Opportunity (2)
Two months had slipped by since his regression, and in all that time Kim Yihyeon had never once stopped running.
At the season opener in Bahrain, he had seized pole position and turned it straight into a win; in Jeddah, he'd done it again, taking both the sprint and the feature race.
And today, in Melbourne — his fourth win from only the third round of the F2 season. Set against the other drivers, it was an utterly dominant record.
"P1! It's P1! Perfect again today!"
His engineer's voice came bursting through the radio.
"……Thank you."
He gave the short reply and lifted his finger from the radio button.
The sky over Melbourne was clear. Trundling through his cooldown lap after the race, he could see the crowds rising to their feet in the stands.
Three rounds into his first F2 season. And already a fourth win.
'…Four wins already, huh.'
By any measure, it was a remarkable result.
But.
'…It's still not enough.'
Every one of these circuits was a track he had already raced, once, in his first life. Which corners would slick off, on which lap the tires would fall apart, where his rivals would overdrive — his body remembered it all.
And that was exactly why—
'I have to do better than this.'
Settling for a result like this was not an option.
A man who already holds the answer sheet and decides this spot is far enough will simply be culled right there. He would end up treading the exact same road as his first life.
In that sense, the environment around him now — this F2 — was of precious little help.
To put it bluntly… F2 was simply a class below F1.
'It was never the drivers' talent that was the problem.'
It was purely a matter of the race cars.
The gap between an F1 machine and an F2 machine was vast enough that calling them "different levels" hardly covered it. So the moment his body grew comfortable in F2 and stopped reaching — to say it once more, that would be the end.
Still, it wasn't all bad.
'…My senses have developed to an almost absurd degree.'
Measured between his first life and this second one, his perception had sharpened abnormally. It felt exactly like that moment in his first life, right before he speared into the wall — when his senses had grown so freakishly acute that time itself seemed to slow to a crawl.
While he was still thinking it—
'I'm here.'
He brought the car to a halt in front of the board marked P1, pulled the steering wheel free, and twisted himself out of the cockpit.
The instant the helmet came off, heat and roaring cheers flooded in all at once.
"WAAAAAAAH!!"
"Great driving! That makes four in a row already!"
"Yihyeon! Yihyeon! Yihyeon! Yihyeon!"
His teammates and the crowd alike, celebrating the win. He smiled back at them, traded a few light words, then climbed onto the podium and sprayed champagne with the drivers who had finished P2 and P3.
And then he made his way back down to the team's garage, where—
"Yihyeon."
"Uncle Oscar?"
Oscar stood waiting with a face that was oddly flushed. Beside him, Louise was all but stamping her feet on the spot.
"What's with the looks on your faces, you two?"
"Yihyeon."
Oscar cleared his throat.
"A while back, while you were out on track, a call came in."
"A call?"
A call? Out of nowhere?
"Mercedes. Mercedes called us."
In that instant, the sounds around him receded into the distance. The cheering of the mechanics, the roar of the grandstands, the commentary spilling from the loudspeakers — all of it.
"Someone from their driver management side. Said they wanted a look at you in person. Behind the wheel of one of their cars."
……
"There was no talk of terms. No promise of a Seat, either. Just an invitation to come test the car once, that's all."
'Ah.'
Oscar was doing his best to sound matter-of-fact. But the fingertips gripping the documents were trembling, ever so slightly.
Kim Yihyeon, for his part, was genuinely calm — his only thought being that what was due to him had finally arrived.
But whatever that calm looked like from the outside, Louise grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.
"Yihyeon! It's Mercedes — Mercedes! You had their poster on your wall, remember!"
"……That was back in elementary school."
"How is that the point right now?!"
She flung both arms around him and pulled him into a hug. He could feel her chest pressing into his, squeezed flat between them.
"Congratulations. Truly — truly, congratulations."
'I'm covered in sweat, though.'
But as she always did, she paid such things no mind. The voice of Louise burrowing into his ear trembled faintly.
"I know. I know how hard you worked to get this far, Yihyeon. Pushing yourself since you were little, even with your family all the way back in Korea."
"……"
"And now that effort is being repaid at last. Mercedes — of all teams in the world — chose you."
He could feel Louise's heart hammering against him. Hard enough that it seemed it might burst at any moment.
He exhaled, slow and even.
"Oscar."
"Hm?"
"When is the test scheduled?"
Oscar froze mid-breath.
"……What?"
"The schedule. The test schedule. You said Mercedes got in touch, didn't you?"
Louise let her arms fall from around him and peered straight into his face.
"…We did just hear the word Mercedes, right?"
"We did."
"And that's your opening line? Aren't people supposed to scream and jump up and down at times like this?"
"I mean, sure, but..."
It wasn't as if he could tell them he had already known.
He was scratching his head, at a loss for how to put it, when Louise pressed a hand to her forehead as though he were beyond hopeless.
Oscar studied him in silence.
Seventeen years old, in the very thick of chasing his dream — and the first thing he says, on hearing an F1 team has called, is to check the schedule.
So pragmatic you had to laugh… and yet, somehow, it left a faintly complicated feeling behind.
In any case.
"Mid-April. The Red Bull Ring, in Austria."
"Two days, right?"
"…How did you know that?"
"Just figured it would be."
Because the truth was, he already knew.
'Same as the first time around.'
Two days later, in the morning. Germany.
