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The night that shades the ever-brilliant Lusail International Circuit did not hold the season’s champ—Max Verstappen—from visiting the now-restricted paddock long after sprint quali and its beloved sole free practice. Fortunately, the heat has now been cooled down, the Dutchman freely strutting himself across the paddock lane.
Perhaps he’d forgotten something in RedBull’s garage, or wants to feel the reverence amid buzzing schedules ahead—Max didn’t want an elaborated reason of his own excursion.
Wearing navy-blue RedBull polo shirt and light blue short trousers up to his knees, Max casually scans each team’s motorhomes—they were all shut down but the forefront’s lamps, of which would sometimes help the securities to check the circuit’s safety—as he sometimes plays his smartphone within his trousers’ pocket.
As he walks near his own team—something suspicious rose.
A man, shorter than him with a jet-black hair and a facial that resembles Asian typicals—he stood up, masking a weary face.
“Yuki?” Max calls that man out.
Of course, everyone would’ve instantly known that aforementioned man; as he is currently the shortest ever driver in these decades—not beating the record yet, unfortunately. To top of that, he was part of his team—as he wore the same setup with Max.
Yuki startled himself quickly as Max’s voice reaches him.
Something is definitely fishy—Max’s initial gut alarmed as he scans his beloved teammate.
“Oh… Max?” Yuki answered back—a tone that Max never recognizes.
As his teammate for just shy of a year, Max knows him even more intimate. Yuki has never been confused and act as bewildered at a mere call from Max. He always remains alert—a result of constant pressure from every single angle as he arrives at RedBull team April this year.
To add oil to Max’s suspicion, Yuki brought an umbrella—something unusual at today’s weather; all cloudy and relatively safe to track and walk nicely. All wet, moreover.
“Hi, Max.” Yuki’s voice turned sharper and… firmer.
This isn’t what Yuki that I usually know—Max’s guttural instinct is getting vigilant.
“Forgot something, shorty?” Max comes near Yuki, readying any scenarios within his mind had there be anything funky with this weird Japanese man.
“Oh… Nope. Just feeling like want to enjoy this quietude.”
“You should be back to the hotel. We still have packed schedules ahead.”
“What about you? You’re a naughty man for sneaking out too.” Yuki laughs back.
Max’s eyebrow rose.
Yep, this Yuki is different.
Max tilted his head, crossing his arm and lent his back to the motorhome’s door—fortunately, it is locked within, “Well, I have to get my peace of mind of my own championship.”
“Yeah, I agree.”
Agree.
Once more, this is not what Yuki would’ve reacted with Max’s comment. Max believes Yuki, at this Lusail and penultimate to the season’s race schedule, is bound to be agitated and likely would wage the war with Max himself just to boot his aggression out—at least, civilly. Moreover, Max have heard that Yuki is also currently going back and forth drafting his own F1 schedules had Yuki been thrown to reserve driver role.
Even Max’s small, cute insult—shorty—didn’t reciprocate what have the Dutchman expected; it was a total silence of this nickname he just launched off to the small Japanese man.
This oddness couldn’t stop hindering Max’s logical analysis. “Yuki, what happened to your umbrella? You accidentally throw your umbrella or what?”
“Oh, this…” Yuki trails off.
“Mm?”
A faint smile answered Max’s curiosity, “Yeah. Pretty clumsy, am I? I’ll just wait here to dry this umbrella—and enjoy my own little excursion.”
Max’s sharp blue iris met Yuki’s wet sport black and white shoes. This isn’t normal.
“Yuki, tell me.” Max decides that façade is no more, “What have you done?”
Yuki frowns as Max dropped his small talk—and remains level-headed as Max starts drugging with more inquires, “Yuki, you won’t usually do this. Either you’ll have to be escorted by Diego, or outright I am to escort you as you were prone to clumsiness than mine. What are you doing here, past midnight, getting lost over here?”
The tension was nigh—Max cornered Yuki opposite to what he did earlier; it’s Yuki who is now leaning his back to the motorhome’s door.
“I am just sheltering here and breath my own solitude before you came here.” The answer catapulted with a tone of something unknown to Max.
A staggering calmness.
Aura that resembles to… himself.
And the boba eyes that have seen even worse wars than perhaps what Yuki is currently battling as of that day.
Perhaps the most illogical, preposterous feature this Yuki had shown—a facial muscle that resembles more to Max than to his known Yuki. In addendum to his lip that bloomed an icy smile.
And in seconds—this Yuki did something unforgiven.
His hand planted to Max’s shoulders—.
—and brought Max down before himself, as if a ton of energy just put above him, leaving no leverage for the champion to claw back.
The umbrella became drier throughout their encounter, unfurled to shade him. ‘Yuki’—or so what Max would have quoted to highlight this uncanny person—unleashed his true persona and intention, “Actually, I don’t want to bother you, but… I came here to see what of me here.”
“What of you…?” Max struggled to find his own fortitude—at least, against this ‘Yuki’.
“Yeah.”
Yuki walked past Max, getting out of RedBull’s motorhome. He shook his sport shoes, letting the dirt to detach from the shoes’ soles.
His blackish iris exchanged the glare with the Dutchman’s blue, continuing his intention clear and short, “I assume in this part, you are the champion. Your arrogance matches mine, to which I find it kind of ironic. And remember…”
His short stature did not hinder him from dashing away—far from Redbull’s motorhome.
