confidence in him and the team. "But he made sure I knew I was just as important while working his overalls off for the team, making all parts work as oiled."

"Just as important or in the way have similar connotations, don't you think?"

"Oh, I don't know," you chuckled dryly. "I'm not a journalist to know the difference between raising questions and feeding into assumptions."

A deep chuckle fell past Naozumi's lips at that. You really weren't going to step down from chewing this woman up classier than she tried to gobble you in big greedy bites. She blatantly ignored your defense, trying to go for another jab at your father. You made sure this one would be her last.

"The current team has been producing pretty promising results so far. A lot of cups won, a good variety of national titles, several breakthroughs in terms of engineering. But what's there to say it won't fail again?"

"Time. Time to exist, time to grow, time to just be. Life doesn't have a speed limit to run at and neither do we. Oh, and regarding priorities," you cut in before she could, "my father put his life on the line for the team back then and he will do it again, as many times as it takes for it to continue living and breathing. I will make sure to do the same."

"One more question," her eyes skimmed down fast, reading through her notes for one more nerve shattering question to ask.

"I believe that's all from me," you smiled politely, hoping she would get the point that you were done talking, unless it was about your other hobbies or interests.

"I still have a few more-"

"I think that calls about my turn," intervened Naozumi. The cocky smirk on his face made him appear a tad bit intimidating against her pushing, but the surety in his voice was enough to tame her venom down. "After all, you know we've had quite the packed day already."

"Of course," she cleared her throat, sitting back in her chair glancing at you once more before she dismissed your presence. "Please, go ahead, Mr. Hiyama."

You leaned on the backrest with a relieved breath. After that, it was mostly Naozumi and Akira completing her slippery sudoku of questions. Sitting in the middle in complete silence while they conversed was better than talking to a brick wall of a person. She asked her questions, glancing your way every so often. If she expected you to be deflated and pouting she had another thing coming. Whenever she tried to get you back in the discussion, the boys interfered, offering her another surprise answer she would rapidly scribble down in her notebook, successfully diverting her attention away from you. Intentional or not, you were grateful to them for silently guarding your back. God knows, a lot of people wanted to take a shot at it and gawk to see where their words would stab. How deep they would reach and how much they'd make you bleed.

"I think that would be it," spoke the editor, finally getting up to grab her things on her way out. "Thank you again for this opportunity," she thanked the agent team behind out of courtesy.

She shook hands with the boys and their agents. When she got to you she hesitated extending her hand, perhaps out of humiliation for stepping out of line in front of a good handful of people or her pride being walked all over by a mere rookie. Despite all that, yours still reached out with a firm smile on your face, showing her it would take more than some interview questions to scare you away from facing the press.

"Pleasure to meet you, Miss Suruki," she smiled, showing you her fake pearly whites, pointy sharp like cobra fangs. "Looking forward to working with you in the future."

"Likewise," you bowed your head. I hope not.

After she left, you huffed a winded breath and went back to the couch, sitting down to mull in your thoughts. That interview left you feeling miserable, taking way too much of your energy to not start off with 'Listen lady' at every word coming out of that woman's mouth. Why was everyone so hellbent on digging up the past on your father? It's not like he committed first degree murder or something like that by getting his career nuked because of circumstances that were out of his hands. Why couldn't they just leave the past be? Why did it all matter so much to these people? You shook your head at each thought, looking past your joined hands supported on your knees.

Naozumi walked over behind the couch, looking out at the dark grey rain clouds forming above the track, his back facing you. For a moment you just stood in each other's silence, listening to the fading murmurs of staff around you and the small patter of raindrops hitting the windows. Until his voice cut through the fog in your mind.

"They'll come after him no matter how much you try to stop them," he spoke, a hint of warning in his voice. "But they'll come after you too."

"Let them come."

The determination in your voice made his gaze turn to you. The look in your eyes was stormy, sharper than the edge of a knife. You were always going to try to prove them wrong, be it about you, the team or your father. That alone made him think that maybe he's got this all wrong. Maybe you had more fight in you than he's seen that night at the docks when you took the insult to your driving personally and gave it your all to prove him wrong. Maybe you were more than just a rookie. Maybe you might just save what's left in the ruins of your father's career. But out of everything you were, he thought you were right about one thing - only time would tell. If your team would burn to ashes again. If your father will continue being a living legend or become a forgotten name. If you could save them both. For now, he was even more determined to see how far you'll go even after the track ended and there would be no more road left to drive your rescue mission on.

The hair and make-up team rushed you back into the compact dressing room to get you ready for what looked like a super makeover. The table in front of you was full of scattered make-up brands, from different types of eyeliner, various brushes, and foundation packs to more than ten shades of lipstick. The outfit racks, one in each corner of the room, were decked in designer and haute couture pieces. Some still had tags of four-digit prices hanging from the sleeves. Since this was a magazine shoot, they needed you to look the styling part and they went all out in every way. All the way.

In a little under an hour, all you could smell was the sharp scent of hairspray, the sparkly glitter hanging in the air and the taste of strawberry overlaying your lips. When the make-up artist spun your chair to face the mirror, your jaw dropped to the floor like a wrecking ball. You were unrecognizable to your very own eyes. That was the same face you saw every morning in the mirror but like a thousand times more accentuated. Your eyelids had the sharpest wings ever drawn in cat eyes history, highlighted by subtle eyeshadow that made the colorful specks in your irises pop out. Falling in messy curls, your hair dropped over your shoulders softly. Hairpins shoved all the way in the back of your skull gathered a few strands behind your ears to add a little volume at the front, besides the shorter curls framing your face. To top it all off, your lips were done in a nude pink shade, appearing glossy and not that far away from your natural tone.

After sorting through heaps of different styles and textures, they finally brought out your outfit. Your lips quirked up in a smirk as you took in that wild beauty sitting on your body. An all-black leather dress with a plunging neckline, not too deep to pop a nip out or too formal to bore, stopping just above your knees. The material ran over your curves like it was meant for you, fitting like a dream. The sides had metal ringlets running for their length, held together by overlapping sheer black laces to pull the front and the back tighter, ends left to free fall below your thighs like a soft caress on your skin. Keeping the accessories light, one of the stylists hooked up a pair of sparkling diamond earrings to give the attire a subtle elegant flair, finishing up with a pair of heels that strapped around your ankles covering your foot in a crisscross pattern, giving you a lot of height to match. A classy rockstar concept very elegantly executed. Truth be told, you looked like a model ready to go out for vengeance rather than a woman starring in a high fashion magazine photoshoot.

Glancing at yourself in the mirror once more, you put a confident smile on your pink lips and walked out in the hallway heading for the studio. Your heart thumped hard against your ribcage, driving your focus in all directions, mostly on not killing your ankles. Door in sight, your nerves escalated even more. As easy as doing a magazine shoot felt the day before, the deed weighed much more heavier now. Throwing a look at the stylist that dressed you up, you saw her pass you a small nod and a smile of encouragement. Maybe this won't be so bad. Right? Taking a deep breath, your hand fell on the handle to push the door open, stepping inside the room. You blinked up and stopped in the door frame feeling the air leave your lungs in shallow breaths.

All buzzing chatter stopped when you walked in. From the photographer in the middle of the room to staff and agents scattered in all corners, all eyes raked you from head to toe. Kate herself looked both shocked and thrilled to see you so dolled up. But what caught your breath wasn't the loaded stares from well over twenty souls in the room. It was the two handsome men all suited up by the smooth velvet couch. As those two pairs of eyes ate you up shamelessly, you did the same to each one in part.

Akira wore a full suit in passional scarlet red. The whole ensemble was the main piece. The relaxed co-ord jacket, the collared shirt and the wide leg trousers fell on his body like every part was made to flatter his features. Beneath a pearly choker hanging stylishly above the open collar, you took a delicious peek at what laid beneath the three open buttons showing his well-defined chest lines. The shirt tucked in his pants and his hands sliding deep in his pockets pulled his shoulders wider than you've ever seen them. The pants ran long over the black boots on his feet, seemingly taller than he already was. And his hair, a curly mess all over the place was the cherry on top. But all details aside, that red alone made your head spin. He might as well have been a demon from hell below coming to take your soul under and you still wouldn't be able to take your eyes off him.

Gaze shifting to the other end of the couch, your racing heartbeat froze still, slowing down to a fluttering rhythm in your chest. There, sat atop the velvet armchair you found a dream dressed in dark navy blue. A fantasy of Naozumi your head hasn't played for you yet. Not until his raven eyes rose up to meet yours across the room in a piercing gaze steeling you breathless. Your eyes jumped from the way his hair was parted on the sides so softly, to the dainty silver necklace falling below his collar bones, to the smooth cut of the suit, unable to focus on just one part of him. From top to bottom, refined wool tailored to an elegant charm enveloped him in the depth of a vast deep blue sea. Hugging the breadth of his shoulders strong and tight. Streaming in a calm, smooth wave of material over the rest of his body, back and front down to his feet. A double breasted blazer with coupled rows of golden cufflinks wrapped around his waist as if worked and shaped to the muscular ridges of his body. It was the only thing covering his torso. But even that cover barely started below his exposed chest, tan and raw with packs of meaty muscle, calling to your touch. The shirt meant to be underneath was missing, or you failed to notice it was never there in the first place. Not that you complained. Knowing what hid beneath that heavy wool, hard and sculpted with strength, your fingers prickled at the memory of those rough muscles. How they called to your touch that night in Tokai, mouth-watering and deliciously sweaty with the brief touch of sex. How they stretched beneath the ironed lapels grazing them as he took a breath you took with him. How the heat pulsed just as hard between your legs now as it did then with his eyes on you, unaware of where your thoughts ran to. But the lone smirk tilting the corner of his lip had your breath twist in your chest that he knew. He knew. And he loved seeing the proof heat on your cheeks. In the tug of your teeth on your bottom lip. In the way your breath faltered. But most of all, he saw it in your eyes. Hungry. Craving for him against your better conscience.

The photographer clapped ripping you out of your breathless daze. Your eyes jumped to him in confusion. He covered his mouth in awe as he looked between the three of you with pure adoration in his eyes. This was a man who truly loved his job.

"My third muse just arrived." You shyly smiled at his compliment. "You're welcome to take your seat among the boys and we shall get started."

You had quite the audience as you made your way over to the velvet couch. Naozumi left his subtlety outside the door, undressing you with his eyes in front of everyone. His dark eyes looked more than hungry, roaming over you from top to heeled toes and reversely with every step you took until you reached the couch in the middle. Those black orbs followed a trail of their own as they drove up the length of your legs. Hastily skimming past the hem of the dress barely stopping at your thighs. Rounding in on your torso where the leather pulled tightly over your skin. Brushing over the deep neckline on your chest. All to stop at your lightly flushed cheeks. Each graze of his eyes burned hot on your skin wherever it stopped a second too long, as if branding each part of you unto his memory. More blood rushed to your cheeks as you took your place next to him, aware of his intense gaze. So you focused on Akira at your right, trying your best to ignore the chaotic flutter growing in your belly before it overwhelmed all your senses.

"You look like you're about to crash someone's wedding," you said, complimenting Akira. He gave you a cheeky smile, letting his eyes run over you a tad bit less intensely than the man at your left continued doing.

"And you look like you're about to crash a really exclusive club party," he joked. "I can't even recognize you. You look amazing." The compliment had you shy away with a smile.

