Monday morning. Third period: English.
The hum of the air conditioner, usually a soothing lullaby for Roan, now sounded like a failing engine idling in neutral. It was agonizing.
Roan sat in the back corner, but he wasn't sleeping. He held a black gel pen between his thumb and forefinger, flicking his wrist until the pen spun into a dark, high-velocity blur. It was the only object in his current reality capable of maintaining high RPMs.
He was suffering from a "performance overload" hangover. The violent vibrations of the two-stroke kart still echoed in his muscles; the phantom scent of high-octane fuel seemed to cling to his pores. It had been beautiful.
Now, he was trapped in an unergonomic wooden chair. A single day away from the cockpit and the withdrawal symptoms were hitting hard. Even an ice-cold Coke tasted flat.
"...when the infinitive acts as the subject, the predicate verb takes the singular form..."
The teacher's voice was processed through Roan's internal noise-canceling filter and discarded. He stared at the blackboard. Dust motes danced in the cinematic shafts of sunlight cutting through the window. In his heightened state, their descent paths were terrifyingly clear. He could predict which ones would settle on the lectern and which would drift into the hair of the girl in the front row.
Too slow.
Roan forced himself to focus, transcribing the notes with mechanical precision. For the sake of his "Grades-for-Racing" contract, he had to stay awake. He began sketching a complex diagram in his notebook. At a glance, it looked like a race car's chassis suspension; upon closer inspection, the nodes were labeled Subject, Predicate, Object.
Subject is the engine; it provides the power source.
Predicate is the driveshaft; it determines the direction of output.
Object is the tires...
Roan frowned at a particularly convoluted sentence on the board. He drew a sharp 'X' over his diagram and scrawled a single word next to it: Understeer.
The sentence structure was flawed. Like a poorly tuned chassis, it was fighting the turn. It lacked downpressure. His current mood, he diagnosed, was a direct result of a dopamine deficit in the brain.
The cure was simple: let the mind run.
He activated the Mind Palace. His vision pierced through the blackboard, the perspective drifting out to perform a reverse-engineering scan of the L-shaped school building. The right-angle corners of the hallway were fitted with mental curbs, transforming them into high-speed apexes. The crowded students became mobile obstacles. The long, steep central staircase became the Eau Rouge of Spa-Francorchamps.
If I can't drive a real car, I'll lap the school.
The bell rang for the break. Students surged toward the snack shop like a school of sardines. Roan didn't move. He stood by the railing at the end of the corridor—a visual blind spot. To a casual observer, he was just looking at the view.
But up close, his posture was bizarre.
He pressed the side of his forehead against the cold stainless steel railing, his body leaning at a rigid 60-degree angle to the floor. His feet were planted, the veins in his neck bulging like coiled snakes.
Hell Week Protocol: Isometric Neck Resistance.
If there was no G-force to punish his neck, he would manufacture his own. The steel was cold, mimicking the feel of a roll cage.
Two girls walked by, whispering and throwing him eccentric looks. They hadn't been at Zack's party; they didn't know about his "Keyboard Legend" status. To them, the quiet, top-tier student was becoming a total freak. Yesterday he was sleeping in class; today he was trying to dent the railings with his skull.
Roan's eyes remained unfocused. His Mind Palace was busy sampling the training data. In this state, the judgment of others was just background noise—advertising hoardings outside the track limits. To reach F4 in three months, every minute in this corridor had to be converted into a hundredth of a second on the track.
A wide shadow suddenly blocked him from the crowd.
Zack stood there with two cans of Coke, his back to Roan, gesturing wildly as if talking to thin air. "Bro, you have no idea! My Yasuo in last night's ranked match... I was literally gliding through them!"
He was using his XXL-sized uniform as a human wall, shielding Roan from the questioning gaze of the dean walking by. It was a silent, practiced coordination.
"Take five, Legend," Zack hissed, pressing a cold can against Roan's burning neck. "You look like you've got a permanent cramp. Save your energy. The 'Big Cargo' arrives tonight."
Roan straightened up, reaching his limit. He took the can and popped the tab. Clack.
"What cargo?" Roan wiped the sweat from his brow.
Zack let out a mischievous, knowing grin—the look of a man who possessed classified technology. He patted Roan's stiff shoulder. "You'll see. We're a factory team now. We can't have our lead driver training his neck on a public railing."
The curriculum at an elite private school was flexible. Most students weren't grinding for the national exams; their "tracks" were already paved with family money.
5:30 PM. The final bell echoed.
Zack led Roan to the basement level of the school gymnasium—a forgotten zone filled with dusty gymnastics mats and broken ball nets. It was a place where even couples looking for privacy avoided due to the rumored scent of damp rot. The sound-activated lights were flickering, casting long, uneven shadows.
"In here," Zack said, stopping before a heavy security door that had been wiped clean of dust.
He pulled a gleaming brass key from his pocket—clearly a new duplicate. He slid it into the lock.
Click.
The mechanism turned with a satisfying, high-end resonance. Zack took a deep breath and threw the door open.
Creeeeak—