Shin OK Number 24 - The Lovers

Xingke sighed as he tapped his fingers on the desk, growing tired of much of the pedantry on display. Lelouch, sitting beside him in a dry charcoal blazer, looked about as interested, with the folder in front of him had not been opened an hour and a half into the meeting, even as VV and the suits leafed through prospect after prospect.

The flight up from Malaysia touched down at Yiwu Airport, with a thirty-five minute drive taking them to the edge of the new facility. While some of the amenities had yet to be finished and furnished, the dominating oval, which had required vast levelling of the rocky terrain between Dingyanglingcun, Liangtoutancun, and Shuanxikou in order to build, lay proudly visible from far in the sky. While it was only banked to twenty degrees, ten less than the contemporary American superspeedways of comparable size, the track surface was significantly wider, and when combined with the slight increase in length, there would be no shortage of butterflies when barrelling through the trioval at full tilt.

Xingke squirmed in an uncertain excitement. That big oval, seen from the skies, lay waiting. It was for him. It had literally been designed at his request, for his satisfaction. And Xingke would be satisfied; an earlier spec chassis of his Schwarzenritter, the one he had driven up until it was replaced after Canada, had been shipped up, and was being fettled ahead of Xingke's first run tomorrow to mark the opening of the track. However, Xingke suppressed his excitement as something much greater and much dearer to Xingke's heart was afoot.

After all, that was not the purpose of todays meeting. Xingke's contract combined with Lelouch's ambitions had allowed for the possibility of a driver academy funded under Schwarzenritter's banner, operated in the track itself with youths from across Asia. It was Xingke's last dream, a facility where disadvantaged drivers who had the skill to go professional but were locked out of the European centres of motorsports and lacked any of the contacts, sponsors, training, or luck that Xingke had been able to take advantage of.

Over the past several months, Schwarzenritters scouts had been busy gathering information on all the various racing drivers across the region, gathering them into an intimidatingly thick binder which most attendants had open on the section regarding a seventeen-year-old from Qingdao that Xingke had written off ten minutes earlier.

"I like guys that have that swagger." Fayer, some administrator from the Rosenberg days, nodded. "He could be the face of the team if you gave him some training, quite frankly. He's got a really charisma about him. VV, who've you got?"

"I like Yangyue Qu." VV nodded, after a pause.

"Agreed." Fayer replied. "The guy's serious, you can see it in his eyes. Sharp eyes, attentive, focused, top of my list. He's got the sponsors wrapped around his finger. Could be the next Kururugi if we marketed him properly. And he's fast."

"Is he?"

The whole table turned to Xingke, who had grumbled the question out through a frown, eyes cast down at the table. After a moment's silence, his gaze flitted up again and he repeated, sceptical "Is he fast?"

VV looked down at his paper for a moment, before shifting slightly in a visible confusion and replying, smothering his irritation in a murmur, "Yes, he is."

Lelouch, still sitting beside Xingke thoughtfully, bit his lip and tried to draw out Xingke's point by asking VV "Can you cite an example of this?"

"Of course." VV nodded. "So, I broke down the development arc of performance across two key areas, their gap to teammate in qualifying as a percentage of the lap length and the average standard deviation of their race lap times as a percentage of the lap length, and tried to graph these over time for drivers like Suzaku, Xingke, Kallen, tried to model their development and use it to try and extrapolate where some of your candidates are and can go."

"I don't buy it." Xingke replied flatly.

"What do you mean you don't buy it?" VV asked.

"It's… we'll get into it." Xingke sighed. "Cite a specific example of good fundamentals that impressed you."

"You have a problem with the formula?"

"I do, yes." Xingke nodded. "See, I've been following this guy, Yangyue, for a while, he came to me last year and asked some questions. He's rated pretty well by this here formula, yea?"

"Among the highest." VV declared proudly.

"He's stunningly average."

Xingke's plain rebuttal threw VV off kilter, however he quickly recovered and simply replied "Elaborate."