Lights, camera, action and you got down to business right away. The camera flashed brighter than the lights overhead as you were positioned around the couch in various poses. Most of the shots had the boys sitting on each side of you, each doing their own thing. You had your legs crossed, chin propped on your fist, leaning forward on your elbow with a bold smirk as you faced the camera. Akira on your right faced faraway to the left, hands joined in his lap in business manner. Naozumi on your left leaned on the raised arm of the couch, fist supporting his head as he looked away to the left in thought. The next had you sat still in the middle of the couch. Akira was sat down at your feet, cross-legged, rustled hair and relaxed smirk making him look like an outlaw. You leaned back on the couch, legs still crossed, a serious smile on your face this time. Naozumi was sat behind you, hands on each side of your shoulders supporting his weight as he leaned forward above you. All three of you had your eyes at the camera, fierce and bold. They were both stuck so close to you, enclosing you in the small space. The hairs at the back of your neck prickled at the one far too close behind you. You felt the scent of his expensive perfume before he angled his lips right above your ear.

"Looking smoking hot, rookie," he spoke low only for you to hear, words barely brushing the side of your head. Close enough to make a rush of tingles climb up your spine. Turning your head to the side slightly, you replied in the same low tone, keeping your eyes on the camera and thump in your heart calm. "You don't look too bad yourself, Mr. Hiyama."

He didn't say anything more past that point, satisfied enough with your response. His hands stretched on top of the couch backrest, changing position to lean forwards a little more. The back of his palms fell behind your back, fingers mindlessly playing in your hair. They sorted through the longer ends, twirling them around and moving them aside to get to your exposed shoulders. When the rough pads of his fingers landed in direct contact with your skin, you sucked in a breath. His touch was warm, oddly relaxing and gentle as it moved on top of your spine line. Spreading out on each side of your back, his fingers ran in circles over the skin of your shoulder blades, thumbs pressing down in all the right places. They padded lightly up and down, left and right, every brush as soft as the caress of a feather. Soft, as they glided up to your nape, the touch almost toe curling. Soft, but nowhere near close to releasing the heavy tension strewn in your back. You were close to just leaning back, ignoring the rest of the people around you and the shoot completely. All to just enjoy the massage and purr like a grateful cat being stroked by its owner for being good. A soft little whimper worked its way up your throat the more you felt of his fingers. Until the reality train smacked you hard. Suddenly, like boiling water scalded your skin you saw right through his intentions. He was playing with you. Every touch was calculated strategically, not for comfort but to get you riled up. Blinking away the haze of his feigned comfort tactic, you gave him quick credit for the moment then adjusted your position. To anyone else, it simply looked like you shifted your back on the couch. You fell back with a thud with the wish to crush those meticulous hands of his. A threat to make him keep them to himself. As your back collided with his outstretched fingers, you felt them press flat to the backrest. All you heard was a low groan behind you that brought the littlest smirk to your face. But he didn't stop there. He resorted to annoying poking now, pushing and pulling lightly at the hem of your dress to have the leather strap back to your skin painfully, looking to piss you off completely. Before you could rip his hands off and ply his fingers off one by one, the photographer called for a set change. Just his luck. His hands retracted back to their place, falling into his trouser pockets and he left you alone for the remainder of the shoot. But that touch of his still lingered on your skin, the ghosts of his fingers still tracing it, raising goosebumps along your back.

Several prop changes and posing instructions later, you were tired. Of the camera shutter. The bright lights. The gawking eyes. The constant moving made uncomfortable by the leather dress that by this point stuck to your body like wrapping foil to a freshly waxed car. Especially having been seated between Naozumi and Akira who emanated heat like the central heating in the building was broken. As you posed upright, lined up together to let the expensive outfits get their own moment of promo, their bodies were so close you could literally feel their hot breaths on your face. And the photographer instructed you to get even closer. If that was physically possible when you were practically sandwiched like cured ham between two of the most solid slices of bread ever baked.

"Okay, Akira. That's good. Now let me have a few with those two only."

"Are you sure?" He sounded almost hurt. "What about me and her?"

The man took his camera to the computer crew waving him off. "We can do them after the break."

His incoming please died somewhere in his throat as he landed eyes with Naozumi's. He couldn't fight a cheeky smirk Akira's way. Ignoring their contest for whose turn is it next to hold the doll, you shifted your weight on your legs with a sigh, wondering when the shoot would finally end. After the long weekend, your little victorious lap around the circuit and that interview, you were nearing the end of your battery life faster than usual. You just wanted to go home or at least reach the hotel bed. Or any flat, cushiony surface that could offer some temporary relief to your aching joints.

Naozumi moved closer as directed, accidentally bumping his shoulder to yours which made you jump away a little. It wasn't intentional at all, it was just the exhaustion speaking. Although, he saw it as an open chance to tease you. He leaned down to your ear a little, keeping his focus on the camera.

"Someone's antsy," he whispered. You didn't need to look at him to see the playful smirk on his face.

"I'm just not exactly happy to still be here. We should've been done by now," you whispered back through gritted teeth, trying to keep a polite smile on your face.

"You can switch positions," said the photographer. He came and sat Naozumi behind you, moving you in front of him, leaving barely any space between you as you sat pressed shoulder to shoulder, skin to skin. "Now look at each other."

Craning your neck to the side, your breath got caught in your throat and you sobered right up. Naozumi was looking right at you. The camera flashes went dark, the bright studio lights disappeared and the sound of the shutter died in the thunder of your heartbeat. His presence was... overwhelming. Those dark brown orbs consumed everything around you until you felt like it was only you and him around. Sneaky and hidden, his palm encased your waist in such way that no one else could see it. Only you could feel it, pressing against the small of your back, peaking up ever so lightly on top of your hip over the leather that suddenly felt too slim and warm. Regardless of how badly his touch had your nerve endings spin in endless circles, those eyes of his drew you in like the pollen of a freshly bloomed flower drew in a hungry swarm of bees. So sweet and hypnotic that you were losing faith in your strength to withstand the Naozumi effect.

He seemed to be absorbing your presence just as much, finding it hard to take his eyes off you ever since you walked in the studio. He had a tease attack planned, the very reason why his hand was so hidden on the small of your back. But the minute he looked into those eyes of yours, glaring up at him with marvel and a glint of curiosity, his plans lost all sense of steering in the right direction, hitting a curve so dangerous that it changed all of them just like a snap of his fingers.

"How about we make a run for it?" he whispered, eyes darting between you and the crew occupied with checking the photo screens.

You snorted. "Run where?"

"Somewhere."

His eyes ran back on the moving crowd of people among staff and publicists, falling on your bag then on the shiny set of keys in the bag next to it. Turning back on you, that soft gaze turned challenging, lips quirking up in a playful grin with an idea.

"Truth or dare?"

Your eyes narrowed on him. He wanted to play games now of all times? For the sake of your growing boredom, you chose to indulge in that little game, hoping it would make the time pass by quicker or something of the sort.

"Dare."

"I dare you to steal the keys to that cherry red truck parked in the back of the parking lot."

"Kate's Chevy?" He nodded. "Why would I do that?"

"Oh, come on. Don't tell me you're not dying to get out of here."

He's not wrong about that.

"Miss Suruki, look up a bit more," pointed the photographer as he resumed shooting. "You're showing a bit of double chin."

Exasperated, and annoyed as fuck, you followed the instructions and tilted your chin up higher with a huff. You hated to admit it. Naozumi was right. You did inch to get out of here before you channeled some of his rage and broke something that may or may not be the photographer's camera if he commented any more about how you posed. You thought about Naozumi's proposition. It sounded like a promising plan. Truthfully, it wouldn't be that hard to steal Kate's car keys. She had a habit of forgetting where she put things in the first place so she might not suspect them going missing before her actual car went missing. What really begged the question was how you'd be able to slip past so many people with a pair of car keys that weren't yours without getting dragged back in the studio by your ears.

At the sight of your brows furrowing together, Naozumi's grin just widened more. You were considering it. Partly, but that was still considering.

Your unsure eyes fleeted back to him. "I'm gonna get in trouble."

"Isn't that the fun part?" His smirk only grew. "Come on, live a little, rookie."

One more look between him and Kate doomscrolling her phone. Another uncomfortable tug of the dress sticking to your thighs irritatingly. The light hit of Naozumi's impatient breath fanning your neck and the brush of his hand sitting way too comfortable in the small of your back. All of those brought upon your loss in this fight that you didn't really care about carrying to a win in your territory this time. Because running away with Naozumi might give you answers to some of the burning questions you've been having about him. And because that puzzle box branded with his name on it called to you to get it open. And you tore at it like a feral wildcat.

"So? Accepting the dare?" he pressed, cautious that you had a time limit to accept or refuse before the deal dissipated into thin air.

You surrendered to the game. Simply because you did want to get out of here. And for the fact that this one curiosity urged to be satisfied more than the collection you've gathered of them so far, all sitting in a mess around his torn puzzle box, unable to match any of them to the man in front of you. And as of this moment, you craved a little rebellion against the system. But you had to bargain some kind of leverage to still keep the ball in your field. And you had just the perfect idea on what to go for.

"Only if I get a truth out of you."

"Deal," he replied almost instantly.

"Deal," you replied, sealing the deal with a shared nod.

As if on cue, the photographer lowered his camera and placed it down on the screens table. "Alright everyone, take a break and we will resume in ten."

Naozumi's head dipped beside your ear in a small graze, coiling his aura around you like he was the very devil summoned out of the depths of hell to convince you to do bad things.

"I'll meet you out at the car," he whispered, pulling back to fix his eyes on yours. "Be fast."

He cut through the crowded room, grabbing his jacket from the back and his bag. Hand on the door, he threw you one more look before he slipped out of the studio without a soul noticing.

Okay so, I have ten minutes to make myself disappear like Houdini. Time to get this show rolling. But first, how does one steal something without getting spotted by literally everyone?

There were people literally everywhere you looked. Make-up crew, the stylists, some magazine staff, publicists and other team officials, all by the table filled with bags, by the dressing mirror, by the door. Someone had to notice you slipping out every way you tried to make a run for it. Trust in Naozumi to give me the hardest part in the deal.

Without a plan, you started making your way to the bag table. Your shaky steps took you close to the bag, fingers reaching for the keys. You nearly had the keys in your hand when as you got stopped by the makeup team for a quick retouch. They didn't give you the chance to refuse it. Letting them lead you to a chair, your eyes never moved away from the shiny set of keys hanging out of the side pocket inside Kate's bag. Until the person in charge of eye makeup moved your head to the other side to widen your eyeliner wing as if it wasn't longer than a crane's wing. Knee bouncing restless, they finally let you go and went on their own break. Blinking the modifications to your makeup away to get rid of the heaviness around your eyes, you glanced at the clock on the wall. Six minutes of the break went by already. You had less than four to get the fuck out the door or you'd be called a rookie until the very end of your career and lose your chance to find out one of Naozumi's secret truths. There are big things at stake.

Looking back at the bag, you saw Kate searching through it messily. Her hand accidentally brushed the keys and you watched horrified as they fell inside her bottomless pit of mysteries. You mumbled a curse. How the fuck do I get her to give me her bag? The clock was ticking quicker than your fatigued brain could work up a solid plan. Two more minutes left. Fuck. Think, Raiko. Think. Think faster.

Eyes whizzing around for ideas, you caught one of the makeup ladies leaving, holding what you assumed was her pad holder box. You nearly put her to oblivion when an idea hit you. That should work. Going up to Kate with a sheepish smile, you tapped her shoulder.

"Who are you- Oh, Rai," she smiled at you, thinking it was someone else. "What can I help you with?"

"I, uhm," you cleared your throat, trying to not make yourself sound guilty of what you were about to do. "Do you..."

"Do I what?" she asked, eyelashes batting at you to spill it out already.

"Do you have a pad or something?" you blurted out way too quickly. "I think my period just started since I... have been having weird cramps all morning. Just wanted to check in case it did."

"You mean now?!" You just nodded with a tight lipped smile. "Sure, I can have a look, though I doubt I'll have any since I didn't find time to buy another stash."

Okay. She bought it. We're moving.

