A still gloom grips the streets of Sapporo, the dark yet to fade. A blanket of white muffles the city ambience and spreads silence in its wake. It seemed like only yesterday that the sun was still warm, the days still long...but it has lost this territory. Winter has begun. Hokkaido welcomes its first proper snowstorm of the season—and not at all with open arms. Reina’s are tight to her waist, shivering as she walks the dark road down to the shop.
“Brrrr... This is just miserable...”
It never gets better, no matter how many winters she lives through up here.
Reina shuffles through the dark, the short trek to the shop feeling like miles as the cold pierces her old jacket. What she wouldn’t give to just be bundled up at home instead, letting the snow and wind come and go before venturing outside again...
But time marches on. University isn’t waiting for her—she’s coming up on the end of the semester, whether she wants to or not.
Eventually she reaches the shop, not yet open for the morning rush. The garage door opens just a hare slower today... The cold stifles its power supply. Everything, living and not, is slow and lethargic in the face of winter’s might...even the prized heirloom greeting her inside.
“We’ve never had to drive her out in the winter like this... I hope she starts...”
The unfortunate reality of owning a classic muscle car is that they are not, and were never meant to be daily drivers. The drag strip is their natural habitat, not the shuffle of traffic. What few articles remain from the olden days are most often garage princesses, only brought out to stretch their legs precious few times a year—and their owners know why. When forced out of their element, and into the role of a regular car, their many, many flaws are exposed. The Road Runner is a brilliant machine, but a terrible commuter: loud, bulky and impractical at every turn...
And critically on this December morning, it absolutely despises the cold.
Reina tries to calm herself down as she unlocks the cold metal door. It almost stings to the touch. Her commute has been an increasing struggle over these last few weeks: as the mercury drops, so too does the Road Runner’s energy. It’s not something the garage princesses ever have to worry about, all tucked in and hibernating for the winter...but the Road Runner doesn’t have that luxury anymore.
She eases the door shut behind her. The silence is deafening. This has become an unwelcome morning ritual.
“Alright, car...” Reina rests her hand on the wheel and takes a deep breath. “I know you’re cold, but you’ve gotta wake up for me, okay? We can’t be late today...”
The cold start problem has been solved for decades. Modern cars come equipped with onboard computers that do the delicate deed of balancing the air and fuel mixture in the engine, compensating for the imbalance caused by cold temperatures. As long as the battery has enough power, the car does the rest for you.
But the Road Runner is an unsophisticated beast. The frigid engine needs lots of gas, lots of compression and lots of power from the battery...and with no electronic aids to take the guesswork out of the equation, it falls to Reina to get the mixture just right.
She pulls the choke out halfway and slots the key in the ignition. The fuel pump groggily hums to life, trying to break the silence. Reina eases her left foot onto the clutch pedal, and her right onto the throttle, giving the car four pumps of gas to encourage it to start. With her fingers crossed, she twists the key...
“Please start...”
The starter begins to turn, slow and lethargic, struggling to wake up the groggy V8 after spending the weekend dormant. The engine groans. The headlights flicker. It wants to fire up, but it’s cold and tired... There’s too much air and not enough fuel. All the engine can do is whine and whine in vain as it struggles with the cold oil and the weak battery.
“You can do it, baby, come on...”
Reina knows to be patient—the engine is out of its element. She gives the car a few more seconds to try and start, before letting go of the key and letting silence reclaim the garage. She must not have the mixture right.
(Okay, little more gas...) She has to be careful with how much she pumps the throttle. Too much gas and she floods the engine—too much fuel, not enough air. Clearing that flood is a lengthy procedure, and she knows all too well that time is money. Erring on the side of caution, she gives the gas pedal two more ginger pumps, settling down halfway on the gas.
She turns the key again, her nervous breaths fogging up her glasses. She can feel the car struggling... It wants more power, but the battery has nothing more to give—and all it has to show for its effort is a thin, wispy cloud of white seeping out the tailpipes. She can’t smell unburned fuel, at least—the telltale sign of a flooded engine—so she can only assume that the car needs yet more gas. It needs all the help it can get.
“We can’t do this today, car. You have to start!”
Once more, the hummingbird echoes throughout the garage. The falling flakes outside taunt her just beyond her reach, the open door beckoning for her to exit...but she can’t.
“Come on, come on, come onnn...” Impatience starts to creep into her body, making its way down to her foot. She starts pumping the pedal while the engine weakly cranks, trying to give it the encouragement it needs. Her worn pants gently rustle against the leather of the seat, legs stretching as she gives the pedal all she can muster. The occasional surge rocks the engine, signs of life trying to emerge; she has to try and capitalize on that as much as she can.
