Tokyo Racecourse.
Flash Series debut race.
[Rigil]'s highly anticipated newcomer — Silence Suzuka — making her first appearance.
King Halo crossed her arms and watched.
The instant the gates opened, Silence Suzuka was at full sprint.
[Breakaway] — obvious at a glance.
A running style the crowd loved but most trainers avoided.
In real races, Breakaway runners didn't win often. You rarely saw the style in high-tier events.
In GI races, the highest-winning style was Stalker — across every distance and surface. That was why Stalker was called the royal road. But where Stalker offered the highest percentage, front-running had its own magic: it ignited the crowd.
It was just like Silence Suzuka's line from the anime: "The number-one uma musume is the kind who lets the audience see a dream." Front-running embodied that more than any other style, and Breakaway was its purest expression.
But audience love was audience love.
Trainers thought about wins and losses.
And about how to win easily.
Because hiding your strength was part of the game, too.
Show all your cards at a debut race, and by the time you reached GI, your opponents would have dissected you down to the bone. Not every uma musume had the self-belief to shrug off opposition research and steamroll every rival regardless.
King Halo glanced up at Tojo Hana on the level above. Her expression was grim — and very unhappy.
Obviously because Silence Suzuka's current running style didn't match the tactics Tojo Hana had laid out before the race.
Thanks to Tokai Teio's memories, King Halo knew Tojo Hana wasn't actually objecting to Silence Suzuka choosing Breakaway. Tojo Hana had noticed something more serious about Silence Suzuka's body. Maturity was complete, but Silence Suzuka still hadn't finished developing fully — and this running style put enormous strain on a body that wasn't ready for it. It would affect her long-term health.
And most critically of all — Tojo Hana was certain that if Silence Suzuka would just execute the prepared tactics, the win would come easier.
On the outside, Silence Suzuka might look like a quiet, obedient girl. Internally, she was stubborn as a post. She didn't bend.
Tojo Hana wasn't dismissing what Silence Suzuka loved — she just wanted her to learn self-control first. But that simple ask had left Silence Suzuka feeling that her trainer was obstructing her, that her trainer didn't understand her.
Tojo Hana wasn't entirely wrong. But Silence Suzuka had picked a trainer before she'd figured out what she actually wanted, and this was the result.
King Halo wasn't even sure whether Silence Suzuka, if she knew she was burning through her own health, would still want to run this way.
What she did remember was that Silence Suzuka's choice in this race had been Nishizaki Ryu's doing. Before this race, Tojo Hana and Nishizaki Ryu had offered competing tactics — and in that moment, Silence Suzuka had already made up her mind about where she'd stay. King Halo wasn't sure the choice was the right one.
Because Silence Suzuka was running happy right now.
And the price down the line was a fractured leg.
She'd also now confirmed: this world's Silence Suzuka was on the anime route.
If it were the game route, Trainer P would have pulled Silence Suzuka from [Rigil] before the race ever started — not, as now, leaving her out on the track wearing a [Rigil] uniform.
The biggest difference between anime and game routes was the injury arc.
In the anime, Silence Suzuka's debut was spectacular, and then she suffered a career-threatening injury in a race shortly after.
In the game, P had picked up a faint wrongness during training — a miraculous, unreasoning sixth sense — and acted early because of it.
Not only did he watch her legs meticulously during training, he checked her race equipment multiple times before every event. It was precisely because of P's vigilance that Silence Suzuka had dodged that fatal accident in the game route.
The other thing was: current-form Silence Suzuka really wasn't suited to Breakaway.
Even given her talent.
Talent was talent, but if you couldn't ride that heaven-sent gift, indulging your nature was just a fast path to self-destruction.
Even Kitasan Black had ended up hospitalized after running reckless.
And if Kitasan Black — with her body and her control — still couldn't get away with it, Silence Suzuka's lesser talent certainly wouldn't either. Or rather — Kitasan Black's talent was mutated. A freak outlier.
"Out of the first turn in the lead — number eight, Silence Suzuka! She's pulling away from the field!" the commentator's voice boomed over the speakers.
"Rigil's rookie truly living up to the hype — the most-popular pick, Silence Suzuka, showing us a gorgeous running style!" the host chimed in alongside. Pumping up the fan-favorite mid-race was old tradition.
Nearby, Special Week was completely riveted. "So fast. So this is what a Tracen Academy uma musume looks like..."
Hit like a truck.
Special Week felt herself being drawn in by that racer.
Silence Suzuka looked for all the world like the protagonist of this race — and that was Special Week's ideal image. Her dream was to "become the number-one uma musume in Japan." She hadn't known exactly what that number-one uma musume would look like. Now she did. Silence Suzuka was the answer.
If before she'd been lost on how to chase her dream, watching Silence Suzuka race now gave her a direction: If I can run alongside Silence Suzuka, I can absolutely make my dream come true!
It was love at first sight.
Special Week stood frozen.
King Halo hadn't expected that someone in real life could actually project themselves into a race this completely.
Weird.
She glanced curiously past Special Week.
...
Where was Nishizaki Ryu? Wasn't he supposed to show up here, as the infamous "leg-groping creep"?
"Oh? King Halo, did you also notice that kid over there? Seems you've got more than racing talent — a good eye, too. Maybe after you retire you could become a colleague of mine. Hahaha."
A familiar, unexpected voice came from behind her. King Halo finally understood — the gaze she'd been half-feeling earlier wasn't from a random passerby. It was Nishizaki Ryu, who was supposed to be bothering Special Week.
"You've taken a liking to her?" she asked, already knowing the answer.
