Chapter Text
The glass doors slide open with a soft whirr. Midday light streams through walls of windows, dancing off of them and shining unceremoniously into her eyes.
Eh? Huh?
She feels strangely groggy, numbly rubbing a tiny hand against her face and frantically hoping her retinas didn’t just get totally fried. The impatient beeping of the door rings through her head once, twice, thrice, until the voices of a couple of passersby shove past her.
“Hey, what’s that blonde girl’s problem, just standing there?”
“Whatever, didya catch that race with that hotshot rookie team?”
“Dude! The Sparrows totally wrecked it out there!”
“Yeah, right? They’re sooo— Whoooa, look! They’ve got french fries today!”
The two students romp off, ignoring the small girl’s excited exclamation of, “Sparrows!?” She can’t say she’s unused to that sort of treatment though. Her shoulders sag a bit as she tilts her head to the side, and her nose twitches, catching an unmistakably salty scent.
Am I in the cafeteria?
She feels a light weight in her hand, almost unsettling in the way it seemed familiar. Looking down, she finds the pink handle of a Hello Kitty lunchbox clutched in her fingers.
I haven’t used this since high school...
Her white Mary Janes tap against buffed smooth linoleum as she steps over the door’s threshold and patters about, squinting around the hustle and bustle of the lunchtime rush for a telltale lock of flyaway hair. She nearly steps on at least three different cleaning discs, and she fights her innate nature to apologize to inanimate objects. The machineries’ thin forms glide across the floor, sensors shifting their directions in response to the students’ shuffling feet. Her eyes transfix themselves on one, humming softly as it darts between long legs and vacuums up crumbs left by a sea of giants.
I know how you feel, Mr. Disc. Keep doing your best! I will too! She huffs out a breath and nods to herself.
“Heeey! Hitoka!”
Whirling around, she catches sight of a boy with way too many fries on his plate for his own good, and her face can’t decide between furrowed concern and bright grinning at the sight of her longtime friend.
“Tadashi!” she chirps as she slides into the hovering plastic seat across from him. She doesn’t tear her eyes away from the other boy’s quadruple helping of mega health hazard as she comments, “I fear for your heart.”
“Umm, well, uhhh,” he mumbles, dithering bashfully over them. Hitoka waits for the boy’s response as she tries and fails to open her lunchbox, and she’s flooded with a severe sense of deja vu. Tadashi tentatively nibbles on a particularly soggy fry before slamming his hands onto the glossy table and squeaking out an, “Anyways! Uhm, you saw the Sparrows in yesterday’s race, right?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world!” Her grin shines with a thousand watts and her arms grip her neglected lunchbox tight against her chest. “Ahh, Shimizu’s way amazing!”
And beautiful and elegant and smart and hot and not that much older than me and she’s—
“—completely out of reach, right?” Tadashi grins.
“Ha? Wha?” She crashes down from her sparkling star-studded fantasy world and plummets back to Earth, blushing furiously. “I mean. Um. What? Sorry, I wasn’t? Um?”
“Huh, did you zone out again?” He tilts his head thoughtfully before shoving five particularly soggy fries into his mouth. “Like, I was saying, they were totally out of reach of the other teams! The Compy is amazing!”
“Oh! Oh. Y-yeah, their car sure is pretty cool!” Hitoka sweats bullets, gulping down her embarrassment.
Is it hotter than usual? It’s hot, right? She eyes the table again, only to find that the contents of her friend’s plate is beginning to overflow and spill. She offhandedly wonders when the number of his fries had doubled. Did Tadashi order seconds while I was daydrea- uh, thinking about Shimizu again? That’s a lot of salt on there, right? What if we dry up? What if the building breaks, and the shiny, shiny sun out there roasts us!? Water, I need water. A nice glass of—
Tadashi tilts his head the other way. “Are you alright?”
“UM. I need water!?”
He just finishes shoveling down a good handful more of his seemingly endless sodium delight when Hitoka makes her proclamation, and the poor boy proceeds to choke helplessly as his food train barrels down the wrong pipe. Hitoka springs up from her chair, slamming her palms down on the table and absolutely yelping, “YES, okay I’ll go-”
A hand falls softly onto her left shoulder, and a clear bottle slides into her vision from the right. The water sloshing around inside mimics her roiling stomach, and that feeling only intensifies when a voice cool as quicksilver slips into her ears.
“Need water?”
Hitoka rotates herself mechanically.
Kiyoko Shimizu — pink-lipped, hand on hip, and in full racing uniform with her helmet tucked under her arm — stares her down, unblinking.
