As a rookie trainer who had only just earned his certification, Urushihara Tōru could recite the average speed of first-year horse girls on this kind of course with his eyes closed.
Urara's top speed did barely reach the average line.
But her acceleration was a disaster.
By the time she finally got up to full speed over this distance, the other horse girls would probably already be entering their final sprint.
How ridiculous was that?
Wait. No.
Something had to be wrong.
Urara was a character who had appeared in the Uma Musume anime. Her ability absolutely should not be at this level.
That was it—aptitude!
Look at me, panicking so hard I forgot that different horse girls had completely different distance aptitudes.
If you forced them to run distances they were unsuited for, they naturally would not be able to show their real strength.
Even Symboli Rudolf herself would still struggle if you shoved her into a short-distance race.
"You ran really well, Urara. Take a break for now, and later we'll test how you handle some other distances."
Urushihara Tōru put on a smile.
As a qualified trainer, not letting his own emotions affect a horse girl's performance was the most basic requirement of all.
And Urara, clearly not noticing the feelings he was hiding, simply nodded with a bright smile and said, "Okay!"
During her break, Tōru would occasionally catch little thoughts drifting from the humming Urara, things like:
So this is what it feels like to have a trainer? Urara feels like she got stronger!
Urara's going to work really hard for Trainer!
It would be fine.
Urara was a horse girl who had appeared in the anime.
Her talent had to be there somewhere, just waiting for him to uncover it.
…
After Urara had rested for a while, Urushihara Tōru stood at the finish line of the mile course and raised an eyebrow slightly.
Her stamina had definitely been squeezed pretty thoroughly this time.
Well, she was still only a first-year debut horse girl and had not had any proper stamina training yet, so that part was understandable.
But her top speed was even lower now, and her acceleration was still every bit as terrible.
"T-Trainer… how was it?"
Still not fully steady in her breathing, Urara ran over to Tōru the moment she finished, wanting to see the results he had recorded.
But Tōru simply closed the folder in his hand and shook his head.
"That's enough testing for today. Go back and get some proper rest. We'll do more tests tomorrow."
"Okay!"
…
The next day, at the finish line of the medium-distance course, Urushihara Tōru watched Urara practically dragging herself forward step by step on sheer willpower alone, and his expression held both admiration and pain.
What moved him was that Urara's grit far surpassed his expectations.
Once he realized she had completely burned through her stamina before the final corner and begun to lose speed, he had already given the order to stop the test.
But the usually obedient and well-behaved Urara had unexpectedly dug in her heels and insisted that she would finish no matter what.
That degree of tenacity and perseverance was genuinely impressive.
But the problem was…
Her result was simply too miserable.
Even if he excluded the portion after she lost speed, it still was not the level a first-year horse girl should be showing.
Urushihara Tōru could even say with certainty that if the current Urara were entered into a medium-distance race for first-year debut horse girls, then as long as the competition was at a normal level, she would lose one hundred times out of one hundred.
As for the long-distance track that they had not yet tested, there was no point continuing at all.
If she could not even last through a medium-distance race, then challenging long distance would basically be suicide.
This was strange.
Wasn't she supposed to be some famous horse girl who had appeared in the anime?
Suppressing the emotions in his heart, Urushihara Tōru studied Urara carefully.
"T-Trainer… huff… how was it? H-How did Urara run?"
The horse girl, her legs trembling but still stubbornly standing, looked up at him with those shining pink eyes.
"You finished the whole distance. That's really admirable."
Urushihara Tōru could not lie to an Urara like this, so he could only put it as gently as possible.
"I-Is that so… ehehe…"
Urara still wore that same brilliant smile.
What do I do? Urara really did disappoint Trainer after all…
"Don't panic."
Urushihara Tōru took a deep breath, as if soothing Urara, and also soothing himself.
"We're not done testing yet. After turf, we still have dirt to test. Maybe Urara is one of those very rare dual-surface types!"
"Dual-surface… type! That sounds… so cool!"
…
On the third day, standing at the finish line of the dirt mile course, Urushihara Tōru closed the notebook in his hand.
There was no need to even open it anymore. Over the past few days he had memorized all the numbers by heart.
