"Shirayuki… she's incredible."
Watching from the outer lane while warming up, Gold Ship could not help but say it out loud. From the explosive start to the way she clawed her way back in the middle of the run, Shirayuki had shown far more than anyone expected. Her body seemed to drift with the wind, slipping through the track as lightly as a feather.
"Is she really a transfer student? Her form doesn't look like a beginner at all."
"She came from Sakura Municipal Middle School…" Meisho Doto said softly. "A school like that probably doesn't even offer any Uma Musume-specific training, right…?"
"Oh? That's a pretty famous school."
Even if Tracen held a unique place in Japan, Shirayuki's old school was still well known in its own right. At least in Tokyo, getting in usually meant you were already among the academic elite.
"So that's what they mean by an elite," Gold Ship muttered.
Not everyone, however, was simply impressed.
Watching that white figure on the track, Rice Shower's expression grew more and more complicated.
She had seen Shirayuki training yesterday. It had not been anything remarkable. In fact, Rice Shower had overtaken her without difficulty.
But now everything was different.
Chiya had said Shirayuki's basics were weak, that she had to start from walking. Rice Shower had assumed that was an exaggeration, maybe even a joke, but even so, it meant Shirayuki should not have been able to run well yet.
And yet only a day later, she was showing astonishing ability.
From Rice Shower's point of view, Shirayuki's running form looked almost perfect, far better than her own when she had first started training.
Could it be that the two of them had been secretly training together behind her back?
And then there was this morning. Shirayuki had called Chiya "onii-sama," a title that, in all of Tracen, only Rice Shower used for him.
A little sister who was better than her, more perfect than her, stronger than her.
The thought made her face darken.
"Does that mean I…"
"Ah!"
"Rice Shower?!"
Gold Ship stopped in front, and Meisho Doto stopped too. Rice Shower, distracted by her thoughts, failed to notice and ran straight into Doto from behind. The force bounced back off Doto and sent Rice Shower tumbling to the ground.
"I'm so sorry! I wasn't paying attention at all, I'm sorry, I'm sorry… Are you okay?!"
"It's not Doto's fault," Rice Shower said, rubbing her head and forcing a weak smile. "It's just me. Rice Shower has always been unlucky… before, and now too…"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! It's all my fault for making you blame yourself like this!" After apologizing over and over, Meisho Doto reached out a hand. "Um… can you stand?"
Rice Shower took it and tried to rise, but a dull pain shot through her foot.
She must have twisted it when she fell.
Of course.
Rice Shower really was an unlucky girl.
Meanwhile, the situation on the track shifted again.
Seeing Shirayuki catch up, Symboli Rudolf and Narita Brian both looked surprised. Neither had expected a newly transferred student with no real training experience to keep up, and using that kind of posture, no less.
There was no proper technical term for it. Some would call it beast-like, others monstrous, but because so few runners had ever used it, most trainers barely mentioned it at all.
The body lowered until it was almost parallel with the ground, driving forward off the feet in a motion that looked almost like crawling. Narita Brian used it to transfer power through her thighs more efficiently. The legendary Oguri Cap used it because, according to her, "it just feels easier this way," and eventually made it her signature style.
And now there was a third.
Narita Brian's golden eyes slid toward Shirayuki's face, and a grin spread across her lips.
Interesting.
This kid might actually be worth paying attention to.
Eight hundred meters remained.
At the edge of the training field, Chiya was breathing hard, sweat pouring off him. Even though Shirayuki was the one running, the exhaustion transferred back to him clearly enough. His muscles burned, the taste of iron lingered on his tongue, and his chest felt as though a heavy stone had been strapped to it.
By comparison, Rudolf and Brian had sweat on their faces, but their breathing remained steady. In other words, they still had plenty left in the tank.
As expected, a gap in raw ability could not be bridged by technique alone.
Chiya tightened his grip on the stopwatch.
The two Triple Crown runners had deliberately stayed just half a length ahead. They weren't accelerating. They were holding position.
They were waiting.
The race was about to enter the final turn, the point that would decide everything.
If she could not pass there, then this training run would end in failure.
This was not a simple speed test. It was an obstacle race. The point was to see how a runner seized opportunities and got past her rivals. That was why Rudolf and Brian had deliberately avoided pulling away.
They were waiting to see whether Shirayuki could catch the opening left by two Triple Crown champions.
If that was the case…
Chiya drew in a breath. His heart was pounding so hard it felt as if it might break through his chest, but he forced his awareness back onto Shirayuki.
Almost there.
The moment they entered the turn, both of their rhythms would shift, and that would be the chance.
Do not rush.
Absolutely do not rush.
For the first time, Chiya understood on a gut level why Uma Musume so often mistimed their acceleration, no matter how many times trainers warned them not to. The tension of the track ate away at their judgment. It made calm thinking almost impossible and dragged them along with the emotions of everyone around them.
And this was not even a real race. It was not even a proper mock race, just a training run. Yet even so, Chiya's hands and feet were already going numb from the pressure.
In a real race, with thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands watching, what kind of pressure would that be?
He could barely imagine it.
He had been naive.
Watching and doing were completely different things.
Chiya and Shirayuki both lifted a hand to wipe the sweat stinging their eyes.
The instant they hit the turn, Gold Ship's voice cut through the wind.
"That's it! Right there!"
At the same moment, Chiya saw it too.
Rudolf and Brian, who had been running side by side and sealing off the front, shifted slightly apart because of the turn. Brian, acting almost on instinct to conserve energy, slipped into the inside lane. The moment she moved, a gap opened beside Rudolf.
Shirayuki seized it.
She bent low, her ankle stretching forward, then extending as far as it could. With the last of her strength, she tore up a strip of turf and launched herself ahead like an arrow.