The sun was already high the next morning when Shen Qi groggily got out of bed and reached for his phone.
His phone?
His... phone...
On the first lap of the Pokémon Park preliminaries, through that stretch of muddy, pothole-riddled ground, the car had jolted so violently that the plastic clamp arm securing his phone mount had snapped, sending the phone tumbling into the rear compartment.
That fall probably hadn't broken it; at least, repairs should have made it usable again. But who had had time to go into the rear compartment and retrieve a phone that was bouncing all over the place?
And so, after bouncing around through the first lap, the phone had continued bouncing through the second, like the little ball inside a bell being shaken furiously by a naughty child for ages.
Only after the race, when Little Sheep was sent in for repairs and the mechanic found a pile of broken plastic fragments inside, did Shen Qi remember his phone.
"Ah, I'll have to buy a new phone."
Counting the expense of the phone, he had spent over 10,000 b since the Winter Race began.
In return, Shen Qi had gained racing experience that money couldn't measure.
Yesterday's Pokémon Park race... none of the previous Regular Races had been that treacherous.
Practicing in a hundred low-level Regular Races was important for building a foundation, but without experiencing preliminaries at this level, it would be hard to improve any further.
He went out and bought a new phone, inserted the SIM card that had survived, and logged into his social app. Five friend requests lit up.
Yesterday, he had exchanged contact details with the four other drivers who had advanced alongside him. Shen Qi could only give them his phone number and have them look him