"But you're lucky since I do have one left. Here," she was about to hand it to you when you stopped her, shoving her hands back in the bag.

"NO! No, no, no," you laughed nervously, trying your hardest not to look suspicious. A few people looked at you weirdly. "C-can you just give me the bag too?"

At this point she was looking at you like you've grown a head. She lifted an eyebrow very confused. "Why?"

"Because there's a bunch of people here and they don't need to see me carry around a pad in my hand. I have nowhere to stash it in this dress."

"Oh, yeah. You're right," she nodded in acknowledgment of your very false predicament. "Don't need them to shush you around more than they have already. They're not really nice people apparently."

Thank fuck, you sighed internally. One more lie and my knees would've broken down spilling all my sins from start to finish until I perished by her freshly manicured hands.

She took out her water bottle and laid the bag in your hands. You mentally gave yourself a pat on the back for the quick plan. Though it wasn't the best escape motive, it worked like a charm. If a pad could be called a lucky charm. Making your way to exit the studio and to find the "toilet", she called your name again. Stopping in your tracks, you felt beads of nervous sweat trickle down your back, knees starting to shake on the weak support of your tall uncomfortable heels.

Did she catch me? Am I dead? Oh god-

"Just make sure you're back before the break ends," she smiled. "I'll tell them to add five more minutes so you can do your business in peace."

"Oh right. The break, yeah," you barked another nervous laugh. "Thank you. You're the best."

She gave you another suspicious look but you didn't sit any longer to see it and dashed for the hallway. Clutching that baby blue designer bag to your chest like it was an armed bomb about to explode, you made your way down to the hotel's reception. Passing some people working on the shoot heading back from their cigarette breaks, you left quick smiles their way but they completely ignored your existence. Once you saw no one else coming from the front, you broke a shaky run for it, heading for the doors to the parking lot. Naozumi was already outside waiting for you, all changed out of his suit in a light blue denim jacket and jeans co-ord, most likely ogling his phone for the time knowing the break should be over soon and you weren't there yet. Rushing over to the double doors, you pushed the handles multiple times, confused as to why any of them wasn't opening. Only for Naozumi to gesture to you that you had to pull them towards you. Much like the sign on the door to your right said.

"I'm a fucking idiot, for fucks sake please open-" and they did open upon a strong pull, letting you outside where you could take a breath properly. Reminded that the break was probably over by now, extra time included, you ran the rest of the way to the car, searching Kate's bag for the keys. Once your hand touched the cold keyring set, you pulled them out and messily threw them to Naozumi mid-way to the car. He caught them, heading for the driver seat right away.

"What took you so long?"

"Just open the car and let's go. The break is over about now."

He unlocked the truck and you both got in, closing the doors swiftly. Your hands were working at lightning speed to fix the dress on you a little and the hair out of your mouth, but Naozumi stopped moving altogether. Looking at him, you saw his eyes zeroing in on Kate's bag laying in your lap.

"What?"

"Why did you take the whole bag?" he snickered, as if that bag was more important than making an escape now before anyone found out what you were up to.

"Does it matter? Let's just drive before they find us and rip our contracts to shreds before our very own eyes."

Back in the studio, the crew has been waiting for the two of you for a while now. The photographer tapped his foot impatiently, constantly checking the time on his watch, on his phone, even the one on the wall. When those extra five minutes were up and you were still not back, he marched to Kate asking her about your whereabouts. It's been a good ten minutes since you went to the bathroom, so she took off to find you, thinking you got lost or needed an extra pad.

"It doesn't take that long to ply on a pad," she mumbled, pushing open the doors to the toilets. She scoured all the stalls only to find them all empty. "Is there a different bathroom on this floor?"

Slowly losing her patience, she walked out of the restroom only to bump into Tanaka right outside the door. He went looking for Naozumi at the request of the makeup team who couldn't find him either.

"Naozumi's missing," he spoke out of breath.

Kate's head tilted in confusion. "So is Raiko."

They shared a wide-eyed look before they took off down the hallway towards the hotel reception.

"Have you driven a truck before?" you asked Naozumi, watching as he struggled to get to terms with the different gear.

"No, but it shouldn't be rocket science. It's just bigger."

"We should really get going before they find us-"

Right as the words left your mouth your eyes connected with Kate's right across the parking lot. As soon as her golden pair landed on her car, seeing you in the passenger seat and Naozumi in the driver's, she was raging. She took steps at twice the speed in those kitty heels. Your hand shot out to tap Naozumi's arm repeatedly as he fiddled with the cluster of keys rattling in the ignition.

"Naozumi," you choked out alarmed.

He waved off your hand to pull the steering wheel up to a better height. You continued slapping his arm to the point he started getting annoyed. "What is it?"

"Drive. Now."

"Hold on, give me a second."

"Naozumi we don't have a damn second," you gritted out, anxiety about to explode in your guts at how close Kate was getting. "Just fucking drive."

He finally got the car to start, pulling a few revs from the big old engine under the hood. Looking up ahead, he caught sight of your co-driver and his publicists all heading for the car angrier than he's ever made them. Then his eyes landed on Kate and he couldn't help himself from giving her a devilish smirk that made her take off running in your direction.

"NAOZUMI DRIVE NOW!"

His foot pressed the throttle so briskly that the recoil from the rush of speed pulled you hard into the passenger seat, hands shooting up to hold onto the handle above the door. The tires smoked and skidded as the car shot out of its place. Naozumi steered along the occupied parking spots, close to hitting some of them, barreling out onto the main street in front of the hotel. The rear of the car trunk was close enough to drifting into Kate and the rest of the people running after the car and knocking them down like bowling pins.

"RAIKO SURUKI I WILL KILL YOU!" yelled Kate as she took off after the car with Tanaka running after her.

Naozumi spun the wheel out onto the road connected to the main boulevard. You looked in the mirror watching how you got farther away from the parking lot, losing everyone that was on your tail. You and your superstar chauffeur on the job managed to escape. You let out a breath, falling back in the seat in relief that they didn't catch you. Not physically, but they did catch you. Kate saw you. Tanaka saw you. A bunch of strangers saw you running away with a car that wasn't yours and a man set on trouble. The realization that this was a really stupid idea hit you belatedly. You started freaking out with all the different consequences running through your head following the stupid, idiotic, very maddening thing you've just done.

"Oh my god," you breathed in a good inhale of air. "Oh god. She-She's going to kill me. Dad is going to kill me. Then mom will kill me too until they all had their rounds," you laugh dryly, hands covering your eyes.

"I think you should put your seatbelt on and calm down," suggested Naozumi, getting his clipped on.

"Calm down?! No, no, no. Do you realise I just sabotaged my own career? Again?" You pulled the seatbelt over from its hold, struggling to clip it in as you were busier freaking out, hands shaking with anxiety. "Why did I accept that dare? What the fuck is wrong with me?"

"Nothing's wrong with you," replied Naozumi, taking a hold of your seatbelt to clip it in for you. His fingers grazed your hand in the lightest touch before they flew back to sit on the gear stick.

"We're just taking a well-deserved break," he argued. "They took enough photos to make pictorials and calendars for the next three years, if we even get to race that long."

"They did take a lot of photos," you laughed nervously, taking a breath.

"A lot of them," he nodded, voice a little softer as he agreed with you so you could calm down your tits and let him focus on driving.

He took a turn on the highway, taking a left under an indicator you failed to see, presumably driving out of Fuji. Within the whole hit and run you just pulled, he failed to mention the location you were driving to.

"Where are we going?"

"Somewhere."

"Somewhere," you repeated with a scoff. That was all he gave you. You came with him based on a mythical location. "Do you actually know where or you just don't want me to know in case I want to alert base?"

He just grinned looking ahead. "Both."

"You're so helpful," you smiled fakely.

"Thank you. I try my best," he says, placing a hand on his heart at the sarcastic remark.

Why did I even agree to this in the first place?

It's been a little over half an hour since you ran away leaving the world in shambles. Well, your world. His was probably always in shambles. Beyond the catastrophizing, you haven't spoken one word with the person at the helm of what is presumably a stolen car that he's been driving peacefully like he was the only one in it. Although, ignoring each other for the time being might make this impromptu escapade much more delightful to endure in the long run. Who knew?

On the other hand, you were getting cooked in that leather dress. Kate's Chevy was old. The body and the interior may have been reconditioned and brought to modern standards, but it got hot like the tropics inside it during the daytime. The sun rays were so bright and warm through the windscreen that it felt like the leather seat was on fire under your already leathered bottom. Even the makeup on your face felt almost liquid, a breeze away from sliding off your face like melted ice cream. Upon one accidental look in the rearview mirror, you caught sight of your luggage right in the back seat. You completely forgot Kate hauled your stuff in the car, all ready to drive for Tokyo as soon as you were done.

Taking off those uncomfortable heels, you stretched your toes with a sigh. Then you chucked them on the floor under your seat, hoping you wouldn't have to see those feet killers anytime soon until you returned them. Unclipping your seatbelt, you rose up carefully and prepared to plant one foot in the back when Naozumi finally spoke.

"What are you doing?" he asked, glancing up at you to try and figure out just where you were headed in a rapidly moving car.

You looked at him like he didn't understand basic human needs. "I'm boiling in this dress and I'm planning to get changed in the back."

Wordlessly, he lifted the hand from the gear shifter, holding his palm open for you to take. One hand propped on your seat, the other slid in his, balancing some of your weight in it as you took a step over the armrest. Your foot barely landed on the floor behind his seat when Naozumi took a swift turn to switch lanes. You scrambled for balance as you nearly fell over him, almost tearing your dress at the seams. His hand tightened its grip around your wrist keeping you steady. Your hand flew away from your own seat to the back of his to keep you from falling over, dress magically remaining intact. Perhaps falling back in your seat instead of dangling over his head like a spider with your legs spread apart between the front and the back of the car would've been more acceptable if the dress wasn't so damn short, riding up the side of your thighs a few inches too high for your conscience. The deep cleavage dipped a few inches down too, nearly popping one out if it wasn't for your hair falling to cover it. Flashing Naozumi with your goodies up above and down below was not part of any of your plans for today. Or any day.

"Didn't know you were this adventurous," he smirked, glancing at your middle for the briefest moment before his eyes turned back on the road.

That glance alone, so short and intense, moving between your chest and your eyes made your heart race faster than the speed he was driving at. Something else pounded too, you just shoved it downhill before taking notice of it. Dazedly, you let go falling into the backseat with a thud since he let go too of your hand too, a tad bit too intentional judging by the grin spreading on his lips. You shot him a glare through the rearview mirror at which he chuckled.

"You might just be the clumsiest person I've ever met, rookie."

"And you're the most annoying prick I've ever had to deal with."

Zipping open your luggage, you sorted through the heaps of clothes until you landed on a pair of dark washed jeans and one of your old band tees. Pulling the the bag closed, you moved it over to sit behind the passenger seat. Thankful the windows were already boarded with your racing gear so no one could look inside, you made quick work of pulling your jeans on under the loose skirt. As your fingers sped to undo the zipper at the back of the dress, you only got halfway down the slider when you remembered you did have an audience. Right in the driver's seat. And his eyes were already set on you in the rearview mirror that gave him a perfect angled reflection of your torso, from neck down to the start of your waist.

"Eyes on the road, cowboy."

"They are on the road," he shrugged, eyes fleeting back down to the highway lane to put the blinkers on, acting like he didn't want to take a peek just a moment ago.

You gave him a sharp look. "You know what I mean."

"I won't look. I promise."

Still, you hesitated, fingers frozen on that damn metal zipper. The serious tone in his voice almost convinced you of that, but you needed something more. A level ground of sorts.

"How do I know you won't break it?"

He gave it a thought then replied right away.

"If I do, I give you permission to get more truths from me. One look is an extra truth to the deal." His eyes fell back on the rear view mirror. "That sound better?"

