At this point, there was no backing out. She just had to go in.
With her nerves hanging slightly taut, Mejiro Ardan followed Sakuraba Ryo through the curtain Sakura Chiyono O had described as "the gate to hell."
A long corridor stretched out ahead of them.
Further in, a door stood open along the side of the hallway. Clearly, that was the treatment room where the massage was done.
The lighting inside was much softer than in the outer room, and the air carried a faint herbal scent mixed with a trace of steam and heat.
The first thing her eyes went to was the large treatment bed in the center of the room.
Maruzensky was lying there quietly, her whole body in an unusually relaxed posture, her hands resting naturally at her sides and her long legs stretched out.
Most striking of all was the white towel draped over her face, wisps of warm steam rising from it and completely hiding her expression.
Chestnut strands of hair peeked out from the edges of the towel, lying quietly against the sheet, and her chest rose and fell with long, steady breaths.
And yet there was a strange flush spreading across her otherwise fair skin...
Maruzensky-senpai—!
How had she ended up looking like she'd gone straight into a defeat CG?!
This was not the kind of disturbing scene Ardan had been expecting. There was no struggling, no odd noise, not even the slightest trace of tension.
And yet Maruzensky's current state could be summed up in just two words.
Serene.jpg.
She looked like she never needed to fight again—
Sakuraba walked over to the treatment bed and gently adjusted the angle of something on the nearby stand, then turned and made a small inviting gesture toward Ardan, his voice as calm and steady as ever.
"Mejiro-san, please lie down here. We're about to begin."
With the grim resolve of someone stepping into unknown territory, Mejiro Ardan took a deep breath and walked over to the wide treatment bed.
The mattress looked soft and comfortable, covered in spotless white linen, no different from the one Maruzensky was lying on.
But to Ardan now, the bed seemed to carry some invisible pressure, like a creature lying in wait in silence for its next "offering."
She swallowed instinctively, and a tiny sound caught in her throat.
Her violet eyes darted from Maruzensky, lying there as peacefully as a sleeping statue, to Sakuraba, who was calmly preparing something as though nothing at all were out of the ordinary.
Chiyono O's cry of "the gate to hell," and her boiled-red face, replayed vividly in Ardan's mind.
Am I... going to end up like that too?
The thought rose up against her will, sending a cool chill through her fingertips.
N-no way...
She was Mejiro Ardan, an Umamusume who had gone through rigorous training and major races. How could a single massage possibly reduce her to...
And yet Maruzensky's overly peaceful state, along with Chiyono O's overly intense reaction, both pointed toward the same unsettling possibility...
This was no ordinary treatment.
"Mejiro-san, just relax and lie down. Make yourself as comfortable as possible."
Sakuraba's gentle voice cut through her thoughts.
He was soaking another clean white towel in hot water, his motions unhurried, as though he were preparing for the most ordinary thing in the world.
Ardan steadied herself. Her upbringing and poise would not allow her to keep showing fear like this.
She gave a light nod, slipped off her shoes, and sat down sideways on the edge of the bed, her movements just a little stiff, before slowly lying back.
The moment her back touched the soft mattress, she could almost hear how much faster than usual her heart was beating.
She tried to regulate her breathing, folding her hands over her stomach in an effort to preserve her usual elegance and composure, but the slight curl of her toes betrayed the tension inside her.
Eyes open, she stared at the soft halo of light on the ceiling, but her ears strained to catch every sound in the room...
The sound of Sakuraba wringing out the towel.
His light footsteps as he approached.
And...
Maruzensky's long, enviably steady breathing from the next bed over.
What... happens next?
Anxiety curled around her heart like fine vines.
She resisted the possibility of some overwhelming experience that might overturn everything she thought she knew, yet at the same time, driven by the curiosity born of both aristocratic refinement and an Umamusume's refusal to back down, she found herself harboring the faintest trace of expectation mixed in with that fear.
Then, amid those tangled and unnameable emotions, she felt something soft and pleasantly warm settle over her forehead.
A moment later, her eyes were covered as well—
It was that same white towel, steaming with heat.
Her sight was blocked, and all her other senses sharpened at once.
She could smell the herbs more clearly now, feel the support of the mattress beneath her, and... the intangible pressure of Sakuraba's hands, as though they held some kind of magic, just before they touched her.
Wrapped in darkness and warmth, her hearing became unnaturally acute.
She heard him seem to shift position slightly, and then his calm voice spoke from very close by, gentle but carrying an unmistakable focus.
"Then, Mejiro-san, let's begin. Please relax as much as you can and leave everything to me."
That sentence felt like a signal. Ardan's body instantly went even tighter, and then she forced herself to slowly breathe out.
"O-Okay..."
Her voice shook slightly, sounding as though it carried no confidence at all.
