A Hybrid of Life and Gasoline | 命とガソリンのハイブリッド

Part 35 | AWD

That Saturday. A group of racers in the Geo Timer discord turned up to a meeting at Oshito FamilyMart. It was the usual suspects who had a lot of free time. Norio and Iori were there as well.

"Hey, Yamada-san, Hattori-san." Shogo, the young university student in the brown Demio, came up and called them while both were standing together.

"What is it, Ya-kun?" Iori replied with a friendly smile.

"I was just wondering, shouldn't this 'Gunma Wolf' guy turn up already, considering he's in our group now?"

"I wouldn't know, Ya-kun." Iori replied with a sheepish smile.

"Calling out Wakisaka-san like that, he's gunning for him, right?" Shogo asked, and both Iori and Norio couldn't agree more.

"Of course." Norio nodded and replied, Shogo was slightly nervous as he saw what Norio did a week back, but realized pretty quickly that he was okay most of the time.

What none of them were expecting was for that exact conversation to be a call for 'Gunma Wolf', as an unknown car turned up in the parking lot not long after.

The black Toyota GR Yaris looked menacing, it was obvious that this car was damn fast even just observing from afar. Iori and Norio couldn't help but be quite a bit nervous about it.

The driver's door opened, and a man in his early 30's stepped out. Norio noticed that he didn't have a particularly distinctive feature on his face, and was not particularly tall or short either. The way he dressed was unremarkable too, a white t-shirt and a pair of jeans. The only thing Norio could see that stood out was the way this man moved. He had a certain poisedness to it, like he was in the Defense Force, or similarly disciplined job.

The man saw the group, and immediately walked over to have a chat.

"Ah, good evening." The man greeted everyone there, he looked polite enough as he slightly bowed.

"Good evening." Everyone replied, doing the same.

"You guys are the Geo Timer users right?" That man continued, and it surprised everyone as he was asking so directly.

The group was anticipating the next word from this guy, even if they already knew what he was going to say.

"Well, I'm Sunao Morita, you know me as 'Gunma Wolf'. I'm looking for 'TowaWaki39'. Do any of you happen to know where I can meet him? I tried to message but he didn't reply."

"Oh, you're 'Gunma Wolf'?" Iori was acting surprised.

"Hey, brother! You drive fast, man!" A random racer shouted excitedly.

That actually made the atmosphere seem lighter. Iori's nervousness lifted when she saw that Sunao Morita was, there's no other way to describe him, just a normal guy. Like all of them there. He was also quite polite and without an air of ego that seemed to plague the street racer community elsewhere.

"Well, we've met the guy before, right?" Another racer interjected, obviously meaning Towa.

"Yeah, Yamada-san, Hattori-san, you guys know him, right?" The previous racer turned to them.

At that point, Sunao was looking at Iori and Norio, he was guessing they were the leader of the group from the way the racers describe them.

"Are you?" Sunao asked, pointing at Norio.

"Ah, yes, I'm 'Mister Banana'. Norio Hattori." Norio replied.

"And I'm 'Azusa-san'. You can call me Yamada." Iori then continued.

It seemed that Sunao was particularly surprised by the appearance of Iori, which was expected, but he didn't care much about that other than them being the administrator of the group.