Chapter Theme:

Oh Wonder - Ultralife

She’s in the paddock for more than an hour celebrating, and when finally she’s led through the ocean of fans and toward the cab and then back to the hotel she’s in the bar for another four hours celebrating with the rest of the team. Even some of the other drivers are there. Standing by the front of the lobby the Ferrari boys give her a thumbs up and over the rim of her vodka and cranberry she gives a thumbs up back and smiles and drinks.

‘Is that your first?’ Joy asks. She tries to sit on the stool beside Seulgi and almost falls and has to hold herself up against the counter.

‘Yeah,’ says Seulgi, giggling. ‘I bet that’s not yours, though, is it?’

Joy holds up her glass lazily. The look in her eyes is distant and vaguely comical and very much drunk. ‘No,’ she mumbles, trying not to hiccup. ‘I mean…no. It isn’t. I’ve had quite a few. And now it’s your turn, champ. C’mon.’

‘No. I’m only having one or two.’

‘But you’re the champion!’

‘I’m only have one or two,’ Seulgi repeats.

‘You’re no fun. Hey! Hey, Wendy!’ She waves Wendy over and says in a slur, ‘Seulgi here says she’s only having one or two drinks.’

‘Well,’ Wendy says, and Seulgi has to look at her fully to realise she’s just as drunk, wobbling from side to side and laughing at absolutely nothing, cheeks blushed rose, drink in her hand. ‘That’s not right,’ she burbles.

‘I want to be sober. I want to savour this, you know?’

‘The drink.’

‘The feeling of winning. Of being champion.’

‘You’ve got the rest of the year for that. Why can’t you just get drunk?’

Seulgi just laughs. She looks down at the vodka and sniffs it and sets it neatly on the counter. Over in the corner some of the mechanics are playing shot roulette very loudly. Down the other end of the bar Yeri’s sat talking to Jennie and they catch her looking over and smile and wave and she smiles and waves back. Thinking for a moment: They look genuinely happy for me.

And then thinking: What about Irene?

She checks her phone to find more new texts than the little notification button can properly display but none of them from Irene. Nothing since yesterday. She sits there for a while wondering whether that’s a surprise or not. The weight of it seems rather sudden and clear – Irene has lost. Eighteen months of convincing Seulgi that she would be alright in defeat and alright in conceding that she may longer be the best and months of trying to convince herself and now that reality is confirmed and the future is mired and murky and unknown to Seulgi, like a notion of what may occur as seen through bad glass, or underwater. A vague idea of what could be and what it means for them.

Wendy stands swaying and smiling like a woman gone mad. The drink in her hand is half full. ‘How many have you had?’ Seulgi says, amused and distracted for a moment. Wendy makes a gesture with her fingers and says, ‘Only this much. I mean, this many.’

‘Two?’

‘Few more. You should join me. You deserve it.’

‘Maybe some other time.’

‘Definitely some other time. And you’re gonna pay, since you’re champion and all. It’s what champions do.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Dunno,’ Wendy says with a shrug. She forces back a hiccup and laughs at the seeming absurdity of it and says, ‘Well done. I always knew you could do it.’

‘Thank you. I mean it.’

‘Remember that time we went go-karting for your birthday? When you’d just turned seven.’

‘Turned eight,’ Seulgi says.

‘Oh yeah. Whatever, I’m drunk. And you beat me by, like, two whole laps.’

‘I lapped everyone that day.’

‘Even those guys that were in the teenage class. Jesus, the look on their faces when you crossed the line in first place. And then you said one day you were going to be racing champion of the world. Said you were going to make it to Formula 1.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well.’ Wendy motions around the room. Then at the championship trophy sat neatly next to Seulgi’s stool on the floor. The look in her eyes is distant and glassy and drunk and emotional and strangely hilarious. ‘I’m so proud of you,’ she says, still swaying, impossible to take serious. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

‘Soulmates, you and I. In a platonic way, you know?’

‘I know.’

‘Can’t believe we’re finally here. Finally at the top.’

‘I couldn’t have done it without you.’

‘Oh, I know,’ Wendy says, and sips again. ‘I was the brains, you were the brawn. Or something. And Reve, too. Reve helped. Do you get to keep her?’