But not yet. This attempt has gone on too long, and the battery is starting to wane. She lets off the starter again, resting herself against the back of the cold bench seat. A heavy sigh escapes her lips.
“I’ve really gotta get this thing tuned for winter. There’s gotta be something I can do...”
For now, though, all she can do is try and try again. She gives the engine yet more pumps of gas, her old shoe creaking as it presses against the pedal. After pulling out even more choke, she twists the key again. All the lights on the dash go dark, the battery siphoning all power from the rest of the car to try and keep the starter going.
“Come on, baby...” She’d settle for a sputter, even—anything to get some combustion, some heat in the engine bay. She can feel the energy draining from the car, the headlights getting dimmer, the starter turning slower...
But mercifully, her wish is granted in the nick of time: one of the cylinders finally manages to fire. The brief pop rattles the exhaust and shoots soot out onto the floor of the garage. A sad, weak display...but all the same, it’s progress.
“Oh! That’s it, you can do it!” She pulls out the choke a little more. She does not want too much choke—she made that mistake one cold morning last week, and the result was a dead battery. With ginger steps, she pumps more and more gas into the waiting engine...
*RRRrrrRRRrrrrRRR-PUTT! PUTT!*
“She’s trying. She’s really trying...” She’s almost got the mixture down. The Road Runner tries desperately to start, intermittent surges and splutters jittering the whole car. The starter whines in peaks and valleys, the cylinders in a tug of war with the waning battery. Cold white smoke wafts from the exhaust, the tension palpable in the air.
Reina pulls out the choke just a little bit more. The engine responds with an immediate misfire, prompting her to let go of the key and try to rev the 611. Alas, all she gets is that one brief sign of life before the engine falls silent again. A common tease.
“I’m getting closer. She wants to go...” Her next twist of the key confirms that. The car immediately begins to buck and misfire, prompting her to pump even faster.
...But this turns out to be a mistake. The smell of unburned fuel assaults her nose.
“Shoot, no no no!” She immediately pushes the choke partway back in to try and save the mixture, holding the throttle all the way down. She gets a brief sputter as a reward, but the engine falls back on the starter just as soon.
It’s getting harder and harder not to panic. She knows she’s getting close, but it’s such a delicate balance to strike... She’s already late, but she has to salvage what time she can.
“This time, car. You’ve gotta start for me...” She gives the key one more twist. The seconds of dry, fruitless cranking give her a sinking feeling, as if all her progress was undone by that close call...
But then, another splutter. A brief surge. A tease that she just might get the car to start after all.
“Oh, almost, come on, come on!” A couple of the cylinders are awake now, trying to convince the rest to wake up from their malaise. The tailpipes tremble, the whole car jittering in place as those thousand-plus trapped horses beg to break free. She tries to pump in sync with the engine’s staccato sputters, leaning in so close that her chest is almost touching the steering wheel.
“Pleeease...!”
Finally, after a long, hard-fought struggle, she can feel the engine coming alive. She keeps the key held as the starter’s cadence devolves into a chaotic, staticky rev...and then:
*VVRRRRMMMMM!*
Reina lets out a yelp of relief, her hands covering her face as she reclines against the seat. She was about a minute or two away from having to call in sick for the day’s lectures...and this is the very start of the cold season.
“That was too close... Don’t scare me like that, car.”
The Road Runner shivers as it tries to idle, cold smoke surrounding the car’s tail. It feels so...weird. The Road Runner was always this almighty, invincible thing when she was growing up; now that she’s trying to daily drive it, she’s exposed a vulnerable side to it that she’s never seen before. The sobering reality sets in: this is the concession she has to make if she wants to daily drive this car...if she wants to be the nail that sticks out.
“Geez... First I break my arms shoveling snow yesterday, and now I just had a leg workout too. This is tiring work...” The engine responds to her bellyaching with a brief surge before it settles back down into its usual low idle.
“...Well, I guess it’s only fair. I’m making you work hard too, after all.” She’s still proud of the old thing for beating the elements...or some of them, at any rate. That was arguably the easy part: now that she has the engine started, she has to get to uni downtown through the snow and ice. It’ll be a difficult journey, but one she can’t avoid.
Maybe some music would help. Reina turns on the CD player; the last disc she had in there, a vintage Steve Miller Band album, takes it from the top and tries to calm her down.
“Okay...let’s go.” She wrenches the car into gear, making sure to push the choke back in so the car doesn’t stall later down the line. After minutes upon minutes of doing battle with the engine, she’s finally ready to start her commute.
Whether it goes uphill or downhill from here, she has no idea.
