Programmed Lives – Fifth Stage

Chapter Fourteen

'Hey, I was just joking,' Jiro said frowning and looking almost as worried as Kyosuke and Akito did.

'Well, I'm not,' Seisuke said getting very serious, 'it looks like it's a lot of fun.'

'Seisuke…'

'Aniki, I'm serious, I want to do it.'

'You don't get it,' Kyosuke started, 'those cars up there,' he added pointing at the cars which were lined up to start their descent, 'they're probably specially tuned for this kind of thing.'

'So?'

'So, smartass,' Kyosuke said now getting seriously pissed off, 'you won't be able to make it all the way down with your RZ-1.'

Then, and for the first time ever, Akito witnessed something that up to that moment, he had thought to be impossible, Seisuke looked at his older brother defiantly for a second then, he turned to Jiro and said:

'Can you organise it?'

'S-sure,' Jiro stuttered.

'Great, I'll go and get ready,' Seisuke said and, with this, he walked back to the white RZ-1. Jiro, not really liking the position where the two brothers had suddenly put him into, made his way back into the building so he could arrange the whole thing.

'Kyosu.' Akito started but apparently it was his turn to be ignored for the oldest of the Takahashi brothers just bypassed him on his way to Seisuke's car, closely followed by a very alarmed looking Misa.

Ryoko exchanged a confused look with her boyfriend who, giving up trying to understand anything, just shrugged his shoulders.

Meanwhile, Seisuke was climbing into his car when Kyosuke grasped the RZ-1's door so that his younger brother couldn't shut it.

'What do you think you're doing?' Kyosuke asked.

'Having a bit of fun,' Seisuke replied.

'Look,' Misa said, 'you don't need to do this to impress me.'

Both Takahashi brothers looked at her showing their disbelief on their faces.

'Hey, I'm not doing this to impress anyone,' Seisuke explained, 'I honestly want to do it just for the sake of it.'

Kyosuke had to repress a chuckle seeing Misa's confused expression and Seisuke, noticing that his older brother had got distracted, snatched the door from his grasp, closing it before Kyosuke could do anything to prevent it.

'He's mental,' Kyosuke said as he re-joined his cousin and Akito, 'oh well, since we've got quite a few spare parts, at least I'll be able to fix the car when he smashes it.'

'Kyosuke,' Akito started very carefully as not to offend his best friend, 'I think he can actually do it.'

'Alright, you come with me,' Kyosuke ordered and, walking towards the car park's ramp, careful not to be ran over by one of the numerous cars which were going around the place, he pointed at it and said, 'do you see how narrow it is?'

'Geez.'

'Precisely,' Kyosuke said, 'if in a mountain pass you don't have much room to make mistakes, here you don't have any at all.'

'But Seisuke's good at drifting, isn't he?' Ryoko asked.

'Yeah, but not that good,' Kyosuke replied then, as an afterthought, he added, 'not even Akito's that good.'

'Thanks mate,' Akito said sarcastically and Kyosuke was going to say something when they saw Seisuke's Mazda climbing up the ramp.

'Right, he's next on the line,' Jiro explained then, observing the white RZ-1, he said, 'he surely has guts, trying this for the first time without any kind of previous training.'

'Like I said, he's mental,' Kyosuke said.

Ryoko then noticed that Misa had remained quiet throughout the entire conversation and, taking the chance that Akito was busy looking around himself, admiring all the cars which were parked around on the first floor of the car park, she walked towards the older girl and said:

'Hey, are you alright?'

'Yeah,' Misa said looking a bit startled.

'Thank you for the invitation,' Ryoko said.

'You're welcome,' Misa replied.

'Er…' Ryoko started, 'I was wondering…'

'You know,' Misa said all of the sudden, 'I thought he liked me.'

The hurt imprinted on her voice took Ryoko so much by surprise that she had to make a huge effort to reply to that.

'He does,' Ryoko assured her.

'He's got a funny way of showing it,' Misa said even more miserably.

Ryoko took a deep breath and, making sure the guys were still busy, she said:

'Look, Seisuke's not a very normal person.'

Misa's half confused, half amused look made Ryoko realise what she had just said.

'That came out wrong,' she said shaking her head, 'what I meant to say is that…'

'I know, he's like all the guys who take their street racing very seriously,' Misa finished for her.

'Yes,' Ryoko confirmed, 'also, he's just had his heart broken by a girl.'