‘The chassis,’ says Seulgi. ‘It was written into my contract, yeah. So, part of her. As a memory. And what a memory it is.’

‘You can say that again. Where’s Irene?’

Seulgi thinks about it for a minute. Then she says truthfully and with a hint of sadness, ‘I don’t know. Maybe in her room.’

‘You should go find her.’

‘I think she probably needs this time alone. To process it.’

‘I think she’s stronger than you believe,’ Wendy says.

‘Maybe. I think you might be right. She did say as much, but that was where this whole issue even came from. Well, for her, at least. For me, it was a lack of confidence in my career. For her, it was the opposite of that, brought about by her total confidence in her career, if that makes any sense.’

Wendy just looks at her blankly.

‘What I mean is, her entire career has been as the absolute best. Even before she was winning championships with Samsung everybody in the paddock knew she was the most talented driver. It was just a case of getting into the right team environment. And that confidence was something that never wavered for her. Whereas for me, it was always fleeting. One weekend I’d be on it and the next I’d be way off the wagon and then back to ground zero. That’s what I had to learn to fix. To believe in myself. And she had to learn how to come to terms with the fact that racing might not always be her everything. That there might be life outside of it.’

‘Wow,’ Wendy says, sipping again. ‘If I was sober, that would be really moving. But I’m not sober, and I wasn’t really listening. Sorry.’

‘Maybe some other time,’ Seulgi says with a grin. ‘Wendy.’

‘What?’

‘Thank you. For everything. I mean it.’

‘Hey, I’m always here.’ She holds up her nearly-empty glass and winks at Seulgi and says, ‘Here’s to many more years, and many more championships.’

‘Amen,’ says Seulgi.

It’s almost eleven in the evening when she works up the courage to text Irene and ask where she is, slightly tipsy and having had a couple more drinks than she would have liked. She’s still at the bar, a good bit quieter now. Wendy and Joy have gone. Yeri is either asleep or dead on one of the stools at the far end and Jennie is not much better and some of the other mechanics sit under the front windows still drinking and laughing and waving over at her in congratulations.

Seulgi finds herself smiling back. She’s been smiling most of the night. The trophy sits where it has sat for hours in between her legs and it catches the dim light in just such a way that has her admiring it all over again and when her phone buzzes five minutes later and she sees that it’s from Irene she’s still smiling. It’s one text. It says:

I’m in my room 😊

She doesn’t bother with a response. Perhaps it would be best to ask but instead she stands and makes sure she’s still sober enough to walk in a straight line and bend down without throwing up and then having successfully confirmed this she picks up the enormous trophy and tucks it under her arm and staggers off toward the stairs up to Irene’s room on the third floor. It takes her a slight longer than usual, her heart racing and her hands shaking and her head spinning. The lights seem a great deal brighter than usual. Even in the silent hallway she stops and listens and swears there’s something there, some outside noise or influence, but it’s a trick of the slightly insober mind to conjure stranger fictions out of the truth.

The trophy feels a great deal heavier than it did on the podium hours ago. She stands in front of Irene’s door and sets it on the floor and holds her breath. She closes her eyes. Her hand stops just shy actually knocking. Thinking: Should I? Or should I leave her alone? Maybe she was just being nice. Will she say anything? Tell me how she feels? Will she be happy for me? She looked happy earlier.

After a moment she decides with alarming certainty that the best thing to do is just knock and see. The time between the sound of her knuckles rapping on the door and Irene answering feels like the span of her life. No longer is the championship the most important part of her day, or her season. Irene opens the door wide and looks at her, swaying ever so slightly, pretending she’s entirely sober and not caught somewhere between that and passing out drunk, a slight blush on her round cheeks, smiling an adorable smile and giggling to herself. Seulgi takes a minute to just look at her back. Standing there in the doorway. It seems doorways have become as much a part of their shared existence as any other tangible item or memory. Monaco and Korea last year. Countless other hotel rooms.

She’s wearing a casual black shirt and her hair is tied back and she looks at Seulgi and down at the trophy and there’s no indication of how she feels at all. Or perhaps there is and Seulgi is a bit too drunk to realise what it is. Thinking: Maybe I shouldn’t have had that last vodka cranberry. I should’ve just stuck to three.