Your earlier shyness was completely gone, replaced by that bubbling ore of curiosity nestled deep within your soul. Additional truths from Naozumi for free? What if you managed to get more truths on purpose? How hard could it be to get him to look? Now you had a mission to accomplish and you chose to take it.

Curious to see how this would play out you moved ahead with the new plan. "Deal accepted," you nodded with a grin.

You went back to changing, moving around to get more comfortable in a place that gave him full access to the backseat upon just one small glance upwards. Carding a hand through your hair, you tried making it more messy, even taking away the secured pins at the back to let the hair underneath free to fall over your shoulders. Finding the back of the dress once more, your fingers resumed pulling on the zipper extra slow. So slow it didn't even make a sound as it went down the cold, long row of metal teeth stuck to your spine. Taking your sweet time until it almost reached the end of the slider.

Unable to hear any movement behind him, his eyes flew to the mirror only to catch you smirking, already onto him. He sighed in defeat.

One more truth in the bag, you cheered internally. Maybe this won't be so hard after all.

The zipper hit the bottom line of teeth on the low of your back. You moved steady, fingers catching hold of the bottom hem of the dress. You lifted it up never once taking your eyes off the mirror. He didn't look. Glancing away you rolled the leather hem in your hands and pulled it off. Before the material obstructed your view his eyes were focused on the road, jaw held in his hand to prevent him from looking up. After the dress came over your head, leaving you only in your bra and jeans, your eyes rose up to find him looking right at you.

About to declare another stolen truth for the winning streak of three in total, you lost your breath on the line of that wild gaze of his. The same one that skimmed your skin with hot fire in every trail he drew over every clothed and uncovered inch of it with those intense eyes of his. If looks could ruin, that gaze alone would be enough to rip your body to pieces like a hungry wolf. His eyes raked wildly over you from your messy hair falling in soft waves over your shoulder, driving down the lengths curling snug around your chest. Stopping to draw in a sharp breath at the dark lacy bralette covering almost everything he wasn't allowed to witness, letting just enough peaking out that he shifted in his seat with a low grunt.

He knew he was a loser the minute he agreed to that deal. Hearing the rustle behind, he knew that fucking dress was off your body and couldn't help himself from looking up into the mirror, no matter how hard he pulled on his jaw to keep his composure. Upon his eyes connecting with your half-naked reflection in the mirror, torso bare and bathed in the sunlight, he turned into a thirsty man wandering the desert. So raw and hungry for just one look at you in all your splendor, that he would give you all his hidden truths if you'd let him take as many looks as he wanted at you.

"Shirt," he grunted, coming to a red light stop.

"Shit," you muttered, throwing your t-shirt on at the speed of lightning.

"You put it on backwards," he gestured, mumbling another curse.

Pulling your hands back in through the sleeves, you moved the shirt around getting it right this time around. "How many looks was that?" you asked with a smirk, trying to rail his gears up a little.

"Just shut up and move back before we're moving again."

Doing as he said, you sauntered back in the passenger's seat without another word. Getting a pair of boots on, you laced them up all the way, then clipped your seatbelt back in, fixing your hair a little. The sun was still too bright for your eyes, burning through your brain rather than your clothes now. You searched Kate's glove box, finding her burgundy rounded sunglasses stashed in a corner.

"Do you happen to have an extra pair?" he asked, just as annoyed by the bright light.

Searching some more through the glove box, you found your own pair of aviator shades in dark green with golden framed edges. "These are mine."

He held his hand out for them. For a second you debated giving him Kate's since they looked like old lady sunglasses, but the lenses were scratched and you'd like to return Kate's car back in one piece. You moved the frames to your pair open and placed them in his palm.

"How do I look?" he asked, looking at you with a model pose. The way his lips pursed made you chuckle.

"Not as cool as me when I wear them."

"Okay, Rambo," he laughs. "Thanks for sacrificing your coolness for me."

Rolling your eyes at the comment, you turned on the radio. Searching for a station that isn't old people rock or edgy pop, in the middle of the highway where reception is static dead, you ended up on the classics post. Naozumi himself got frustrated with your constant button pushing, blowing a breath when the classic instrumentals of a random opera piece played through the speakers.

"That the best you can do?"

"If I had my phone I could play you some actual music," you retorted, resuming your ceaseless button pressing. If you had more time you would've been able to grab it on the way out of escaping.

"Like the stuff at the car show?"

"I thought you left before that."

"I was people watching."

You snorted. "More like lady scouting."

At that he grinned. "I take it you're still jealous you missed out on the fun that night with that sexy model?"

"Absolutely not," you shook your head with a dry laugh. "I'm glad that was the last time I had to hear that next to my head for a full night, just on and on without stopping. Is your dick that insatiable?"

"Stop deflecting," he said, licking his bottom lip with a scoff at that last remark. "Was the stuff at the car show yours?"

"How did you know?"

"It was good. For dancing and stuff."

"Pass me your phone," you held your hand out. He lifted a brow suspicious of your wishes with his phone. "For some actual music. Please. My ears will go deaf if they play Vivaldi's Four Seasons."

Just as you uttered the name of the famous composition, that atrocious violin jingle copyrighted for an advert started playing. Your fingers wiggled in the air waiting for him to move it before you clawed the device out of his pocket. Blowing another breath, he fished it out of his back pocket, tapped a few buttons to unlock it and handed it to you open to his music app. A huge mistake on his behalf. You now had access to everything he listened to and you started giggling at what you found on his home page.

"What's so funny?"

"Your recent listening history- Oh my, what even is your liked playlist? This is giving divorced dad on the way to the repair service. Or the scrap yard."

You literally hit a gold mine. If anything told you a lot about a person, it was the music they listened to. Naozumi here, listened to a lot of alt rock and indie with occasional iconic pop anthems here and there. That itself told you he was an emo boy at heart, even if he didn't really wear it on his sleeve.

"Give it back," he grinned, trying to take the phone away from your hands.

"Nuh-uh," you smacked his hand away. "I'm the DJ here. You're my chauffeur now."

"Your chauffeur?" he laughed. "Wow."

Quickly looking around some playlists, you queued up songs one after the other to last you for hours. As soon as the first notes of one blared through the speakers, his head started bouncing in sync with the tune, fingers tapping the leather casing on the wheel in rhythmic beats, looking pleased with what you picked. It fell right between his style and yours - pop with a twinge of edgy. The best of both worlds.

"Better?" you asked, leaning closer to him. He just looked at you through his shades, plastering a small smile on those mischievous lips of his.

"Way better."

All you could see was the long highway lanes. Forwards. On the side exits. Always going straight and diving through the edge of multiple cities without even going inside any of them. At one point, your stomach started grumbling. You pat it down to silence it. Food was one thing none of you took into consideration. Well, you would've if he mentioned the way to wherever he was taking you would take several days to reach. The more you tried to keep down the civil war going on inside your belly, the louder it got.

Naozumi drove some more until he took a diverting lane into a gas station. Did he hear my stomach grumble like a troll or something? If he did, he didn't tease you about it. Parking by the gas pump, he got off and closed the door pausing at the front of the truck. He waited for you to get off too. You waddled your way out, stretching your legs then walked into the station with him right behind you.

"Since we have nothing for the road, I thought it best to stop and do some shopping. I'll go get us water and some drinks," he said, half-turning for the aisle, waiting for you to tell him if you wanted anything in particular.

"Cool. Hope I don't find your spit in it," you joked. He gave you a look that told you he did contemplate that, then shook his head. "Then I'll go get food and snacks. Want anything?"

"Get me what you're getting yourself," he said, turning for the aisle only to crane his neck back from behind a shelf stacked up high with travel accessories. "Oh and ditto. If I find something in the food that isn't food, I will sandwich your face with it."

He was in dire need of better comebacks. "Sure, sure," you rolled your eyes at his pathetic threat.

Whizzing around the stacked aisles, you grabbed all the snacks you could find on hand. Chips, salty crackers, flavored gummies. You took the freesom to fill your hands since he was paying. Rounding around you ended up in front of the windows filled with the fresh daily's. Your mouth watered at all the food combinations, from the crispy chicken strips to the burger menu selection on the other side. Even the muffins and crème desserts underneath looked delicious. In the end, the need for food won over the sweet treats, so you picked up two footlong toasted everything paninis and made your way to the till where Naozumi was already waiting for you. He only had a few bottles of water and soda meanwhile your arms were barely holding onto everything you dropped messily on the till. He drew in a sharp breath shutting his eyes.

"Did you buy the whole available stock?"

"No. But if you're paying," your hand inched towards more finger treats at the till, "I can go back and pick up more stuff-"

"Stay put," he smacked your hand away, putting the caramel chocolates pack you managed to grab right back in its place. "And you said my dick is insatiable," he mumbled under his breath.

"We have a promotion going on," spoke the old lady scanning your items watvhing you with a sweet smile. "You bought a lot on our two plus one deals, like the water and the salty snacks. So you can get one pack of sweets of your choice for free," she added, scanning the chocolates you wanted earlier and putting them right in the bag with the sandwiches. Naozumi just grunted while you smiled at her like she saved your world.

"You look like a nice couple." She smiled sweetly at you, then shot Naozumi a cold icy stare that made you burst out laughing. "Don't upset your girlfriend."

"She's not my girlfriend," he sighed, seeing the atrocious price displayed but still tapping his card.

"She could be."

That made you choke on the very air you were breathing. Naozumi froze too, his credit card beeping on the scanner for him to slide it off as the transaction was complete.

"Is that all?" she smiled again handing you the bag.

"Yeah," coughed Naozumi. "Thank you."

"Have a nice trip!"

Thanking her awkwardly, you both walked out zoning over the parking lot. A few words from an old lady rendered both of you completely and utterly speechless. Her previous words washed over you like an induced fucked up hallucination.

"You look like a nice couple."

Me and this imp in flesh and bones? You laughed to yourself. Not a chance.

"She could be."

No, thank you, coughed Naozumi. I like my braincells and sanity intact.

Sharing an accidental look, you both shook off the earlier conversation with a violent shake of your heads. Spotting the car, you took off bolting for the driver's seat while he continued shaking his head blankly. Despite the fact that he was caught in his own argumentative thought process on why that lady was wrong to consider you and him a couple, Naozumi still beat you to it, splaying himself in front of the driver's door before you could reach it. He wasn't the one carrying the bag with food, snacks and a bunch of bottles, which gave him the unfair advantage of shoving his hands to cover the door handle as you struggled to get your fingers through. You even shoved your shoulder hard into his torso but the most that did was make him wince. The man was fucking impenetrable.

"Let me drive too!" you shouted, smacking his chest so hard that you were sure it left a handprint.

"Nope," he shook his head, arms crossing over each other. "Even if you got in the driver's seat, I'm the one with the keys and the destination. So tell me, were you going to drive back all the way to Fuji or straight to Tokyo?"

Growling at him, since arguing with Mr. Know-It-All was actually fucking pointless and braincell eroding, you stomped your way to the passenger's seat mimicking his words in his annoying voice, just a tad bit more pitchy than it actually sounds like.

"I heard that," he deadpanned.

"Good," you eyed him over the roof, wishing you could flip him the bird as well. "You were supposed to." You sat back inside with a huff.

He clipped in his seatbelt, turning the engine on. He cast a look at you, happy to see you so excited to be here. "Shall we, daddy's little princess?"

You looked him dead in the eye trying not to gag. "Just shut the fuck up and drive."

Driving for hours now, you still had absolutely no clue where Naozumi was taking you. Just that the highway scenery changed to a mountain road covered by a dense tree line, going through a dirt trek of fields and hills. The indicators didn't help your mental map much since they were mostly pointing to little villages you've never heard of ever before in your life.

