The tension in the lead pack had reached its boiling point by Lap 20. Three drivers. Rin, Takamori, and Izamuri, had broken from the rest of the field and were trading tenths every corner. No one could pull away. No one dared lift.
Rin still held the lead, but barely. Takamori was all over his bumper, braking later than ever, trying to squeeze through on corner exits. Behind him, Izamuri waited, studied, planned. He wasn't being held up, he was letting them wear themselves out.
Lap after lap, their lines began to fray. Takamori's rear tires had started to cry for help by Turn 5. The chicane had turned brutal, jolting his kart every time he clipped the curb. But he couldn't afford to slow down, not with Izamuri looming behind him like a ghost. Every time he defended against Rin, he exposed himself to Izamuri's patience. And Izamuri? He never lunged. He simply appeared, forced the mistake, then disappeared again.
Rin knew the pattern. He could see Takamori beginning to sweat, his driving more frantic, his exits less tidy. Lap 20, Turn 3. Takamori sent it deep, nearly nudging Rin off line. It was enough to force a reaction—but not enough to complete the pass. Rin countered with a cutback, kept his kart on the racing line. They were side by side through the long Turn 4 sweeper.
Izamuri didn't back off. He braked earlier than both, took a clean wide arc, and came out of Turn 4 with double the momentum. For a second, all three were nearly parallel into the chicane.
But Takamori swerved to block. Izamuri braked harder than usual and tucked back in.
It was close. Too close.
The three of them slashed through Turn 5 and 6 with no room to breathe. Rin still led. Takamori right behind. Izamuri still waiting, still calm, held his line.
Their tires kissed paint. The rear of Takamori's kart wobbled from the sudden proximity, and he fought the steering hard. They burst out of the chicane wheel to wheel before Takamori muscled back ahead on the short straight to Turn 7.
Behind them, Hana had her own hands full fending off Ayaka, with Haruka occasionally poking his nose in at corner entries. The trio remained close, but not quite within striking distance of the top 3. For now.
But not far behind, something entirely different was unraveling. The Kaira twins. Hojo and Tojo. They were still locked in a battle no one asked for. They were still two laps behind, still trying to settle some prideful grudge long since forgotten by the others. Their lap 18 was messier than ever, each corner filled with divebombs, squeezes, and the occasional wheel bump.
They should have been flagged for blue, but no one dared interrupt their madness. They weren't blocking the lead pack. Yet. By Turn 9 of their lap 18, just two corners before the main straight—Tojo tried to dive inside Hojo again, this time without enough room. Hojo turned in sharply, unaware of how close his twin really was.
The inevitable happened. Their wheels touched. Hojo's front tire climbed over Tojo's rear. Both karts lifted violently. The momentum launched them off-track, straight into the outer tire wall.
The impact was brutal. Tires flew in every direction. Rubber barriers spun through the air like shrapnel. Both karts ended up nose-deep into the wall, lodged in the mangled tires, stuck at an awkward angle.
But worse. some of the tire stacks rolled across the track and settled near the final corner.
A trap. A sudden, dark, unannounced wall on the apex.
And the leading pack was heading straight for it.
On Lap 20, Rin braked late into Turn 8, smooth as always. Takamori followed with a bit more caution, slightly overshooting the apex. Izamuri didn't react. He flowed through both of them, closing even tighter on exit. This would've been the moment—this was where he'd strike.
But then, he saw it.
A black streak across the asphalt. Chunks of displaced tire wall. Yellow flags waving violently at the edge of the track. Instinct took over.
Rin saw it too. He lifted immediately, slowing the kart as fast as it would allow without locking the brakes. Takamori responded a split-second later, swerving wide to avoid a loose tire that had settled on the left edge of the approach.
Izamuri. dead center, had nowhere to go but straight. He braked hard. The rear twitched, threatening to spin. He corrected, dropped two wheels on the grass, and yanked it back to stability. By the final corner, all three karts had stopped.
Just meters from the mess. Tires littered the turn-in point like forgotten debris from a minefield. The smashed karts of Hojo and Tojo were still wedged into the wall, bent and silent. None of the three leaders moved. The engines idled low, their helmets turning as they tried to understand what had just happened.
Seconds later, Hana's kart came storming down the straight. She saw the flags, saw the obstruction, and braked hard. Her rear lifted momentarily before settling down. She veered right and stopped beside Izamuri.