"He's seen success, certainly." Xingke acknowledged. "But what your formula doesn't account for, can't account for, is the fact that he has the sponsorship backing of China's biggest telecom company, which gives him all the newest tyres and gear, and in spite of having a car that is far better maintained than any of his competition, he's only just about able to keep ahead of his competition."

Once Xingke stopped speaking, the room was as silent as the surface of the moon. Xingke smirked when he literally heard a pen drop, shaking his head as he continued making his point.

"Guys who aren't sponsored generally aren't in great cars, they can't afford to get new tyres, replace parts. They won't stand out in the way that well-funded drivers will, and they will statistically be left behind, potential wasted. If a driver has funding like that, it doesn't make their achievements more impressive, it makes them less impressive."

Once again, the room was silent, however Lelouch, who had seemed to be of two minds up to that point, tried to stand up for his driver.

"Would you be able to cite a specific example of good fundamentals that impressed you, that you think shows he has something worth investing in? Some good overtake, or race where he showed good racecraft?" he asked VV, to Xingke's silent approval.

"A specific… there are hundreds of hours of footage altogether, I can hardly point to one ten second clip out of several days of video. The only way we can do this is by looking at the aggregate." VV bristled, not being able to point to any specific point in a specific race on demand and not liking it one bit. "Look, we need to look at this as a numbers game, we can't let our emotions get in the way. Yes, certain moments might stick out, but if that paints a misrepresentative picture, it doesn't solve the problem."

Xingke smirked, already delighting in seeing VV squirm. He wasn't sure what Lelouch's relationship to VV was, or what terms they were on, but in less than two hours Xingke already couldn't stand him. He was exactly the sort of smug insider that kept the gravy train of European and American racing infrastructure unchallenged on the logic that that was how it had always been. Nevermind that the historic head start that Europe had had in the rise of motor racing led to a feedback loop of social capital accumulating to create a small club of rich, successful drivers and their friends who could pick and choose who they passed on their secrets to, excluding prospects with more talent that were outside of their social circles, Xingke generally found that the sorts of people who were at the head of such gatekeeping were, more than anything else, absolutely insufferable.

Xingke tipped his head to the side, before asking "Okay, what's the problem?"

VV sighed, and replied "Look, Xingke, we all understand what the problem is. We have to..."

"Okay, good. What's the problem?"

VV frowned, before admitting "We have to replace you."

"Nope." Xingke smiled, delighting in having VV play to his tune. "What's the problem?"

VV looked to each side, before, with a voice of uncertainty, attempting "We have to find a wellspring of talent that we can try to build up in house."

"No." Xingke replied, shaking his head. "What's the problem, Lloyd?"

Lloyd Asplund, who Xingke hadn't been sure was actually awake, snorted to attention, before confusedly, and with a lot of pausing, murmuring "Well, we need erm… we need to find the best candidates to train as devicers… out of this set-"

"The problem we're trying to solve is that there is a fucking wealth of talent out there." Xingke firmly stated, interrupting the Briton with a firm, if raspy tone. "Like me, like Kallen, that never gets the time of day, that never gets picked up because of sub-par equipment, that could easily set the world on fire if given the chance, and that we can build a school for, ensuring that those prospects are ours. The problem is how do we identify these drivers. Now your system, whatever it is, if that's the thing other teams are using, the one thing we know for sure is that it doesn't work.

"What do you mean?" VV asked.

"Kallen was only ever picked up because her older brother Naoto was able to work the junior formulas for himself to get picked up by Rebellion, and was able to leverage that to make Rebellion sign his sister." Xingke explained sternly. "I was only picked up because the guy who was meant to drive in that first Le Mans in 1998 broke his leg and I was the only guy around at the time to sub in. Both of us could have slipped through the net, and if we have any sense, we need to be there to catch drivers like that who weren't so fortunate. It's not the big, successful drivers that need help. The one's that have good fundamentals, but don't have the equipment to stand out statistically, that's we should be targeting."

