Programmed Lives – Second Stage

Chapter Twenty Seven

Takumi realised a split second too late that, due to some unfortunate coincidence, Mina-chan had chosen to turn round just as Takumi prepared himself to throw the fourth of a series of punches at her manager who was now half laying on one of the couches.

'What's going on in here?' she asked getting out of the sound-proof room widening her eyes seeing Sasaki's bloodied face.

'Get her back in there!' the manager shouted at the two security guys who had probably been summoned by the sound technicians.

One of them grabbed Mina-chan and pushed her back inside the recording room. The other one, with the manager's help, seized a furious Takumi and soon he found himself dragged out of the room and despite resisting as hard as he could by kicking the two men who were literally carrying him, Takumi ended up being thrown out of the studio rather unceremoniously.

'Wait!' he shouted as they shut the door on his face. He then took out his mobile phone and tried calling Mina-chan, predictably enough, he didn't get any answer. He swore and, seeing that there was nothing he could do, he decided to get back home: he'll try calling her later.

It turned out though that she didn't pick up the phone. Not that night, nor in the whole weekend, nor in the first three days of the following week. He even tried going to her house but no one seemed to answer the bell. Going back to the studio was, of course, out of the question so Takumi found himself out of any viable options to get in touch with his girlfriend.

'Are you alright?' he heard Keisuke ask as the whole team minus Bunta, who had decided to stay home, packed the stuff up early on Wednesday morning so they could head to the Fuji International Speedway in the Shizuoka prefecture, some two hundred and fifty kilometres south east of Gunma.

'Yeah,' he lied and Keisuke, seeing that Takumi clearly didn't feel like talking, decided to let him be.

That same evening, and while the guys were all by the motorhome enjoying their dinner after a hard day of work, Takumi walked away from them and tried, for the umpteenth time, to call Mina-chan. Still no answer. Takumi swore again punching the wall next to him.

'Hey, don't hurt yourself…' Keisuke said startling Takumi. Then, seeing the sombre expression on his team mate's face, he added, 'what's the matter? Are you having problems with Mina-chan?'

Takumi looked at him and, slowly, shook his head.

'To have problems with her I'd need to talk to her!' he exclaimed and, noticing how very confused Keisuke looked, he decided to explain the whole incident to him.

'Wow Takumi! Remind me never to piss you off,' Keisuke said chuckling.

'I'm serious: I don't know what to do! I know something is wrong,' Takumi said beginning to get upset.

'Hey, you can't worry about this now: we've got to focus on the race. You can take care of it as soon as we're back home.'

'But…'

'Takumi, there's nothing you can do now. I'm sure she's not mad at you and even if she is, you just need to explain to her what that bastard said and she'll understand.'

Takumi just nodded not entirely convinced.

The next day they only had a relatively light testing session since the car seemed to work fine. So by the end of the day, both Keisuke and Takumi had only driven the FD for a few runs each so they could familiarise themselves with the track.

'That's enough. You take the rest of the day off. I'm just going to check the data we've got…' Ryosuke said and both Fumihiro and Matsumoto followed him.

Rest. Right, as if Takumi could get any sleep. He kept checking his phone to see if Mina-chan tried calling him but, so far, his phone insisted on being completely mute.

He couldn't shake off the feeling that something was very wrong and he hated not being able to do anything about it but, as Keisuke had pointed out, they had a race to think of and right now, he had to focus on that.

Finally, at around two o'clock in the morning, Takumi managed to get some sleep.

The next day, and even though this third round of the championship was being held at the beginning of May, the sky was a very dark shade of grey and the environment was full of humidity.

'Beautiful day, huh?' Keisuke said sarcastically as the two of them left the motorhome after getting some breakfast.

'Gorgeous,' Matsumoto commented in an identical ironic tone.

'Don't worry, I've just received the weather report and they predict rain only very late in the afternoon. We should be alright,' Ryosuke said approaching his team.

'Good, I definitely don't like rain,' Takumi said and Kenta snorted hearing him. Takumi looked at him frowning and Kenta explained:

'You had me fooled that night at Myogi.'

