CHAPTER 133: RACE WEEKEND | FRIDAY | A TRIP DOWN THE MEMORY LANE

"How long do you think it will take you to get to such a pace after moving to shifter karts?" Logan Sargeant turned to Lando, Enaam, and Fatih, who were watching the KZ2 karts on the track, hearing the up- and downshifts as they neared the end of the straights and out of corners.

"I think I will kill a gearbox or two, but I should be competitive in a few days, a week at most," Lando said, his eyes still focused, tracing one of the shifter karts from the final corner exit all the way to the first corner.

"I will have to take a long time to not destroy my gearbox since my mother will kill me if I do, but a month at most," Enaam said after a moment of thought, having watched how much the workload on the drivers increased once a gearbox and front brakes were included.

"And you?" Logan asked, looking at Fatih, who seemed to be in another world, his eyes locked on a single driver, tracing him for the whole time he was on the grandstand.

"I don’t know, but it shouldn’t be long," Fatih said when he realized it was his time to answer the question.

"How lo—" Lando started to ask for a number, but the question was stuck in his throat when he saw Fatih looking at his phone after receiving a notification, before smiling and walking away, typing. Lando turned to the others and asked, "Who do you think he is talking to?"

"His girlfriend?" Enaam said, causing a short silence between them before they started laughing at the thought of it.

After a short while, they returned to watching the free practice once again as Logan said, "I think he is the monster, so he should be the one to learn the fastest," having already heard as much about Fatih’s legend as possible from his test visits to the RFM factory.

"Why are you counting me out?" Lando asked, not happy to not be considered a monstrous driver.

"I believe I can do it, but he *for sure* can," Logan argued, not really answering the question.

"I can beat him for sure in learning new things," Lando said, puffing his chest with confidence.

As they continued talking, Fatih found himself in a corner of the grandstand, texting back and forth with Seraphina, who lost most of her shyness when a conversation was done through text. She had just informed him that she was planning to look at his channel shortly and was asking how his competition was going after he sent her a picture of the track moments ago.

As the back-and-forth texting continued, Apollo materialized. Floating around Fatih in a sleeping position on a cloud-shaped bed, he asked, "Why her of all people? I’m sure it would have been easier to make a close friendship with anyone else in the class. You made more progress in short conversations with other students than you did in the first two weeks of being her deskmate. It isn’t pity, is it?"

Fatih, who was in the middle of writing a text, paused to think for a moment before he said, "I’m not completely sure if it is because of this, but I think I can understand her better due to her situation isolating her from the general public, which is something that happened in my previous life. Having a problem that shuns you from easily making normal friends is a taxing situation, and the few friends you have are very important in keeping you together. At least to me, those friends were as important an anchor in my life as motorsports was.

"Although her problem is very different from mine, the byproducts of making friendships are nearly the same. The only difference is that she is in public places without friends while I was mostly confined to my room, making her situation in regard to feeling lonely much worse. It’s like she is dying of thirst while seeing others drown, while I was confined inside, making it a bit more difficult to see people enjoying having many friends and a social life, which prevented me from comparing myself to them. I think that is the reason I feel like I can resonate with her much more closely than I can with any of my new-life friends. It’s not their fault; it’s just that I know her situation and can relate to it much better than someone who just hears an explanation of it."

It was as if the question from Apollo had caused him to think about things that he had been subconsciously avoiding in his new life. Even after having answered, he didn’t resume texting, as his eyes and his thoughts wandered far away.

"Do you think of your friends from your past life?" Apollo asked after a long silence.

"I occasionally find myself thinking of them, but not for too long, as I keep reminding myself to try and live my current life so as not to sully their friendship with me by being bogged down by their absence. It is not what they would want me to do."

"Have you tried looking for them on social media?" Apollo asked, despite already knowing the answer from having spent most of his time seeing the world through Fatih’s eyes.

"I didn’t. I died in 2030 at the age of 25, meaning in 2013, I was eight. The oldest of them would be nine now, with the youngest being seven. At this time, we didn’t have smartphones, and neither did we have social media accounts. And being an orphan, there are no family members of theirs whose social media I can go through to get an idea of where they are and what they are doing." Fatih looked at his phone, went to Google, and typed "HOPE ORPHANAGE," pressing enter before going through the search results.

"I don’t think they have a website at this time yet, so I can only wait for that or for when they have social media so that I can either be sure that they exist in this world or not, and if they do, try to reunite with them again and repay them for all they did for me," Fatih said after going through the first three pages of the search results.

"You don’t think they exist, do you?" Apollo asked.

"I see no reason for them not to exist, but I’m not the one who brought me back to this world, so I won’t understand their reasoning if they did that. But I hope they do exist so that I can return at least a portion of their sacrifices," Fatih said after a moment of contemplation.

"You can pay someone to go look for them, right?" Apollo suggested.

"I’m sure you know it too, but my mom is looking at my account activities like a hawk to prevent me from accidentally hiding another three million dollars and having her deal with the mess like I did previously," Fatih said, chuckling at the memory of how his mother had reacted. As a result, she now made a habit of looking at the accounts Fatih had access to, to make sure all money entering and leaving went to legitimate, explainable things.

"Then you have no option but to bide your time. During that period, you have to keep winning to not waste this new opportunity," Apollo said, trying to change the topic when he saw Fatih returning to the contemplative silence.

"Don’t worry about that. The moment I wear the helmet, every thought other than racing goes silent, leaving me alone with the track and my kart. I won’t be hindered," Fatih said, chuckling internally and thanking Apollo for his attempt at lightening the mood before he returned his focus to his phone to respond to Seraphina’s message.

"I know, I was just reminding you," Apollo said before disappearing when he saw Fatih’s focus now shifting from his previous friends to his current friend, Seraphina, having resumed their back-and-forth messaging.

........

"He did it in his second international debut race in the FIA Karting World Championship. Can he do it today as well? AND YES, HE DOES IT! HE SETS THE FASTEST LAP OF THE QUALIFYING PRACTICE, LOCKING HIMSELF ON POLE POSITION FOR TOMORROW’S HEATS!" the commentator shouted as Fatih finished his second qualifying lap after his first was impeded in the final sector.

"He has yet to disappoint in his international career. And if you look at his career, he looks no different than an Italian driver, as all three of his races have been in Italy, and if you listen to his Italian, he sounds no different than a native," the second commentator said, causing both of them to chuckle.

"If he wins this competition as well, then I don’t think anyone is going to be able to break his record of a triple win in his first three international races, winning the 42nd Trofeo delle Industrie, winning a race of the FIA World Championship, and finally taking home the WSK Euro Cup. What a record it would be! But even if he doesn’t win this weekend, I don’t think it is easier to break his current record than it would be to break his potential three wins."

As they talked back and forth, the qualifying practice for the KF Junior category finally came to an end before the track was opened for the KZ2 qualifying session a few minutes later.