The ride turned surprisingly pleasant. Despite the fiery company you've been in for the most of it. You've been throwing small insults at each other here and there that turned into playful bickering and small talk about this and that. Music, cars, even sports. The man was an open book. The Naozumi you're travelling with was nothing like the one you knew in the racing paddock. This one had a mountain of calm and relaxation in him, already in the vacation spirit judging by the relaxed smile laid on his lips. You could be just as relaxed too, if you only knew where in the world he was taking you. Browsing a few destination options, you came up with two possible places - somewhere he's never been to before (possibly getting you lost and driving shit knows where for hours), or somewhere he liked going on the occasional. The more you looked at it, the latter seemed much more plausible given his carefree persona at the moment.

Too focused on him, you failed to notice he turned right into an open plan overlooking the mountains until the wild panorama was all that surrounded the car. Parking in a spot, he unclipped his seatbelt right away and got off walking to the reddish barrier in front of the car. You followed after him stopping beside his hunched form to lean on the metal frame. One look his way and you caught him taking a good breath of fresh air inside, shoulders dropping off all the weight they seemed to carry back in Fuji, letting it all go to oblivion. Even the stressed twinge in his brows loosened. Perhaps it was this Naozumi that was his true self. Calm and at ease with himself and the world.

"Where are we?"

"Izu."

You tapped the metal, listening to the echoes. "Interesting choice for a surprise getaway."

"Have you been around these parts before?"

"No," you shook your head looking down into the valley below. "But I heard the beaches are really nice, surrounded by pure white sands all around the peninsula and the water is so clear and blue since it's open entirely to the ocean." You looked back at him. "Why?"

The smirk on his face grew as he listened to you talk about the scenery, like that is exactly where he planned to take you from the get-go.

"What now?" you asked, crossing your arms on top of the railing.

"Come on," he tilted his head mountain ward. "Take a guess on where I'm taking you."

Trying to piece together the long road you've just driven down and the fact that you were currently up in the mountains, you had a few places come to mind. If you were in Izu, then the beach was pretty close by. But it couldn't be that one specific beach. That one has been nothing but a scribble in your long growing bucket list for years. There was no way of him knowing that, so you mentally searched for a different place still around the area.

He watched your brows furrow together, chewing on your lip in thinking. In one blink, your face lit up and your eyes sparkled as if you found the answer, but then your head tilted to the side confused, shoulders sagging.

"We're up in the mountains," you stated. He nodded confirming the obvious. Your eyes focused ahead on the massive mountain spreading into multiple tall rocky peaks, cresting down into ripples of pine covered hills and valleys below the open plane. You realized you've seen that mountain before. "Is that Mount Amagi by any chance?"

"Yep. You're getting close."

"Hot close or cold close?"

"Hmm, I would say hot."

The second he said hot, your mind landed back on your travel bucket list.

"No way!" you gasped, grabbing onto his shoulders. "Are we going to Shirahama?" He nodded with another smile, glad to see you this excited. "For real, for real?"

"For real, for real," he laughed, a pleased smile on his face that he didn't ruin the surprise. You shared a gentle look before orying your hands away from him. "Thought it best to go catch some sun near an open body of water. I don't know about you, but I sure needed it after that madness in the mountains. Fuji is beautiful, but I don't want to see it again anytime soon."

"You and me both," you huffed. "Although, this view is pretty charged with sun itself," you smiled, closing your eyes to feel the mountain breeze just blow over you. The fresh air was really sent down here from the gods above. The wind played around your arms, floating up to glide through your locks, stopping to caress your face softly like a lover. Warmth danced on your face as the sunshine turned into an eternal state of mind you didn't want to step out of.

"It is a pretty view," he agreed, mumbling the words beneath a long breath. He was looking at a very different view from the mountain, sitting right beside him on the railing, more alive and breathtaking than the endless stretch of greenery or the wild flora growing on the cusp of these dormant mountains could ever be.

Something came over him, making his fingers move on autopilot to pull his phone out of his pocket to capture the moment - you - with the wind rustling your hair, the mountain in the background, eyes closed in peaceful wonder, a content smile on your face. He moved back silently, careful not to ruin your moment, as he angled your face with the mountain in the back. A breath and his finger tapped the shutter. Checking the picture just once, he pocketed the phone satisfied with the result. He wasn't one to take photos of things or people, as aesthetic or nice as they looked. But he believed that some memories were worth keeping within the layers of one. Glancing back up at you, still in your serene moment of peace, he smiled in content that this view was now his to keep. A little secret memory created just for him.

Mountain view left behind, you began the descent through the serpentines surrounding the hilltop area. Soon enough you reached the opening of the cityscape below, the blue ocean a stretch sway. Buildings and hotels peeked out between tall cliffs lining up along the stretching skyline, resembling a slice of paradise you've only seen in movies. The pictures online didn't do the place justice at all either.

"Can you hand me a sandwich?" asked Naozumi, attention fully on the curved road.

He was right on time since you were hungry too and didn't feel like eating on your own. Picking up a panini, you unwrapped it halfway and handed it to him. He took a hold of it shifting in his seat, leaning the hand with the sandwich on the rolled down window. He switched lanes, fingers nimbly moving between indicators before falling down the slope of the wheel, forearm settling back on his knee. Your sandwich stopped midway to your mouth, watching the movement as if you haven't been driving cars for as long as you could walk on your own two feet. There was just something about the way he did it, so manly and self-assured, that was too hypnotizing not to sit and observe it like a co-driver doing the same for its driver. Just more immersed in the way his hand glided over the leather casing of the wheel to take a swift turn, steering it straight before the foot of his wrist ended back on his knee to keep the wheel in place.

The traffic came to halt as the late afternoon rush hour set in. Feeling eyes on him, he found you looking at the way his hand was sitting on the wheel tapping to some song in the background. His lips quirked, about to comment on it and tease you, until his eyes fell on the mayonnaise drop hanging on the side of your cheek. He just chuckled to himself drawing your attention away from his hands.

"What?" you asked cluelessly.

"Why do you always have shit on your face?"

"For you to get your knickers in a twist about it," you huffed, rolling your eyes. "Where is it now-"

Before your hand could even stretch to find the location of the misplaced sauce, his thumb rose up to collect it rapidly, pulling it to his mouth in all but a blink. His tongue flicked out over it, licking it clean. Your mouth fell open at the gesture, appalled and in disbelief.

A comment brewed in you until a phone started ringing somewhere in the car. Naozumi shook his head that it's not his. It wasn't yours either since you left your bag at the studio in Fuji. Searching around the back you came to Kate's bag. Her phone was ringing bloody murder inside now that it caught city signal. Tanaka's name flashed on the screen for one more ring before it stopped, showing you a polaroid photo of her and her very secret boyfriend on her lock screen,and about twenty-seven missed calls, and a shitload more texts.

A mere second and the phone lit up with his name again. You shared a look with Naozumi. He nodded for you to take it. You pressed the answer call button only to be welcomed by silence - a fake silence - preparing the Kate Volcano to explode and engulf everything in burning flames and lava. You had to cook up a believable story fast. Sure enough, she gave you five seconds to pick something then her voice came through lightly satirical.

"Raiko Maria Suruki."

Not the government and the religious name. If she used your full baptized name, she was more pissed than you've ever seen her be pissed. And when she was this mad, all hell broke loose upon the world around her without one soul leaving unscathed. Truth be terribly told, you feared her more than you feared your parents. You cleared your throat before answering to appear on top of the situation, though your trembling heartbeat said something else.

"Present?" you spoke, voice a tad bit higher than you wanted it to sound. You caught a grin on Naozumi's face. He was enjoying this a whole lot.

"You better be on your way back this instant, young lady," she spoke sternly like a parole officer. "Did devil incarnate kidnap you against your will or did he somehow coerce you to do this to get out of the photoshoot deal? If that's the case I can give him over to the police so they can handle his rogue ass-"

Naozumi's ears were perked in silence, listening in the whole time. At all the accusations brought to his name, he felt compelled to take the phone from your hand to place it on speaker instead. Your eyebrows hit your hairline. Glaring at him you warned him not to do anything stupid.

"Devil incarnate speaking," spoke Naozumi, Kate's voice drawing to a bouldering halt.

"One, she's not coming back until possibly tomorrow or when she feels like it. Two, I didn't kidnap her, she actually came of her own accord. And three," he turned to you. You seemed more relaxed than he's caught you these past few days. If anything, he did you a favor by taking you away. "She looks like she's having fun to me." Your eyes fleeted up to his, softening despite your earlier warning. "Any other problems I can solve for you?"

"Naozumi Hiyama, just you wait until I get my hands on you-" He must've seen the ear-splitting yell coming so he pressed the end call button, hanging up on her and putting the device on mute. Sliding the phone inside the armrest compartment next to his, he picked his sandwich back up continuing to eat as if he didn't just wake Wrath in flesh and bones.

"Wow, you have balls."

"That's kind of the point," he turned up a smirk.

Giggles ruptured out of you one more joyous than the other. Your giggly fit turned into a full laugh consuming the breath in your lungs like you heard a really good joke. Maybe it was the situation you've found yourself in or the atrocious circumstances following it, but all you could do was laugh. He was downright insufferable in essence, but at times like these, he surprisingly turned into the funniest thing you could have around. Naozumi who couldn't give two fucks tried to give one and even that worked his way still. Unbelievable.

He watched you laugh, truly laugh it out until you clutched your stomach and the edges of your lips made a pair of rare dimples pop out. He laughed with you, the sound pulling your eyes to him. From beneath that serious jokester façade of his came a smile so genuine, it knocked your breath out before you could even take it in, rattling your heart to a flutter. The thought that he might actually be human underneath that troublesome devil attitude of his made your heart race with warmth.

"You should smile more often," you say, fiddling with your panini. If you focused on that bright, real smile, your opinion on him might just shift to places you thought it impossible to reach. Just like your pulse shifted rhythms from just looking at it.

"I don't have a lot to smile about in my life," he let on, eyes boring out onto the city skyline at nothing in particular. He searched the skyline just like he did the flower field just the other day. Like his mind ran a hundred miles a minute and stood still at the same time in a contradiction of his real self and the one he showed to the world. Though this time around, all that wind spinning in his eyes was gone and he wore a true smile. The kind where his lips pulled in like the tide reins in the sea with the changing flux. It barely reached the corners of his mouth, but it was a smile nonetheless. His own kind of smile.

"I'm sure that's not true," you argued, clearly affected by that affirmation. Or the shadow of that smile still on his lips. Or both.

He spared you one more glance then turned his lips upwards in his usual smirk, focusing back on the road ahead.

In the month you've known him, you've found yourself observing that smile of his. Sometimes accidental. Sometimes incidental. And you found that he has a wide collection of them, varying on intensity and honesty from each and every human he interacted with. The one he wore the most is the cocky smirk he showed the world and the press, letting his charm conquer the crowds, filled with secret dishonesty as he hid his heart away. The one he dressed up in front of the ladies is a sure and confident smug grin designed to keep him safe, not too close to tie a long-term bond, or too far to turn him into a societal monster unfit for human interaction. Even the self-assured grin after he crashed his car over many instances was calculated, that you wondered if he truly felt any pain or he just hid it well. You've experienced all of those, and still, many more. The playful smirk when he annoyed you to the world's end, tilted in the same smug way on his upper lip. The overconfident grin, stretching it bigger when he succeeded. The pursed, hidden smile like a Cheshire cat's when he compelled you to give in to his taunting. But none of them were as true and close to candid as the one he just gave you. This one was a unique piece in his collection. A limited find. One that happened to be just for your eyes.

