She didn’t stop.
She laughed softly. That girl had no idea what was coming. The injuries. The rivals who became friends and then vanished. The night her father told her racing was a waste of time. The morning she left home anyway.
“One last ride,” she whispered.
The K-DRIVE’s AI giggled. “That was close!”
She opened the maintenance panel one last time. The black-box recorder was still blinking. Hiiragi--39-s Practice Diary -Final- -K-DRIVE--
She should have felt happy. Instead, she felt hollow.
Then she opened the throttle, and the world blurred into light. She didn’t stop
Two thousand, one hundred forty-seven days. She’d started this diary when she was fourteen, a scrawny kid who could barely keep the anti-gravity driftbike from scraping its underbelly against the tunnel walls. Back then, the K-DRIVE had been a salvaged wreck—half the conduits fried, the stabilizer held together with zip ties and spite.
“End diary,” she said quietly. “Final entry.” The injuries
She slid off the saddle and pressed her palm to the bike’s cool alloy frame. “You did good, old friend.”