***
The sun finally peeks above the horizon in a doomed attempt to reclaim Sapporo. It does little to melt the snow, its rays too weak—no, the morning commuters will not have the luxury of snow-free roads on their way to work. Predictably, it’s mayhem out there.
But before Reina can even think about diving into the jungle of traffic, she has to get out of the neighborhood first. She commands the shivering car out into the morning gloom, leaving tracks in the snow as it crosses the infested parking lot. Slow and steady, she reminds herself. Like you’re driving on eggshells...
Reina eventually meanders her way through the sea of white, and pokes the Road Runner’s nose out onto the open road. They haven’t plowed her side street yet, and while she did get the lot cleared yesterday, yet more powder has taken its place. All four tires stand inches deep in snow. Reina looks both ways; there’s nobody coming.
(Can I get some grip here...?) She feathers the throttle, trying to use the Road Runner’s monstrous torque to its advantage...but as she feared, the old tires are a poor match for the powder plaguing the pavement. She bites her lip as she hears the wheels spinning, clumps of snow thrown clear behind the car.
(No, of course not...)
She’ll have to get a running start at it. She grabs the shifter and orders the car to retreat, finding just enough grip the way it came. It’s hard to tell whether the red on her cheeks is from the cold or from the embarrassment... It’s something unpleasant, at any rate.
“Come on, car, it’s just the driveway. We can do this.” She’s impatient, but she can’t be angry at the old car. She’s the one forcing it where it doesn’t belong.
The Road Runner backs up into its own puffs of smoke, its taillights like red, angry eyes piercing through the fog. Reina feathers the throttle to find the sweet spot—she needs all the speed she can get with however much grip she has. She angles herself so she doesn’t overshoot the road and plow into the earth beyond it. Now or never, she realizes... The road’s not gonna just come to her.
“Okay, here we go...” She feels the car shudder, the tires spin. The snow doesn’t want to let go of her, but eventually, the sheer horsepower wins out. This is the most frightening that twenty miles an hour has ever been.
“Wh-Whoa...!” She’s on the road in seconds, but now she has to get the wheels pointed straight—she’s drifting toward the edge of the road she feared. She wrenches the steering wheel to the right and feathers the gas; she doesn’t dare touch the brake for fear of locking up. Her heart is racing, but time is standing still—she feels like she’s stuck in limbo for an eternity before the car finally responds. In the nick of time, the Road Runner finds a faint hint of grip, throwing up a spray of snow in its wake. Reina lets slip a sigh of relief... She has made it about a hundred feet from the garage. Only miles and miles to go.
“At least we’re moving now. That should make things easier—“
She spoke too soon. She caught the stop light right as it’s about to turn red. Just as soon as she got going, she has to stop again—and with the momentum she’s built up, stopping a two-ton car is no easy task.
“Whoa! Easy, car, easy!” No ABS means she has to pump the brake in an awkward rhythm, or she risks locking up the tires and plowing right into the intersection. Knuckles white, she grips the wheel and grimaces as she tries to stop in time...
“Phew! Don’t scare me like that, girl...”
She has mere feet to spare. She’s lucky no cars were coming yet, or that could’ve given her a heart attack.
The Road Runner, discombobulated, pops and grumbles as it waits for its turn. It’s still idling higher than it should—the temperature is really getting to it. Reina pays close attention to it, making sure it doesn’t conk itself out.
The legions of cars lazily pass by... She wishes it were so easy. They barely have to worry about the snow at all, with their ABS and their EFI and their traction control... Winter is an afterthought for them. She has to plan out her every move in advance: as the traffic dies down, and Reina senses the light about to turn green, she shifts back into first and tries to crawl her way up to the intersection...
But alarmingly, she can’t find any grip here either. The light turns green, and she’s going nowhere fast. Tick, tock, tick.
“Shoot, not here! Come on, come onnnn...!”
The Road Runner slips and slides in place, trying in vain to make the turn. All that weight up front makes it all the harder for the rear tires to plant down in the snow, anchored by its own signature engine. She feels the Road Runner’s sheer torque trying to free its hulking frame, inching forward only to fall back again. All that power and nowhere to go...
“We’ve gotta get going, baby, please...!”
She realizes this isn’t working. She’ll have to back up and try another running start. Thank God there’s nobody behind her, or she’d be completely stuck.
Taking care not to feed the car too much gas, Reina eases the car backward as gently as she can. Unlike last time, the snow doesn’t take kindly to her retreat whatsoever; she barely gets anywhere before the tires start slipping again. She doesn’t have nearly enough space yet. The front wheels peek left and right, trying to find some grip elsewhere on the road, but all Reina gets for her effort is a spray of powder up along the sides of the car. She turns her head back in dread to find one of the rear tires buried in snow, suspended helplessly in its grip.
