Chapter 3: Floor it or lose it

Meanwhile, from the lane to the right of him, there was the deafening roar of the other car starting up and springing forward, its speed increasing as it vanished in the distance, leaving gray puffs of smoke behind itself.

Haruto wrestled desperately with the controls on the machine’s interior. There was a rusted, claggy-feeling key stuck to the ignition, and after fighting it with his fingers for a few seconds, he had been able to force it sideways, prompting his own car’s motor to start growling as well.

That, however, had only lasted him a few measly seconds before the darned thing went silent again.

Below the whole mishmash of buttons and triggers he had in front of him, there were three pedals lined up, and pressing his foot repeatedly on the rightmost one, which he believed to be the gas pedal, but nothing came of it. Perhaps it was one of the other two? He tried them, alright, but still, there was nothing.

“Damn it! Why did it have to be a car!? Why did it have to be a goddamn car!?!?”

He banged blindly on the old steering wheel, crying out to nobody in particular.

Was he losing his mind? Was this all some kind of dream? What kind of sick game was this, where his life was being put on the line just for the heck of it? Where he had to fight some fat bastard he didn’t know from anywhere because some ridiculous-sounding voice from the beyonds had decided so!? In fact, wasn’t he already dead, anyway?

That red car had run over him, he had blacked out and now he was here. Why? Did he deserve this? Had he been that horrible a person that somebody decided ‘Yeah, this guy deserves to go through this, haha!’?

The red car… It was just like the one he’d seen on [Redacted]’s phone.

“It was her boyfriend’s…?”

That much was clear, he realized. It was the same vehicle, the same exact design. Plus, the guy from the picture had been there next to her as Haruto’s vision blurred out. It had to be the same.

“Why… Why…?”

The whole thing was now crashing down on the former highschool student, threatening to crush his body, his whole existence, at any moment. He was losing his mind, indeed.

“Why did that bastard run me over…? What did I ever do to him? Hell, there’s no way the guy even knew me…? What the hell…”

It made no sense, no matter how hard he tried to think about it. There was no way that guy knew him, and even if he did, he hadn’t done anything to him. Taking that into account, the only sensible conclusion to take was that it had all been an accident.

But even so…

The red car had been going so fast… Too fast. Haruto had never driven in his life and even he knew no car should ever move in such a way on an urban road, especially on such a narrow street.

Whatever were [Redacted]’s boyfriend’s motives, or lack thereof, the very fact that it had happened pissed him off.

His sorrow, his tears, his regrets, it all came together into a loud, insufferable throbbing inside his head, one he could not rid himself of now.

The humiliation…

The life he had been stripped of…

The future he would never get to witness…

And most of all, the rage that now had taken over his heart.

It was happening again. The guy from the red car had taken his life away, and now, the fatso on the other lane would be taking whatever was left.

Haruto decided, right at that moment, he could not allow that.

Even if he had to face the one thing he dreaded most, and learn to drive that disgusting, motor-run machine, he would take that guy down if it was the last thing he did.

The boy took a deep breath.

“Think, now. First things, first, I can’t even get this damn thing to stay on… The buttons and all the other garbage here on top won’t do anything, so…”

He looked down. There were the three pedals, right there for him to reach. Then, to his right, he recognized a small knob-like object placed in the space amid the two seats, several faded numbers visible on its top surface. He recognized the thing from the days his old man used to take him on weekend drives. ‘The shifter’, as he used to call it. And his hand would never let go of the thing, no matter what. He wasn’t sure what that thing was supposed to do for certain, but it was important.

It was likely related to the motor, he guessed. Each of the numbers corresponded a certain direction he could move that knob, or ‘lever’, to be more precise.

Maybe that was what he was missing. It was worth a try.

He turned the key again and pressed the right pedal at the same time, moving the lever to the ‘1’ slot. The motor quieted down again, just as fast as it had before.

“Shit.”

Should he have gone for another slot?

“No, no, why would they want you to use the second or third instead of the first??”