Unlike [Tokai Teio] and [Kitasan Black] down the line, Special Week was the first uma musume Nishizaki Ryu had ever personally sought out — a must-have, the kind where no one else would do. If the other teammates were all [Gold Ship]'s unilateral kidnappings, Special Week was the one Nishizaki Ryu had directed [Gold Ship] to go and fetch. A completely different tier of treatment.
Even Silence Suzuka, currently racing out there — as King Halo understood it, Nishizaki Ryu had only noticed her because Tojo Hana had brought her up. Curious, he'd slipped over to observe Silence Suzuka, and on a whim offered her the running-style advice she was executing now. After the race, Silence Suzuka would decide [Spica] suited her better than [Rigil], and would file a transfer request herself.
Nishizaki Ryu didn't actually intend to poach Silence Suzuka. Nobody understood Tojo Hana's skill better than he did. He knew perfectly well that Tojo Hana wasn't blind to Silence Suzuka's running aptitude — she saw it too clearly, which was precisely why she wanted Silence Suzuka to hold back. Only, that ran counter to Silence Suzuka's own will.
Silence Suzuka leaving [Rigil] was basically inevitable. Even without Nishizaki Ryu, another trainer would have stepped in.
Right now what Nishizaki Ryu genuinely cared about was — Special Week.
Originally he'd just come as the tactician observing his own advice in action — trainer's due diligence. He hadn't expected to stumble across her at the racecourse. He hadn't even spoken to her yet, but his instincts were already screaming: those legs had the real thing.
"That's right... King Halo, you won't say anything, will you? That girl's mine." Nishizaki Ryu showed a rare flash of decisiveness — not a face any of the sisters had seen on him across any of the other worlds.
King Halo shook her head. "Not interested."
Come to think of it — why hadn't Tojo Hana noticed Special Week? No, with her ability, not noticing would be weirder. The truth was probably that [Rigil]'s next intake had already been pre-decided. When El Condor Pasa enrolled shortly after and entered the same selection trial, it wouldn't matter how green Special Week still was, or how well she performed. As long as she couldn't beat El Condor Pasa, she had no path through that screening.
King Halo glanced up at Tojo Hana on the upper level. Amusing. If she remembered right, the El Condor Pasa whom Symboli Rudolf and Tojo Hana had pinned such hopes on would eventually lose the Arc de Triomphe to Legacy World. Based on the game's race animation, Legacy World beating El Condor Pasa had come down to raw strength — not even disputable. As for the behind-the-scenes machinations of real horse racing, those had nothing to do with the uma musume here.
On that note — the Special Week who'd once lost to El Condor Pasa would go on, at the Japan Cup, to burst mode and demolish Legacy World in turn. Also not disputable.
So what did that say about Symboli Rudolf and Tojo Hana's vaunted eye for talent?
Still — in this world, none of that had happened yet.
King Halo didn't know Legacy World's actual strength.
As for the genius El Condor Pasa —
From her observation, El Condor Pasa hadn't awakened ZONE yet.
Even in the upgraded world, awakening ZONE wasn't easy.
ZONE had existed since the beginning, but regardless of version updates, it remained one of the uma musume world's core powers — an ultimate force that only a precious few could ever command.
King Halo herself hadn't mastered it yet.
Seeing that King Halo genuinely had no intention of approaching Special Week, a somewhat sleazy grin spread across Nishizaki Ryu's face.
King Halo bolted. The last thing she wanted was to be associated with that. Nishizaki Ryu looked disgusting. No wonder Special Week would mistake him for a creep.
She put distance between herself and Nishizaki Ryu and moved around to watch from the other side.
The race was entering its final stretch.
Silence Suzuka came out of the final turn in the lead — but because she'd pushed too hard early, she was already losing pace in the middle stage. Now the rivals behind were reeling her in, one by one.
So this is Nishizaki Ryu's tactical handiwork.
King Halo was a little surprised. Textbook front-runner tactics? Did Nishizaki Ryu actually know what he was doing? Kitasan Black's world had exposed how unreliable Nishizaki Ryu could be — he'd even misread talent, which was genuinely hard to believe.
Because he'd recognized that Silence Suzuka's body couldn't sustain Breakaway for the full race, he'd had her rest through the middle stage.
The tactic itself was simple, but execution wasn't. The only reason it worked was that Silence Suzuka actually trusted Nishizaki Ryu — and Nishizaki Ryu had zero experience training front-runners. The plan was almost certainly something he'd pulled out of his head on the fly.
The tactic Silence Suzuka was running was a standard Breakaway pattern: initial sprint, rest, final burst — three simple phases. But how much do you sprint in the opening? Without firm control of your own pacing, you'd never get breathing room at mid-stage.
And "resting" mid-race wasn't resting in the normal sense. Speed couldn't actually drop. In a skill-less world, you transitioned from full sprint to a fast gallop — which only recovered a little wind, but enough to power a final-straight finish. Races were always harder than training.
In a skill-enabled world like this one, there was far more to factor in.
Opponents' skill-activation timing. Your own recovery-skill deployment. And so on.
Nishizaki Ryu had laid out the tactic easily enough — but watching closely, King Halo could tell the only reason Silence Suzuka could execute it at all was that her raw strength in this race was overwhelmingly dominant.
Which circled back to Tojo Hana's tactic being the correct one — higher win probability, lower wear and tear. Silence Suzuka running like this was pure self-indulgence.
Different.
If McQueen's Breakaway was a tactical choice — a method for dominating a race, for seizing victory on her terms —
Silence Suzuka's Breakaway was just indulgence. She wanted to tear across the turf with her whole heart. She wanted to keep running and never stop. A purely playful impulse, and it was steering the race.
...
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