Ayaka arrived next, swinging wide left to avoid Hana's sudden slowdown. She pulled alongside Takamori, waving her hand in the air to alert the others behind. Haruka was the last to join, locking his brakes slightly and skidding sideways before halting behind Rin. His head tilted.
"What the hell…"
Sic karts now sat frozen in a line, just meters from the crash site. None of them said a word. There was nothing to say. They had almost been sent straight into a wall of rubber, metal, and bodies, at full speed.
The track was silent—just the dull hum of idling engines and the flickering of yellow flags swaying in the breeze. The tire wall was wrecked. The twins' karts were buried nose-first into the mangled rubber pile, engines sputtering, bodies slouched awkwardly over the wheel.
The tire wall groaned under the weight of the two karts jammed into its core. Dust settled, and the low drone of idling engines faded beneath a new sound. Shouting. The Kaira twins were already out of their seats.
Hojo, yanking his helmet off and tossing it onto the grass like it had personally betrayed him. His face was red, twisted in rage. "Oi, Tojo! That was your fucking fault, you absolute mouth-breathing fossil!"
Tojo's helmet jerked up. "My fault?! You turned in on me, you dumbass!"
"You divebombed me from three kart lengths back! What kind of shithead fucking ape logic do you even run on?! What did you fucking expect? flowers and fucking applause?!"
"Better than your rusted-out muscle memory you fucking idiot!"
Tojo jumped out of his kart, struggled a little and nearly tripping over the tire pile as he kicked his way clear.stomping across the mess of scattered tires. "You were behind, you absolute dipshit!"
"You turned in while I was still beside you! You blind? Or just stupid?"
A marshal cautiously approached, holding out his arms like someone defusing a bomb. "Gentlemen, please, go back to the paddock"
They met in the middle of the wreckage, face to face, inches apart and then it happened. Tojo shoved Hojo, who immediately shoved back, sending both of them staggering into the loose tire wall. A marshal tried to intervene but it was too late.
Without warning, Tojo grabbed one of the tires that had rolled off from the barrier, still dirty with grass, and hurled it straight at Tojo's chest. The impact knocked the wind out of him, but Tojo recovered fast. "Right. We're doing this again? Fine!"
He snatched another tire and flung it back. Hojo ducked. It bounced off the side of a marshal's safety barrier. Another tire flew. Then another.
Ayaka groaned. "Seriously?"
Haruka already had one leg out of his kart. "We should go."
One by one, the group began pulling off their helmets, stepping out of their karts and backing away from the unfolding sibling war zone. Marshals tried to wedge themselves between the twins, but neither seemed to care. They'd stopped being racers five minutes ago—they were now two angry brothers in full meltdown.
Another tire flew through the air. It missed everyone but knocked over a cone on the side of the corner.
Hana ducked. "Okay—nope. I'm out."
Ayaka was already jogging back to the pit. "I'm not catching a tire to the face for this."
"Should we help?" Haruka asked flatly.
Rin scoffed. "What are we gonna do, referee?"
"Fair point."
the rest of the drivers sprinted into the pit lane, the marshals shouting behind them. Haruka led the way, half-laughing, half-panicked. Ayaka followed with her arms up in exasperation. Hana looked like she was trying not to get involved in the chaos. As the group made their way across the track, back toward the paddock. Hojo finally got hold of one of the monster tires—too heavy to throw, but perfect for rolling. Tojo realized it too late.
"HOJO DON'T YOU FU-"
Hojo gave it a push. The thing started rolling down the incline of the runoff zone, slowly, majestically—and smacked into Tojo's shins like a freight train. He dropped like a sack of potatoes.
"FUCK!!! MY FUCKING LEGS!!"
What followed was less of an argument and more of a tire-slinging civil war, the two of them chucking rubber at each other like medieval peasants in a siege. The marshals scattered, one of them slipping in the mud. One even tried to blow a whistle, but no one heard it over the yelling and crashing.
Ayaka sighed. "Not my circus. Not my monkeys."
Haruka just laughed under his breath. "God, I missed this."
Hana glanced back at Izamuri. "You seeing this?"
Izamuri didn't answer right away. He stared at the two grown teenage men now locked in a tire-based brawl, flinging rubber at each other with reckless abandon, shouting every profanity known to man, and inventing new ones. To him, it was like a war zone. Tires flying, people yelling, marshals chasing two unhinged brothers now engaged in what looked like gladiator combat in front of the wrecked tire wall. "Do they… do this every year?"