"This is a business, not a charity." VV replied, lips tighter than a bank vault. "Now this system isn't perfect, but it's stuck around for a reason."

Lelouch, who had been sitting to the side contemplatively as Xingke and VV had been sniping at each other, piped up and asked "VV… if I may… this is the system other teams use, yes?"

VV nodded, answering "Yes."

"Then we mustn't use it."

Once again, silence fell over the room, as VV looked like he was about to have a conniption. After a moments pause for dramatic effect, Lelouch moved to explain himself.

"What Xingke says is true, if we try and go after people with interest from outside investors then competition will raise their prices out of our range. If we want to get ahead of the competition, we can't start by following exactly what they do." Lelouch insisted. "If we try and do exactly what Camelot does on a smaller budget, what do we end up as? A budget Camelot. If we follow them in here, then we will follow them out there."

VV tapped his fingers in thoughts, before scoffing "That sounds like fortune-cookie wisdom to me, Lelouch."

"No, that's just… logic." Lelouch said incredulously, before his jaw stiffened. "It's not a question of improving. Everyone's always improving. All the teams including us are improving their infrastructure, refining their processes, making hires, everyone is improving, it's just a question of rates of improvement. We're behind the curve, we're a new team in terms of leadership, we lost millions of Euros of legacy assets in the administration proceedings, and we are trying to outpace teams that don't have these problems. We need to do more than them with less than them. We can't just get better, we need to get better faster than everyone else is getting better, or else we'll just be jogging on a treadmill."

VV sighed, before asking "Will you at least listen to our ideas?"

Lelouch, arms crossed, nodded "Go on ahead."

Xingke smiled. He had been worried, at first, that this was going in the opposite direction to what he wanted, with VV and Fayer driving at an academy that took in those that could afford to pay disgusting sums of money for the pleasure, the sorts of people least in need of the sort of academy Xingke had hoped to build. While he knew Lelouch would try to do the right thing, with his own background making him sympathetic to Xingke's ambitions, he wasn't sure how much of a fight Lelouch would be able to put up against the impermeable logic of capital. After all, while Lelouch was the plurality shareholder, he was not the majority shareholder, and could be outvoted if he were not sharp enough or canny enough in navigating and manipulating the other shareholders.

Xingke felt slightly more assured now that that would not happen.

"What about Cao Zhang?" VV, who had thought to think through who Lelouch might like.

"No. His development seems to be plateauing."

VV seemed to try and hide a swear, but was unable to conceal his frustration fully. After a moment, he moved on and asked "Li Qiang? He's golden for sponsors."

"No." Lelouch shook through pursed lips. "He is indeed big for sponsors, he's all the talk on Weibo, but that's his only headline. We're here looking for drivers, not billboards."

VV sighed, and tried again, asking "Chen Yangtan?"

"No. Hasn't had enough standout performances."

"Lelouch…" VV began, before dipping his head. Taking a moment to gather himself, he asked "May I speak candidly?"

"Why stop now?" Lelouch shrugged.

"How can you even talk about all of these drivers like you know them all in detail?" VV demanded. "We detailed hundreds of candidates, so many that each of us could only concentrate on a small chunk, are you seriously saying you're familiar with the whole thing? You haven't even opened the file on the table in front of you!"

"Yeah, I reviewed all of it."

VV, and indeed the whole room, paused in surprise at Lelouch's no-sell. All of it? Surely not, there was too much, they had had to segment it in order to make it manageable for themselves. He had probably scanned it, he couldn't have memorised the whole thing.

Incredulous, VV eventually asked "All of it?"

"Nine hundred and forty-six candidates, with each one's portfolio containing a biography, a breakdown of performance statistics, adjusted qualifying percentages, and adjusted racing lap time deviations measuring consistency, and video tapes." Lelouch rattled off. "Unless there was more stuff ye kept hidden."

"You read it all?" VV asked again, blinking in disbelief.

