Milan was a short affair. They landed, and Hisako barely had time to gawk at the casual abundance of doors and buy a notebook. They hurried to put their uniforms on in the airport bathrooms, and then they got on a train that spat them out at the edge of nothingness. The old stone of Milan suddenly stopped in a tunnel, and then it was vast stretches of farmland dotted with the occasional town.
She could see the steeples of churches in each one, like a brief beacon of civilization before another expanse of lazily rolling hills. From the end of the line, they took a rental car deep into the Tuscan countryside.
The last town she saw was almost an hour from their destination, and the last building not part of the property was a gas station where they bought a quick meal before leaving the paved highway for the packed gravel of the countryside.
The foreignness was immediate and almost frustrating.
The trains were harder to understand, the streets were congested, and the traffic was unruly. The highway wound in confusing circles, and accessing the travel stops was sometimes difficult. The food at the gas station was nice, but the options were minimal—a far cry from the relative feast at a Japanese conbini.
The first sight of the property was an old stone-brick wall winding along the roadside. They followed it to a simple steel gate. An old hand-painted sign identified the property as "Micheli Motorsports Tuscan Campus" or "MiMo Heartlands"—the latter was drawn in many hands on handmade placards hanging from the fence, each signed by a different name.
They rolled past the gate and a long way down the dirt driveway alongside vast fields. Cutting through the carefully planted crops were narrow dirt paths carved by ripping wheels. She saw a few of the creatures that created them as they made their way to a bustling secondary gate: leather-bound riders atop little motorbikes, barebones and whining as they zipped about.
The Mobile Response Unit students, surely. She watched one skid to a stop before twisting the throttle and rocketing down the road past them, jumping over little hills and ruts in the fields.
At the end of the road at a secondary, more official gate, Strömberg pulled into a dirt lot full of similar passenger vans. Many had European flags on their plates showing which countries had already arrived. When they got out, finally stretching their legs after hours of travel, Hisako took the moment to eye them.
There were no Italian plates, which didn't surprise her—it was their home; they probably had their own parking space. She saw British plates, though, and German, Dutch, and even a few she didn't quite recognize.
A party had arrived just before them—a group in crisply pressed formation of dark suits with a flag of a blue and a yellow horizontal bar. Strömberg led them to follow, taking their cue in approaching the guard shack, which seemed to be the source of some kind of badge.
Soon they were at the glass, Strömberg talking in smooth English to the woman on the other side. Hisako stood at the edge of the path further into the property, looking past the wall of the guard shack to stare.
Past the secondary gate was a proper estate. There was an old farmhouse at the heart, then a larger, more modern building that looked something like a barn-style home. Further down the road was a garage of some sort, and then she could see a winding dirt track cutting into the distant hills.
There were silos, fenced-in fields, little barns, small patches of forest and brush, a pond, and what had to be horses, sheep, and cows milling about. A dog skittered about a swarm of sheep, seemingly at the behest of one of the riders standing on their bike nearby.
The place was both a motorsports training facility and a functioning farm.
She was so distracted that she didn't notice a party bustling past her. One of them tried to brush past and instead bounced off her arm and got a sharp elbow to the shoulder when she jumped in surprise.
She turned hurriedly to apologize. "Pardon me, sorry!"
The whole group—a quartet of ribbon-adorned Europeans in a rich blue uniform—turned to eye her, noticing the Japanese party standing at the path's side. She glanced at Strömberg, who was engrossed in a tense conversation—he seemed to be having an issue getting their badges.
"Good evening," she said quietly. "Sorry about that."
They continued without so much as a nod of acknowledgement, turning away to chatter among themselves.
Someone cackled nearby. "Eh, they cannot all be winners, no?"
She jerked to look to the source of the voice. Across the path from the guard shack was one of the bikers, helmet off and phone raised to his ear.
He was idling next to her, amused at the interaction. She almost didn't understand him; his English was heavily accented, and he peppered the words she did know with chuckled words she didn't. Hopefully it wasn't English.
"Ah, no," she agreed after a long moment of parsing his words. "It's okay. It's, uh, just businesses, right?"
He giggled something light and playful, like the whole thing was a game. His eyes were bright and youthful despite his tanned crow's-feet and sprinkled gray hairs. In a ratty, paint-stained T-shirt and mud-stained jeans, he rolled back and forth restlessly on the beat-up old dirt bike he sat on, half-tied, holey sneakers kicking at the ground.
"Justbusiness as usual," he chuckled, then trailed off in rhythmic foreign words. He capped it off with a gentle pat to her shoulder before addressing her group. "Welcome to Italy, friends. Enjoy yourselves."
He gave a peace sign and, with a twist of his handlebars, sped off down the tire-worn dirt road all the bikes had gone down.
She blinked. He was the first person who was nice to them, and she hadn't asked him for his name.
Great networking, Hisako.
"That's it?" Strömberg asked the gate guard.
He'd been handed their badges and a few pamphlets but looked skeptical.
"All good," the guard confirmed.
"Just like that?" he questioned.
She eyed him sharply. "Your IDs were confirmed." She beckoned the next party forward, forcing them out of line.
Strömberg handed them each a badge and a pamphlet as they walked forward on the path. He pointed to the barn-like house. "That's where the guests are staying." He showed his badge, pointing at a little number on the back in small print. Hisako's had the same number. "We're in bunk room eleven."
