Lost and found
Summary: While diving in Lake Como, a YouTuber finds a lost phone and posts the discovery on her small channel—only for the video to go viral. Unbeknownst to her, the phone belongs to F1 driver Yuki Tsunoda, who lost it while on summer break.
Yuki Tsunoda x reader
A/N: what? Me? Writing for f1 again? Say it louder for the people in the back!
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You weren’t planning to go viral. Not that day, not ever.
Your YouTube channel was a niche little corner of the internet—full of underwater diving videos, occasional tutorials, some GoPro montages of gear setups, and the occasional blooper reel.
You were no stranger to a few thousand views here and there. A couple of your more entertaining dives, especially the one where you found a wedding ring (and returned it to a crying man on a pier), had gotten you some brief attention. But a million views overnight?
Something was wrong. Or rather, something weird had happened.
It started with a completely normal dive in Lake Como.
The water shimmered like polished glass under the July sun, warm enough to swim in without a wetsuit. You had your GoPro strapped to your mask, your flippers in hand, and a clear mission: film a 10-minute underwater session and then have gelato by the lakeside. The usual.
That’s when you spotted it—about six meters down, wedged between two rocks and slick with algae. A black iPhone. Still intact.
You retrieved it without much thought. People lost things all the time in the lake—sunglasses, rings, wallets, phones. This wasn’t new. You slipped it into your dry case and kept diving.
It wasn’t until you surfaced and powered up the GoPro footage that you realized how interesting the find looked from an audience’s perspective. The light glinting off the phone, the slightly dramatic moment of you tugging it free, and your surprised little laugh when you brought it up to the surface—it had the makings of good YouTube content.
So you edited the footage that night, titled it:
"I FOUND A PHONE IN LAKE COMO?! | Diving Surprise"
…and uploaded it the next morning.
You didn’t check your phone until noon.
The gelato place was packed, so you were halfway through your pistachio cone when you finally opened your channel.
1.2M views.
67,000 new subscribers.
Over 800 comments.
You nearly choked on a chopped hazelnut.
“What the hell…?” you muttered, staring as comment after comment loaded.
“OMG that’s Yuki’s phone??”
“She doesn’t even KNOW who he is 😭”
“Girl about to meet a F1 legend without knowing it”
“This is so Yuki-coded it hurts.”
“Please tag Yuki Tsunoda before the poor man panics again.”
You squinted.
Yuki… who?
The DMs started rolling in shortly after. First, a few curious followers asking if you’d turned the phone in. Then a flood of people politely—and then not-so-politely—telling you the phone probably belonged to someone “super famous.” You opened Instagram and were promptly flooded with notifications.
Then came his DM.
@yukitsunoda0511 ✔️
Yuki Tsunoda ✔️:
Hey! Sorry if this is weird. That phone you found in Lake Como… pretty sure it’s mine 😅
Can you check if there’s a small Japanese flag sticker on the back of the case?
Also, huge thanks for not doing anything dumb with it lol
Let me know!!
You stared at the message for a good thirty seconds. His name sounded familiar now that you thought about it. F1? Something racing-related? You scrolled through his profile and were instantly hit with photos of race cars, pre-race preparations, and him grinning in a race suit.
Okay. Yeah. He was famous. Like really famous.
You flipped the phone over and sure enough—there it was. A tiny Japanese flag, right on the edge of the waterproof case.
Well… crap.
You answered quickly.
you:
Hey! Wow, small world. Yeah, it’s definitely your phone—I just checked. Didn’t mean to cause a stir 😅
Where should I send it?
His reply was nearly instant.
Yuki Tsunoda ✔️:
No worries!! I’m just glad you found it and didn’t toss it or anything 😂
I’m still in Como for a few more days. Would you be okay meeting up somewhere to return it? I’ll buy you coffee or lunch or like… five gelatos as thanks
You laughed out loud. “Five gelatos,” you muttered. “This guy knows the way to my heart.”
You agreed to meet the next afternoon at a café near the lake. You wore a casual sundress and tried not to overthink it. After all, it wasn’t a date. Just a guy picking up his phone. A famous, kind of ridiculously attractive guy with a million Instagram followers, but still—just a phone hand-off.
He showed up in sunglasses and a cap pulled low, probably trying not to attract attention. But he still had that unmistakable grin you'd seen on his profile. A little boyish, slightly chaotic energy.
“Hey! You must be the diver girl,” he greeted, slipping off his sunglasses.
“Yup. And you must be the phone-loser.”
He laughed. “Fair. Very fair.“
You handed over the phone, and he held it like it was sacred. “I had everything on here,” he sighed in relief. “I mean, the cloud has backups, but still. It was like losing my third arm.”
“I don’t know if I should be honored or horrified that I rescued your third arm,” you joked.
“Definitely honored,” he said. “Also—your video? Amazing.”
You blinked. “Wait, you watched it?”
“Of course I did! It got sent to me like fifty times by friends. One of the media guys even commented on it. I think they were just happy I didn’t scream when I lost the phone this time.”
“This time?”
He scratched the back of his neck, grinning sheepishly. “Let’s just say I have a track record of losing things. Phones, AirPods, passports…”
You laughed, sipping your iced coffee. “So what you’re saying is, I should stay on standby with my GoPro wherever you go.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Official Tsunoda Retrieval Squad.”
The conversation flowed easier than you expected. He was funny, down-to-earth, and surprisingly unassuming for someone who drove multimillion-dollar cars at 300 km/h for a living.
“So, you really didn’t know who I was?” he asked eventually, looking amused.
You shook your head. “Honestly, no. I’ve heard of F1, of course, but I couldn’t tell you the difference between a pit stop and a pit bull.”
He burst out laughing. “That might be my favorite thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“Well,” you shrugged, “I might know nothing about racing, but I do know how to find sunken treasure.”
“And I respect that,” he said, raising his coffee in a toast.
You ended up walking by the lake after lunch, trading stories—him about the chaotic F1 world, you about the strange underwater things you’d found: dentures, a vintage camera, someone’s full wallet sealed in a ziplock bag.
“I think fate owes me, honestly,” you said, kicking a pebble.
Yuki glanced at you. “Why’s that?”
“I always return what I find. Phones, wallets, rings. The universe better repay me with a puppy or something.”
He grinned. “I’m not a puppy, but I can offer dinner before I leave Italy.”
You paused mid-step. “Are you asking me out?”
“Technically, I’m asking if you’ll accept more than five gelatos as thank you. But yes.” His smile turned softer. “If you’re up for it.”
You smiled. “Well… I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to go out with a guy who owes me his entire camera roll.”
The next video on your channel?
"I FOUND A PHONE IN LAKE COMO… AND THEN WENT ON A DATE??"
You never expected to become a viral diving YouTuber.
You definitely never expected to accidentally rescue the phone of a world-famous F1 driver.
But Lake Como had a funny way of hiding things beneath the surface—and sometimes, just sometimes, it let you find something worth keeping.
Thank you for reading!
Taglist: @ipushhimback, @ladyoflynx, @lewishamiltonismybf, @cmleitora, @same1995, @amatswimming, @llando4norris, @dr3wstarkey, @hurtblossom, @ernegren, @esposamultifandom, @darleneslane