Part 1 - A Different Logic
Exhaustion, delayed but inevitable, hit Konrad like a soft wall. Curled on the sofa in his new apartment, he was asleep in moments, dead to the world. The frantic energy of the last twelve hours—the race, the tryout, the contract—had finally burned out, leaving only silence.
He was unaware of the quiet storm he'd sparked.
Down the hall, Charles Leclerc walked with a purposeful stride, his mind not on the route to his own door, but on a set of racing lines. He stopped at the corridor's junction, his gaze drifting toward the unmarked apartment.
Schäfer.
The name was a simple fact, but the driver behind it was a complex problem Leclerc's mind couldn't stop trying to solve.
All afternoon, the simulator bay had been a hive of frustrated activity. Led by a scowling Giuliano Alessi, nearly every academy driver had taken turns in the F4 sim, their goal singular: break the German's record.
Alessi had declared it a fluke, a lucky run by a gamer who didn't know the rules. The others, their professional pride stung, had agreed. Antonio Fuoco, Guanyu Zhou—they had all tried.
And one by one, they had all failed.
Montfatini had let it happen, a rare, unspoken permission to let their competitive fury run its course. But Leclerc had withdrawn after fifteen laps. He wasn't interested in a brute-force assault on a lap time. He was interested in the method.
He'd tried to replicate Konrad's lines, the ones that defied textbook logic but somehow yielded impossible speed. He'd felt the car buck and protest, confirming the lines shouldn't work. But for Schäfer, they had. That was the real challenge, not the number on a screen.
The record wasn't the point. The point was that an outsider had walked in and, in one hour, rewritten their understanding of that virtual track. Beating his time now, after hours of struggle, would be a hollow victory.
Leclerc stood before the blank nameplate. He needed to understand the logic. Their brief exchange in the sim bay had shown him Konrad was analytical, his mind built for deconstruction. Perhaps he would share his process.
It was a simple, professional curiosity. But the air in the academy had turned tribal. Alessi's faction had drawn a line, and approaching Schäfer would be seen as crossing it. Leclerc disliked politics. He preferred the pure, binary truth of the track: you were either fast or you weren't.
He weighed the professional need for knowledge against the social friction it would cause. For a long moment, he hesitated, his hand half-raised.
Then, decisive, he turned to leave. The questions could wait.
Footsteps on the stairwell made him pause. He recognized Rosanna's quick, light tread. Instinctively, he took a few quiet steps back, melting into a recessed doorway. He wasn't hiding, not exactly. He just preferred to avoid an conversation he couldn't immediately explain.
A more pressing question formed in his mind. What was Rosanna doing here so late?
Part 2 - Home Cooking
Rosanna had changed into casual clothes—a simple t-shirt and jeans—with her curly hair tucked under a daisy-patterned headscarf. She looked practical yet still vibrant.
She struggled with a large, insulated cooler bag, its weight evident from her strained arm and heavy footsteps. The bag bumped against her leg with each step as she muttered in Italian about the "troppi gradini"—too many stairs—between the parking lot and the dorms.
Leclerc remained in the doorway's shadow, hoping Rosanna was too focused on her burden to notice him.
Finally reaching the third floor, Rosanna paused to catch her breath, setting the heavy bag down with a soft thud before continuing down the hall—directly toward Leclerc's hiding spot.
His back tightened. No. Not here.
But God seemed to hear his prayer—Rosanna's footsteps stopped just short of him. A knock echoed through the hallway.
"Konrad?" she called.
No response came from the apartment.
Rosanna knocked again, louder this time. "Konrad!"
Just as the door seemed ready to surrender, it finally opened. Konrad stood there, hair disheveled, blinking slowly as he emerged from deep sleep.
"You were sleeping?" Rosanna didn't wait for an answer. "Through the whole afternoon? What about dinner? Or lunch?" She tutted sympathetically. "A growing boy needs to eat!"
Konrad rubbed his face, his voice rough with sleep. "Sorry, Rosanna... I forgot where I was for a moment."
Rosanna laughed. The usually composed young man before her now seemed much younger, the guarded professionalism gone.
"Dinner," she said simply. "I told you I wouldn't let you eat fast food."
Konrad's thoughts gradually cleared. "You were serious?"
"Always." Rosanna gestured to the cooler bag. "We take our hospitality seriously in Sicily."
Konrad noticed Leclerc then. "Charles? Are you joining us?"
Leclerc stepped forward awkwardly under Rosanna's surprised gaze. "Good evening..."
"Come in, both of you." Konrad lifted the bag—and grunted at the weight. "Rosanna, what did you pack in here? Enough to feed the whole academy?"
As they entered, Konrad turned to Leclerc. "I haven't learned my way around yet. Could you find the plates? The layout should be similar to yours."
Leclerc found himself moving automatically, caught in the current of Konrad's straightforward hospitality.
Rosanna had already unpacked the bag, filling the air with rich aromas as she transferred still-warm containers to the counter. "Sicilian caponata—eggplant, celery, olives. And arancini, fried rice balls. Every Sicilian child grows up eating these."
She lifted a final glass container triumphantly. "And the main event—pasta alla Norma!"
Konrad froze. "More pasta?"
Rosanna laughed heartily. "This is different! This is heritage cooking, passed down through generations. This is the taste of Sicilian homes." She stirred the sauce lovingly. "My grandmother always said no problem exists that a good tomato sauce can't solve."
A stomach rumbled loudly through the apartment.
Konrad looked down at his own stomach, then up at Leclerc's slightly embarrassed expression, and burst out laughing. The genuine sound seemed to break the remaining tension, and even Leclerc relaxed into a real smile.
Through the open door, Konrad spotted a familiar figure passing in the hallway. "Guanyu!"
Zhou Guanyu backtracked to peer around the doorframe. "I was just... passing by."
"Have you eaten?" Konrad asked. "There's plenty here."
Guanyu's eyes widened at the spread of unfamiliar dishes. "I've never seen food like this in restaurants..."
"Of course not," Rosanna said proudly. "These are family recipes."