She pocketed her badge and opened the pamphlet. Inside was a list of rules, a map, a day-by-day schedule, and some information about the area. She glanced between the map and the estate, getting her bearings and reading about the buildings.
The farmhouse was entirely off limits, and the track, trackhouse, and fields were only available with permission and a student's supervision. She chuckled as she read more; whoever wrote down the rules struggled to word them formally and hide how subjective they were; the paragraph outlining instant expulsion for "disrespecting" the property or students didn't even try to define what counted as disrespect.
In the fine text at the bottom, the pamphlet noted that the rules were set by the property host and must be respected by all parties.
She wondered what kind of person the owner was. One of the best and valued enough to have the property and training authority, but also one who hosted a summit yet kept rules possessively strict. She got the impression they didn't really want people in their home, but something had convinced them to take the risk.
The walk to the lodging barn was scenic and allowed Hisako to glance around at the other parties more.
Ahead of them, the party that'd bumped into her walked alongside another. She finally recognized the ribbons on their uniform as the French colors, and they were speaking French with another party she'd initially assumed were Indonesian officers from the flag on their uniforms.
Everyone around them seemed familiar with each other. She frowned a little as the parties flowed around the Japanese party to meet with another.
The loud snarl of a bike lurching to roll alongside them made her jump.
The rider—a new, younger man in a colorful uniform—laughed as he snapped up the muddied visor of his neon helmet. "Sorry! Didn't mean to scare you!"
If the older man was difficult to understand, he was nearly impossible to understand. His intonation was borderline sing-song, fast, and high-pitched. While politely smiling, Hisako repeated the words slowly in her head to understand how they fit together.
"I'm Aniello! I'm your, ehh—" He cycled through a few Italian words. "Eh, the baby watcher. A chaperone, I mean. The Japanese competitors' chaperone." He bowed dramatically on the bike. "At your service."
"Thank you for your time. We look forward to working with you," Strömberg said.
Aniello tilted his head, bike bumping along as they neared the lodging. "Are you all competing?"
"Just Mochizuki-san and Serizawa-san," Strömberg replied.
"Ah, okay. Cool." He chuckled. "Cesco said there'd be mostly talkers. Most people who've already arrived brought only one fighter. Glad I got two fighters."
Hisako offered her hand, receiving a heavy-gloved pat in response. "I'm Hisako Mochizuki. You can call me 'Hisako', though."
He tilted his head again—he reminded her a bit of a dog with all his vivid expressions and mannerisms. "Isn't that rude?"
"It's fine."
"You can call me 'Eiji', too," Eiji said. "Aniello is your first name, right?"
"Hm? Yeah, 'course." He gave Eiji one of his glove pat-shakes too. "Excited to work with you all. Cesco said the Japanese were the most interesting, but I had to be extra polite to be nice."
"Ah, so far so good," Hisako assured him awkwardly.
"You guys go get settled in. I'll see you all at mealtime. Bell rings when the food's up."
He waved and ripped off the other way, toward the track. He launched out of a well-worn pothole, and another rider jumped a low fence to join him.
"That's so cool," Hisako breathed.
Eiji chuckled, and they all entered the lodging house.
The first impression was space. The main floor was open-concept; one big communal space with an adjoining kitchen, divided only by a long wooden dining table. There were massive couches, wide armchairs, and plenty of end and coffee tables. The second floor was more like a loft, allowing wide windows and skylights to bathe the ground floor in natural light.
Teams bustled about, unpacking and hanging out together. Strömberg led the way past the social clamor to the second floor where the bunk rooms were.
Each room had a door, but they had unique carvings in the wooden faces—all done by previous guests, Hisako guessed. She saw names and numbers, drawings of faces and bikes, and even what had to be maps of tracks with notations and funny little notes.
On the door to the first bunk, she saw Aniello's name—"ANIELLO + LORENZO WERE HERE." The door was closed, and while the other doors were covered by graffiti, only a fourth of the door was marked up.
Their bunk had a practical, strategic conversation on the door. The track across the body had been carved and re-carved, new paths dated and old paths crossed out. Someone had repeatedly written "flat out" at every corner, and someone else had written "NO!" next to each one.
She chuckled to herself as Strömberg opened the door and let them in. She paused before entering, noticing one corner had "flat out," but the annotation was instead "only Cesco can do this." Then, in a tidy, small hand, someone had added "and Aleix" and then crossed it out far deeper than it'd been written.
She walked into the room quietly, eyes searching for anything more about the previous inhabitants, but found only a simple bunk room. The room kept the barn's homey wood aesthetic with the paneling and furniture. There was a table with a few chairs, four bunk beds, and a cozy little nook built into the windowsill. It was a bit small for eight people, but she imagined eight students already comfortable with each other might find it more like a sleepover party than a shoebox business hotel room.
They had their own bathroom as well; she poked her head in to find a narrow full bath with a long sink vanity. The barn was planned and built to comfortably house a small army of students.
She turned back into the room. Strömberg and Hisakawa had already taken the bunks closer to the window, and Eiji had already chosen his and was carefully sorting his clothes on the lower bunk. Hisako tossed her bag onto the lower bed of the unoccupied bunk and clambered onto the top.
She'd never been on a bunk bed before. She tested it, kicking her feet and flopping back on the bed with a relieved sigh.
"Already jetlagged?" Eiji asked.
Hisako shot back up. "Never."