Chapter 27. It Wasn’t Only Time That Was Heavy.
Chapter 27. It Wasn’t Only Time That Was Heavy.
[Restoration Complete]
Vehicle: 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray
Restoration Value: A+
Difficulty: B
Contribution: 70%
Your proficiency has reached a certain threshold.
Special Skill Reward
$A Stethoscope for My Ears$
(You can now distinguish a vehicle’s subtle sounds. You can accurately pinpoint bearing wear, tappet noise, belt slip, and similar issues by exact location.)
Basic Vehicle Appraisal Skill Enhanced
$Beyond Theory, Into Practice$
(Your advanced applied ability beyond what is covered in service manuals has increased significantly.)
Coins Acquired: 12,600
Total Coins Held = 21,775
—————
It was the afternoon of exactly the eleventh day after Donnelly collapsed.
I had finally finished the Corvette.
And then the now-familiar restoration completion reward popped up, but—
Twelve thousand six hundred coins?
Maybe because Restoration Value, Contribution, and Difficulty had all exploded in a multiplicative calculation, a number I had never even imagined jumped out at me.
The gap is enormous. I think with the last Crown Victoria, I restored three of them and only got around six hundred coins...
Thanks to that, even after making up what I had spent on the Corvette’s engine and transmission, I still had a very solid balance left over.
And on top of the steadily improving base appraisal skill, I had even received a bonus skill as a proficiency reward.
Is it because I trained using my senses with Donnelly?
This entire special ability had been absurd from the start, but the power of the bonus skill I had just gotten was downright unreal.
It’s like someone installed a stethoscope in my ears...
I was on my way to the driver’s seat to start the Corvette and test the new skill too, when—
“Jason.”
A familiar voice came from behind me.
A voice I recognized instantly.
“Donnelly...?”
I ripped off my gloves and spun around at once.
“How... No, more importantly, are you feeling a little better now?”
“Heh heh, how do I look to you?”
Donnelly asked with a mischievous smile.
“Ah... well...”
The truth was, the moment I saw his face, my heart lurched.
His cheeks had hollowed in over the past few days. His complexion was more deeply sickly than before. His arms and legs trembled faintly.
I could not have called him healthy even the first time I met him, but now he had the unmistakable face of a patient.
And yet his eyes were still sparkling.
As if the soul inside him had not changed in the slightest since the days of his youth, when he proudly brought home the Corvette.
So my answer was already decided.
“You look good. I guess resting for a few days really did help.”
“Heh heh, right? More importantly, it seems I came at one hell of a perfect time, didn’t I?”
Donnelly asked, glancing at the Corvette that had just come down off the lift.
“Yes. Just like last time, how do you always manage to time it like this? I literally just finished installing the powertrain. Once I fill it with oil, it’s done.”
“Heh heh, the truth is, Bill’s house is always on the way past here. He’s been going back and forth and keeping me updated on what you were doing.”
“Ah...!”
I could see Bill in the distance, leaning against his car. It looked like he had driven Donnelly here.
“Then... I suppose that really means this little guy’s restoration is finished.”
Donnelly said it as he dragged over a chair and sat down.
It seemed even standing for a long time was difficult for him now.
Then he stared silently for a long while at the Corvette, glowing even redder in the afternoon sun.
“...Would you like a cup of coffee?”
I too stood behind him, quietly looking at the Corvette he was staring at, then finally spoke.
“Coffee sounds good. Being stuck at home the past few days, the thing I missed most was that coffee. Bill liked it too.”
“You two really don’t seem to have any secrets from each other.”
I went over to the shelf and took out two paper cups, one for Bill as well.
“Jason.”
“...Yes.”
“Don’t make that kind of face. I’m all right.”
At Donnelly’s words, my hand stopped dead in the middle of making the coffee.
“And thank you. I really wanted to say that, but I’m a little late. Heh heh heh.”
Donnelly laughed. He seemed to be laughing more than usual today.