'Er…' Takumi said scratching the back of his head.

'Enough chatter, let's go,' Ryosuke ordered.

The first one to get back into the car was Keisuke and, in the meantime, Takumi got an individual briefing from Ryosuke who, trying to keep it as simple as he could, explained the characteristics of the track to his driver.

'You've got to be careful with the second sector: it seems like it's flat but it's actually uphill. This may cause some level of strain to the engine and the rear tyres so keep it in mind, alright?'

'Sure,' Takumi said.

When it was time, Takumi boarded the car and, having received the final instructions from his Team Manager, drove out of the box into the pit lane. At first he thought of driving hard so he could vent some of the frustration but then, remembering what had happened the last time he'd driven while angry made him decide to take things relatively easy.

He started his flying lap as the traffic on the track started to ease up so, during the track's first sector he found absolutely nobody. This allowed him to break the first sector's time record and he had the pleasure to receive Ryosuke's praise in real time through the radio.

Takumi liked this track a lot. It wasn't similar to anything he'd experienced before but, he thought, maybe that was precisely the reason why he liked it so much.

Just as he started the second sector, flooring the pedal so the engine would go at full throttle, he noticed a weird vibration coming from somewhere at the back of the car.

'Ryosuke-san, I'm…'

Takumi didn't get the chance to finish what he had to say for, suddenly, he felt something shake up the car and, albeit he fought with all his strength, he couldn't help but to feel the rear of the car lift off leaving only the two front tyres in contact with the ground.

He tried as hard as he could to control the car but, having lost the two tyres which gave traction to the car, he knew that it was an impossible feat. All he could do was to try and prevent the car from crashing or, even worse, capsize.

At the end, thanks to his efforts and to the gravel, he limited the damage by making the car stop somewhere in between the track and the outer wall. Takumi only realised how very shaky his hands were when he released the steering wheel.

'Takumi? Are you alright?' he heard Ryouske's anxious sounding voice through the helmet's earpiece.

'Yeah, I think so,' Takumi said ashamed to notice that his voice was almost as shaky as his hands.

He then realised that the circuit's marshals had already gathered around his car. One of them, leaning over towards the door's window, said:

'Can you get out on your own?'

Takumi nodded as he took his gloves off so he could remove the straps of his seatbelt.

'You were extremely lucky, we thought the car would capsize,' the marshal said making Takumi become aware of how bad things must have looked from the outside.

Takumi had to hold onto the car's door in order not to fall over for his legs felt all wobbly and unable to hold his weight.

'Are you sure you're ok?' another marshal asked.

'Yeah, just a bit shaken up, that's all,' Takumi said.

'Sit down for a bit, alright?' they said while helping him walk towards the circuit's wall.

'Yeah,' he agreed and sat down leaning his back against the wall's cold concrete.

'We'll be sending someone to get you back to the boxes. Are you sure you don't need medical assistance?'

'No, no. I'm okay,' Takumi said and, for the first time, allowed himself to look at the car finally understanding the seriousness of the situation: one of the rear tyres had exploded and it seemed to have bent towards the inside. Probably the suspension had collapsed and that, combined with the high speed, had done the rest.

He was indeed lucky he hadn't taken off with the whole car and this thought made him feel even shakier.

By the time he got driven back to the box, the FD had already arrived and the guys were already looking at it. They all stopped seeing their driver get out of the emergency vehicle.

'Is the car repairable?' Takumi asked looking at his machine with a worried expression on his face.

'That's the last of my worries right now,' Ryosuke said putting his hand on Takumi's shoulder, 'your wellbeing is what's paramount here.'

Keisuke joined them looking positively freaked out.

'Man, that looked bad: half of the car was flying,' he said frowning and biting his lower lip.

'Go and get some rest, I'll be with you shortly so I can check if there's anything wrong with you,' Ryosuke said.

'I'm fine, don't worry,' Takumi said shaking his head.

Nevertheless, he appreciated being able to go back to the motorhome and, the minute he got there, he removed his racing suit and put on a t-shirts and an old pair of jeans. He then laid down on his bed and closed his eyes. He had definitely seen much happier moments in his short life.