‘Hi,’ she says.

Irene just looks at her. The glint in her eyes is unreadable, pride or mortal sadness or passion or something entirely different altogether. ‘Sorry if you wanted to be alone,’ Seulgi mutters. ‘I should’ve text you again. I didn’t know if you needed time to—’

She has no time at all to finish before Irene’s lips are on her and kissing her and pulling her into the room by the waistband of her jeans and nudging the door closed behind them with her foot and guiding Seulgi first to the wall and then toward the table and then to the end of the bed, kissing her all the while. She leans into it and runs her hands across Seulgi’s shoulderblades and down to the small of her back with such delicate care and practiced ease that Seulgi can only melt into her embrace. She smells of chocolate and perfume and vaguely of cranberries and maybe it’s from Seulgi’s own lips, her own breath. She pulls back and looks at Seulgi and cups her face and kisses her again and she’s smiling. When she lies on the bed and motions for Seulgi to lie against her chest she’s still smiling. Seulgi leaning on her and kissing her and shifting back and thinking: Hold this moment. Hold it forever. All life becomes is memories.

‘I thought you’d be mad at me,’ she says.

‘Mad?’

‘Because…you know.’

‘I’m so proud of you,’ Irene says with genuine adoration. ‘I knew you could do it. You just had to believe in yourself, is all. All this time, the past year and a half…this is what it’s been leading to – you showing the world that you’re the best.’

‘You’re the best.’

‘We’re the best.’

Seulgi looks at her. She holds up her hand and laces their fingers together. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘We’re the best.’

Irene shifts back against the headboard and leans in to kiss her and she pulls away and says, ‘Wait.’

‘What?’

‘I left my trophy in the corridor.’

‘Oh , yeah,’ says Irene, barely interested at all. And instead of voicing anymore concern she leans in and tries for another kiss, like a schoolkid having recently discovered the tactile joy of kissing for the first time.

‘I should go get it.’

‘Why?’

‘What if someone steals it?’

‘Who’s going to steal it? The only people in this hotel are other F1 drivers. It’s not exactly a long list.’

‘I don’t know,’ Seulgi says. ‘Maybe Joy might take it. Or Yeri might use it for something I probably don’t really want to know about.’

‘Can’t you get it later?’

‘It’s literally just there. I’ll be back in a second.’

The pout on Irene’s face has her reconsidering for a moment. Opening the hotel room door and grabbing the trophy and rubbing her throbbing head it occurs to her that she’s never seen Irene pout properly like that before and that has her giggling to herself.

‘What?’ Irene says, sitting up and crossing her legs on the bed. Seulgi sets the trophy down carefully on the table and takes a long look at it and smiles. ‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘I’m just happy, is all.’

‘Me too.’

‘Good.’

Irene motions for her to sit on the bed and she does. ‘You know,’ says Irene, ‘I really was kind of dreading it. Losing, I mean. I know it makes sense, because none of us want to lose and it’s very human to want to succeed all the time, but I was truly dreading it. Wondering if the past four months of convincing myself I’d overcome that hurdle in my life was going to be for nothing. And now it’s here and do you know what?’

‘What?’

‘I feel fine. Honestly just fine. Actually, I don't. That's a lie. Of course it is. If I'm being honest, losing does kind of , and I am kind of bummed out. But I thought it would be this overwhelming, crushing sensation, you know? And it's just not. I mean, yeah, I'd have preferred to win - I'm a racer at heart. A champion. But if anything, it’s like this massive weight’s been lifted from my shoulders. I don’t have to push myself to other people’s standards anymore. I don’t have to force anything. I know what I am and where I’m at and where you’re at, and I know I’ve still got the talent to beat you, and I know it’s going to be hard, and now that I’ve lost I know that I’m alright with losing. I can be myself now. And I think that’s all down to you, Seulgi. For helping me even when you didn’t know you were, and for being so supportive and understanding and mature and helpful.’

‘Anything else?’

Irene giggles, a low and content murmur in that has Seulgi’s heart doing flips. ‘I just love you,’ she says. ‘Love you so much.’

