Under The Same Flag

Chapter 6: Margin Of Error

It had been one of those carefully arrange outreach visits, the kind sponsors used to remind the world that speed could coexist with kindness. Chi Cheng went because Vanguard GP had been funding the center for three years. He'd been told to smile for the cameras, shake hands, and deliver a few sentences about opportunity and discipline. A routine performance in corporate compassion.

He wanted to disappear the moment he finished what he'd been asked to do when he heard laughter—not the kind that followed him at interviews or press events, but something brighter. Raw. Not from the crowd, but from the courtyard beyond the gate.

He paused.

Through the fence, he saw Wu Suo Wei kneeling in the grass beside a small boy, helping him tie two uneven bamboo sticks together. The boy's tongue poked from the corner of his mouth in concentration;the roll of string wobbled in his hands.

"Not too tight," Wu Suo Wei said gently, his voice low, patient—a tone Chi Cheng had never heard off the track, not in the paddocks, not in interview. "Let the wind help you."

The boy laughed when the frame finally held, and Wu Suo Wei smiled—that same unguarded, effortless grin that could light up the whole paddock, only softer here, stripped of its performance.

Chi Cheng didn't move. Didn't even realize he was standing still.

For someone who'd built a life on speed, the stillness felt unfamiliar. Dangerous, even, a hairline crack in the calm he wore like an armor.

Something about that image lodged in him like grit under skin: Wu  Suo Wei in plain clothes, sleeves rolled up, helping a stranger's kid build something fragile and bright. It didn't fit. Wu Suo Wei wasn't supposed to be gentle. He wasn't supposed to care.

And yet... there he was.

Neither of them had spoken. Neither seemed to realize the other had any connection to that place. But Chi Cheng couldn't forget it.

A rumble of engines broke the moment—two black SUVs pulling near a gate, polished and deliberate. The volunteers straightened. The children turned, shielding their eyes from the glare bouncing off the hoods. Chi Cheng's reflection caught briefly in the car's tinted glass: composed, expressionless, exactly as he was meant to be.

Chi Cheng exhaled slowly and stepped out first. The sunlight struck the Vanguard crest stitched faintly near his collar, a reminder the he wasn't here as himself but as the face of something larger. His shirt sleeves were rolled neatly to his elbows, the fabric pressed and spotless even under the afternoon heat. Every step he took was deliberate—measured, quiet, composed. The kind of control that came from a lifetime of being watched.

He scanned the crowd, expression neutral. Then his gaze found him. Wu Suo Wei.

Standing beside the boy, now holding a kite that had somehow come together. Their laughter softened into the afternoon air. Wu Suo Wei looked up and caught Chi Cheng's stare. For a heartbeat neither moved.

Chi Cheng couldn't tell if Wu Suo Wei was surprised or if he'd expected this all along.

Then Wu Suo Wei's grin slipped into place, practiced but not insincere. It was infuriating how easily it came. How even when cornered by coincidence, he looked like he belonged here.

Chi Cheng's team began unloading donation boxes—the usual: footballs, notebooks, art supplies, all stamped with Vanguards emblem. He joined in, signing papers, kneeling to untangle a child's string, fingers steady out of habit than care. His worked the way they did in the garage precise, methodical, detached. Still, his eyes flicked toward Wu Suo Wei from time to time. As if to confirm that he hadn't imagined it. That the man really was there, crouching beside a child, teaching him how to make something fly.