'You told me he didn't have a girlfriend,' Misa said and Ryoko couldn't miss the accusative tone the older girl was using.

'Well,' Ryoko started, 'I told you that I didn't know if he had a girlfriend which, technically speaking, it was true because the one he did have was busy cheating on him.'

'What?' Misa asked sounding every bit as shocked as Ryoko had felt when seeing Kaori kissing that guy at the shopping centre, 'what kind of girl would cheat on a guy like him?'

'I know, it's…'

'…unreal,' Misa said, once again, finishing the sentence for her.

'Yeah,' Ryoko said and, smiling at the racer, she said, 'you know something?'

Misa shook her head.

'I like you,' Ryoko said and the older girl gave her such an apprehensive look that Ryoko was forced to hastily add, 'not in THAT sense you silly!'

'Ah, you scared me there,' Misa replied and then the two girls started laughing together.

'Hey, what's so funny?' Akito asked, he, Kyosuke and Jiro having approached the two girls unnoticed.

'Er…' Ryoko started then, looking from Misa to her boyfriend, she shook her head and said, 'you wouldn't understand.'

'He's heading down now,' Kyosuke said preventing Akito from saying anything back to his girlfriend.

'So, what are the rules?' Ryoko asked to no one in particular.

'It's a time attack,' Jiro explained, 'the best time of the night gets a prize.'

'A prize?' Akito asked.

'Yeah, essentially, the winner gets whatever he wants, excepting cars and money, he can ask for anything.'

'Sounds good,' Akito said.

'Don't even dream of it,' Ryoko said wiggling her finger in front of her boyfriend and, seeing Akito shake his head quite vigorously made everyone laugh out loud.

By the time they had all calmed down, they saw that Seisuke was already on the fourth floor out of six and seeing the almost perfect way in which he was clearing each of the turns from the spiral-shaped ramp, forced Kyosuke to reconsider the fact that, maybe, after all, his little brother wasn't at all crazy.

'Wow, look at that Mazda!' they heard someone from the public exclaim.

'I haven't seen it before, where's it from?' another one asked.

'Dunno, but he's so freaking fast!' the first one replied.

'He's from Gunma, at least that's what it says on the registration plate,' a third person, a woman, added.

Then, as though as Seisuke had heard them, dashed past the group of people standing there, confirming that he, indeed, came from Gunma.

'My god,' Jiro said checking the chronometer on his watch.

'What?' Kyosuke asked concernedly.

'Unless I'm very much mistaken, I think your little brother's just beaten the current record.'

'You're not mistaken,' a guy in his thirties said as he walked towards them, 'my name's Morisaki, who are you?'

'I'm Takahashi Kyosuke, from Maebashi,' Kyosuke said and, for some reason, he couldn't help but to think that he'd seen this guy somewhere before.

'Well, your friend's right, your brother has beaten the record I established a year ago.'

'I'm sorry to hear that,' Kyosuke said and the older guy started laughing at him, making Kyosuke feel rather uneasy.

'Don't be, I've been coming to every gathering to see if anyone good enough showed up.'

'ANIKI!' Seisuke shouted as he ran towards them, his face lit up with excitement, 'I loved it! It was so much fun!'

'Hey,' Morisaki said, talking to Seisuke, 'I don't seriously think anyone is going to beat your time so, I believe that you're the winner of the night.'

'Ah, really?' Seisuke said.

'Yes,' Morisaki said, 'so, what's it going to be?'

'Eh?' Seisuke asked looking very confused.

'What do you want as your prize?' Morisaki asked.

Seisuke seemed to consider the thing for a bit then, he looked at Jiro and said:

'Hey, you're not with Misa or anything like that, right?'

Jiro looked very much taken aback by this question and he only managed to shake his head.

'Alright,' Seisuke said and, walking purposely towards Misa, he took her head in between his hands and, bending down only slightly, for Misa was just a bit shorter than Seisuke was, he kissed her full on her mouth.

'What…' Misa said breathlessly.

'Now,' Seisuke started, giving her his best smile, 'this IS what I do to impress a girl.'

Misa just stared at him, unable to trust her throat to produce any coherent words and, at the same time, Ryoko shook her head with her eyes closed.

'Hey, you're Fujiwara Akito, aren't you?' a teenager asked while pointing at Akito.

'Er…'

'YEAH! GUYS IT'S HIM!' the teenager shouted to his group of friends who, hearing that, started running towards an increasingly frightened Akito.

