May 30th—one of those days that sits right on the edge of the year's halfway point—broke with a bombshell.
How big of a bombshell?
A piece of news from Japan's Umamusume racing world somehow drew attention from the entire globe.
And no, the main character of this incident wasn't Japan's current biggest name, Gotham Song. But honestly… saying it had nothing to do with her would be splitting hairs. Even Gotham Song herself blanked out when she heard it, staring off like she didn't even know how to respond.
So what kind of news could be that huge?
Simple. A nationwide event—one that began because of Gotham Song, and would end for her sake—there could only be one.
It was…
URA collapsing.
Sudden, right?
So sudden that Gotham Song genuinely never expected to hear the death notice of a behemoth like that at a time like this.
Sure, when she first heard it she was confused—thrown off, even. But once she came back to herself and actually thought it through… it wasn't that hard to understand.
Because as a member of Mejiro Manor—one of the Umamusume in Japan who knew the most about the truth behind the whole system—Gotham Song had always known more of the inside story. For example: URA had effectively lost its authority a long time ago. The only reason it hadn't fully toppled earlier was frankly ridiculous—too much legacy, too much mess, and no way to sort it all out in a short time.
Like Symboli Rudolf once complained to Gotham Song, half-dead from exhaustion:
"URA's like a rock. It can't fight back at all, but it's so damn heavy. Try moving it and it'll work you to death."
Symboli Rudolf's metaphor wasn't wrong, exactly… but in Gotham Song's ears, it still didn't feel quite right.
To her, URA was more like an enormous dead dog.
You kick it, trying to shove it out of your way—and then you realize its weight is beyond imagination. Forget kicking it aside; if your foot doesn't bounce off and send you stumbling, you should count yourself lucky.
Sure, you can move it eventually. It's a dead dog; it can't resist. But the labor you'll have to pour in, and the sheer mental fatigue, will be anything but small.
That was URA.
Gotham Song felt like that description fit better—fit so well it was almost hard to know what to say, because that really was URA's whole deal: it could just lie there and wait to die, while the people trying to flip it over had to think about everything.
First came the handover. All those documents and materials had to be pulled off paper and uploaded online. Then you needed warehouses to store the original copies. Then you had to integrate everything into a modern network. Just that much was already a nightmare.
Because URA had decades and decades of records—some of them already deteriorating despite preservation attempts. The sheer volume was an ocean. Just looking at it was enough to make you despair.
And even after you digitized everything, that was still only the beginning. There was so much more to do—like auditing every single URA staffer's connections, competence, and personal background.
You had to. Even if you were replacing URA's role in Japan's entire racing system, you didn't have time to retrain an experienced workforce from scratch. If the training cycle dragged on too long, it would be unacceptable for a newborn organization.
So you could only sift through URA and keep whoever could be kept—make them the first batch of employees for the new institution.
Of course, management was almost entirely replaced. The ones who stayed were the rank-and-file—people who actually did the work and had no involvement in decision-making.
Stuff like that should've been brutally difficult in the original world. Yet in this world, it became strangely… easy.
Gotham Song didn't quite understand it, but the solution was so Umamusume it hurt.
You sat a few foals in front of each person who needed vetting, one by one—and listened to the foals' first instincts. If the foals felt they were a good person, they stayed. If they didn't feel like a good person, they were fired on the spot.
Childish? Absolutely.
Accurate?
Terrifyingly so.
Gotham Song could only sigh in resignation. So foals had that kind of use, too, huh?
It really was effective. Umamusume, as spirits of the track, tended to have pure hearts—and when they were foals, they were even more carefree. They served as something like living insurance.
Umamusume were incredibly sensitive to malice—especially human malice. Most of the time, one look was enough for them to tell how likely the person in front of them was to harbor ugly thoughts toward Umamusume.
So this method, unexpectedly, felt almost like… what, the Three Goddesses' blessing turned into a certification system?
Gotham Song couldn't say. She didn't even know how she was supposed to judge something like that. In any case, it was about as plain and practical as "adapting to local conditions" got.
So that was how they solved it. Incredible.
But that was only one problem. The others weren't so easily handled. If you asked what the hardest part was, it was probably severing URA cleanly—cutting it off at the roots.
URA was enormous. Tug one strand and the whole body moved, especially where利益—interests and stakeholders—were involved. Forget coordinating its relationships with every racecourse; every seat in URA, every person in every position, represented some faction.
So when it came to destroying URA, those people became the biggest obstacle.
The ones actually inside URA? They'd been slacking off for ages.
The reason it succeeded was because the Symboli family and Mejiro Manor were the ones doing it—and thanks to Gotham Song, Tokyo's true old-guard No. 1 family, along with the Kitabu family, also joined the action. With that, even the interest-trading side of things met far less resistance.
Otherwise, who knew how long URA could've kept dragging itself along?
Gotham Song couldn't even imagine it. Before her sister made a move, URA's reputation had already been atrocious—people cursing it online every day in numbers that weren't even counted by the tens of thousands. On the low end, it was over a hundred thousand posts a day.