Focusing back on the tropical scene on your left, you tried to calm the rattling shake in your heart. He drove some more, turning around a few resort-style hotel buildings. A giddy excitement bubbled in you with every glimpse of the light blue ocean you could catch between them. Soon enough he drove down the main street in front of the beach. One more turn and he drove over a sandy path at the foot of the beachfront, parking with the front facing the main street. As soon as the engine cut off, you threw your seatbelt off and shoved the door open, running out to the shore. Naozumi didn't even get to pull the keys out of ignition and you disappeared into thin air.

Running all the way to the shore, hair winding down your back, you stopped at the frothy foam rushing up the seams of broken waves. You arrived just in time to see the sun start his descent to set above the horizon line. Bright orange bled into strokes of red over the blue sky, spreading to reach as much of it as possible. Warm sunrays played on your face as the fireball dove towards the endless ocean until he finally sank down beneath the water line. The last figments of his light left a purple haze as a gift for his moon that would be bringing the night. Naozumi joined you on the shore, hands in his pockets as he watched the waves lap a few feet away. He saw your eyes jump all over the place, trying to take it all in with one look. Your eyes sparkled with each new detail you found. He could almost feel your frustration that you couldn't photograph the place to memory.

"Welcome to Shirahama Beach," he spoke with a chuckle. You turned to him a bit startled, unaware of just when he fell in beside you.

"It's so beautiful," you marveled, looking back out on the water. Cliffs rose all around, surrounding the coast. The white sands, now a deep beige with the sunset, stretched all the way to each end of the beach. Sapphire waves lapped eagerly at tour booted feet. Despite the loaded traffic you just drove through, you couldn't see a lot of people around. "Is it normally this empty?" you asked, eyes turning back to Naozumi.

"Well, it's barely the start of the season so most people come in the morning to explore the city and go partying in the evening. All hotels are normally fully booked once the weather is constantly warm. And the beach may be empty, but the clubs are always packed."

"They have clubs here?" your eyes were nearly bulging out as you asked.

He nodded with a smirk. "How do you feel about a drink and some real music?"

Falling in beside him, Naozumi started telling you about the club you were heading to. The main building is just an expensive high-rise hotel on the beach front. At least ten stories of guest rooms, an indoor and outdoor pool, several gyms and a restaurant. But the side building attached to it has a built-in club and bar space that was packed for most of the year, be it the weekend or a random Monday night like tonight. From how he spoke about it, he knew an awful lot about this place. True to his words, you couldn't tell where the queue in front of you began and ended. Just that it looked as long as the line down to hell must be. Naozumi cut through the waiting line, clearly not cut out for waiting, until he reached the main entrance. A pair of big, bulky bouncers controlled the flow inside and out, turning around anyone who didn't seem fit for entry. They only let in the regulars and occasional VIP clients dressed extravagantly. Seeing some of the outfits rolling inside, you looked down at your tee and jeans combo thinking you could've done better putting that tight leather trap back on. At the sight of Naozumi approaching, one of the bouncers leaned down to his height with a grin and a firm handshake, most certainly a face he knew. Tapping your boot to the faded bass tremors coming from inside, you eyed Naozumi oddly, wondering how frequently he visits these parts that he's besties with the bouncers. Changing a few words between them, the man glanced between you and Naozumi briefly. You smiled awkwardly, feeling nerves crawl up your body at how hard that man's stare was. They shook hands again, finally moving away to let you through.

Naozumi took the lead, taking you down a long hallway tinted ultraviolet. People were either talking or making out against the walls openly without a worry. Most were too inebriated to keep themselves or their smooching partner on their feet as they rushed to devour each other's faces. They looked carefree and as happy as a club visit can get someone, diving in the crook of their partner's neck with intoxicated smiles. A brief thought had you imagine Naozumi in that position with a random model but you set that scene on fire as quick as it came around. You didn't need another nightmare on your mind. Although, you and Naozumi hitting the club on a beach you've never been to before without a way back home was already a horror masterpiece in the making. The night was just getting started after all.

"I didn't take you for a club kind of guy," you whisper-shouted, keeping close behind him as you passed through the people at the front entrance. He stopped in front of two tall black doors, music getting even louder now.

"I didn't take you for a DJ either," he shouted, glancing back at you with a smirk. "Seems like we're both full of secrets."

He pushed the doors open right as the trumpets started their ascent into the famous Destination Calabria chorus and boy, the club button in your body pressed play right away. Early 2000s dance music crashed through your eardrums at full volume. The music pounded with your pulse, thrumming in your body like a jackhammer. It coursed through you with a thrill of adrenaline putting your body in motion right away even as you were just sat on the spot checking the place out.

Packed was a huge understatement. The club was flooded to the brim like an overflowing glass of water, filled with dancing bodies instead crashing into each other. The minute you set foot in the main part of the club, the mixed scent of high quality alcohol and expensive perfume hit your nostrils. Neon signs in pink or blue quotes were hung at the entrance and above the bar at the other end. Multicolored light batons dangled down from the ceiling, changing colors with the lights set beside a small stage reserved for the DJ, a pedestal on each side occupied by dancers. Naozumi sat beside you, watching as you curiously gouged out the place.

Leaning up to his ear, you shouted, "This is a thousand times better than what they play in Tokyo clubs. Are you sure we should even be here?"

"Last I checked, it's not illegal to go clubbing. Plus, it's only us here," he said, his lips falling by your ear. That affirmation did little to comfort you. You looked around the club with more unease. He dove back down to your ear with more words of conviction.

"Come on, let loose for a bit, rookie. It's not gonna hurt you if you set free to have some real fun. Let someone else spin your life for a night."

The depth of his voice reverberated in your ear over the music, echoing small ripples of shivers down your back. Both the anxious and the fun kind, mixed together. After the weekend you had, you really needed the fun to overpower the stress. But you had doubts when it came to doing anything with Naozumi in the equation.

"I hope you won't make me regret this."

He only gave you another grin. That pointy smirk on his lips alone telling enough that you were in deep shit already. His hand brushed your arm in encouragement as he leaned back down to your ear, voice so sure it almost convinced you for good.

"You won't regret this. I promise." You looked at him with a doubtful look. He's been making an awful lot of promises to you today. Not that he broke any of them. It just felt weird to find him seeking your trust.

"I'll go say hello to some old friends but I'll be right back. If you need a drink, mention my name at the bar and they'll open my tab. Try not to get lost."

Pulling back, he glanced once more at you as you nodded. In a heartbeat, he let go of your arm and made himself scarce. You followed him with your eyes for a while, until his jet black hair disappeared among the ripples of bobbing heads in the crowd completely. You pushed away the shrill of anxiety prickling your nerves and took to dancing, trying to let loose. Diving deeper into the pivoting bodies moving on their own rhythms, you landed somewhere in the middle of the atmosphere. The middle has always been the safest. Close to the DJ booth, covered by strangers, lighter than the rest of the room. The perfect place to let go.

A few songs rolled by and there was still no sight of Naozumi. A part of you told you he left to go look for a hook-up catch or do god knows where with sketchy people since they seemed more his entourage. With or without him, you let go and let your body move along to the music, humming to a beat that sounded familiar, mouthing lyrics you knew somehow. You gave it full control and let it take over you. Closing your eyes, you felt it running in your veins with a rush of energy, tingling your limbs like no other song has done before. Hypnotizing your senses to the sharp notes and motions of the instruments. Reeling your heartbeat in sync with its melody. It swayed and spun you over and over, making your hands drive along your hips, around your waist, to the back of your neck and in your hair. It moved you in a trance until the chorus hit and your eyes opened to find Naozumi, just a throw away. Too far. As if hearing your thoughts, his steps fell in closer and closer with every passing beat of your heart growing louder in your head. Too close.

Every single day, single hour I can see your face, single day Every single day, single hour I can see your face, single day

Back turning away from him, you continued dancing until rough, sure hands wound up around your middle, spinning you around to pull your body to him. You sucked in a breath at the sight of those dark eyes catching yours with such an intensity your heart quivered off beat. Synths melted into softer vocals beyond the chorus, just like you fell into his arms, bodies all but melting into one another. One figment of your fantasy after another came to life as you sunk deeper and deeper into his hold, running your hands up his the strong sides of his arms, the needs of your body louder than your rational thoughts going into override. His touch curled around your body, fingers brushing above your hips over the thin material of your shirt to pull you closer. Your body crashed into his, hip to hip and eye to eye. But it wasn't close enough. Not nearly enough. You could see it in those eyes of his, looking at you with a hunger that made your skin heat over. The need to have him close when he's been craving to have you closer.

The tempo rose steadily as he pressed you into his chest. His touch electrified all your nerves. It skimmed up your waist, rounding around your back with raw need. You moved together to the dizzying rhythm, letting the bass guide your hips side to side wherever the music wanted to move you. Be it away from his chest to link your hands together as they raised above you, your small fingers threading through his bigger ones as he leaned into you. Be it deeper into his chest, surrounded by his strong arms like a ship drifting in the ocean. You spun around, back colliding with his broad chest as he caged you back in his hold. Lifting your hands up to swing with the wave of the melody, you felt him dive low into your neck, his breath whispering things over your skin. Disarmed by his broad form towering behind you, your arms fell back down, hands rushing to grab and tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck to shift the control back in your hands. He didn't let you, his strong arms sneaking back around your waist holding control back to him. You tugged on each other's restraint back and forth until you both let go of every worry, every inhibition, every rule, every barrier placed between you. Until it was only you and him on the crowded dance floor, bodies finding synergy with the raising synths, heartbeats rising just the same.

Spinning back to him, your hands raced up the front of his chest beneath his jacket. The pounding of his heart ran steady under your palm, the hard muscle underneath his shirt warming up with your touch. In all but a blink, your fingers laced around his neck while he pulled you in closer by the small of your back, faces falling closer than a mere breath away. Close enough to lay it all to faith and do something sober you would horribly regret. But she was so far away, stressing her pants off about life, so afraid to let go for once. Music-intoxicated you didn't care about a thing. Not about the bad boy beneath your arms, swaying too drunk on the feel of him around you. Not when the gaze in his eyes promised much more, gazing into yours with fire. Not too long and they fell on your lips. A beat and he leaned in for them. A puff of his hot breath on the rim of your bottom lip. His tight grip pulling your body into him. Nose brushing the bridge of yours. So close. Closer, you begged internally.

Kiss me, you nearly breathed out. Kiss me mindless and hard.

Do you believe in life after love? I can feel something inside me say I really don't think you're strong enough, no

The sudden change in tune had him halt. Painfully close. He dropped a curse just a nail away from laying his lips on yours. You whined audibly at the lack of lips missing from yours but the music swallowed it. The more upbeat disco rhythm ruined the growing sync between you. Demolished sounded more like it. The spark of the moment was all but gone in the blink of an eye. But the buzz was still there. As you backed up, his arms slid off yours almost reluctantly, like they wanted to hold you a little while longer. Too bad your conscience reeled you away. You felt the phantom warmth of his palms like a ghost holding you gently.

"I'm gonna go get us some drinks," you coughed awkwardly, taking a step back. Your hands fell off his shoulders aching to race back to hold onto them. You fisted them at your side, trying to push the tingles and the feel of him off your fingertips.

"Want me to come with you?" he asked, looking unsure of what just happened himself.

"No!" You shook your head at him way too fast. Music changing the mood, sober you was slowly inching back into your head with countless thoughts rapidly firing one after the other making it hard to make both your mind and mouth co-operate. "I mean no. It's okay. I'll be right back." With that you dashed away to the bar at the back.

What the fuck am I doing? We danced together??? We nearly kissed?!!! I wanted him to kiss me. Mindless and hard? Jesus Christ. We were so close to doing damage to everything. My career, my sanity, my dear lips," you stopped, unconsciously touching them. Dear god, this runaway trip feels more like a curse than a blessing.