Seulgi takes a moment to study the room in amusement. On the bedside table are Irene’s Grand Prix trophies and lined neatly on the marble countertop in the en-suite kitchen are her four championship trophies and on the chair next to Seulgi’s own 2020 world championship trophy sits the enormous stuffed arcade bear with its head lolling over the backrest, looking about as drunk as Yeri had been. ‘You didn’t tell me you brought this with you,’ Seulgi says.

‘Why would I not bring it?’

‘You said it was too big. And too heavy.’

‘I didn’t say that. I just couldn’t be bothered carrying it all the way to yours. Getting a cab was easier. And it’s cute. I like it. Have you drank out of that yet, by the way?’

‘Out of what? Oh, the trophy?’

‘Yeah.’

‘No. Why would I do that?’

‘Are you kidding me?’

‘Have you?’

Irene nods.

‘All four of them?’

‘Yeah,’ Irene says. ‘Duh.’

‘But…why?’

‘It’s just tradition. You need to have some fun.’

‘As if you’ve just said that. Like, of all the people.’

‘Well, people change.’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi says, beaming. ‘You’re right there. Thank you. For all the support and everything else. Really, I mean it.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ Irene says. ‘Oh, that reminds me. I got you a present.’

She leans over the side of the bed and opens the big pullout drawer and produces a white box with a Tommy Hilfiger logo on it.

‘Is it shoes?’ Seulgi says.

Irene opens the box and takes out the sneakers. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Special edition.’ She turns them around and shows Seulgi the little logo of a cartoon bear on the heels. ‘I had them custom made for you.’

‘What’s the bear for?’

‘I thought it could be your logo.’

‘Why?’

‘You kind of look like a bear.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t know,’ Irene says, shrugging shyly. ‘You kind of do, in a cute sort of way. I mean, you look like a human, obviously, a gorgeous human. Very gorgeous human. But if I had to compare you to any animal at all, a bear would probably be my first choice. I thought that’s why you got me the stuffed one. To remind me of you.’

‘I just thought it would look funny watching you struggle to carry it around everywhere.’

‘Well.’

‘Thanks, though. I mean it.’

Irene looks at her in amusement. ‘How much have you had to drink?’ she asks.

‘Just a few. Maybe a few more than a few. But I’m not, like, drunk or anything. Just a bit tipsy. I’m still sober enough to…you know. Consent.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ Seulgi murmurs, blushing a slight. ‘But yeah, I’ve had a few.’

‘I can tell. You taste of cranberries.’

‘Do you want to come down and have a drink with me?’

‘I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we order room service?’

‘Can we do that?’

‘Don’t know,’ Irene says. ‘Probably. I just don’t want to move from here. I can’t be bothered. But if you really want to, I will. You’re the champ, after all.’

Seulgi just looks at her. It takes a long time for her to say what she wants to say next. ‘I was wondering if we could sit down and talk about us,’ she says in a small voice.

‘What do you mean?’

‘About our relationship. I just want to us make sure we’re on the same page about how we’re allowed to be out in public and how secretive we need to be and stuff like that. I don’t want either of us getting the wrong idea or hiding things or anything. I don’t want anymore of that. I think we’ve had enough of that for one year.’

‘I agree,’ Irene says. ‘But not tonight. You’re a bit too drunk and I’m a bit too tired and I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

‘We should get some champagne. Pour it in your trophy.’

‘We should.’

She shifts on the bed and leans into a long and loving kiss that has her head spinning. The room feels much smaller, Irene much closer, more intimate. She’s already giggling into it, a sort of childlike glee, the reality of her situation becoming readily apparent at the sight of the gold trophy with her name engraved on it sitting there on the kitchen table and the softness of Irene and the taste of her lips and the smell of her perfume and how right it all feels. ‘That was a great race,’ she mumbles absently.

‘Yeah. How many people finished?’

‘Like, eight. And we lapped everyone.’

‘Not too shabby for a washed-up has-been and a reckless amateur, right?’

‘Guess not,’ Seulgi says. ‘Almost like a double victory out there.’

‘I know what you mean. Remember when you said you were terrible in the rain? In Belgium last year?’

‘Yeah. I was stupid back then.’

‘Or maybe you were terrible. And now you’re not. Maybe you’ve just grown.’