"I read it all." Lelouch repeated. "I read it diligently. I made copious observations on each driver, which I remember in detail, however I have each one of these notes in hard copy in my office. I am prepared at your leave to sit down with you at another time and go through each one, a task which, if we were to start it now, might last until next week. I watched all the races cited, twelve thousand, four hundred and nineteen in all, a two-hundred-and-six hour task undertaken over three months. I have been very particular and very granular in my review of the sample you have provided."

The room again fell silent as Lelouch maintained a steely glare towards VV, who, while managing to match it without completely withering, was clearly put off kilter by Lelouch's sheer certainty. Xingke had no idea how he could prove it, or if he was even telling the truth, but he oozed so much confidence that he struggled to doubt the truth of Lelouch's words.

However, such was not a challenge for VV, who straightforwardly challenged "I don't believe you."

Lelouch flashed a smirk concealed to all but Xingke, who flashed his eyes up to VV just in time to catch the expression on his face as Lelouch began his lecture.

"For example, you listed Chen Yangtan as a good candidate." Lelouch noted. "Chen Yangtan, a driver with forty-six starts over three years, average finishing position of four point three. Not bad, however if you watch his races, he struggles to overtake up through the podium. Now you wouldn't know that from his statistics, since he has a thoroughly average qualifying history, forcing him to work his way past slower cars to get up to fifth or sixth, which is about where that car should be. But he always gets stuck, race two of the fourth of May 2019, race one of the eleventh of May, race one of the fourth of April 2020, even if the car is slightly slower, he can't push the overtake unless he has an overwhelming pace advantage, and he can't make a good car great. He is only as good as his car allows him to be, and we can do better than that in terms of candidates. I only just about ranked him in the top forty percent."

VV paused, tapping his fingers again, before joking "How's your sleep pattern Lelouch?"

"Awful, thanks for asking." Lelouch nodded, before quickly moving along. He tried to use his one good arm to prop himself into a standing position, however as he faltered it took Xingke reaching across at the last moment to stop him from collapsing entirely. After a moment, and with Xingke's help, Lelouch slowly rose to a standing position, before locking his leg braces into place to take the strain off. He brushed himself off for dramatic effect, before clearing his throat.

"Okay, here's who we want." Lelouch began. "Number one: Fang Gu's brother Jun."

"Oh God." Fayer sighed, as VV, shaking his head, explained "Lelouch, that's trouble. I get what you mean about his skills, but… he has had his problems with the law, he's been caught multiple times out there doing illegal street racing, in trouble with the police, there's rumours he's in with drug gangs, I mean no one wants to touch him."

"That's good for us, he'll accept a cheap offer." Lelouch nodded. "Especially for a guy who can perform like he did at Ningbo on the fourteenth of November, 2018."

Some anonymous businessman raised his hand and asked "Which race was that?"

"It was the rainy one, mounted a charge from the back." Lelouch explained, before leaning across and pointing it out of the leaflet in front of the questioner. "This one here."

"I see."

Meanwhile, VV, irked, let out a groan before murmuring "Lelouch, we appreciate your dedication to this but I think you should have more respect for our judgement. You have a lot of experience and wisdom in this room. You need to have a little faith and let us do the job of picking the drivers to replace Xingke."

Lelouch, eyebrows creasing, asked "Is there another driver that has stats like Xingke? In the youth scene?"

"No, not really." Lloyd, who had been silent as his two saviours argued. VV, with a nod, admitted "No."

"And if there was, could we afford to pry him away from expensive and proven junior programmes?"

Fayer shook his head and answered "Nope."

"Then what the fuck are you talking about?" Lelouch snapped.

This put off the chorus of scepticism, though more out of fear of Lelouch's sudden temper than having been convinced of anything substantive. However, to Xingke it signalled something more; Lelouch might be able to stand up against his partners.