'Can I have your autograph?' one of them asked shoving a GP2 magazine at him.

'Er…s-sure,' Akito replied and, as he was going to sign the magazine, opened on the page which had his profile and his photograph on it, someone else joined them and said:

'I didn't know that professional racers came to this kind of things.'

'Hey,' Kyosuke, finally deciding to intervene, said, 'he's just trying to have fun at this party, alright?'

'Okay, so, do you want to try going down?' the guy said, 'after all, for a pro like you, this should be a piece of cake.'

'Nah, I think I'll pass,' Akito replied, forgetting all about the teenager who was still waiting for him to sign the magazine.

'What, not good enough for you?' the guy said in a very menacing way.

'Hey,' Morisaki said, 'let's just keep this civil, alright? Fujiwara's just having fun and if he doesn't feel like driving tonight, let him be, alright?'

'Yeah,' the guy said then, giving Akito a foul look, he turned round and left them.

'Excuse me,' the teenager said waving the magazine at Akito who, wanting to get rid of him as quickly as possible, signed the thing as hastily as he could then, after signing a couple of other things, the teenagers felt satisfied.

'Happy New Year and, good luck for next season!' the first teenager said hugging his magazine to his chest.

'Yeah, thanks,' Akito said feeling completely overwhelmed by the whole situation.

'Hey, superstar, can I have your autograph too?' Seisuke asked teasingly.

'This is not funny,' Akito replied and, by the way he looked at the youngest of the Takahashi brothers, Seisuke realised that his best friend wasn't very much in the mood for any sort of jokes.

'It's quite scary really,' Ryoko said taking her boyfriend's hand in hers.

'Yeah, guys, let's just go home,' Akito suggested for the whole thing had just ruined it for him.

'But…'

'Kyosuke, you guys can stay but, I think I'm going to go home,' Akito said looking very much like he wanted to be anywhere but there.

'No, if you're going, we'll go too,' Kyosuke said.

'Er..' Seisuke started pointing at Misa with his head.

'Alright, I'll go with them, YOU can stay,' Kyosuke decided.

'You don't mind, do you?' Akito asked looking at Ryoko.

'No, of course not, I'd rather go home too.'

'Alright,' he said to her then, looking at Jiro, he added, 'thanks for the invitation though and, have a happy New Year.'

'Sure, same to you,' Jiro said.

With this, Akito, Ryoko and Kyosuke walked away from the group leaving behind a very concerned Seisuke.

'It must be difficult for him,' Misa commented as she looked at Akito climbing into his V-86.

'Yeah, I guess he's not used to being famous yet,' Seisuke said.

'I don't think you ever get used to that,' Morisaki said and, judging by the way he spoke, he probably knew a thing or two about being famous, this made Seisuke look at him a bit more closely then, as if he'd just had a divine illumination, he said:

'Hey, I know you! You used to be into rallying, didn't you?'

'Yeah, I won the national rallying championship about ten years ago,' Morisaki admitted.

'I knew it! Do you know that my uncle won that same championship about fifteen years ago too?' Seisuke asked.

'Who's your uncle?' Morisaki asked back, suddenly getting curious.

'Takahashi Keisuke,' Seisuke replied and had the pleasure to see that Morisaki, Jiro and, more importantly, Misa, did a double take.

'You're Takahashi Keisuke's nephew?' Morisaki asked not having fully recovered from the shock.

'Yep, why?'

Morisaki laughed at that and, shaking his head, he said:

'Now I understand why you're so good.'

Seisuke had to make a huge effort to keep a straight face so that he wouldn't look as smug as he felt after hearing those words.

Meanwhile, Kyosuke was following Akito's V-86 as they drove on a dual-carriage road which led towards the motorway which would take them back home and, as he looked at the car's clock, he saw that, with a bit of luck, they would make it home just before the midnight.

He smiled thinking of his brother's newest conquest being happy for him, even though Kyosuke knew that it probably wouldn't last for too long, after all, Seisuke had only been in love for real once, with Kaori, and they all knew how that had turned out…

'What the…' he said as he noticed a couple of headlights of a car which, despite having all the room in the world, still refused to overtake his RZ-1 and was about to signal the driver with his indicators when he saw that the car was a lot closer than earlier and, with a very risky manoeuvre, it finally went past Kyosuke's Mazda.

'Akito, watch ou…'

He didn't even have time to finish that sentence for, the next thing he knew, the car had rammed itself straight into Akito's rear bumper.

To be continued…