Hitoka forgets how to talk.
Practically radiating light, the raven-haired racer brings a hand up to her mouth and uses her teeth to pull off her glove with a single, smooth tug, revealing her long, pale fingers and immaculately manicured nails.
Hitoka forgets how to breathe.
The ungloved hand glides towards the bottle in her other. She twists the clear blue cap with two clean flicks of her wrist, allowing the stopper to come off with a light pop. Shimizu raises the shimmering bottle to her parted lips and lets the water flow between them. Swallowing gently, she lowers the drink and exhales with the grace of a breeze. Her hair streams out behind her like ink, and her tongue swiftly swipes away the moistness from her lips.
Hitoka feels like the tiniest cleaning disc.
“Are you thirsty?” Shimizu swishes the bottle to the side and readjusts her helmet, shifting her balance to the other foot. Her face remains impassive as she cooly recites her lines.
Hitoka feels like she’s going to die.
“The racing lifestyle is a busy one, and the cockpit heats up fast.” She takes another heavenly sip and turns her head, letting her hair sweep behind her. Hitoka vaguely registers a familiar tune playing in the distance.
“But Hydrapure has us covered.”
The tiny blonde feels her skin dry up. Pinpricks of salt burn against her skin, and she glances behind her only to stare at a dizzyingly large pile of french fries. Tadashi is nowhere in sight. She jolts back and her vision is consumed with the image of the racer pouring the rest of the bottle over herself. Shimmering water cascades down and streams through her dark hair. Shining droplets lit with cool blue light catch on her thin frames and slide across her porcelain skin.
Hitoka feels herself shrivelling up.
“Their newly patented water desalination techniques will pave the human race’s track to an ocean’s depth of hydration.”
Hissing tides splash against Hitoka’s ankles, and she grits her teeth at the sting of it flowing into her sizzling cells. It rises higher and higher, sloshing and churning. Intense pressure assaults her from all sides, and the floor sags beneath her feet like putty. Her gut heaves up into her stomach like a whale bursting from the sea, and the cool voice of her racing idol rings uncomfortably through her throbbing brain.
“And I never intend to lose a race. I’m Shimizu Kiyoko, pilot of the Sparrows, and I stay hydrated with Hydrapure.”
The liquid rises quickly, but instead of the cooling sensation she hopes for, it prickles like pins and needles. Her lungs feel tight and her vision goes darker. I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die I’m gonna die. I’m gonna drown in the middle of the ocean and get eaten by a big fish with pointy jagged teeth and it’s gonna digest me a-and then spit me up and-
She squeezes her eyes shut when something zooms right by her face, cutting through the water, and she gasps with every fiber of her being. Her eyes widen at the horizon. Sleek, polished grey metal tipped with a sharp red beak shooting through the sound barrier. It’s capped with a rounded, glassy window dark as obsidian, like the gigantic eye of a cyclops growing larger as it moves straight towards her on the checkered finish line below her shoes. Two gleaming white headlights wink at her, and she can’t tear her eyes or feet away. The high humming of the encroaching engine becomes louder and more palpable, squeezing her skin to her bones, screeching forwards, cutting through the air, and her throat constricts as the heat of it comes close enough to singe her skin—
“Mphhgh!?”
Hitoka Yachi wakes with a start, her alarm blaring out candy pop and her hair sticking up defiantly in some failed parody of an edgy rock star's styled ‘do. Her heart titters like a bird and her lungs are running a marathon. She stares wide-eyed at her Hello Kitty nightlight, flops back onto her pillow, and brings her hands up to wipe the cold sweat from her face.
The chime subsides for an electronic, feminine voice. “Hitoka, calm down. It was only a dream,” it repeats, “Calm down. It was only a dream. Calm down. It was only a dream.”
The mantra mollifies her enough that her lids droop again and the throbbing in her head begins to fade. Somewhere in her addled brain she deeply thanks whoever thought up that app. She still feels dazed when she reaches to press the back of her hand against a round, white pad on the dark wall behind her. It fades from black to clear, and pale morning light flecked with dust seeps through, glancing off the colorful posters hung neatly on the opposite wall. Dragging her upper half out of bed, Hitoka scoops up a postcard-sized device from her nightstand and slides her finger along the screen to silence her dwindling wake-up call.
She groans. One day I’m not gonna even wake up. Her foot slides out of her bed and toes into a fuzzy star-emblazoned slipper. I’ll end up in a coma and then a bunch of scary tall guys in black suits are gonna pick me up and take me to a big, cold research lab and...
The tone of her second alarm begins to ring, and she takes it as a cue to stand on her two feet.