Immediately she tries to correct the error, working first gear like a tightrope. The right-rear tire spins uselessly in place, throwing up snow in its attempts to break free; the aftermarket limited-slip works overtime to try and feed torque to the one good tire left. She can hear the supercharger whining, as if the car’s voicing its displeasure. It aches, but she has to keep going.
“You’re almost free, just move up a little more! Come on, you can do it...!” The one good tire screams for mercy, but after getting a massive shot of torque, it finally manages to dig into the powder and find some grip underneath. The whole car groans as it lurches clear of the rut—and as an act of mercy, the light turns green just in time for her second approach.
“Thank you, goodbye, I’m gone!” Reina is beyond relieved to bid that unpaved nightmare goodbye. Route 230 is still slippery, but it’s paved and what snow remains is packed down right; she takes the intersection slow and steady, giving herself a wide berth to make the turn. To the other cars on the road, it’s a bizarre, anachronistic sight... It’s a sore thumb in this otherwise normal morning.
But Reina doesn’t have the energy to care about how ridiculous she looks. She just wants to get downtown and get this awful commute over with.
(Add winter tires to the list of things this car needs...) The bills keep piling up. Properly winterizing this old thing won’t come cheap...but there’s no avoiding it this year. She’ll have to pay the piper one of these days—and the way it’s looking, she’ll have to do it sooner rather than later.
*sigh*
Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’, into the future...
***
The morning rush is in full swing. Cars aplenty criss-cross the spider’s web of roads stretching all over Sapporo and beyond. The shops are about to open; work starts at the top of the hour; the early bird university classes are already in session. Reina couldn’t catch the commuters napping today—she’s gotta wait in line just like them, the minutes rolling by like sheets of ice, flowing on the river.
At least she’s not shivering anymore. For all the Road Runner’s lack of creature comforts, it’s very good at making the cabin nice and toasty. It feels extra nice on a day like this.
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“Serves me right... I should’ve given myself more time.” Reina taps her finger on the steering wheel, counting the songs on the CD while she waits for the glacial dance of traffic to let her through. She’s missed her first class already; she’ll have to try and flag down the professor to ask what she missed.
She prides herself on punctuality—perhaps inherited from her mother. This stings.
Eventually, the river to her right and the mountain to her left both fade into the background, rows and rows of buildings taking their place. She passes by the train station on her way... Packed today, as usual. Few are in the mood to risk the snowy roads today, preferring the comfort of public transport. Reina has to admit, if all those commuters were out on the roads instead, the traffic would be far worse than it already is.
One more traffic light commands her to a halt. She grips the wheel just a little bit tighter as she pulses the brake, knowing how quickly things can get out of control. Mercifully, her tires find grip on the compacted snow and salt. It still drains her, knowing she has to do this pretty much every time... Her commute is a chore, but it’s never been a challenge like this.
“Not much longer to go... I might still be able to get there in time for my nine o’clock.”
She catches a glimpse of the fuel needle. It sits just above one quarter. She should have enough to get there and back today, but she tries to ease the engine’s complaints with some gentle reassurance.
“I know, baby, I know... I’ll get you some gas after class today, alright?”
There’s a flashy Subaru lined up beside her. The contract is almost comical: the tiny, unassuming hatchback is such a better fit for the conditions that it could leave her giant machine in the powder. When the light turns green, it goes gallivanting through the intersection, while Reina is left to slowly feather her way back up to speed. Slow and steady, she reminds herself.
“At least it’s always nice and comfy in here.” The bench seat may be hideously dangerous, but damned if it isn’t comfortable. She’s actually tempted to turn the heat down, despite the frigid flakes falling around her. For whatever reason, the heater just feels extra...hot today. Maybe it’s the contrast with the cold snap?
“...Wait. Hold on, something’s weird...”
She feels the Road Runner hesitating as she applies throttle—and it’s not the tires slipping; the engine itself seems to have lost some of its jump. The car’s warmed up now, and she remembered to push the choke back in. Reina quickly scans the gauges on the dash, her eyes wide with confusion...
“What the?!”
The temperature gauge immediately screams at her. It’s trudging up into the red zone, and fast. The Road Runner isn’t just warmed up; it’s overheating.
“Crap, I gotta stop, I gotta stop!”
Immediately the traffic morphs into a cage. She needs to find a gap in the bars to break free—and with the engine starting to protest, she doesn’t have much time to get to safety. Her eyes frantically dart all over the road, hazard lights flashing as she scrambles to find a place to pull over and park out of harm’s way. She puts the heater on full blast to buy her more time. Every second is precious.