After a moment, Lelouch sighed, and explained "Now you're still trying to replace Xingke, a driver who has six Le Mans wins out of eleven entries, a driver who has four Rolex 24 wins out of eleven entries, a driver who is perhaps the single most accomplished sports car racer of his generation, a driver who has eleven Grand Prix wins over hundred and sixty-five Grand Prix starts. You can't get that in a test tube, at least not unless you're willing to do the long, hard work of fostering talent rather than expecting it to show up at the first time of asking. I told you we can't do it, we can't do it. Now, what we might be able to do is identify his younger self. Rather than looking at stats, look at fundamentals."

The seated listeners looked between each other, unsure where Lelouch was going to take this.

"Now Hu Jun…" Lelouch began, "May or may not have helped to some degree which may or may not be what we would describe as lawful. But he's also a really fucking good racing driver who is about to slip through the net simply because there was not anywhere he could turn to try and use his skills to earn a fucking living. The fact that he's had to do these things, again allegedly, is because no one else is ready to pick up his number, if we sign him he won't have to do these things, if he in fact does them."

Xingke beamed. Yes, this was it. Lelouch got it. This was exactly what he had meant, and Lelouch was really advocating it to these stooges. For all that this school being made had meant to him, this was a real sign that the promise of the institution could be realised.

"But Lelouch…" VV stammered, frustrated, "This guy is like Teflon to sponsors."

"Could you not…" Lelouch hissed, before stopping himself, and, haltingly trying to p "Don't… I don't want to hear that word, that s word, again for the rest of this meeting. Next person to say the s word gets thrown out. I'll worry about the s word. I don't want my drivers to worry about the s word, because that means they're not worrying about driving."

VV shook his head, before conceding, reluctantly, "Alright."

"Thank you. Number two: Wei Xiuying."

"Oh, fuck." VV swore, shaking his head. "He's almost older than you, and his sponsors-"

"Don't use that word!" Lelouch hissed.

VV sighed, before beginning again "His… partners are so pissed at his stagnation that they're willing to eat into the early termination clause in his contract just to get rid of him."

Lelouch, having calmed down, nodded "Exactly."

Fayer raised his hand and noted "Three years ago, Xiuying, big name. Was a major prospect, developed a cult following. But now his hands are gone, and I question whether the potential is there. He's plateauing, the best part of his career is over."

"I'd say it's just getting started." Lelouch confidently stated.

"Says who?"

Lelouch blinked back to VV, who had asked the question, and simply noised "Hmm?"

"Who says he's just getting started?"

"I do." Lelouch quipped. "I'm saying it. That's the fun thing about being me, I get to say things like that."

VV, who looked like he was fit to be tied, had to wait several seconds to cool himself down enough to ask "What leads you to say that?"

"November twelfth, 2019, race two at Guangdong." Lelouch explained. "Look at how he approaches turn six, all the overtales he makes into that corner."

Fayer, looking down at his sheet, frowned and asked "Where?"

"This one here." Lelouch answered, pointing over at the map attached to the file in front of Fayer. "He's got a beautiful driving line, he properly hooks the apex. You can almost see him rocket off the exit with the momentum he carries, look at the tapes. He snaps the car in and is able to keep the grip as he ride on the apex, it pops off. It's very smooth. A lot of polish. We can build on that. On lap four he's able to brave it round the outside there."

"Explain the plateau." VV demanded. "If he's so good why has he stopped improving?"

"Ganggen Liuti." Lelouch stated simply, pausing before explaining "During the height of the Xiuying boom, a fluids and hydraulics company was his big backer in the early days, however in 2019 they went bankrupt, and he has had to increasingly fund himself, which has correlated with declining equipment. The fact that he has been able to keep results steady indicates to me that his game has done nothing but improve."

VV tapped his fingers, and nodded "Alright."

"Okay." Lelouch nodded. "Number three: Wang Jielun."

Fayer frowned, and asked "Who?"

"Exactly. Sounds right who we should be looking out for. Now he does have a little problem with-"

"Little problem?" VV repeated, sarcastic and sceptical in equal measure. "He's only got one arm!"

"So does that Italian in the sports cars." Lelouch shrugged.