Your hands all but smacked down on top of the bar, getting the attention of a few people and the bartender. Pulling them away with an apologetic smile you waved over the man behind the bar. He smiled at you in sympathy, as if he knew the mess rolling around in your mind at the moment all too well. "What can I get you?" he asked, getting a glass ready.

"The strongest shit you've got."

Right as you said that, the reminder that you were penniless and at the mercy of Naozumi's wallet had you grimace. Inching to take the order back, you were about to tell him to leave it when someone on your right called him over. She was one of the dancers you saw on the dancing platform when you stepped in the club. Her tan skin all but shimmered. Curly long dark hair fell below her waist, draping over her pink sequin dress to match the few rebel pink streaks in her looped curls, changing shades with the neon lights above. She seemed to be a foreigner, though she had very subtle Asian features and a different air about her. Her lips drove up to the bartender's ear with what must be an order, glancing between the mixing instruments in his hand and your conflicted, slightly confused stare. He plied himself away with a knowing look directed at her, shoulders sagging with the familiarity of her words. She flashed him a sweet smile and he had to surrender to her charm. You would too if she smiled that sweetly at you. Then, her green eyes glanced up at you as she motioned you over. Your feet moved to her spot with polite intent, as she pulled a stool out for you with a friendly smile.

"Hey girl, I got you covered," she patted your arm. "I told him to put it on my tab." Her green orbs dove up and down your face, frowning at the way your brows pulled together like they've always been that tightly pinched in stress. "Rough night?" she asked, her voice floating softer over the blaring music.

"You could say that," you scratched your neck awkwardly. "Look, thank you for paying. I forgot my wallet... home." In Fuji, actually. "I'll make sure to repay you somehow."

"There's no need for that," she shook her head. "If you're having fun and get to forget about your rough night, then consider me paid. Us girls have to stick up for each other every once in a while." Her brows shot up as she pulled her hand off the stool so you could sit. "Oh my, I'm Stella by the way. Come and have a seat."

You climbed the chair and spoke with her some more, getting to know each other. She was so easy-going you might just tell her all your secrets. She went by Stella down here at the club, working as a server and occasionally filling up the dancer platforms when she felt like letting loose. Her parents were of Japanese-American descent. She's grown up around the coast for most of her childhood, courtesy of her grandparents, and moved over from the mainland once she was old enough, trying to get her family off her case. A little while later, the introductions turned your way. She was stoked to learn that you were a rally driver. More so, as soon as she found out you came with Naozumi, her lips tipped up in a knowing smirk. She let on that he's Shirahama's most regular customer, doing more miles with his car to get down here than to spend them flying somewhere else more tropical and sunny.

"He's been coming down here for a couple years now. There's no season I haven't seen him walk through the door, even if it was just in passing or to say hello to everyone." Her hands wound up around her sparkly top, leaning forward on her chin to get a better look at you. "Though, I've never seen him bring anyone with him, especially all the way from the big city."

The way she said it made it seem as though you crossed some sort of dynamic bridge with him. "Does that make me special or something?" you joked.

The way her green eyes stilled cold with the blue hue of the lights told you there was a lot she wanted to say on the topic. But before she could tell you more, your drinks came through. The bartender laid down a cocktail glass for you and one for your new friend, pouring the contents of the cocktail shaker skillfully. The liquid had an interesting peachy shade, light on top and darker at the bottom of the glass. He added a cherry and a slice of orange on the side, telling you that it was called Stella's Special. The woman in question all but glowed as he said it.

"Let me know what you think of it and be honest, even if it sucks," she says. "I've been tweaking the recipe and I'm lost on what to change."

"The whole thing," coughed the guy behind the bar. Stella glared at him with a silent warning to watch it.

She didn't let on any other information on what it contained to not spoil your first taste. A bit skeptical, you clinked the glass with hers and threw it back together, letting it burn down your throat. The first hit tasted like a mix of vodka and martini, with a tang of citrus fruits leaving a sweet aftertaste. The next had a weird consistency to both tequila and rum. Whatever it was, it kicked your system into instant relaxation. Her eyebrows lifted up waiting for your review.

"It's exactly what I needed," you sighed, having another gulp of it. "Light but really strong, fruity and smooth, surprisingly all in one. It's really good." She clapped excitedly at your comment making you giggle.

"See, I told you it's good to go," she sounded pissed turning back to the bartender. Something told you he's had to taste test the cocktail enough to puke his guts out. His upcoming sigh of defeat only confirmed that.

"It might be Stella," he deadpanned, "but I'm not selling it as long as I have a bartender license to uphold. I like my job. Active and safe from a Consumer's Protection citation."

"Whatever. Be sour that I made my own drink and you won't ever figure out how to make an original one for as long as you live. Come on," she clinked her glass to yours. "Let's have some more of these, then we can go have some fun once you have some real fuel in you!"

Naozumi was racking his mind about the moment you just had. Well, it's been a while since that scene happened but he just couldn't get it out of his head. He liked it. A tad bit too much for his own good. He didn't mean to lean down and try to kiss you. Kissing you was not a part of the plan and he hoped it wouldn't ever get there. But with your hands tangled deep in his hair and his arms around your body, he got carried away. The change of music was truly unsolicited, ruining whatever he built up in him to do. As glad as he was for the interruption, a part of him wished the DJ never played that fucking disco song. Climbed right up his extremely disliked list.

Minutes passed by and there was still no sight of you or the drinks you disappeared after. He took off to the bar, pushing through the lost drunk dancers and the couples making out, thinking you were either getting a drink or someone managed to chat you up already. Getting to the bar, he looked left and right but there was no sight of you at all. Nodding to his bartender friend in greeting he talked to him asking if anyone ordered alcohol on his line. His friend said his tab wasn't opened by anyone tonight. That left his mind blank.

Where did she go? he wondered, looking around trying to spot you in the crowd drenched in strobe lights. Blue and red flashed and his eyes landed on the dancer platforms at the side of the stage. Moving away past them, his eyes fell on the one to the right of the DJ scene where a very familiar face was getting down with one of the dancers he knew. Drawing closer to the platform, his eyes caught on the dirty boots, riding up the dark jeans and an old band tee and realized it was you. Completely shitfaced by the looks of your lascivious dance moves. The hem of your shirt was tied together to expose your navel. Your hands were deep in your hair making it a mess, hips swaying wide to the side of the stand, feet padding dangerously close to the edge. He tapped your leg to get your attention. You looked down ready to shoo whoever touched you away with a boot to the mouth until you recognized Naozumi. A wide smile broke on your face as you waved at him.

"Fun's over, rookie. Get down from there."

"You told me to let loose. That's exactly what I'm doing, so no can do," you sang, continuing to move your hips to the music, sending his existence to oblivion.

He tapped the back of your leg again and you glared at him this time. "Are you always this complicated?" he asked.

You stopped dancing and leaned down to him with a brazen smirk on your lips. Hand moving of its own accord, you grabbed onto his chin trailing your fingers under it as if you were petting a dog for being a good boy. Naozumi was far from being a good one but that wasn't something you could change. What you were in fact able to change was his pestering.

"Oh, I'm not the complicated one here, mister," you bit back, a devilish smile matching his usual one stretching your lips. Your other hand tugged on his shoulder pulling him in close, letting your lips graze the side of his ear, as you whispered, "Unlike you, I know what I want."

"And what is that?" he asked, angling you down with a fire in his eyes that made something in your belly flutter. Ignoring that weird feeling, you simply smiled bright at him, unknowingly sending his wheels spinning.

"Why fun, of course!" you say, throwing your head back with a drunken giggle. Jumping back up unsteadily on your feet, hugging your dancer friend once more. She hugged you too as you sang together to the song playing.

At this point, he had better chances letting you run out of fuel than forcibly drag you away from the platform and into the car. So he let you dance it all out until you dropped, keeping watch from the side. One song passed, then another, until about ten of them went away and you were still dancing and singing like you drank heavy shots of espresso instead of the loaded alcohol scent he caught off your breath. He gave it a few more preparing to call your curfew soon.

The music coursed through you like an energizer. At one point you weren't even sure what you were dancing to. The songs all morphed into one melody, the rumble of the constant bass rocking your body giving you one solid beat to follow until you struggled to move your limbs past a half-assed twist here and there. You didn't have to move much to feel the joy of being free of all your burning worries, letting yourself float on the wave of music, drowning the world out to hear your inner one sing. You just had to look through your blurry eyes at your new dancer friend holding most of you up, swinging you side to side, and carry on feeling the freedom.

But slowly, your energy was depleting. You ignored it as much as you could, but that bout of exhaustion you ran away from all weekend hit you all at once. And it hit you hard. The boots on your feet weighed like heavy lead every time you lifted them to take a step. It was impossible not to blink at the flashing lights like they didn't annoy you to hell and beyond. You swayed, blinking away at the lightheaded feeling gripping you with force. Stella leaned in to tell you a joke but you barely registered it before starting to laugh uncontrollably, unable to process her words past the blur of her mouth moving. Whatever she said must have been funny because you shook on your feet as you laughed and hiccupped, clutching your stomach in jolly pain. The lights spun in dotted lines all blue and too bright. Your steps backtracked, tangling over each other until you stumbled over the edge of the platform, blacking out for a moment.

Naozumi saw your knees wobble and bolted up to reach you. Strong arms wrapped around your waist and the back of your knees, holding you up as your arms wrapped around his neck out of reflex, the one thing that was still working with you. He blew a breath of relief that he got to you before you could kiss the floor and break your skull. Or something else Kate would most likely put him six feet under for.

The world around you fell to a complete blur, feeling yourself free fall to the bottom of something. Shaking away the heavy feeling weighing on your lids, you blinked multiple times to clear the fog. The force surrounding you felt cushiony, soft, weirdly safe. Your mind struggled to catch up with you as your eyes rode from the platform you just stood on to what looked like a person at your side. A familiar face spun in your field of vision like they rode a merry-go-round around you, pivoting side to side until Naozumi's serious face became clearer. His jaw looked tense up close, so close you could see his lips parted in shock and his eyes swimming with worry. You squinted, trying to figure out if you were seeing things or this was actually a really worried Naozumi you were seeing. You gaped at him for a moment, zeroing in and out of focus on him and the world around you. Then you simply giggled with a messy hiccup, smiling sweetly at him as you buried your head in the crook of his neck.

"I think that's enough fun for tonight," he spoke, fixing you in a better position in his arms. Seeing as you were completely out of it, making wide blinky eyes at him, like one of those colorful pocket-sized lizards that smiled at people before biting them, he took off through the crowd with you safely secured in his arms.

He made his way out of the club through the other entrance connected to the beach, carrying you the way back to the car. The waves lapped at the shore splashing one after the other in the dark of the night, calming to hear after the loudness of the music. So calm your eyes drifted closed, your legs swinging left and right supported by your humble transport, feeling as if you were in the sea and the waves were lulling you into a dreamless sleep. Until a smooth, deep voice with a hint of sweet alcohol broke through the silence, calling your name. It took a handful times but your attention was finally on him.

"What did you drink at the bar?" He sounded concerned, glancing at the way your lids dropped every so often.

"Your friend Stella has the prettiest green eyes I've ever seen," you say, drawing your head back on his shoulder with a drowsy smile. "She ordered her special for me."

"Of course she did," he chuckled. "You drank that atomic liquid bomb with all but a panini sandwich in your stomach?" You nodded. "How many did you even have to get this drunk?"

You lifted your hand to eye level trying to count the number of pink umbrella glasses on your fingers. You got as far as your fourth but your memory blurred beyond that point. There might have been more but you weren't that sure about it. He looked between your narrowed eyes and the struggle to keep your fingers straight as you counted beside your hand and knew the answer weighed heavily on way more than four. And even one of those was enough to send you in a coma.

"I hope they give you kids champagne on the podium."