“Come on, come on, come onnnn...!” She finds a sign for a parking lot ahead, and tries to navigate through the gridlock into the leftmost lane. She grimaces as she’s forced to cut off an errant car to get there. The blinkers will have to do as her apology.
Snow crunches beneath the tires as she finally pulls off the road. She can’t see the lines for the parking spaces, and she doesn’t care—she’s in too much of a hurry. She pulls forward and shuts the car off the second she’s in the spot.
Exhausted, Reina slumps against the back of the seat, her whole body deflating. She’s at a loss for words—what was supposed to be a normal commute has turned into a mess.
“What on earth happened to you...?”
The hood pops open, and Reina steps out into the frigid morning air, her coat doing little to dispel the cold. Flakes dance around her. The engine greets her with a cringe-inducing sizzle, faint wisps of smoke escaping from under the hood.
“Oh... Ohhhhh, dear.”
For better or worse, she immediately finds the culprit: the upper radiator hose has a crack smack dab in the middle. Pressurized coolant spews from the open slit, foiling the engine’s cooling system; it’s a good thing she managed to get stopped when she did, or the hose might not be the only thing broken. The Road Runner is incapacitated until she fixes it.
“Yup, that’s a blown hose...” Reina mulls over her options. None are particularly good.
“...Shhhhhit.”
All this driving in cold weather recently must have worn out the hoses. They can get brittle and crack when they cycle between hot and cold like that—and she was putting them through that twice a day, at least. She didn’t think they needed to be replaced all that soon...but they chose to remind her in the most dramatic way possible.
So now what?
“Okay, is there anything I can...” Reina tries to find something to catch the ongoing leak so it doesn’t drip onto the ground any further. The snow beneath the car is already being dyed a sickly shade of green.
Thankfully, there’s a box by the back seat—a part she picked up from a supplier downtown for a repair last week. It’ll have to do for now.
She manages to slide the box underneath the car, catching the dripping coolant; she scoops up the contaminated snow for good measure. Thankfully, it doesn’t look like any of it leaked onto the pavement below. Her relief only lasts for a moment, however... She needs to figure out where to go from here.
*sigh* “Well...I might as well just call in sick to school at this point. I’ve gotta try and get her back to the shop. I can’t just leave her here...”
She’s never seen the Road Runner like this before. She tried to ride as long as she could, tried to bring it with her into the future...and it just couldn’t do it. She can’t fit a square peg into a round hole. 40 years of baggage weigh it down at every turn—and now it’s all her burden to bear.
It reminds her of the decision she has to make. Father Time’s patience has run out.
“...Calm down, Reina. We’ll get through this. One day at a time... I can get this fixed.”
She has an idea for a quick, temporary fix. She doesn’t have any of the necessary parts in the trunk, but there’s an auto parts store a few blocks up the road. They should have the things she needs to make the fix—and that will hopefully hold up long enough to get her back to the shop. That’s the most she can do right now... Just roll with the punches, and if they knock her down, she has to find a way back up.
“I’ll be back in a bit, okay?” She looks back with a dejected frown as she makes for the store.
“Just hang in there...”
***
The brief walk to the store seems to stretch on for eternity. Every block, every street, every plodding step, Reina is hounded by the elements. They try to convince her that it’s just not worth it anymore. Leave the past behind, they whisper in her ear... You wouldn’t have to do all this if you weren’t so weighed down. Let this be the first breath of a new era—and the last gasp of the old.
...But Reina doesn’t stop. For lack of anything better to do, she soldiers on.
She eventually finds the auto store, having just opened for the day. She’s been here plenty of times for picking up basic parts on the cheap... She’s never been here like this before.
“Should be toward the back...”
She needs two things for her emergency fix: an insulator to patch up the leak, and a supply of coolant to refill the radiator. She knows exactly what to get on both counts—hose leaks are best patched with self-fusing silicone tape, and the radiator takes old-school antifreeze. She’s beyond relieved to find both of them in stock.
Without delay, she snatches the parts off the shelves and ponies up the cash. She doesn’t want to be in here any longer than she has to be—the clock is ticking, and she’s already conspicuous enough by default. She can feel their eyes following her out the door.
The stranded Road Runner watches the other cars go by. It’s a fish out of water—and out of coolant. It draws the occasional stare, an amused hum from passersby...but that’s all it is. It comes and goes like it was never there. All it can do is wait for its owner...
“Geez, this thing is cold...” And at last, she arrives. The can of antifreeze stings to the touch. She’s glad to finally put it down for a second, along with the roll of tape. Time to go to work.