‘Could be,’ Seulgi says. ‘Did you ever name your car?’

‘No. I decided I couldn’t beat Reve, and so I left it.’

‘I love you,’ Seulgi says, out of the blue and entirely unprompted and grinning like an idiot. ‘This is exactly how I wanted my life to go. It feels like a bit of a dream.’

‘Best get used to it. Oh, and can you remind me to talk to Yeri before we leave in the morning?’

‘Sure. If I remember myself. Why?’

‘I’ve got something I need to ask her.’

‘You could go do it now, if you wanted. She’s still downstairs.’

Irene thinks about it for a moment. Then she says, ‘Is she…you know.’

‘What?’

‘In a state to talk?’

‘No. I’m not sure she’s even in a state to survive.’

‘Well then. Best leave it until tomorrow. Assuming she survives, of course.’

‘Thank you,’ Seulgi says again. ‘For everything.’

‘Any time. I’m always here for you.’

It isn’t until midday the day following, when they’ve already packed their belongings and are heading out to wait for their cab driver, that they remember to talk to Yeri. It doesn’t take long to find her. She’s sat in the bar and she looks almost identical to the night before, hair tangled and unkempt, face pale and distant, eyes red and sleepless, only this time she’s dressed in a set of white Samsung pyjamas and a Samsung cap in a poor attempt to hide her face. She’s sat by the window with the blinds closed and a backpack in the seat beside her and something that isn’t quite coffee steaming in a ceramic cup on the table. Irene and Seulgi take a minute to just observe her from the door. Like a test subject in a dangerous experiment, a creature with significant radioactive potential. Or like something drawn up from the bottom of a lake, a terribly old fossil, left out to rot in the sun.

She only notices them when they’re almost in front of her. The look in her eyes says nothing much at all and the way she turns her head is with some great mechanical difficulty, hundreds of years out of date, as if she might be reduced back into some primal form of subsistence at any given point in the near future.

‘Jesus,’ Irene says, ‘the ing state of you.’

‘Rude,’ Yeri croaks.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Can you keep your voice down, please? I have – and I’m not exaggerating at all here, I promise you – the worst headache in the history of all of humankind. By some margin, too. That night at Mint? All those whiskeys we had? Baby stuff compared to this. There are torture victims that would consider this a greater misery. You could crack my head open like an egg and take out what’s left of my brain and it would be an improvement on the pain I’m feeling right now.’

‘Nice.’

She looks down at the cup in her hands and groans and very slowly holds it up to her lips, like a mutant on the verge of inevitable death. The steam coils about like a little wispy moustache. ‘It’s green tea,’ she mutters, still sounding half drunk. ‘They say it’s good for hangovers. Good for your stomach, too.’

‘Well? What’s the verdict?’

‘The verdict is that whoever said that was either a clever bull artist or high out of their damn mind, because I still feel like I want to be dead.’

‘You are such a drama queen.’

‘You should’ve seen the amount I drank last night, then you’d understand. Right, Seulgi?’

Seulgi only shrugs. ‘I was gone early,’ she says. ‘But I did see you passed out at the bar.’

‘Oh, that was the start of it. Then I woke up. And then…well. Let’s just say that if I ever hear the words “whiskey” or “sour” again in my life, it’ll be too soon.’

‘At least you had fun.’

She makes a face as if to call the truth of this into question and says, eyes closed and lips barely moving, ‘I’m glad you’re here, actually. I had something I wanted to tell you. Well, tell Irene. But whatever. Three’s company.’

‘You mean two’s company. Three’s a crowd.’

‘Whatever. The point is I wanted us to sit down and chat.’

‘I wanted to talk to you as well. It’s about your contract.’

‘No need. I was gonna talk about the same thing.’

Irene and Seulgi glance at each other. Slowly Yeri continues, as if any sort of excitement or more urgent pace will serve only to shatter her into a thousand pieces. She opens to begin speaking and somewhere in the kitchen the sudden sound of ceramic clinking together has her wincing and closing her eyes. ‘I’ve been meaning to say this for a while,’ she says eventually. ‘I’m leaving.’

‘In this state? Hope you’re not driving.’

‘No, I mean leaving leaving.’

‘Leaving what?’