"Granted, but he's never won a race." VV replied. "Wanfu wants to cut him, no one wants to pick him up."

"Good. He's cheap."

"Let me get this straight." VV scoffed in disbelief. "You're gonna get a guy that's been released by half the organizations in Chinese motorsports because he's got nonrepairable limb damage in his elbow and can only operate a paddle shift?"

"He can't pull on a H pattern shifter and he lacks some of the finer polish." Lelouch acknowledged. "But you know what he has? The fundamentals."

VV shook his head and murmured "We've got… fuck knows how many free agents that are better than those three guys."

"Nine hundred and forty-three." Lelouch stated. "You have nine hundred and forty three others. More qualified? Probably. Better? I'm more sceptical on that one."

"Wait a minute, let me get this straight." VV asked. "So you're not gonna bring in one but three defective pilots to replace Xingke? You're not just picking whoever has a good sob story, you've not gone all emotional on us?"

Lelouch paused, and looked down. Xingke could see the wheels turning in his head, trying to work out how this could play out. Lelouch still was conflicted, but in him Xingke could see the will to seize the moment. His position, his situation, his place in time, his singular position in the heart of the mechanism, made it possible.

Xingke, with a bit lip, watched Lelouch make the mental calculations, silently rooting for him to leap the precipice, make the emotional jump, become the person Xingke believed he could be.

And just at that moment, Lelouch tilted his gaze back up and met eyes with VV, before speaking with the confidence Xingke had been hoping for.

"This is the new direction of Schwarzenritter." Lelouch declared. "We are trying to build a motorsports dynasty from the ground up, we have so much catching up to do. If we try and do what the big teams are doing, we'll only keep pace, we won't be any better than their best ideas, their rate of improvement will be the ceiling of our rate of improvement. If we want to be better, if we want to make up the gap and draw level, if we want to bridge the gap, we need to self-consciously do things differently, exploit things that they've overlooked. We are card counters at the blackjack table and we will turn the odds on the house."

Lelouch could do it. He could be the singular keystone that could challenge the insular motorsports landscape. Of course, the thing that made him singular was not the product of his individual virtue or lack thereof, it was not the product of his geist or soul, but happenstance. He appeared at the exact moment history needed him, when the machinery had seized up, when the legitimacy of the sanctioning bodies, already built on sand and a wilfull denial of the conflict at the heart of the project, had finally sunk. It was only within this context that Lelouch could fulfil the role, what might in hindsight be called destiny, of trying to open the door for young talents as money choked out teams large and small.

Lelouch could do it.

VV shook his head, scoffing "I don't see it."

Xingke, holding his breath, stood up for Lelouch, noting "I think we have to remember this is the man, he is the plurality shareholder. He answers to no one except the other shareholders. He definitely doesn't have to answer to you or me. We make suggestions, he makes decisions."

"That's all fine and well, but we've been working our asses off for weeks to make this team better, and you're throwing our work out and suggesting we go all in on a geriatric, a handicap, and a criminal." VV complained, clearly sensing he was being scorned.

"Alleged criminal." Lelouch corrected. "But yes, that's correct."

Xingke let out a breath in relief. He was really standing up for the project. Lelouch could really stand at the gates, at this moment of change, and be the great figure that saw it through. When Xingke considered greatness, it could only take the form of a great response to changing conditions. For Lelouch, Xingke could only contemplate his voyage from a driver who was motivated purely by self-interest, wanting to protect his family, to someone who was prepared to pledge, and understood that he was being asked to pledge, everything he had ever worked for at this altar, towards the lives of people he had never met and might never meet. Lelouch, faced with a soul-enlarging trial by fire, could rise to meet the moment.

VV, defeated, nodded, and the meeting paused to allow everyone to go to the toilet. Xingke stepped out towards the hall, finding an unoccupied room off to the side of an antechamber, where he broke down and cried.

Please leave a review if you're enjoying the story so far! It really motivates me to keep going, but thanks for reading in any case!

~G1ll3s