Chapter 3
“Why so quiet, Brian?”
“I understand this to mean you’ll be staying home for the next two months or so.”
“Good.”
Rose shut off the tablet, looking satisfied. No matter how entertaining something was, nothing beat watching it in the comfort of his own home. And considering the far more interesting story about to unfold, waiting a little while was a perfectly acceptable choice.
The drive home felt unusually long today. When Rose looked out the window, he noticed traffic had gotten fairly heavy around them. Just then, a strange car caught his eye.
It was a Porsche painted in some bizarre color that could only be called fluorescent purple, crawling along in its lane at a snail’s pace.
“A Porsche out for a leisurely stroll. Imagine that.”
The Porsche 911, all sleek, sharp lines, wobbled like someone had poured cognac into the engine instead of oil. Then, as if it had suddenly come to its senses, it glided forward smoothly again, though still very slowly. Thanks to that, the Porsche fell behind the Signiti in no time.
“Report that car. The driver looks like a junkie.”
Rose spat the words out while staring at the Porsche. Brian, who had been writing an email, asked where it was a long moment later, but by then the Porsche had already dropped out of sight.
Contrary to Rose’s concerns, the Porsche’s driver was not a junkie. There was simply a very slight argument going on inside the car.
“If you borrow someone’s car, at least drive it properly!”
“If I ever borrow your car again, I’ll change my last name!”
“Oh, sure. Nicholas Hayward. So if you change your last name, that means we’re not brothers anymore? What are we going to do? What a disaster, huh?”
“Johann, you’ve completely lost it, haven’t you? There’s no way you’d do this to me unless you’d gone totally insane. The bald spot I got when you hit me with a wrench, huh? It’s still right here!”
Steering with one hand, Nicholas raked through his hair with the other and thrust the pale scar at Johann. His aim was dead-on, and as a result, the car lurched and rattled sideways.
At seven, Johann had injured fourteen-year-old Nicholas with a wrench and promised to treat him as hyung for the rest of his life. And as life would have it, Nicholas really did become Johann’s legal older brother.
Then Nicholas, in full hyung mode, yelled at his little brother.
“Your passport may say American, but your soul is Korean! That’s the land of Confucianism, right? Whatever hyung says goes, right?”
“Fine, I’m sorry. My bad, hyung.”
The brisk apology left Nicholas at a loss for words. Johann meant it.
“Yeah, well, okay then…”
The lifelong friends and legal brothers knew how to fight fast and make up even faster, at the speed of light. At the same time, the Porsche that had been weaving all over the road finally managed to slip meekly back into its lane.
“Seriously, what are you going to do?”
Despite Nicholas’s concern, Johann remained perfectly calm.
“What else? I’ll go grovel to Scrooge.”
“And what if he hits you again for bringing up installment plans?”
Johann fell silent, his face darkening again.
Johann Hayward was an IndyCar Series driver for Phoenix Racing, an independent team with no sponsors. The IndyCar Series was America’s flagship motorsport, and people often called it America’s F1.
Two weeks ago, Johann had won the Indianapolis 500, a major race better known as the Indy 500. Then, at his next race yesterday on Nashville’s Music City Circuit, he had retired. Not because of a mistake, but because of a crash that happened right in front of him.
A full lap down and running near the back, the driver ahead of Johann tried to block him instead of letting the leader through. He botched the corner, locked up his brakes, and spun, ending up blocking the track completely. Johann, who had been running first, managed to brake in time and avoid the crash, but the car behind him couldn’t. It slammed into Johann’s car with a crunch.
The car was wrecked beyond driving, so Johann’s result for the race was DNF. Did not finish. A retirement.
There were a lot of qualities a motorsport driver needed in a sport that burned through astronomical amounts of money, and one of them was the ability to personally reel in team sponsors who could cover repair costs in situations like this. Unfortunately, Johann was catastrophically lacking in that particular skill.
That was exactly why he had come back from Nashville a day late.
Money.
