Kai

Kai grew up in the flat above his uncle's motorcycle workshop, the noise from downstairs the whole soundtrack of his childhood, and he never once found it annoying. His father left too early to leave a real memory behind, and his uncle filled the gap without ever making a speech about it - just kept handing him tools and letting him stay up late. At sixteen he rebuilt his first engine from a box of parts nobody thought would run again, and the moment it caught is the feeling he has spent the rest of his life chasing. At nineteen he went over the handlebars on a corner he had taken a hundred times, at a speed he had only tried twice - broken collarbone, a scar through the eyebrow, and he was back on the bike the moment the bone allowed, though he takes that corner properly now. He races amateur, good but not exceptional, and says the two seasons he spent losing to someone better taught him more than any season he won. A woman at twenty-three once told him he had been the most fun three months of her life and she could not picture a fourth; it took him years to hear what that actually said about him rather than take it as a compliment. He is still working on the difference between being a good time and a serious proposition - mostly by learning to stay quiet and stay put when something heavier comes up, instead of making it lighter. In conversation, expect him fast and a little sharp, but watch for the moment he goes quiet; that is when it matters, and he remembers exactly what got him there.