"You think I can get podium?" you asked, eyes fixed on him, fingers tapping the rhythm of the song playing back at the club on his shoulder as a small giddy smile graced your lips.

His brown eyes flickered in the dark settling on your face. That smile of yours was a wonder to him. Now, in all the weeks he's known you, he's barely seen a real smile fall on your lips. At some point he thought you forgot all joy somewhere, locked in a briefcase with a number combination that you could collect after working your seriousness off on the job. But tonight, he finally saw it. You were smiling so much, letting all that cheer explode from deep inside you with a brightness that would put the glow of sunshine to shame. His serotonin counter broke somewhere after the third one you flashed him while wildly dancing on that platform, unaware of just how fast those drunken smiles of yours made his heart race. If you gave him any more of those, he might just pop a leg and get knee damage before he made it to the car with you.

"I think you can do whatever you put your mind to," he spoke, eyes falling over your winged eyes, sparkling in the light of the bright moon.

"You can put me down now."

He lifted a brow in doubt. "You sure you can balance your wheels?"

"I'm sure," you nodded with a tight-lipped smile, the kind children have when they're being entrusted with a big responsibility for the first time.

He obliged, letting you down from the safe hold his arms had around you. The moment your feet touched the sand, you took off your boots and so ks tucking them inside and started running along the beach, laughing at how good life felt. It hasn't felt this good in a while. Just having the lights blinking up the hills and the roiling waves of the dark sea in sight made you feel like you were floating on a cloud, away from the mundane responsibilities of life, enjoying the present like nothing else mattered. Because at times when the stress of helping the team get back on track and deliver results called, everything mattered, big or small, insignificant or trivial. But everything was too much to handle sometimes. Take for example how this weekend treated you, kicking you up and down the roads of Fuji, running over your hopes and dreams until they turned to almost unsalvageable roadkill. After all, this impromptu trip was like a distraction sent from the gods. Especially Naozumi's sweet friend with the pretty green eyes and her special liquor. That friend made your weekend much better.

Naozumi let you run away as far as you wanted. He didn't run after you. He just sat back walking beside the path of footprints you left in the sand, keeping an eye on you just in case he had to gather you up from the sand. Slowing down, you turned around running backwards through the small waves breaking at your feet, looking back at him. Once that smile of yours appeared, he felt compelled to grin back just as wide.

He thought you looked more like yourself now, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, than you did this weekend in the one place you seemed to love the most. A part of him was glad he threw that little revenge plan away back at the shoot, asking you to come with him. He could tell you were stressed out of your mind these past few days when you didn't reply to his annoying remarks at all, not even on a hard wedge of his shoulder into yours in the line to get food or an inappropriate teasing remark thrown your way, keeping that serious look with furrowed brows on your face at all times. A look that he knew too well. The independent fix-it-all, available nonstop for each and every soul, acting like all was fine to keep the stress at bay when there was a war waging inside of your own, refusing to just be indifferent and let things go when the world was running faster than you could ride it.

That same part of him was also glad that you listened to him and let loose a little tonight. You ran backwards again and stumbled falling on your back in the sand laughing. The grin on his face fell, concern replacing it again. He got ready to run to your side when you got back up to your feet like nothing happened, giving him the thumbs up that you were fine before taking off running again. Maybe you let loose a little more than he recommended. But you were laughing making him laugh to himself. He's seen you getting your hands dirty by working on cars and braiding flower crowns, and still, he felt there were more layers to you. His own curiosity wanted to pick apart at those layers one by one, until he got to the core of you.

He finally caught up with you stopping a few steps by the water. Squatting down in front of him, you made wide eyes at a coiled sea shell that washed up on the sand with a really adorable look on your face. You had that childlike wonder in your eyes as your pointer poked it, looking at it like it was some sort of magical tool. If your eyes glimmered any more at it, he thought you'd start believing everything was possible if you wanted it to be by the power of the magical sea shell. Crouching down to you to get a better look at the pursed smile on your face, he wondered where your mind ran off to again.

"What did mini you used to dream about?" he asked, looking between you and the shell.

"To see my dad happy," you replied in a heartbeat, nodding in agreement that current you wanted the same thing. "Well, mom too, obviously. And Tanaka. And Kate. And everyone! But him especially."

Your eyes moved away from the seashell, focusing on the big waves rolling out at sea, as if looking after the spark of a hope that your dream was almost done being crafted. Almost on its way to you. Almost in your hands. Almost real.

"If dad will be happy and live his life without all that worry he's been carrying around for sooooo long, then I would say that my dream came true," you said, smile turning meek on the edges. "That's all I've ever dreamed about. I want to make it come true. No matter how long it takes."

A shrill breeze blew from the sea, sending chills down your arms. You shook like a duckling with your cheeks puffed. Naozumi pulled off his denim jacket, wrapping it around you as best as he could without stepping on your precious new find. He picked up the little seashell and placed it in the front pocket of the jacket, patting down the pocket so you knew where it was in case you happened to look for it. His hand brushed a lone strand of hair away from your face, falling to your arm to rub some warmth into you.

"Come on, Dora the Explorer. Let's get back to the car before we freeze our seashells out here."

He helped you get back up on your feet and tucked you under his arm, taking you the rest of the way back to the car. The cold sand crunched under your feet, toes already on the brink of becoming mini icicles. Stopping to pull your boots back on, you held Naozumi's arm for balance, sliding your feet back in the warm comfort of your boots. Then you ran ahead of him until you reached the car's trunk. You let the latches open and the gate fall before running over to your luggage in the back clicking the keys to unlock the car. Rummaging through it, throwing clothes all over the backseat, you found your long fluffy blanket. Rounding back to the back you climbed up, with a little help from Naozumi pushing your legs up as you crawled over. Confused, he watched you lay the blanket down for most of the length of the trunk bed before sitting down holding your hand out to him with a smile. He grabbed it and you pulled on it hard with a giggle so contagious he couldn't help but laugh too as you struggled to pull him up without sliding off yourself. Finally up in the back of the car, you had a way better view of the high cliffs hugging the coastline and the dark sea splashing up on the shore. Golden bundles of yellow lights flickered from one end of the coast to the other, from little houses way up on the hills, to the bigger hotels down on the shore, mixing in with the midnight blue sky and the sea, both drenched in almost complete darkness. The waves crashed on a calmer tide and the wind blew, but not enough to make the air cold, rustling your hair in a twirl from time to time. The peace of the night made you sigh in content.

Naozumi unwrapped the lid of a water bottle handing it to you. You looked at it with a pout shaking your head. He insisted, pushing the water your way once more. You reeked of alcohol and dehydration was not a good thing to go by after a rally weekend. He's felt that on his own skin way more than he cared to remember. You whined audibly, pushing it away from you like it would do you more harm than the shit you already consumed.

"If you want to puke your guts out first thing in the morning, then be my guest."

That sentence alone made your guts roll in horrid anticipation. With a scoff, you took the bottle, drinking a good amount of it before handing it back to him. He set it aside, bringing up his knees to lean his arms over them in a brooding lean. You noticed he was doing that thing again - zoning out somewhere too far away from here. The earlier easy look in his eyes turned heavy with something he seemed unable to let go of.

"What are you so in deep thought about?"

"Nothing," he sighed.

"I think you should let loose a little too. Come on, tell me what's on your mind."

"I didn't realise this was twenty-one questions."

"Need I remind you you owe me like three truths? Now come on, spill one. I'm letting you choose the first one out of courtesy," you said, making a short curtsy, bowing your head with a hand roll. The pun had him chuckle, smiling down at the floor.

"You're welcome to start off with what's bothering you because I can practically smell something's been on your mind ever since we fell in that damn flower field two days ago."

"Oh, yeah? How come?"

"You notice things when you become a driver," you said, tapping your temple in intellectual manner, giggling as he followed in tow.

"Okay," he nodded. "One truth."

He thought long and hard about what to say. Knowing you, the other two most likely had thoughtful questions prepared.

"I...," he started, making you lean in with curious eyes. Then he sighed. "I have nothing. I don't know what to tell you."

"What are you chasing after when you drive?" you blurted out, trying to kickstart his brain a little.

"I'm not chasing after anything," he retorted, looking back at you. You had that look on your face that told him to watch the bullshit.

"I'm asking for truths, not denials. I can tell you're chasing after something important." Your eyes moved back to the sea, thinking back to what you told him a moment ago, about your dream. "We all drive for a reason or another."

You weren't wrong. He did race for something important. A motive so important and sacred to him that it haunted his waking moments more than he wanted to let it plague him.

"It doesn't matter what yours is," you shrugged. He was puzzled at the step you took back all of a sudden. Looking back at him, you searched his raven eyes and asked, "But there is one, isn't there?"

"Yeah. There is," he replied right away. "You race for your father. I race for someone too, hoping I can stop time just enough to keep them here with me longer."

Something told you that was as much as you'd get out of him for now. A reason to put your life on the line was better than living life with no meaning.

"That's good enough of a truth for me," you smiled, bumping your shoulder into his to lighten up the heavy mood falling over you.

Laying back on the blanket with a sigh, you looked up at the sky just in time to see the clouds clear a little. He laid down beside you too, trying to spot what you were looking at so absorbed. There were countless stars above you, blinking down at you. Through the faded blur in your eyes, you tried focusing on a brighter one among the many sparkling in the sky, stifling a yawn.

"Whenever I see the stars," you started, "I try looking for the brightest one to place a wish upon. There's so many of them, floating out in space with unspoken wishes." His dark orbs fell on you as bright as the stars above. "So many prayers hoping to be heard. Even more dreams waiting to come true to those who want them badly enough."

Your eyes fell on him briefly before they ran back to the star you found to land one more wish upon. "Do you think dreams come true?" you asked him.

He followed your line of sight upon a star, flashing a bright, intense fiery red - a red giant. From what he knew about them, they were stars that don't live that long, going close to end their lifespan before other celestial bodies around them. Placing a wish on them was like wishing on a shooting star, to do it quick and fast before it faded, unable to put real meaning into it, but with the peace of knowing that your wish was out there in the universe for longer than a burning second in time. He's never sat down to contemplate the universe like this but he had a lot of unspoken wishes in him. Maybe there was some magic in letting it out in the open to make your heart rest easy. Even if it's just for a while.

"I think that anything can come true if you truly want it," he said softly. "You just have to believe in it enough to make it real."

His eyes fell from the star on you to see you were fast asleep already. A deep chuckle fell past his lips. While he contemplated his limited knowledge on philosophy and the wonders of outer space, your hands tangled around his forearm pulling it closer to your chest like a child hugging their favorite stuffed plushie to sleep. Your face nuzzled in the muscled bump of his arm, trying to soak up all the warmth his bicep could offer. Your cheeks puffed up as you breathed in and out lightly, all curled around him as your battery ran out completely.

Unable to conceive what came over him, he unwrapped your hands to pull you closer into his chest, fixing his jacket around you better. Brushing your hair away from your face and down your back, he couldn't take his eyes off you, sleeping soundly in his arms. He's held a lot of women before, in more passional and less comforting ways, always to get that rush of anger out of his system, never to get attached for too long. But he's held none of them so gently as he held you. And you didn't even want him near. No woman ever made him feel this strange need to chase, hunt and taunt until he ran out of weapons and backup plans. No woman has ever refused his satisfaction as many times as you did, throwing his words right back at him every chance you got. And normally that would make him stop chasing. But not with you. That only made him think of other plans, chase after you faster, coming in way stronger than he's ever done with anyone else.

But no matter what he did, you wouldn't fall like the rest. You weren't like them. Because very oddly, none of them fit so right in his arms like you did right now. Safe, warm and not his to hold.

Thank you for reading! :) Taglist: @ellisaworld @howimeetyoukit @jonnelpunk @nadlx33333 @fancifulrealist @iamnotxevil

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