It had been a long evening for Sean. Another night in a grungy-yet-immaculate Tokyo parking garage. Meeting the man Han spoke so highly of, but as if a ghost. Dominic Toretto.
Meeting the man, a handshake. The skin on Dominic's hand was sandpaper, icy.
His shoulder-bump embrace was to be familiar with the Arctic Circle. A scent a mix between Old Spice and Axe, and a lingering petrol smell.
Sean had only recently been crowned DK, the drift king. And yet in Dom's presence, he felt a simple peasant. He hadn't even seen Dominic race, and yet in seeing the steel in his eyes he caused Sean's nervous functions to go haywire, his instinct firing panic into his stomach, incendiaries at the back of his neck. The 4-valve engine in his chest revved unevenly, incessantly.
Dominic, 'call me Dom,' was always willing to race. "Doesn't matter whether you win by an inch or by a mile," Dom woudd say. And yet the competition was only secondary. Dom wanted the speed, the action, the adrenaline. That hormone pumped through his veins like a canister of nitrous oxide.
Through the night they chased through the mountains, the young DK, king in name only, followed the master. Soon they found that elusive flow, their cars a vehicular ballet, dancing around corners. The squealing of tires were a call-and-response rhythm, the roar of engines a melody.
But as the sun peeked into vision, Sean could feel his car, the extension of his soul, losing grip. He didn't want to stop following Dom - he would follow him wherever, to the end of the road.
With each turn, he knew that the end of the chase was nearer. "Just one more corner," he whispered under his breath.
Dom looked up at his rearview, and in that split second saw Sean's car leap off the side of the mountain, diving to the trees below.
Dom nearly ripped his emergency brake out, spinning around only to see that it was too late. Once more, Dom saw a fellow racer, a man who was nearly family,
die. 'Nearly...' The sudden realization hit him, and the muscles in holding his jaw firm went slack. Sean was family.
Spinning around once more he raced down the mountain to the trees, hoping that they had gently guided the car to the ground. But soon he saw Sean's body.
His arms contorted, his neck broken, his breathing stopped. No seatbelt could have saved the young man. All Toretto could do was run his hand over the DK's eyes,
closing the lids.
He called for an ambulance, but couldn't stay. There would be too many questions, and a man like Dominic Toretto already had enough consequences to deal with.
Dom didn't know where to go, to loose his grief and emotion. He drove further out of the city, Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" on the radio, until he came to a small Shinto temple. He parked, and went to his trunk to pull out his leather jacket. Lifting it over his shoulders, he saw a bottle of unopened Corona tucked next to the tire jack. He couldn't recall ever putting it there, not being the kind of person to race when there was alcohol in the car ('just another charge to pin against you,' Brian told him once a while back). He popped off the lid, his eyes scanning the horizon. A new day.
As a single tear swam down his cheek, he poured out some of the bottle. He could live with death - in his life, he had seen much of it. But the blood of family on his hands, he could have lived without.