I took a deep breath, handed him the steaming coffee, and said brightly,
“Save words like that until after you’ve driven it. For all you know, I might have done a terrible job. ...You want to go for a drive already, don’t you?”
“I’ve wanted it enough to dream about it.”
“It’s not a dream anymore. It’s real.”
I placed the Corvette’s small metal key into Donnelly’s hand.
“Yes... the day really has come.”
Donnelly stared at it for a long moment, then closed his fist tightly around it.
How long, exactly, have I postponed this moment?
That was what Donnelly thought as he made his slow way toward the Corvette.
From the moment he first bought it, and for a long time even after his wife passed away...
Click—
He pulled the mechanically solid-feeling handle and opened the door. The Corvette door opened more lightly than he had expected.
Beyond it, the Corvette’s stylish interior welcomed him, still preserving its original form despite the passing years.
It looks like a jewel box.
That was exactly what he had thought the first time he saw the Corvette at the dealer’s lot.
The inside of the door and the dashboard were covered all over in tan-colored leather.
The various gauges were ringed in silver.
The black manual gear knob looked like a billiard ball, and even the wooden steering wheel dripped with elegance.
No matter how many times he looked at this interior, he never got tired of it.
Steadying his trembling hand, Donnelly gently inserted the metal key into the gleaming silver keyhole.
Then, after drawing in a deep breath—
“Hup.”
He pressed the heavy clutch pedal all the way down with his left foot—it was truly heavier than he had expected—and lightly turned the key.
Rrrrrooom—
The sleeping engine woke for the first time in decades.
But perhaps because it had been so long, its stretch was rough indeed.
Rrr-rrr, rrr-rrm, rrrm—
“Hold on!”
Hearing the sound, Jason came dashing over to the engine bay.
He was probably adjusting the carburetor.
A moment later, as though nothing had ever happened, the engine calmed down.
The steady, humming texture of its idle felt wonderful. It felt as though both the car and he himself could breathe properly again.
No matter how I look at it, that young man is something special.
For someone that young to set up the carburetor on an old car like this with such uncanny precision...
“It’s good now! Go ahead and drive it as much as you like!”
Jason shouted.
At the end of his life.
On the very day he had been forced to give up even the repair shop he had devoted fifty years to, Donnelly met Jason.
Now that I think about it, it really is a strange sort of bond.
Because thanks to that stranger he met then, he had been able to fulfill his deepest wish like this.
It felt almost as though his wife, Nora, had sent him this gift from heaven.
“Nora...”
Even now, when he closed his eyes, he could still vividly see her bright smile.
“I’ll be with you soon.”
No one knew his body better than he did himself.
He did not have much time left.
But that was all right.
When he met Nora again this time, he finally had something to tell her.
Donnelly gestured through the open window.
“Jason.”
“Yes?”
Jason, his first and last apprentice, strode toward the open driver’s window.
“No, not this side. Get in over there.”
Seeing him do that, Donnelly lifted his thumb and pointed to the other side.
For the briefest instant, a boyish expression from his younger days crossed his face.
“This time, you’re in the passenger seat.”
Rrrrrooom!
As though it meant to vent all the resentment of the long years it had spent asleep, the Corvette’s engine roared fiercely.
“W-whoa, Donnelly! Isn’t this a little too fast?”
I sat in the passenger seat gripping the handle tightly.
No, really—my master drove like this?
He had always sat so quietly in the passenger seat that I had never even imagined it.
“Heh heh, this is how a sports car is meant to run. Otherwise, why would they call it sport?”
Clack, vroooom!
As if teasing me, Donnelly dropped the manual gear down one notch and pressed harder on the accelerator.
“Whoa...!”
At the sensation of acceleration that felt like it might suck my whole body into the seat, admiration burst out of me automatically.
How was this a car that came out sixty years ago?
The Corvette, reborn with a heart that was like new—actually truly new—tore down the road as if to show off, overtaking modern cars.
“Whew! Nice car!”