Sakuraba's fingers fell, but the first place they touched was not Ardan's injured leg. Instead, they settled on the shoulders that had tightened from nerves.
His movements were astonishingly gentle. Even through the thin fabric of her clothes, the pressure came through with startling precision.
Ardan was still wondering why he was not starting with her leg when a subtle sensation, like a feather brushing over her, spread out from her shoulders and neck.
It was not simple pressure or ordinary relaxation. It felt more as though warm, threadlike currents were slowly and steadily seeping into her along the lines of muscle and through the gaps between bone.
Ardan shuddered all over and nearly held her breath on reflex.
That gentleness itself was the strangest catalyst of all.
Then his fingertips began to move, gliding down along both sides of her spine in a rhythm so soothing it was nearly hypnotic. Each press came with a hard-to-describe ache and heaviness—not pain, not even unpleasant, perhaps even comfortable—and what followed was a deeper numb softness, as though some hidden lock buried in muscle and bone were being gently pried open.
At her ankle—the place where the lingering pain after the race had made movement difficult—she had been guarding it instinctively the entire time.
At last, Sakuraba's hand came to rest there.
His touch was so light it was as though he feared breaking some fragile treasure, his fingertips barely brushing the skin around it.
And yet it was precisely that extreme softness that seemed to hit the very core of the pain.
A sharp, strange sensation—part electric shock, part rushing warmth—shot up from her ankle in an instant, racing along her calf, thigh, spine, and straight into her brain.
"Mm...!"
A short, muffled sound escaped her lips completely against her will.
Ardan startled herself with it. That was not a sound she would ever normally make. It carried a tremor she tried to suppress and an unfamiliar sweetness that did not belong to her at all.
She hurriedly bit down on her lower lip, trying to trap any further sound behind her teeth.
But Sakuraba's hands did not stop.
His careful attention to the injury continued, and as though sensing the tiny reactions in her body, his touch only became more detailed, more deliberate, more thorough.
The sensation...
It was too strange.
Like parched ground suddenly being soaked through with sweet spring water, every thirsty cell crying out as it unfurled—
And at the same time, like tiny currents running wild through her body, every nerve ending trembling in delighted response wherever they passed.
"...Ah..."
Another low sound slipped out, softer than before, even harder to suppress.
Her cheeks beneath the towel were already burning. She could feel the tips of her ears growing hot too.
Reason was screaming at her to keep her Mejiro family dignity intact, but her body was betraying her. Under those gentle hands—so precise it was almost cruel—it softened inch by inch, relaxed inch by inch, and even... began to lean into the touch that brought those strange sensations.
Her toes curled and uncurled on their own.
The muscles in her calves twitched lightly.
At some point, the hands that had been neatly folded over her stomach had gripped the sheets beneath her instead, her fingertips whitening slightly from the force.
Each breath was now long and warm and carried the faint tremor of a reaction so shameful that even she could hardly bear it.
So this... is how Maruzensky-senpai ended up like that?
It was not rough pain.
It was this—this gentleness so inescapable it struck straight into the deepest part of a person's senses.
It wore down your will.
Stripped away your restraint.
Coaxed the most instinctive bodily reactions out into the open without leaving anything hidden.
Sakuraba's voice remained as calm as ever, as though the strange sounds she had made had never reached his ears at all.
"Please try to relax, Mejiro-san. Your muscles are even more tense than I expected, and that's not good for your recovery."
Relax?
How much more relaxed do you want me to get?!
Ardan screamed soundlessly in her heart.
Under those gentle yet unnervingly precise hands that seemed to hold some kind of magic, she felt like a tiny boat in the middle of a storm, able only to let the waves of sensation carry her toward some unknown shore.
The gate to hell?
...
Perhaps, in another sense, it was more like a tender paradise that made people sink helplessly into it...
...
I can't hold back anymore...!
"Ohh—ohhh~~"
The girl's voice echoed through the treatment room.
...
Out in the main shop, Sakura Chiyono O sat stiffly, staring at the curtain now that she had recovered a little.
There was still a lingering flush on her face.
That massage was definitely weird!
She had barely been in there for any time at all before she heard Maruzensky-senpai making... making those embarrassingly awful noises!
My admired senpai—how could she make sounds like that—?!
Wait.
Hadn't Ardan-san gone in just now too?
Surely she wasn't also...?
While the small girl's thoughts ran wild, the curtain rustled again.
"Um... Sakura Chiyono O-san... it's your turn now, okay?"
Wearing his business smile, Sakuraba looked at Sakura Chiyono O as he said it.
But in Chiyono O's eyes right now, Sakuraba's smile had become absolutely terrifying.
"Kya!"
A yelp escaped her on reflex, almost like a puppy's bark.
The d-devil was here!
---
T/N: i want that massage