Maybe he was doing things wrong, still. Maybe it wasn’t about the slots. Maybe the rightmost pedal wasn’t even the one he needed to accelerate at all.

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The best way to find out was to keep trying, he settled.

Next, he turned the motor on with the middle pedal pressed instead. The same thing happened, unchanged.

He tried again, this time with the leftmost pedal instead.

That was when things changed.

The car was still stuck in place, all the same. However, the motor did not quiet down. It was still grumbling, underneath its metal hide, as if to complain about a long, hard life.

Haruto stopped in place for a moment, taken aback by the development.

Simmering down from his frenzy, he let go of the pedal.

The motor went down.

Then, he started the vehicle all over again, with that same pedal pressed.

He couldn’t move it that way, but somehow, someway, the leftmost pedal was keeping the motor alive.

And just like that, another fit came over the boy.

“Why the hell would you make a whole pedal just to keep an engine alive!?!?”

With his free foot, he then stomped furiously on the rightmost pedal, and suddenly, he could hear the bald tires underneath the vehicle’s body wrestling against the asphalt, and before long, the car slowly started to move forward.

In the midst of the dashboard, he could see what he assumed to be the speedometer slowly raising its numbers. As long as he kept his right foot down, he’d gradually gain more speed.

The path ahead was entirely straight, and the mist was receding quickly, soon allowing him to see farther into the distance. Not far enough, however, that he could see the road properly lead anywhere. It was a never-ending straight line, or at least so it seemed to him.

“No turns, no intersections… Where is this leading, exactly…?”

Moreover, the car was just barely hitting 60 kilometers per hour after a few seconds. It was too slow. At this rate, he would never catch up to his opponent. And no matter the cost, no matter what he had to do, Haruto was set on winning that match.

“I need to go faster.”

He looked down. There was the ridiculous pedal to keep the vehicle awake during start-up, the other was clearly the brake, so he didn’t want that one. He was already pressing the gas pedal as far as he could, so nothing else to do there. With that in mind, perhaps it was the shifter he should give a try.

Quickly, he started pulling the shifter back and forth, changing the position of the lever from ‘1’ to ‘2’. On cue, the speedometer started to raise slightly faster. In just a moment, he had gone from 65 to 80. But that was still not enough. The boy kept moving the shifter back and forth, trying out number after number. 3, 4, 5, 6, he stopped at the highest he found, then glanced at the dashboard. 140 khp and rising.

“And mom said I’d never make it on the road!” he chuckled. “Now where’s the lardball?”

There was still nothing but more road ahead for a few instants.

However, soon enough, the mist started to recede even faster, revealing the rest of the straight path he had left to take and an equally gray sky. No, it wasn’t just a normal gray sky. Even through the dirty windshield, Haruto could see something was clearly off with it. There were clearer, pure-white squares all over it, appearing and vanishing at random, some of them staying for a moment, others moving around without stopping, like some absurd checkerboard.

Beyond the end of the long path, he could see a dirty clutter of buildings ahead, rotten and decaying in the distance, high enough to pierce the sky above.

Another pop-up window opened up on the boy’s right side, lacking any sort of button or prompt to press.

‘Welcome to Chariot City, grasshopper. Make yourself at home.’

The window closed on its own, and another appeared in its place. Taking another glance, Haruto realized it was a map. A rather simple one, representing solely streets and buildings, but a map nonetheless.

(Must be the layout of the city).

At the lower end of the window was a long, empty strip with a single blue dot moving along it, heading towards the more busy areas of the map.

It was him, he guessed, along with the road he was now on. And that meant…

Scrolling slightly upwards, with his free hand, it didn’t take him long to find another dot, similar to his own, weaving through the city’s lower edge only a few kilometers from him. It was red, and it seemed fast as well.

That did matter to him, however. It wasn’t going to escape.

Glancing right, something else caught his attention. The guardrails on that were now gone, and that road’s right lane was now quickly joining in with his, creating a singular path.

Realizing what that meant, he couldn’t help but grin.

“Run fast, buddy! Run fast.”

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