"Every. Single. Time," Rin replied, casually tugging off his gloves. "Last year, Hojo tried to choke Tojo with a timing transponder."
Izamuri turned back one more time. Hojo was chasing Tojo across the tire barrier now. Both of them had taken off their race suits down to their base layers. It looked like a mix between a karting disaster and a family barbecue gone nuclear.
One tire rolled past them, harmlessly wobbling down the pit lane like a forgotten prop. Inside the garage, Rin flopped down on a bench, sighing. "I give it three more minutes before someone throws a toolbox."
Haruka leaned on the wall, breathing slowly. "Two minutes if one of them brings up that one incident where they failed their drivers license test… over a cup holder…"
Ayaka poured water on her face and muttered, "One minute if a marshal tries to separate them."
Meanwhile, Izamuri finally took off his helmet. His hair clung to his forehead, soaked in sweat. He sat down slowly on the bench, as if trying to understand the sheer absurdity he just witnessed. He'd expected intensity. Rivalry. Maybe even dangerous driving. He hadn't expected… this.
"Seriously," he mumbled, mostly to himself, "how haven't they killed each other yet?"
Hana walked past, tossed him a bottle of water, and said dryly, "They're twins. It's like watching two angry cats in a mirror. Nothing ever actually lands."
A loud bang echoed in the distance. Followed by more yelling.
Just under ten minutes after the tire-throwing chaos erupted, Hojo and Tojo finally ran out of things to scream about. Both had toppled back onto the grass, panting like dogs, their fire burned out by adrenaline and the heavy rubber they'd been flinging like weapons.
A marshall still nursing a bruised shoulder cautiously approached. "You two done?"
Tojo sat up first, rubbing a tire mark off his shirt. "Yeah…"
Hojo gave a lazy thumbs-up from the ground. "Call it a draw."
Tojo chuckled and extended a hand toward his brother. "Still the worst brake-timing in Japan."
Hojo grabbed it, pulling himself up. "Still the worst corner awareness on Earth."
From the pit lane, Rin and the others watched with a mix of amusement and disbelief. Hana leaned on a toolbox, arms crossed. "Every time," she said, more to herself than anyone. "They wreck. They fight. They forgive."
"It's a ritual," Ayaka replied, sipping from a can of sports drink.
Haruka chuckled, folding his arms behind his head. "They're not drivers. They're a circus act."
"Just like Scuderia Ferrari in F1" Rin chuckled.
"Can't argue with that" Takamori replied
Izamuri said nothing. He sat on the pit wall, staring at the twins in the distance as they limped back to the paddock together, now laughing like schoolboys. The same two who, just minutes ago, looked like they might murder each other over a hairpin. He took a slow breath. "How are they still alive?"
"Because they're too stupid to die," Rin said dryly.
Even Takamori smirked. "Or too stubborn to let the other go first."
Izamuri shook his head, unable to decide whether he was impressed or horrified. Or both.
Far above them, Daichi stood at the rooftop's edge, arms crossed, eyes downcast.
He'd watched the entire thing, every moment of chaos, every ridiculous overreaction, every airborne tire, and now, seeing the dust settle and laughter return, he finally exhaled. He didn't smile. Didn't shake his head.
He just turned around quietly and walked away. Through the rooftop access door, down the concrete stairs that echoed with his footsteps, past the cluttered third-floor storage deck and back to the ground level behind the paddock. No one noticed him slip away. No one ever did.
He walked across the gravel lot, dust crunching beneath his shoes, until he reached his car. A sleek Mitsubishi 3000GT, Red, wide and low with faded red brake calipers and a subtle front lip. The kind of car that looked like it had stories buried in the paint.
Daichi stared at it for a long moment. Then opened the door, got in, and sat down without a word. The interior was dark, the smell of worn leather and old air fresheners wrapping around him. He inserted the key, let the silence breathe for a second longer.
Then fired the engine. The 3000GT came to life with a deep, velvety growl, as if sighing too.
Pulling out slowly, he rolled past the paddock, now alive with activity again, mechanics checking tires, drivers laughing, marshals sweeping up the last of the mess.
He kept his eyes forward. Didn't wave. Didn't stop. And as he drove through the gates, onto the narrow road that led back toward Tokyo, the chaos faded behind him, replaced by the smooth hum of the road beneath.
He'd seen enough. Not the chaos. Not the absurdity. But the boy's potential. He sees something inside Izamuri that no one else can see.