“Okay, let’s see how we’re doing. I hope I didn’t lose too much, at least...” She pops open the hood, but before she dives into the engine bay, she checks the underside of the stricken car. Naturally the cardboard box is sopping wet, but it’s not letting any of the coolant through to the ground below, so thankfully, she doesn’t have to replace it. She can leave it there while she works with the cracked hose. And on that note...
“Oof. Yeah, this thing is really worn out.” Radiator hoses aren’t supposed to crunch like that. She can’t remember how old this set of hoses is, but either age or temperature has taken its toll on it—it’s soft and brittle to the touch. Coolant still drips from the crack, but the engine is at least cold enough now that she can work on it safely.
First, the tape. Reina dries off the hose as best she can, and then gets to work wrapping the leak in an obscene amount of tape. They call it Rescue Tape for a reason: it’s exactly what the car doctor ordered. After tense minutes of wrapping and cutting, the leak finally seems to stop; she can see a few specks of green still dripping from other parts the coolant splashed on, but the source of the outbreak is contained, for now.
“Hopefully that’ll get me back home...” Next comes topping off the radiator to make up for the coolant lost. You’re supposed to flush the whole system whenever you change the coolant, but that’s not the most feasible job in the world when you’re stranded in a parking lot away from your tools. All she can do is add the antifreeze to whatever’s still left in there, filling the radiator up to the neck and closing the cap shut.
It’ll have to work.
“That’s about as good as I’ll get it.” Reina surveys her handiwork. It’s not that she lacks the confidence; she just knows how important the job is. Coolant is serious business—and a botched radiator job can spell disaster.
The wind is picking up. She’s running out of time. Not wanting to inundate the engine bay with snow, she lowers the hood shut and leaves the rest in the Road Runner’s hands.
“Okay...” Reina tries to calm herself as she climbs inside. She pumps twice and holds it halfway down—the usual.
“I’m sorry, car... Can you start back up for me? I just need to get back home for today.”
She slots the key in the ignition, and gives it a nervous twist. The Road Runner slowly responds, trying to recapture the heat it needs to fire back up for her. The engine pants and sputters, still exhausted from its overheated workout.
“Please, please, pleeeease...” Reina can feel the engine struggling to start again... Reina hopes that it’s just cold and not damaged. She gives the car one more pump of gas to try and help it along, pulling the choke out ever so slightly. With that little nudge, the car finally corrals itself and grumbles to life.
*sigh* “Oh, thank God...” Reina lets the engine idle so it can try and thaw itself out. She pops the hood and briefly takes a look inside amidst a lull in the snow, giving the hose one more check to make sure it hasn’t started leaking again... Mercifully, the tape is holding up.
“Alright, let’s make this quick.” Contented, she hops back inside. “Just hold on a little longer for me, okay...?”
At last, the Road Runner moves again. Reina watches the temperature needle like a hawk as she joins the flock of traffic, keeping the heat on full blast and babying the throttle as much as she can. At the very least, traffic going out of the city isn’t nearly as cramped as traffic going in—she’s one of the few cars retreating in the morning rush.
She feels even more like a stranger when she goes against the grain—now everybody has to look at her as she drives by on the opposite side. Instead of feeling invisible, though, she feels like everybody can see through the Road Runner’s facade now... She just has to hope it’ll hold out a few miles more.
One more traffic light stops Reina before the packed commercial drag will let her leave. She takes the chance to check the car’s temperature...
“Good. That’s right where it should be.” She doesn’t feel the engine hesitating or sputtering either. The immediate symptoms have been treated...but she still doesn’t trust the car to handle the commutes ahead. Driving with a mended radiator hose is generally not a good idea—cracks breed cracks, and any fault in the hose gives the driver mere minutes to react. It pains her to admit, but the best course of action would be to sideline the Road Runner and order a replacement part. It’s just not worth the risk.
Yet another expense piling up on her back. The old car drags her down, a blessing and a burden in one.
It at least has enough strength left to get her back home. Route 230 whisks her away from the morning rush and into the familiar suburbs, the mountain watching over her as it always does. Clouds veil its upper half in gray... The top is somewhere up there, but she can’t see it anymore.
“Oh...” She lets out a wry chuckle as she returns to find her side road plowed. “Well, at least I won’t get stuck over there again.”
And finally, after an exhausting morning commute, Reina returns the Road Runner home. She makes the final turn into the big, empty lot, and opens the garage door to allow the old beast inside. She gave it her all out there, as did the Road Runner...but it just wasn’t meant to be today. They slink into the shop defeated.
“Hm...?” Uncle Naoto is heading up the midday shift by his lonesome. He cocks his head at the sight of Reina trundling back in; the company will be nice, at least.