And even so, URA lived on, business as usual.
It wasn't "the building was already about to collapse."
It was that someone with an agenda finally kicked it hard enough.
The news broke at the end of May. Then in early June—before the first weekend even arrived, on a Wednesday afternoon—the details of the new organization were already about to be announced to the whole world.
Gotham Song stared at everything on the stage in front of her, sinking into a deep, helpless sort of resignation.
By any standard—emotion, logic—if this was the end of URA and the beginning of something new, of course Gotham Song had to come see it. Especially since this whole thing was Mejiro Ramonu's handiwork. She had no excuse not to show up.
She just hadn't expected it to move this fast.
It felt like… when she first fought her way back into this world and won her comeback match, she still hadn't imagined a day like this.
Even after she learned Mejiro Ramonu and Symboli Rudolf were working together against URA, she never thought it would be easy. And yet—less than a year later—URA had been ripped up by the roots, and they were already changing the sky itself?
This is the Three Goddesses—no, this is a little too Three Goddesses. I'm feeling less human!!
Gotham Song fell silent.
Beside her, someone curled her lips into a smile.
"You don't look very happy, Miss Song?"
"No. I just think it's sudden… kind of like how you flew to Japan without saying a word."
Gotham Song looked at Secretariat, and Secretariat looked back without the slightest guilt—like her presence here was the most natural thing in the world.
Still, it wasn't hard to understand why she was here.
After all, this was URA collapsing.
"Is that so, Miss Song? I didn't get any notice beforehand either. The moment I found out, I flew to Japan. URA is such a damnable thing—of course I had to come pop champagne the instant it fell."
"And your official duties?" Gotham Song asked.
"Isn't Miss Festival Glory there?"
Gotham Song's mouth twitched. She knew that would be the answer.
The moment she pictured that familiar-yet-strange Umamusume carrying all the work that wasn't hers, a fresh wave of speechlessness rolled over her. But she could understand it, too. Secretariat had been holding a grudge against URA for a long time.
After the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe ended, she'd been ready to fly straight to Japan and scream at URA in person. If she didn't come witness this with her own eyes now, Gotham Song would've wondered whether American Tracen had buried her under too much work to escape.
Looks like it wasn't "too much work."
It was just that someone else was carrying it.
Festival Glory… you've been set up!!!
Secretariat. Ah, Secretariat.
"But now that we're rid of URA, things should look better going forward," Gotham Song said. "If I remember right, even international races should be freed from the old restrictions?"
"Isn't that only natural? Besides, Miss Song—so long as you think it's appropriate, the rest of us won't have any objections. So whether Japan's international races pass approval or not… really depends on your opinion, doesn't it?"
Secretariat sat there openly at Gotham Song's side, composed and dignified. She wasn't wearing her old Racing Outfit, but what she had on was similar in spirit—an old-style noblewoman's formal dress, a shawl, and that signature cane held neatly in her hand.
In that moment, her bearing matched the world's stereotype of her perfectly: elegant, aristocratic, refined.
Of course, that was only the surface.
The real reason people couldn't forget Secretariat was the stark contrast beneath that elegance—the wildness inside.
"Crazy Secretariat." That was what many called her. No insult in it, just plain fact. She was the kind of person who, in a post-race interview, barely bothered to hide the madness—like she wanted to tear her opponent to shreds.
Maybe retirement had smoothed her out over the years. At least that kind of insanity had vanished completely.
But today, that old shadow seemed to return.
That manic, unmasked, almost hysterical aura cracked through its shell and stepped back into the world.
Secretariat was ecstatic, seeing URA about to be wiped out.
And as for how to describe that…
Gotham Song rubbed her cheek. She hadn't said it out loud, but she knew perfectly well: her expression probably looked a lot like Secretariat's right now.
If anything, she might look even more like a madwoman.
This was URA, after all. The URA that could make someone like her want revenge.
If it died just like that, wasn't it one of the best things to happen under the sun?
Heehee. Good riddance, meow. Pop the champagne, meow.
Secretariat didn't speak. She only watched Gotham Song, then let out a long, drawn sigh.
Back when she still hadn't met Ms. Twilight Song / Ruka, some instinct in the dark had told her: that powerful Umamusume wouldn't just become your nemesis—she could become a very good friend, too.
Because your personalities would be remarkably similar.
For the longest time, Secretariat had wondered why her intuition would say something like that. After all, like fans around the world, she'd only known Gotham Song through television.
But much later—after truly getting to know Gotham Song—Secretariat finally understood something.
She never should've doubted that instinct.
A legendary Umamusume's intuition was forged through countless hammerings.
So what was the truth?
The truth was that when it came to madness and hysteria, Miss Gotham Song wasn't merely her equal.
She surpassed her.
Secretariat could still remember it clearly—what Gotham Song looked like right now.
Like she wanted to charge the stage and announce URA's death ahead of time.
So, since we're so alike… we should settle this, shouldn't we?
---
T/N: and the URA is dead, tbh i never really saw the hatred towards the URA as like sorta racism, its just another form of government its not like URA is ONLY in japan thats the JRA