In other words, a sponsor to foot the bill so he could actually race.
“Okay, tell me. So what happened?”
“Don’t ask.”
“So you went and caused another scene.”
Johann remained silent.
“You actually did?!”
The evening the Nashville race ended, Johann had a business meeting with a solid, respectable-looking businessman in his forties who claimed to be interested in becoming a sponsor. He had felt uneasy from the start, since the man’s company had nothing to do with racing. But IT firms and beer companies sponsored races all the time, so Johann figured the guy was just a personal fan.
In the end, Johann flipped the dinner table over mid-meal.
“Why, did his daughter turn out to be a fan this time too? Wanted to meet you?”
“No, the thing is, the guy himself said he was my fan.”
“That’s a relief. That’s really great news!”
“Yeah, Nicky. I thought so too at first…”
But Johann was a deeply unlucky man.
“But here’s the thing, Nicky. The guy says he’s my fan. And then he tells me he’s bi.”
“…Huh?”
“He’s married. He even has two kids. Then he tells me not to worry because he has a partner too? I started wondering if I’d heard him wrong or if my brain had shorted out. Can you make any sense of that?”
Nicholas stared back, speechless.
“The first thing he brings up after saying he’s my fan is an affair? Is that some kind of flex for CEOs? Or is there a rule in this world I don’t know about? Unless there’s a rule saying sponsors have to disclose their kinks and exactly how they like to have sex, there’s no reason for him to do this to me.”
At Johann’s heartfelt lament, sweat beaded on Nicholas’s hands where they gripped the wheel.
“Uh, Johann.”
“Okay, fine, he said he was my fan. People can get tongue-tied when they’re face-to-face with someone they genuinely root for. I get it. I wanted to believe that, so I stayed seated for the time being.”
“And, and then?”
“And then that fucking bastard!”
At the sudden shout, Nicholas was so startled he nearly hit the brakes without meaning to. The car lurched violently, but Johann was fine.
“He said he only gets turned on during sex if someone else is watching! Said I didn’t have to do anything. I just had to be there! He said he’d invite me to his villa in Switzerland so I could watch him get beaten by his partner. Isn’t that guy completely insane?”
Raised in America, Johann was hardly naive, but with a Korean soul, he wasn’t exactly the casual-sex type either. He was simply a perfectly ordinary twenty-one-year-old man. For him, something like this was impossible to accept.
“Still, Johann… It’s not like he’s asking you to beat him.”
When Nicholas protested in a feeble voice, Johann glared at him.
“So. Are you saying that’s a relief?”
“No, that’s not what I mean. It’s just, you know. He’s not asking you to get beaten or anything…”
As far as Nicholas was concerned, he had chosen those words carefully to comfort his little brother, but Johann’s eyes took on a dangerous shine.
Johann had already lost his mind.
“Well said. So, Nicky, want to go in my place?”
“No, how does that even work? Was it me he wanted, or Johann Hayward?”
“I don’t fucking know! He said he just needed a person there! You’re a Hayward too!”
“And if I go, do we even get the money or what?”
“You said you’re my hyung! You can’t do even that much for me?”
“And what have you ever done for me?”
With Johann screeching in outrage and Nicholas refusing to give an inch, the Porsche wobbled left and right again.
“Seriously, no?”
“Like that would ever happen…”
“Yeah.”
Even though he had thrown a fit out of sheer frustration, Johann had no intention of actually sending Nicholas in his place. The situation was just too unbelievable, so he had tried making a pointless, unreasonable demand.
Why is it that none of these so-called sponsors are ever normal? That was the biggest question on Johann’s mind these days.
A sponsor. Johann genuinely needed a sponsor. But not just anyone counted because they called themselves one. What Johann wanted was a decent, normal sponsor who didn’t demand sex in return. An ordinary sponsor who wanted to put a company logo on Johann’s helmet for promotional purposes. That was all.
Whether his future sponsor liked motorsport or not didn’t really matter. Johann wasn’t even asking them to acknowledge his talent.