The Dutchman’s primal instinct kicks off; he instantly run towards Yuki—he didn’t want to lose any moment right now.
To find out this damn bizarre instance he’d just encountered.
“Wait a fucking minute, damn it! Where’ll you go—.”
The unannounced game wiggled Max’s immense focus—he is now running faster to close the gap between them. Yuki ran to the closest pond nearby—within the paddock garden, but edged near F1 Teams’ Parking. It wasn’t deep—a mere ten or less meter depth—but Max’s gut and years-long’s personal experience with peoples around him is warning him.
Yuki braked his legs near the pond—as Max have thought—and did something even insane.
He jumped off the two meters high’s metal fences just from his legs alone, and sat above it.
“Damn.” Yuki cusses him out, “You really are something, Max Emillian Verstappen. As I expected from being my teammates in my part.”
“Yuki!” Max shouted—in anger and confusion, “Who the fuck are you!? You are clearly Yuki, but the Yuki I know did not act out of this insanity just to satiate my entertainment!”
“I am your Yuki.” Yuki cuts off—this time, more distant, “However, I am a different Yuki. Let me introduce myself, properly.
I am Yuki Tsunoda, the four-times World Champion from where the Max Emillian Verstappen I know might be as weak as the me over here.”
His legs kicked in, catapulted himself to the pond—with the umbrella still unfurled.
Max screams wordless, but his sharp hearing capability caught something even eerie from the abysmal, abnormal Yuki he just saw—.
“Take care of the damn weak me over there, you love-struck swine.”
Yuki fell into the pond, but Max senses nothing from the water’s ripples. He let go of his phone and shoes—instantly swim and dive inside for minutes, and found nothing of Yuki’s remains. The Dutchman returned back to the pond’s perimeter—all but nothing and staggering wetness across his body.
Plenty of unanswered questions unboxed just from their abrupt meeting.
Max tried to dry his hands—a futile attempt, regardless—and reaches his smartphone, thus texted someone in the WhatsApp;
You (to D)
Where’s Yuki?
“Just who the fuck… are you…” Max mumbles—the remaining being unintelligible, perhaps to cuss the whole camaraderie between them. Either he had been hallucinated—to which he would need an assisted medication—or he has just seen something out of the fiction at that time.
Love-struck swine?
In the first time since Yuki’s arrival to Formula One, he has never publicly taunted the Dutchman in such disrespectful taste.
If any, Yuki would’ve just stuck with some standard cuss lists—or maybe, the British style such as wanker, or bollocks, or buggers. Even Max might’ve imagined Yuki slandered some people with ‘twit’—he had lived in Milton Keynes for two years and continually flown there for business from Faenza or Milan.
However, despite this Yuki’s jerk-ass manner, a fact had been lunged straight to the Dutchman’s fortress—within his heart.
That, the Max Emillian Verstappen did treat Yuki slightly different to his previous teammates.
True to this Yuki’s words, Max did feel closer and want to protect the little Japanese guy’s future in the hellish poisoned chalice—a reputation so poignant in RedBull’s ever-flourishing tale since the champion’s arrival in the team.
“Who truly the fuck… are you…” Just like a mantra, a mere presence from this Yuki stabbed throughout the Dutchman’s memories and bleed the most rogue flick of images afresh.
A message pinged on Max’s phone, popping the sender and the message.
D
What the fuck? Yuki came out of the bathroom just a while ago.
D
Are you delirious?
Max offers only one certain affirm.
You (to D)
I am in the lucid dream.
Fortunately, the spontaneous act to get away from the Dutchman did succeed.
And now he’s back—to the Silverstone, the ever-raining season that lovingly share the circuit. Even luckier, he teleported just right in the time, behind the RedBull’s motorhome.
“Fucking Stonehenge.”
The call just in, and Yuki immediately picked up. “Oi Yuki, where have you been!? We lost just thirty minutes behind the schedule! Get in before I kill you somewhere quiet, fucktard!”
The eyes went dark, and his demeanour deteriorated to an even hostile attitude, “Yeah, Father. I’m coming in.”
“This too is important for your fifth title contending, bastard! And since you’re the first seat, stay sharp.”
The champion—at least, in this world—huffed in defeat. “Okay, Father. I’m joining you asap.”
The call discontinued on his part, and he briefly checked his belongings. His umbrella still held onto his hand, and his outfit did not ever get wet. Perhaps this is some kind of magic—the first thought popped out from his mind.
Nevertheless, Yuki strutted himself to the paddock open—receiving the whooping fans’ screams and fangirling all over the pathway, as well as his manager’s fuss.
“Just what the fuck did you disappear…” Diego Menchaca—now is a renowned manager—lunged his elbow to Yuki’s torso.
“Haha, I’m wondering too.”
“Damn you shorty.” Menchaca’s lips pouting, intensifying his complain.
“It’s okay, at least I returned in one piece.” Yuki tossed out a faint, unreadable smile.
As the camera and people flocking to the ever mesmerizing short-stature Asian champion away from their own motorhome, Yuki whispered a word to his beloved manager, “Camera’s on, let’s go. I have to take care of my beloved Max-chan right now.”
Their little meeting exchanged immeasurable pool of feelings onto them.
The Max Emillian Verstappen and the little Yuki Tsunoda.
This time, Yuki of this world will make sure that Max didn’t suffer.
Unlike what Max did to Yuki in the world Yuki accidentally shifted to.
end.