After disabling the rest of her follow-up alarms, Hitoka drags her feet into the bathroom. She adjusts the heat settings before peeling off her nightclothes, and when she steps into the shower, the water beats down her back at just the right pressure and temperature.
This is so relaxing, I want to fall asleep here. Yeah. It wouldn’t hurt to catch a few more minutes of rest, right? I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? Some water in my ear? Ah. EH— She fumbles with the soap as it slips and slides between her hands. Sinking into a kneel and clutching the bar to her chest, she pushes that pricking feeling of drowning to the furthest corners of her consciousness while the rest of her mind races ahead. Wah. What if I slip next time? And end up hitting my head on the tile? And getting a concussion? What if I die? What if they find me here, dead and wet and naked and—
She buttons up a clean shirt and swipes the dust off her knee-length skirt. She combs through her hair before tying a portion of her bangs away from her face, and with swift motions of her hand, she brings a pop of colour on her pale cheeks. Hitoka breaks away from her makeup palette to glance at her tablet.
“I just woke up,” the new text message reads.
“At least you got some sleep, Tadashi!” Hitoka types.
“I know,” the boy replies. “I’ll try to get ready within fifteen minutes. See you in a bit, Hitoka!”
She sends a quick response back. She puts away her tablet before she walks over to her kitchen to prepare a light meal for herself. The sizzle of oil and the smell of eggs and butter entice her senses, and her mouth waters as she squeezes some syrup onto her food. When she finishes, Hitoka sets her plate on the dining table, and the clatter of plastic against wood echoes in the room.
She flips on the television in her breakfast nook. A soothing voice emanates from the speakers, and she whips her head up just in time to catch the girl from her dreams seated in a posh news set. The racer flashes a reserved smile before she opens her mouth to speak.
“Yes, I’m looking forward to racing the Crows this summer.”
“So Shimizu,” the news anchor continues, “You’re 22 — that’s quite young to be this popular in the scene! Your top rivals have been racing for three more years than you have. With that in mind, have you and your engineer been making any special preparations on your ride, the Compsognathus, for your race against the Crows?”
Shimizu’s lips quirk into a grin. She readjusts her eyeglasses, hiding her mouth behind her palm. The mischievous flash of her teeth lasts for only a moment, but Hitoka captures and files it into her expansive mental collection.
“Nothing out of the ordinary. We’re simply working to be at our best form.”
The interview transitions to a video montage of two cars drifting, speeding, and making sharp turns while barely being an arm’s width apart. One of them, sleek and white with a rounded black window, sets Hitoka’s heart racing with recognition. The Sparrows’ vehicle is considerably less terrifying on TV, where it isn’t about to barrel her tiny body over. “Of the twenty-nine races that the Crows and Sparrows have competed in this year, they triumphed as champions ten times each, losing only to the Hawks and the Owls,” the reporter relays through a voiceover. “The race taking place next week is being held to settle the score between these two fierce rivals.”
Despite the savoury aroma of her meal, Hitoka focuses all her senses on the news segment. The network cuts to a commercial break, and it’s only then that she finally blinks her eyes. She scrunches her brows at the snippet of Hydrapure celebrity endorsements that plays on the screen. Straight lipped, she turns her head back down to the tablet by her plate.
The girl glances at the time and feels an electric surge rush down her spine. She stuffs her mouth with waffles and downs half a glass of grapefruit juice before slipping on a sky blue blazer. After fussing with its star-shaped cufflinks, she shoves her tablet into her purse and stumbles back into her bedroom, hastily grabbing her bags and dumping them into an opaque white pod. It slides closed with a jab from her foot. Her shaky fingers mess up the authorization sequence on the lid twice before she finally keys in the address code for the Racing Federation Building. With a huff, she wheels the transport pod towards her apartment’s vestibule, slides open the hatch by her front door, and sends it down the mail tube with a resounding shup!
Her heart seizes for the third time that morning when she hears slow, steady beeping from outside. Oh my god, is it overweight. Oh my god! Is it robots!? Does the police force have robots now? That was on the news last week, right!? Is overweight luggage a crime!? I’m not prepared for lasers!!!
She squeaks, gnaws at her lip, gulps down her fear, and slams the door-opening button with her eyes squeezed shut. The beeping subsides, and she hears the quiet keening of another door opening further away. Tentatively, she takes a peek.
A two-seater driverless car is parked not a meter from her porch, open and ready for her to hop in. A familiar hand retracts away from a button on the dash, and a friendly face looks at her with sleepy concern.
Hitoka exhales. “...I am never going to get used to that signal.”