'Hey, can I come in?' he heard Keisuke say through the room's thin sliding door.

'Sure,' Takumi said getting up so he could sit on his bed.

Keisuke let himself in and sat next to him.

'Hey, the guys say that there was a problem with the suspension that they hadn't noticed before. You didn't do anything wrong.'

Takumi didn't even seem to acknowledge that.

'…I understand you may be…'

'Keisuke, no offence but I really don't want to talk about it,' Takumi said interrupting his team mate.

'I get it. If you need…'

'Yeah, thanks,' Takumi said laying back down on his bed. Keisuke took that as his cue to leave the room.

He hadn't even enjoyed five minutes of peace when he heard his phone ring. He picked it up with every intention of pressing the button to kill the call when he saw Mina-chan's name on the display.

'Hello?' he said springing up from the bed.

'Takumi, I need your help,' she said in a whisper charged with fear.

'What's wrong?' Takumi said urgently.

'Sasaki has us locked up in the house. I managed to steal my phone from him but he said that if we got in touch with anyone he'd hurt my Mum…I don't know what to do…'

Mina-chan started sobbing and Takumi could tell that she wasn't making it all up: the girl sounded genuinely terrified.

'Minami, don't do anything. I'm on my way,' Takumi said resolutely.

He didn't even let her disagree with him. He pressed the button to finish the conversation and, grabbing his 86's keys, stormed out of the motorhome.

'Takumi what are you…' Ryosuke said seeing his driver up and entering the garage with a very determined look on his face.

'Ryosuke-san, I need to go to Tokyo,' Takumi announced in a tone that made it clear that he wasn't asking for his permission.

'Why?' Ryosuke asked, clearly not impressed, and everyone in the garage looked at Takumi as if he had lost his marbles.

'I…' Takumi started.

'It's anything to do with Mina-chan?' Ryosuke asked and Takumi, seeing how pointless it was to lie to his Team Manager, he nodded.

'Please, I really need to go,' Takumi said, this time using a more reasonable tone.

'Takumi, you need to rest, not drive over two hours and back to do goodness knows what,' Ryosuke said sorely missing Bunta Fujiwara's influence for he was sure the old man would know how to handle Takumi much better than he would ever do.

'Please, I wouldn't ask if this wasn't an emergency,' Takumi insisted stubbornly.

Ryosuke looked at him for a bit, probably considering his options before saying:

'Alright, after all, we've finished the qualifying session. I just hope you know what you're doing.'

Takumi nodded and, turning round, he got out of the garage.

'What's happened?' Keisuke asked while following his team mate towards his car clearly not happy with Takumi's cryptic explanation.

'That bastard of her manager has her and her mum locked up and is threatening to hurt her mother if she tries to get in touch with anyone…' Takumi explained as fast as he could while sprinting towards the AE86. He was definitely happy he'd paid attention to the uneasiness that had made him bring his own car to this race.

'What?' Keisuke exclaimed sounding almost as pissed off as Takumi.

'Yeah, that's why I need to go.'

'Right you are! And I'm coming with you!' Keisuke said walking over to the passenger side of the Toyota.

'What? No way,' Takumi said his hand halted half way to the door's lock.

'Look, I doubt that prick is going to let you get her out of the house without putting up a fight and, more likely than not, he'll have help. Takumi, even if I hate to admit it, when it comes to fights, I'm the expert here.'

Takumi, realising Keisuke was right, decided to give in and said:

'Alright, but you need to get your brother's permission.'

'Nah…with you doing the driving, he won't even notice I've gone anywhere before I'm back,' Keisuke said with his usual boyish cheekiness.

As he climbed into the car, Takumi felt grateful he had such good friends and, as he turned the AE86's engine on he felt all the anger coming back at him fuelling his determination to get to Tokyo as soon as possible so he could rescue Mina-chan and her mum.

If he wanted to be honest with himself, he really was looking forward to give that bastard of a manager a good beating and, with Keisuke's help, he was sure he'd get his wish pretty soon.

To be continued…