"Gaia took the day off today."
After the second class of the morning ended, Urara looked at the empty seat in front of her and sighed.
"Maybe she guessed a lot of people would come looking for her today."
"And she doesn't seem used to dealing with crowds."
Right now, there were indeed a lot of people standing outside the classroom door.
There was a younger student horse girl—apparently a rich young lady—kneading an iron ball in her hand, saying she wanted to test her strength against Gaia.
There was also an upperclassman wearing a lab coat that didn't fit at all, insisting she wanted to give Gaia a physical exam, babbling about "possibilities" and other things no one could understand.
Then the class rep from next door was shouting something like, "Gaia is too bakushin! Let's go bakushin together this afternoon!" and nearly charged straight in.
On top of that, there were hyper-enthusiastic reporters who kept asking questions nonstop while jotting notes the entire time.
Everyone was paying attention to Gaia.
"Must be nice… I want to get famous too," Urara mumbled lazily with her face on the desk—then, in the next second, her ambition ignited.
"Heh heh. I'm going to race too!"
But why didn't Gaia come to school?
On Tracen Academy's grounds, Takayama Gamu was lying under Chairwoman Akikawa Yayoi's "Soil Maintenance Mecha No. 3," carefully tinkering with a screwdriver and wrench.
Horse girls' running inevitably damaged the track. To ensure the Tracen horse girls had a perfect track to use every afternoon, Chairwoman Akikawa came early every morning to do maintenance work first thing.
"Chairwoman, this machine's mechanical structure had a small issue. I've fixed it," Takayama Gamu said, sticking his head out and wiping the mud from his face as he spoke to Akikawa—who was off to the side playing with a cat.
Because Gaia had run on the track yesterday, the turf now looked like it had been bombarded by artillery. Even Akikawa's specially ordered "Soil Maintenance Mecha No. 3" couldn't fully restore it—and it eventually malfunctioned.
As the big brother of the culprit horse girl Gaia, Takayama Gamu had been summoned early in the morning to serve as an emergency repairman.
"Praise! Trainer Gamu's efficiency is extremely high!" Chairwoman Akikawa grinned, showing a sharp little fang; the white streak at her bangs swayed as she spoke, making her look like an excited child. She pulled a small bag from behind her and tossed it to him. "This is your reward."
"No need for payment. It's what I should do…" Gamu tried to refuse. Chairwoman Akikawa was, frankly, the person at Tracen who treated him best—she'd even funded him generously after he passed the trainer exam so he could finish developing the anti-gravity device.
"Huh? This is… seeds?" he blurted.
He'd instinctively caught the bag, but the feel was odd. At Akikawa's pointed look, he opened it and stared at the contents in confusion.
"Correct!" Chairwoman Akikawa snapped open her fan, smug. "The carrots grown at Tracen's carrot farm all start from these tiny seeds!"
"Trainer Gamu—giving a trainee horse girl carrots you personally planted is the perfect way to deepen your bond!"
"That child named Tamamo Cross would definitely want carrots planted by her trainer's own hands!"
"I understand, Chairwoman." Gamu nodded, finally grasping the goodwill behind it.
"Action!"
"Yes, Chairwoman!!"
He responded with the solemn posture he used back in XIG when receiving orders, then returned to his private training room.
There was some open ground next to the training room, but since he only had one horse girl—Tamamo Cross—clearing out a whole plot just to make a carrot farm felt wasteful. It also risked getting him scolded by Secretary Hayakawa Tazuna.
So Takayama Gamu got a styrofoam box, shoveled in some dirt, and decided to plant carrots in that.
"This should work, right?"
After covering the seeds, he watered the soil lightly and muttered to himself.
He turned to leave—then, in the next moment, he felt a faint heat at the left side of his chest.
"The Esplender is glowing?"
He pulled it out. Red and blue light spiraled together inside, giving off a soft radiance.
Where the light touched the styrofoam box—right where he'd buried the seeds—green sprouts emerged.
"The carrot seeds are accelerating their growth!!"
The light inside the Esplender was conscious. Back when Gamu had been chased by Zazzak and fell off a cliff, those lights had protected him.
But he hadn't known they could also accelerate plant growth.
They were, after all, the Earth's light—so perhaps the ability wasn't surprising. Still, he'd never seen them react like this before.
"…They're fully mature already?!"
When the glow finally faded and the two lights returned into the Esplender, Gamu pulled the carrot from the box and examined it carefully.
"Size is approximately 79% larger than the same variety. Nutritional value increased by 134%," Paal reported in its usual mechanical tone after analysis.
"Gamu, you could become a billionaire by selling carrots."
"If I wanted to be a billionaire, I'd sell patents. Why would I sell carrots?" Gamu shot back.
Still… giving this carrot to Tamamo Cross should be fine, right? No harmful components were detected.
As Takayama Gamu kept thinking about the carrot, Tamamo Cross arrived at the training room right after dinner.
Their trainee-trainer relationship application was still going through the official process, so she still had to attend normal PE classes.
"Trainer Gamu! I'm here to train!"
Hm?
There was a nice smell in the training room?
"Oh, hey, Tamamo Cross." Holding the carrot, Takayama Gamu opened the door.
Should I just give her a key?
Or modify the door into an automatic one and let Paal handle it?
That would be more convenient. It wasn't like he had anything to hide in the training room—he was completely aboveboard.
Meanwhile, Tamamo Cross's gaze had already been completely captured by the dirt-streaked carrot dangling from Gamu's hand.
It looked delicious.
She swallowed.
But if she drooled like Oguri Cap right now, her image in Trainer Gamu's eyes would probably turn into a horse girl who's super greedy and gains ten kilos right before a race.
Absolutely not!
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My : pat*eon*com/RuneA
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