No matter how carefully, how gently, how tactfully he tried to put it, the data in that notebook told him only one thing—
Urara's ability was not especially promising.
Compared to turf, her running style was clearly more suited to dirt.
On dirt, her acceleration did at least improve enough to barely brush the passing line.
And thanks to her astonishing perseverance and toughness, Urara's finishing kick—her final burst—actually lasted a long time.
But the problem was that no matter how long it lasted, her top speed was still only that much.
The speed Urara reached with all her might in that final charge was, by horse-girl standards…
quite slow.
How had a horse girl who ran this slowly managed to become a horse girl important enough to appear in the anime?
With that question weighing on his mind, Urushihara Tōru rubbed the head of the Urara who, as always, came trotting over and stuck close to him the moment she finished running, then declared that training was over for the day.
…
So where exactly had things gone wrong?
Sitting alone in the trainer's office, Urushihara Tōru began to think it through.
First of all, there was no question that Urara was a character who had appeared in the Uma Musume anime.
More than that, she was not just some passing face in the background.
She had lines. She had front-facing shots.
There was no way she was some randomly drawn Background Girl A.
Even if, just for the sake of argument, his memory had somehow failed him and he had mixed Urara up with some other pink-haired horse girl from the anime who merely looked similar—
Even then, what were the chairwoman's and the secretary's evasive words and inner thoughts supposed to mean when he tried to sign a contract with Urara?
Surely he had not misunderstood all of that?
Besides, Urara was a special-admission student whose papers had been personally stamped by the chairwoman herself.
The chairwoman and her secretary could not possibly have been wrong about her.
By comparison, that should make Urara the equivalent of some ultra-genius student directly recommended into the very top universities.
If the student was not the problem…
Then was the problem the teacher—in other words, himself as the trainer?
But he had not even started giving Urara any actual training yet. Could the difference before and after training really be that huge for a horse girl?
Just as Urushihara Tōru's thoughts were spiraling further and further out of control, he suddenly felt a sharp gust of wind.
Someone locked an arm around his neck from behind!?
Had an assassin sent by that damned family that had set its sights on Urara finally arrived?
Tōru was just about to struggle when a voice he had already grown familiar with over the past few days rang out.
"What're you thinking so hard about, genius boy?"
"So it's Kurokawa."
Urushihara Tōru relaxed immediately, though he still patted the arm around his neck to signal for her to let go.
"How many times have I told you? I'm not some genius. I'm just good at brute-force memorization."
"Yeah, yeah. That's exactly the kind of unusual thinking a genius would have."
She obediently let go, but instead rested her arm on his shoulder.
"So then, what's our rising star so troubled about?"
The speaker was a woman dressed in an extremely flashy way, wearing a smile that seemed completely unaware of the concept of personal space. She looked exactly like the textbook definition of a gyaru come to life.
Kurokawa Ayaka.
Considering that she had spent a full five years preparing for the trainer certification exam, she could barely count as a senior.
But since the two of them had obtained their licenses in the same batch, she could also be considered his peer.
Naturally, that meant she was also a rookie G-rank trainer.
"I don't have money to treat you to dinner, Senpai."
There was more than a little resentment in Urushihara Tōru's voice.
At first, he had actually had a pretty favorable impression of this gyaru-like classmate.
After all, who did not enjoy looking at a beautiful woman?
But it had not taken long for him to realize something.
The more charming Kurokawa Ayaka was as a woman, the more unreliable she was as a human being.
What kind of shameless person kept pestering someone from the same cohort, insisting he call her "Senpai," and then, after getting her way, also insisted that her "junior" treat her to meals—and if he refused, she would just keep sticking to him endlessly?
That was why he had not even saved the contact information she had proactively given him.
"Don't make it sound like I'm the kind of person who only comes looking for you when you won't buy me food, okay?"
Kurokawa Ayaka jumped back as if a horse girl had kicked her.
"Can't I just come check in on our rising star once in a while?"
After saying that, she slapped a hand down on the desk and leaned her face right up close to his.
"Go on, tell me. No matter what kind of problem you've run into, as your dependable senior, I'll solve it for you!"
-------
My : pat*eon*com/RuneA
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