“What’s up? Did they end up closing for the day or something?”
“No...” Reina shuts the door, making for the front of the car. “She blew a radiator hose. I got it patched up, but she’s gonna be out of commission for a while.”
“Oh... Yeah, shit, that’s...not great.”
Naoto pauses work on the big sedan he’s got on the lift, and walks over to inspect the damage. He actually appreciates the excuse to take a break—too long working on obtuse modern cars can make him a tad cranky.
“Yeap, I don’t blame you for that. Looks like she was leaking pretty good.” If the crack is close to the edge of the hose, you can try cutting it and refitting the hose, but he sees now that Reina didn’t have that option. This was the most she could do.
“Doesn’t look like anything else is hurt, though.”
“Yeah, once I taped it up and put new coolant in, she sounded okay. I don’t think there’s any damage to the engine. Just a really close call...”
“You go up to the Autobacs or something?”
“Yeah. I was close enough to walk.”
“Good call. Would’ve been a bit risky trying to get back here dry.”
(Man, poor girl though, walking in the snow like that...)
Naoto puts his hands to his hips and lets out a contemplative sigh. He has to agree with her assessment: driving with this fix is just asking for more trouble.
“I think I’ll go ahead and order a replacement. Hopefully it doesn’t take too long to ship...”
“What’ll you do in the meantime?”
Reina sighs. Perhaps the time has finally come to bite the bullet.
“...I guess I’ll just have to take the train for a while.”
Her saving grace; her nemesis. The train runs all day, every day, rain, shine or snow. It’s the perfect tool for commuters like her... It takes away all the guesswork, the responsibility of being out there on the roads.
She’s in no position to refuse. She has to just swallow her pride. This is the only way she’s going to pull herself back up.
“I’ll have to take it back into town later, anyway. I talked to one of my professors—she said I can make up a test I missed today. I’ll head up there and get that done once I clean up the coolant all over the place.”
“You sure...? Maybe there’s somebody you can carpool with or something.”
“I don’t know anybody off the top of my head...” She never did find it easy fitting in. “It shouldn’t cost me too much if I get a monthly pass or something.”
“Gotcha...” He sighs. She’s got it all figured out for today, but beyond that, she’s got an uphill battle ahead of her.
“I’m sure you’ll figure something out. You’re a smart cookie.”
“Yeah...”
Naoto wishes there were more he could do. He wishes Reina didn’t hold herself accountable for his brother’s misdeeds. It’s not a fair way of looking at it.
“Well, tell you what: I’ll cover you for tomorrow. You do what you gotta do, okay?”
“O-Oh... Are you sure? You don’t have to do that.”
“Don’t sweat it. I’ll be here a while anyway—got a Nissan over there with a CVT trying to go. Shocker, I know.”
Reina responds with a faint chuckle. “We should just become a Nissan dealership, then we’d be rich.”
He smiles. At least she’s still chipper enough to joke with him, just like old times.
At any rate, he knows she can trust her with the Road Runner’s repairs—if anybody knows that car inside and out, it’s her and her mom. He just has to do his part to help her along and lift her up as she navigates these confusing straits... Maybe some day, when she’s built up the confidence she needs, she’ll be the one to right his brother’s wrongs.
But that’s a long ways away. For now, he’s got a finicky transmission to service—and she has a sick Road Runner to tend to.
Time trundles on like molasses, the snow slowly piling up in the parking lot. Reina cleans the engine as best she can, working through all the nooks and crannies that the coolant soiled. Unfortunately, there’s nothing more she can do for today... They don’t make the exact parts for this car in Japan, being a 40 year-old American relic. She’s had to order them online, and it’ll be at least a week or two before they arrive. That means, for the time being, the Road Runner will sit helplessly in the shop while it awaits its hose transfusion.
The guilt gnaws at her... She tried to push it out of its comfort zone, and in the process, she broke it.
“Hey.”
She’s briefly startled by Uncle Naoto’s hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t beat yourself up, okay?”
“I...”
“These things just happen. It’s not your fault or anyone else’s. You got dealt a bad hand, that’s all there is to it.”
“And you’re making it work as best you can.”
She isn’t sure how Naoto was able to sense her thinking about that, but she appreciates it nonetheless. It’s just...
(Is that all I can do...?)
“Time heals all wounds. Once that new hose gets here, the old girl will be right as rain.”
She nods, trying to let his words comfort her.
“I think I’m done for today anyway... I’ve gotta get back to uni and get that test done.”
“You got this, Reina. We believe in ya.”
“Thank you...”
