Race day arrived without ceremony.No system announcement woke her up. No dramatic countdown appeared on her ceiling. Alina simply opened her eyes at six in the morning, stared at the pale light coming through the curtains, and knew without checking anything that today was the day.She lay there for exactly two minutes.Then she got up.The hallway outside her room was empty. The mansion was the kind of quiet it always was in the mornings, the heavy, indifferent quiet of a house that was large enough to make a person feel like a guest in it. She had grown up inside these walls and somehow they had never quite adjusted to her. Or maybe she had never quite adjusted to them. It was hard to tell anymore which one was true.She went to the kitchen and made her own breakfast.Nobody came down while she was eating.Her father was probably already in his office. He kept early hours, not because he was disciplined but because sleep had apparently stopped cooperating with him years ago, or at l
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