Until my Last Breath

92

Tokyo, Japan

The sky is the same color it was that day.

A dull grey, heavy and thick. The clouds move lazily, not quite threatening, but not promising mercy either. It doesn't rain - not yet - but the scent is there. In the wind. In the soil. In my bones.

It smells like October 2014.

My boots crunch softly on the gravel as I step out of the hotel lobby. The air is cool and damp, like the breath of a sleeping city still wrapped in its dreams. But Suzuka isn't asleep - it's watching. Buzzing. Moving. Alive.

And scattered across the city like petals are red and white flags. Photos. Murals. Candles still flickering in glass jars, even in daylight. Someone has written "Merci Jules" on a café window in bold cursive, and another wall is covered in images of him smiling in his helmet. At the park gates, a small statue of him stands under the sakura trees - the ones just beginning to shed. The leaves fall gently onto his shoulders, like the world is trying to hug him back.

It's not for the media. Not a PR thing. You can feel it.

It's real. The people remember him.

I stop walking and just stand there. Watching.

My lungs don't quite fill all the way.

I didn't expect this much love. This much warmth. It fills something in me - but it opens something too. The wound is deeper than I thought.

My phone buzzes in my pocket.

Charles- Come up, we're all in the suite. Maman made eggs and is threatening to cry if you don't eat.

I almost smile.

Almost.

The hotel suite smells like coffee and warm bread when I step inside. And laughter - the kind that always lingers after a family's been together for more than ten minutes. Arthur is the first to look up from his seat at the long breakfast table, grinning.

"And the diamond of the paddock finally makes it."

"I'm jet-lagged, not dead," I mutter, dropping my bag near the wall. But I allow myself to be pulled into hugs. Pascale is already beside me, arms tight and maternal, pressing her cheek against mine and whispering, "You're doing amazing Riri."

I swallow a lump and nod into her shoulder.

There's something about being surrounded by the Leclercs - all of them - that makes me feel like I'm ten years old again, waiting outside the garage for Jules to finish a press conference, with Charles at my side throwing bits of gravel at my shoes. It's that mix of familiarity and comfort and the ache of what's missing.

They talk. Eat. Arthur plays music from his phone. Pascale fusses over the croissants. But I don't say much.

I just sit there with a coffee in my hands, staring out the window as Suzuka wakes up below. The cars are already beginning to fill the roads. Fans walking, some wearing red, others waving tiny flags. There's a screen on a nearby rooftop playing footage from years past - I glance up just in time to see my own face flash across it from my Red Bull debut. Then Jules. Then Charles's win in Silverstone.

Time, spinning all at once.

There's a heaviness inside me that hasn't lifted since I boarded the plane.

A fresh wound carved into the old one. I haven't even had the chance to grieve what I lost before walking into the place that took the first piece of me. It's like my heart doesn't know which way to hurt.