With that, Reina leaves the shop behind for today. Naoto will close in her stead—and the Road Runner will rest and recover. Hard to say how long it’ll be before it actually roams the roads again... Something had to give, and that was what let go first.
And yet, she gets back up to face it all again.
***
After a fierce battle, the sun finally retreats from its daily campaign, unable to pierce the gray shield looming over Sapporo. The muted monochrome sky fades to black, and the city lights flicker on to fill the void left behind. The evening rush clogs the streets all over town, bumpers staring daggers at each other as they wait in line for freedom.
And in the midst of it all, Reina’s day is done at last. She steps back out into the evening chill, leaving Hokkaido University’s engineering building for the night. She won’t be joining the gridlock on the streets, though... Instead, she retreats underground, where the future beckons with an electric hum. Ready or not, it glides on the tracks to meet her.
The subway epitomizes Japan’s commitment to efficiency and structure. Invisible on the downtown streets, yet it cuts through the city center like a knife. Where the cars above are locked in their holding pattern, the train rushes effortlessly from station to station. You can always count on it, rain or shine, to get you where you need to go.
This is the world Japan has built—the world everyone knows. Yet Reina has never felt like she truly belongs here.
It’s sterilized. It’s soulless. But she has to respect it for what it is: for the vast majority of people, transportation is only a problem to be solved, a box to check in their daily routine. It’s not lifeblood like it is for her. The trains run on time and without incident, their efficiency unmatched across the world—and without that, a flood of steel beasts would drown the concrete jungle each and every day. The future needs trains more than it does cars; small wonder, then, that Aikawa Auto is in decline.
But be that as it may, it’s not the real reason why she dislikes riding the train.
(Just find a seat and keep to yourself...) Whisper quiet. It’s only polite.
She finds an open seat, and tries her best to disappear into it. All around her are salarymen, students, shoppers...the typical crop of Japanese society. She doesn’t fit in among them. Her hair, her skin, her body all defy the order—and they always take notice. Their eyes train on her like cameras; some curious, some confused, some laced with a subtle scorn. “Ganguro” comes to mind, a fashion trend viewed by some as flippant and vain—discarding the Japanese spirit to chase gaudy Western aesthetics. But what is Reina to make of it? Japan is all she’s known, but Japan doesn’t know her.
The Road Runner, perhaps through its sheer brutishness, helps her feel better about herself. It doesn’t care what other people think about it; it doesn’t care to fit in. It is a titanic, ten-litre terror that takes cues from no one. Ironically, Reina fits right in behind the wheel of the beast—it exudes such confidence that it emboldens her to embrace herself.
But, being a nail that stuck out, the Road Runner got hammered down. Now Reina is next. She finds herself with an ultimatum from the future: you try to swim against the tide, to stick out among the crowd, and you won’t have it easy. Are you ready to make that choice?
Or will the future have to decide for you?
(...No. I can’t let this get to me.)
The past still means too much to her. Her family still means too much to her. To dilute the soul of the company—in the vein of her father—would be tantamount to spitting on her family’s legacy. She sees only a dead-end in that future. There has to be some way to translate their spirit into the future without tearing it apart. Some way to preserve the values that made them who they are...
But how?
(I just...don’t know yet.)
(I have to figure it out soon... I can’t wait any longer.)
The train breaches its concrete corridor and glides among the night sky. Snow tops the buildings like a blanket, the darkness overhead covered in a veil of faintly-gleaming gray. Somewhere up there in the night sky are the lofty ambitions of the auto company—her dreams from brighter days. Aikawa Auto once burned like the brightest star in Sapporo... Somehow, some way, she has to recapture that light.
It’s just hard to aim for the stars when all she sees above are clouds.
(...So where do I start?)
A flickering flame still burns within her. A passion for all things cars; a deep respect for her family; a desire to make them proud. Those form the core of who she is.
She must kindle that flame so that it may forge her path forward. She needs a vision, an idea, a solution for the company’s problems—and the confidence to see herself through. That is what she lacks, compared to her mother and grandmother...and if she wants to live up to their examples, she’ll need to find the strength they held.
The strength to stick out.
The cold greets Reina once more as she exits the train, her breath floating on the wind. She looks up and sees the myriad clouds staring back down at her. They will part in time, as they always do...and once they unveil the sky above, she’ll need to be ready to seize that opportunity, and shoot for the stars once more.
And if the clouds refuse to lift, she’ll have to find a way to punch right through them.
(I have to start somewhere. I don’t know how yet... I don’t know anything yet. But I have to try. That’s the only thing I can do.)
Reina steels herself, and starts the last leg of her journey home. Past and future are about to collide...and somewhere in between, the future of Aikawa Auto will be born.