With the time difference, it would be evening in Korea. Sitting on the living room sofa, Kim Yihyeon placed a video call to his family back home.
The screen lit up before the ringtone had even rung three times.
"Oh — son!"
His mother.
Beaming, she unleashed a torrent of words before he could so much as open his mouth.
"We watched you win! Your father, your sister Seoa, and me — the three of us sat down and watched together. Our son really is something, you know? You barely came down from first place all race — except for that one tire change!"
"Thank you."
"Thank you? I'm the one who should be thanking you, with a son who does this well. And look at your face! Such a handsome face, and you've gone and lost all that weight."
"I haven't lost any, though?"
"You have. A mother can tell."
A short laugh escaped him.
In his first life, there had come a point when this nagging had started to grate on him. And it hadn't even really been nagging to begin with.
Looking back on it now… he couldn't imagine why he'd ever felt that way.
'Turns out it takes dying once to understand.'
"Is Dad there?"
"Of course he is. Honey! Your son's on the line!"
Amid a burst of shuffling, his father's face appeared on the screen.
"Hey, son. First place again today, I hear."
"Yes."
"Good. Well done."
For his father, that had always been the whole of it. A single "well done" that could easily have struck a stranger as half-hearted — and that was all.
But Yihyeon knew better.
Everything lived inside that one word — his love for his son, his pride, the deep glow of a father's satisfaction, and the apology he never put into words.
Which was why, this time — this time above all — he wanted to become a son his parents could be prouder of still.
"Um, Mom, Dad. There's something I need to tell you."
"Something to tell us?"
"I, um… Mercedes reached out to me."
Silence fell on the other end of the screen. His mother, doubting her own ears, asked him to say it again.
"……What did you just say? I didn't catch it properly — could you tell me again?"
"You heard me right. That F1 team. Mercedes. They contacted me."
The stillness held for about three seconds.
Then it detonated.
"H-honey! Did you hear that?! He says it's Mercedes! Mercedes!"
"Hold on, hold on. Son — that Mercedes? The silver car?"
"Yes. The silver car."
"Aigoo, good heavens! Aigoo!"
His mother vanished from the frame and popped back in a moment later, the rims of her eyes already red.
"What do I do, my hands are shaking. Honey, hold me up."
"Why would you be shaking? He's the one Mercedes called, not you."
"And you're one to talk — your legs are rattling like a jackhammer!"
……
His father, on the far side of the screen, cleared his throat.
He was watching the spectacle with a suppressed grin when a head poked into one corner of the screen.
His little sister. Kim Seoa.
"What? What's going on, that Mom and Dad are both yelling? Did Oppa get into some kind of trouble?"
"Seoa! What kind of thing is that to say? 'Trouble'!"
"Isn't it? Then why is everyone screaming?"
For a single instant, his mother's voice rang out at full volume.
"Your brother! He's going to Mercedes!"
"……Mercedes?"
His sister's eyes went round.
"You mean — the F1 team Mercedes?"
"Yes! Mercedes called your brother!"
"……!"
Kim Seoa knew.
With a brother running flat out toward F1, she knew exactly what the name Mercedes meant in that world — what it stood for, where it sat. All of it.
"Then are you an F1 driver now, Oppa?!"
"No."
But regrettably, Kim Yihyeon shook his head.
"Not yet."
"Why not? You said Mercedes contacted you."
"They got in touch. They haven't signed me."
He laid it out, calm and measured.
"A Seat is opening up on the grid next year, and the test is them preparing for it. If the team likes what they see afterward, then we talk about a contract. If they don't, it ends right there."
"Tch. So we were counting our chickens."
"Pretty much."
For a brief moment, Kim Seoa looked genuinely deflated.
But.
"Still, this is huge. Can I go tell my friends about it?"
How quickly she'd found her smile again — he was grateful for that, truly.
…Though the "tell my friends" part did leave him a little doubtful.
'Would Seoa's friends even know who I am?'
Much as it stung to admit, motorsport still wasn't all that popular back in Korea.
Either way.
"Hold off until I've actually signed, okay?"
"Well, well. Our oppa's just oozing confidence today, isn't he?"
"Because I actually am confident."
Kim Seoa pulled a face like she'd bitten into something sour.
The laugh broke out of him before he could help it.
"Seoa."
"What."
"Is there anything you've been wanting to do lately?"
Kim Seoa blinked.
"……Why? Out of nowhere?"
"No reason. It just occurred to me that I've never asked."
The other side of the screen went quiet for a beat.
"Honestly, what is with you today? You're being weird, Oppa."
His sister laughed it off, but Kim Yihyeon didn't miss it.
The barest shadow that had settled over the tail end of her words.
She'd been exactly like this in his first life.
Whenever he asked, she would always say she was fine — and it was he who had taken that answer at face value and let himself believe it.
"If something comes to mind, tell me. I mean it. Once I sign with Mercedes, there'll be nothing I can't do for you."
"……Okay."
And with that, the call ended.
For a long while afterward, Kim Yihyeon simply stared at the darkened screen of his phone.
In his first life, he had made these people laugh — and in the end, he had made them cry.
This time, he intended to keep them laughing all the way to the end.
Three weeks later.
Kim Yihyeon arrived at the Red Bull Ring in Austria together with Oscar and Louise — and there, waiting in front of him—
"Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Kim."
Toto Wolff, Team Principal of Mercedes, extended his hand.