Efímero | His Legacy | Formula 1

5. We are complete strangers

We are sitting in the living room, and we are quiet, waiting for each other to talk. So, I decide to speak first.

"Not gonna lie, I wish we had met in a different scenario."

"Yeah, me too, maybe if Jules had presented us."

"He always talked about wanting the two of us to meet, but obviously it never happened the way he wanted it," I say remembering the good old times with him.

Charles sighs heavily before talking. "A lot of the time I wish the halo had been implemented before."

I look at him confused. "What do you mean?"

"The halo, the thing that it is over-"

"No, I know what the halo is," I interrupt. "I don't understand why you wish particularly that it existed before."

"Because that could have saved Jules," he says as if it was obvious.

"No, that could have never saved his life."

"What do you mean?"

"I ran the simulation of his accident thousands of times adding the halo to see if that could have saved him. It never did."

"What simulation?" Leclerc asks confused.

"The one I created with programming to simulate Jules's accident to see if there was something that could have saved him.

"And there was nothing that could have been done to the car that could have saved his life. An accident like that is a death sentence. There is absolutely no way of getting out of that one alive.

"The only things that could have saved him are external things, like the crane not being there, a red flag, or maybe the safety car or the virtual safety car."

"Wow"

"Yeah, 'wow'. I know, sounds kinda obsessive," I laugh, and he smiles.

"Just a little. But how were you able to run those simulations."

"I go to a technological school where in one of my classes we were taught how to create realistic simulations of stuff and get all the probabilities out of it. So, I did that. I can show one day," he doesn't look convinced. "I mean not Jules' crash I mean another one of the simulations I've created."

"That sounds like a plan," he smiles, and I instinctively smile too.

"Do you have somewhere where I can wash my face?" I ask because I can still feel the dry tears on my cheeks, and it doesn't feel good.

"Yeah, of course," he opens one of the closed doors and again I see that fanciest bathroom ever. "You can take a shower too. I don't have any clothes for women but if you want you can borrow my PJs for today."

I look at him confused. Why is he being so nice? We barely know each, I am a stranger to him.

He gets uncomfortable under my stare. "But if you don't want to take a shower. It's just that I normally after a tough day like to take a shower," he starts to stammer. "It has nothing to do with you smelling bad which you don't." I am so confused by him. He sighs before talking again, " I was trying to be a kind and good host, but if you don't feel like taking a shower is fine."

I laugh slightly. He releases tension in his body.

"I would enjoy a shower, plus I am in fact kind of stinky," I smile softly. "And I would gladly accept borrowing your PJs for tonight."

He brings me a pair of his PJs, and I enter the shower. The boiling water relaxes all the muscles that were tense in my body without me knowing they were tense until now. The shower helps me relax after such a rough day. I get out of the shower and put on Charles's PJs, they don't fit so badly. They are a little bit big but not as much as I thought they would be.