APEX ‹𝟹 LIPSOUL

One

"She's more nervous than she's ever been in her life, but it's a good nervous. It's a nervous she hasn't felt before. It's the kitewire in her stomach, the butterflies turning and righting and telling her to keep her head up and smile and pretend she isn't nervous at all. Pretend she isn't about to step into a multi-million dollar car for the very first time and ignore all the possible things that could go wrong and perhaps still might. She's done it thousands of times in training, but training is just that. Training is expensive simulators and virtual reality headsets and motion-sensitive seat arrangements. Training isn't the real thing, no matter how much she wishes it were.

'We're here,' her driver says. He smiles at her through the rearview mirror and she smiles back. It a reassuring look but it doesn't do much. She doesn't even know if the guy driving her is part of their team. If she's being honest she knows a lot less than she thinks is necessary. She opens the door and steps out into the cold January day in the parkinglot and waves at the driver as he pulls the car around and drives off. The building in front of her looks a lot cheaper than she remembers it being last time. No enormous radio towers or state-of-the-art glass complexes or anything remotely of the sort. Just a small office and a garage and the test track beyond. She listens to the wind a moment. The sun is small against the back of her neck. She stands there for a while not quite knowing what to do or where to go. It occurs to her that the only instructions Haseul gave were Turn up and Don't get lost. But a minute later the front door of the office opens and Haseul steps out and offers her a smile and draws her in for a hug.

'Jinsoul,' she says. 'Didn't get lost, then?'

'Guess not.'

She's already wearing her engineer's overalls, the grey uniform jumpsuits with wings of red and gold down the arms and black patches on the shoulders and the tire-and-wings combination logo on the chest bearing the words APEX MOTORSPORT. 'Come on,' she says. 'Let's get you started.'

'Already?'

'There's no time to waste. Why, you scared or something?'

Jinsoul only beams. 'Never,' she says. 'I'm as ready as I'll ever be.'

'That's what they all say.'

'Yeah, well. They're not all me, are they?'

Haseul takes her through the offices room by room, introducing her to a various host of faces she knows she should be remembering but isn't. People all dressed in Apex uniforms sat around computer screens and tablets and typing away and listening through earpieces to conversations Jinsoul isn't privy to. They wish her good luck. Tell her to break a leg. She thinks if she's not careful on the corners she might just do that.

Out in the garage she takes a good look at the car for the first time. It isn't the first Formula 1 car she's ever seen, not even close. Jinsoul likes to think of herself as something of a fanatic, and the noticeboard in her room at home with the ticket stubs of eight consecutive Korean Grand Prix attendances is pretty supportive of that. She's got pictures with all of them. A 2007 picture of her smiling with Lewis Hamilton. Felipe Massa on the podium in '08. Vettel's only championship win in 2011. And a distant picture from the stands of Korea's only championship winner, Kim Jungeun, smile playing on her rather attractive face, damp with sweat and hair all matted and wetlooking and a rosetinted blush on her cheeks and her hands hoisting the 2018 Korean Grand Prix trophy high above her head. Jinsoul remembers that weekend very clearly. She remembers standing there seven days after reading the contract sent to her in the post and thinking: That could be me next year. That really could be me.

'Well,' Haseul says. 'What do you think?'

She spends a long time taking it all in. From that close there's something different about it she can't quite explain. It looks inhuman. How low and long it is, the sleekness of the body, the vaunted slats along the front wing, the spoiler at the rear. It looks like something devised from the smoking lobes of a madman. She paces around the car a couple times and back again. Her hand runs along the cool carbonfibre and the inside of the monocoque and down the back of the seat. Her seat.