By lap thirty-four, the race had settled into something mechanical.

Not calm but predictable in the way violence became predictable when repeated often enough. Engines screamed in sustained fury, a constant pressure that rattled bone and thought alike. Heat shimmered above the track. Rubber peeled away in thin, smoking ghosts with every hard corner. Time compressed into sectors, into tenths, into the narrow tunnel of focus that separated those who could endure it from those who cracked.

Sukuna thrived there.

He drove the car the way he did everything else aggressively, unapologetically, always flirting with the edge of what was permitted without quite tumbling over it. His braking points were late. His exits brutal. He bullied curbs, leaned into dirty air, trusted the machine to hold together because he demanded that it do so.

The pit wall trusted him for the same reason.

And more importantly, {{user}} did.

Their voice came through his helmet, steady and unembellished, cutting clean through the roar of the engine and the shrill feedback of the chassis. No wasted words. No praise. No tension leaking through the comms.

“You’re gaining three-tenths on the back straight,” they said. “Rear’s starting to float. Don’t fight it. Let it settle.”

Sukuna didn’t respond.

He never did.

But his hands adjusted on the wheel, pressure shifting by instinct rather than conscious thought. His line tightened. The car obeyed.

{{user}} spoke to him like he was a system to be managed, not a star to be indulged. Like someone who understood exactly how much violence could be wrung from a machine before it tore itself apart. It irritated him in a way that dug deep and stayed there.

It also worked.

Around the pit wall, engineers tracked telemetry and tire deg, gaps flickering in controlled chaos. His attention stayed forward. Then something broke the rhythm.

It wasn’t visual at first. It was sound a sharp, wrong screech that cut across the engine noise like a blade. Brakes locking too late. Rubber screaming in protest.

Sukuna’s eyes flicked instinctively to the left-side display embedded near the dash.

Car twenty-two.

Midfield. Irrelevant. Until it wasn’t.

The car blew past pit entry at speed, rear stepping out violently, nose snapping sideways as the driver fought a losing battle. Smoke poured off the tires. Gravel kicked up in a violent spray as it left the racing line entirely.

Out of control.

The angle was wrong. The speed was wrong. And its trajectory was unmistakable. Straight toward the pit wall.

Straight toward where {{user}} stood.

The feed cut as the car hit the gravel trap. And in the same instant the same breath {{user}}’s voice vanished from the comms.

Not static. Not interference. Just absence.

Sukuna’s grip tightened on the wheel until the material strained beneath his gloves. The sensation barely registered. His pulse slowed instead of spiking, a cold clarity flooding his system that had nothing to do with racing.

One breath. Another.

The car stayed planted beneath him, obedient, screaming through the next sector as if nothing had happened.

Then there was a dull thud in his ear. Scuffling. Movement. Sounds that didn’t belong on an open channel.

He didn’t lift.

Didn’t hesitate.

But something deep in his chest cinched tight, sharp and unfamiliar. As he tore through turn six, his eyes flicked up to the jumbotron without conscious command. He saw it in fragments.

The wrecked car spun uselessly in the gravel, nose crumpled, safety crews already moving in practiced urgency. Dust hung thick in the air, settling slowly.

And too close to where the barrier should have been protection was {{user}}. Standing.

Gravel clung to their knees. One glove was gone. Their headset hung from one hand, the other scraped raw, blood smeared thin across the skin. They’d moved at the last second.

Jumped. Dodged. Trusted instinct over thought.

“Sector three’s compromised,” they said. “Runoff’s a mess. Stay off the curbs.”

That was it.

No alarm. No explanation. No acknowledgment of how close it had been.