“Man, that’s clean!”
People around us rolled down their windows, gave us thumbs-ups, and tossed out a compliment or two.
That alone showed how much Americans loved old cars.
To them, a classic car did not seem to be merely something old and outdated, but a precious memory worth preserving.
“Heh heh, looks like people think this car’s pretty special too.”
It seemed Donnelly’s shoulders had lifted with pride at the praise from others.
No—ever since the very moment he first stepped on the Corvette’s accelerator, the smile had not left his lips.
It was as if the wrinkles between his brows had been smoothed out by the Corvette’s powerful acceleration.
The road stretched on without end.
The Corvette showed no sign of tiring.
And after a certain point, neither of us spoke anymore.
Donnelly had become completely absorbed in driving the Corvette.
And I did not want to interrupt that by opening my mouth for no reason, so I quietly leaned back into the seat.
Outside the window, the familiar Arizona desert scenery swept by at speed.
Creak, creak—
I turned the little manual window crank a few times and lowered the small window slightly.
Hot desert wind rushed in through the gap.
Rrrrrooom—
The Corvette’s low, rich exhaust note pulsed at a steady rhythm in my ears.
I want this to keep going forever, without stopping.
I felt like I could understand, at least a little, why Americans dreamed of the Corvette and longed for it so much.
When you were riding in a Corvette, everything outside seemed like it did not matter.
Things that would all pass someday anyway, like the scenery slipping rapidly behind you.
Thinking that way made my heart feel freer instead.
But the words Donnelly said to me after the drive brought all the turmoil back.
“It was perfect. The car, the drive, everything was beyond what I imagined even in my dreams. I’ve got no regrets now... So, Jason. I want you to sell this car for me.”
On the quiet roadside, with the Corvette’s stylish low exhaust rumbling in the background, I was struck speechless for a moment.
Thrum, thrum, thrum—
“...Sell this car? What do you mean, all of a sudden?”
Of course, selling a car was entirely the owner’s right.
But I knew what this Corvette meant to Donnelly, so I had no choice but to ask.
“It’s not sudden. Originally, I meant to sell it together with the shop when I closed it down. Thanks to meeting you, I got to enjoy the luxury of taking it on a drive like this first. And besides...”
Donnelly said it as he opened the driver’s door and stepped out of the car.
“Sit here for a second and try the clutch.”
“Huh?”
“Go on.”
I did as told for the moment, got out of the passenger seat, and moved over to the driver’s side.
The instant I put my foot on the Corvette’s clutch pedal, I understood what Donnelly meant.
“This is pretty heavy.”
It was not quite the stone-block feeling of an old Ferrari, famous for having a brutally heavy clutch, but it still seemed tiring for an elderly man to keep pressing repeatedly.
“That’s right. Just from that short drive, I already feel tired. You could really call it a sport, heh heh.”
Donnelly looked down at the Corvette with gentle eyes. As though, even while it stood right in front of him, he was already beginning to miss it.
“You’ve probably realized it already, but it’s about time I started preparing for what comes next. Now that I’ve reached the end, it’s surprisingly not as frightening as I thought. But I don’t want to leave this world doing nothing but burdening others until the very last moment...”
Death is expensive.
Anyone who had gone through medical care, elder care, or funerals in America knew the truth of that.
There was health insurance called Medicare, but it did not cover everything.
(Translator’s Note: Medicare — The U.S. federal health insurance program primarily for people age 65 and older, and some younger people with disabilities. It does not cover all medical or long-term care costs)
That was why, once they entered old age, one of the greatest fears many Americans had was becoming a burden on their children.
“All right. Then I’ll try to move it as quickly as possible—and for as high a price as I can.”
I did not ask any further.
What I had to do was help Donnelly live like himself to the very end. Not stand in his way.
“Good. Then start by asking something outrageously high. A Corvette like this doesn’t come along every day, does it? Heh heh heh.”
Donnelly grinned.
And on that point, I agreed completely.