‘I’m leaving Samsung.’

‘What?’

‘Yeah. Should’ve probably told you before, but I was still figuring things out. I only told them myself yesterday after the race, when they were telling me very politely that I needed to either sign on the dotted line or get out. So, yeah.’

Irene is quiet a moment, locked in the process of trying to formulate a proper response. All she can manage is, ‘Are you serious?’

‘Yeah.’

‘But why? I mean…yeah. Why?’

‘Couple of reasons, really.’ She puts the cup down and rubs her head and looks at them with a soft and hungover smile. ‘I want to forge my own path,’ she says. ‘I want to be my own person. And I was never going to accomplish that at Samsung. As long as you were there, I’d be relegated to being the number-two driver, helping you get the wins where needed, occasionally sneaking one or two in for myself, being the backup. The support role. I’d be the sort of person they’d describe in the media as “Talented, but not outstanding.” Or maybe “Sometimes brilliant, often not.” A B-level player. Don’t argue. You know I’m right.’

Irene is silent.

‘Anyway, that’s the gist of it. No hard feelings towards you or anything. I’m not entertaining any sort of delusion or anything like that. I know why it’s the way it is – because right now you’re better than me. But I want to make something of myself and I think I’ve got more of a shot of that elsewhere, because I’m not forced to live in your shadow and I’m not being constantly compared to you. Like I said, no hard feelings. It is what it is. I’m not one of these people that can look at a third-place finish and think, “You know what? That’s good enough for me.” I want to win. I think I’ve got the talent to make that a real possibility. And it’s gonna be real sad leaving Samsung. I’m gonna miss you a lot more than you know. I feel like we’ve become real good friends over the past few years, and the past few months especially. But we’ll still see each other all the time. It’s not like I’m retiring or anything.’

‘What are you doing, then? I’ve heard nothing about this. Where are you going?’

Yeri smiles again, eyes closed, a modicum of excitement having finally surfaced from amid an ocean of misery. With all the grace and speed of an elderly lady she reaches into her backpack and pulls out a small creamcoloured envelope and hands it over to Irene. ‘Inside,’ she mumbles, sniffing. She watches as Irene takes out the letter inside and unfolds it and reads it silently and Seulgi reads it over her shoulder and then Yeri watches in modest amusement the look on their faces the longer it goes on. She waits for Irene to reply and Irene, eventually, after reading it twice, does.

‘Ferrari?’

‘Yeah,’ Yeri says.

‘You’re joining Ferrari?’

‘That’s what it says, isn’t it?’

‘When did you manage this? When was all this sorted?’

‘Very recently. Like, days ago.’

‘And you never told me?’

‘I was planning to, but I didn’t want to distract you before the race. I knew how important it all was.’

‘What about the guys at Ferrari?’

‘Both leaving,’ Yeri says. ‘But keep that on the down low. Only a select few know right now. And if anybody finds out before they make it public…well, it wasn’t me that told you.’

‘They’re both leaving?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And going where?’

‘I dunno. To race in DTM, maybe. Or WEC. Or Blancpain. Or V8 supers. Maybe they’ll pull a Vettel and just flat out retire. Not my concern. Not my job.’

Irene looks at the letter again in disbelief.

‘I’ve had about five separate meetings in the last five days with them,’ Yeri says. ‘And let’s just say their plans for next year’s car have convinced me they’ll be back at the front of the field. It’s looking like a redemption year for the boys from Italy. They’re really confident about it. Or at least they sounded confident when talking to me about it. And I can be the number-one driver there. No more playing in shadows. Not that I hold a grudge or anything, or that I’m jealous. You’re cool. Much love for you.’

‘Ferrari,’ Irene mumbles.

‘I think I’m gonna look pretty good in red, don’t you?’

She spends a long time formulating a response. She passes the letter to Seulgi and Seulgi reads it a third time and nods and hands it back to Yeri. ‘I can’t say I expected this,’ says Irene. ‘But I’m happy for you. Really, I am.’

‘Thanks. Me too. I’ve got a feeling next year is gonna be the best year yet.’

‘Me too,’ Seulgi says from over Irene’s shoulder with an adorable grin. ‘Call it a hunch of mine.’