"What are you two doing now?!"
Dyna could not make sense of the situation at all. Based on past experience, whenever she came here, she was always able to decide for herself what she was wearing.
So why had someone dressed her in Sea the Stars's race outfit? This was her mental space, wasn't it?!
Cody's Wish spread her hands and smiled lightly. "Sea the Stars said before that she wanted to see you in her race outfit, so I helped make her wish come true."
What a neat way to shift the blame. Cody's Wish had sold Sea the Stars out in one move and gotten away without any risk herself. Naturally, Sea the Stars objected at once.
"How could that be? Dyna, Cody's Wish wanted to see it too. She's an accomplice."
The two of them immediately started exposing each other's motives. The more Light Dyna listened, the more her mouth twitched.
At last, she raised a hand in a stop gesture. "So basically, the two of you just wanted to see me in a different outfit, right? Why go through all this trouble? If you wanted to see it, you could've just said so… It's not like anyone here would care if I changed clothes. Why make it feel like some kind of crime?"
She really did not understand the logic of her seniors. Looking down, she couldn't see her own stomach, but if they were going for accuracy, then that tattoo must have been reproduced too. A tattoo on her lower abdomen… that sort of thing inevitably gave off some very questionable implications.
Sea the Stars coughed softly. "Sorry. Next time I'll just ask directly. Nothing like this will happen again."
She sat down beside Dyna and, while Dyna wasn't looking, shot Cody's Wish a resentful glare.
As for Cody's Wish, she was leaning against the rail of the racecourse, gazing up at the blue sky and white clouds, apparently lost in thought. In truth, she was feeling rather pleased by Sea the Stars's change.
When Sea the Stars had first arrived, she had been as expressionless as a stone tablet. Cody's Wish had wanted someone to talk to, but all she ever got was silence.
Yet after Cody's Wish's relentless efforts over this stretch of time, Sea the Stars had finally started letting her real self show through beneath that poised, handsome façade. She was clearly a horse girl who enjoyed a little fun after all. Cody's Wish couldn't help suspecting that the pressure of her upbringing had forced her to construct a mask to protect her real nature.
Cody's Wish had always thought East Asian family pressure was terrifying in some respects.
Though Sea the Stars had been born and raised in Europe, there was no escaping the fact that her family came from the largest country in East Asia.
Cody's Wish only knew that because she had searched it up on her phone before the Breeders' Cup.
"By the way, Dyna," Cody's Wish said, turning her head. "Your next race is over two thousand meters, right?"
"Yes. The first race of the Triple Crown—the Satsuki Sho. It was supposed to be held at Nakayama Racecourse, where the final straight is notoriously short, but because of the earthquake damage, this year it's been moved to Tokyo Racecourse. It has the second-longest straight in Japan. Foreign media always say it's the track that best fits the stereotype of Japanese horse girls."
Sea the Stars, sitting nearby with her knees drawn up and her fingers interlaced around them, listened with interest.
For her, two thousand to twenty-four hundred meters was the most orthodox of orthodox distances. Over these past years, one might as well say there had been no one capable of defeating her over that range. The saying "No matter how strong you are, Sea the Stars will still be above you" existed for a reason.
As for why she hadn't won her debut race… well, the answer was simple: true powerhouses never win the first round.
"Are people in Japan really this obsessed with the concept of a 'Triple Crown'?" Sea the Stars asked. "France has a Triple Crown too, but not many horse girls actually care to run it. What's more popular nowadays is the so-called 'New French Triple Crown' with the Arc replacing the last leg."
Triple Crowns really did matter especially much to Japanese people. There wasn't just the Classic Triple Crown, but the Fillies' Triple Crown, the Dirt Triple Crown, the older-horse Autumn Triple Crown, and all sorts of other three-race achievement lines.
Dyna herself didn't know why everyone was so attached to them. She only knew that the people of disaster-stricken Japan needed a Triple Crown right now.
"I don't really know either," Dyna admitted. "But an unbeaten Triple Crown always gives people a huge emotional lift. That's why I want to become a Classic Triple Crown horse girl. The Classic Triple Crown, and then the Autumn Triple Crown as an older horse… those might be my biggest goals in the future."
It wasn't as though she had never imagined sweeping both the Classic Triple Crown and the Autumn Triple Crown in the same year.
After all, even classic-year horse girls could enter the Tenno Sho (Autumn), the Japan Cup, and the Arima Kinen. But that would mean four races in three months. If she actually tried to do that, JRA would probably just forbid her from entering.
Sea the Stars tipped her face up to the bright sky. The weather in dreams was always lovely. Sometimes, it was the clearest reflection of the dreamer's state of mind. Dyna's mental state had always been healthy and bright, so there was nothing to worry about there.
By all logic, the amount of training Dyna was doing in real life was already enough. But for someone as exacting as Sea the Stars, it still wasn't sufficient. She wanted to pour some technical knowledge into Dyna about what to watch for over ten furlongs. She had absolutely no intention of letting Light Dyna lose any race in front of her.
"Come on," Sea the Stars said, rising. "Let's go around the track once. I'll teach you a few things. A two-thousand-meter G1 isn't some little kiddie race like the ones you've run before. The girls who stand here all come with the resolve to risk everything for the title."
With a snap of her fingers, a fierce wind swept across the course, forcing Dyna to squeeze her eyes shut. When she opened them again, the scenery had changed completely.
The starting gates were there now, along with sixteen other horse girls.
"Wha—?"
Dyna stared blankly. At some point, the clothes on her body had changed back into her own race outfit. In such a field, its warm pink still stood out strikingly.
Sea the Stars patted her on the shoulder and pointed toward Gate 18.
"That one's yours. Do your best. If you can crush even one of the girls in this field, then you'll have more than enough strength to crush the competition in the Satsuki Sho."
Dyna's gaze swept across the other horse girls. She didn't recognize any of them. But from the pressure each one gave off, it was obvious there wasn't a single pushover among them.
Still, she spotted one chestnut horse girl who looked oddly familiar—hair glinting like starlight. Before Dyna could ask, Sea the Stars answered.
"That's right. That's my mother. Or rather… the version of Sea the Stars who won the Arc."
Dyna swallowed hard.
Then she looked toward the gate beside hers and saw another horse girl radiating an overwhelming presence.
"Fame and Glory," Sea the Stars said. "In my six G1 races, she faced me in three of them. She was absolutely the greatest rival of my racing career, though she never managed to beat me even once. She's one of the runners you especially need to watch in this simulated race."
Sea the Stars herself was in Gate 8. A perfect draw.
Dyna stepped into her own gate with a knot of unease in her chest, practically tricked into it by Sea the Stars. Of course, she could have refused.
But—
"Ha—! Cough, cough…"
She jolted awake from the dream. That terrifying training race had replayed itself dozens of times, and in the end, she had finally managed to finish seventeenth instead of dead last. No matter how the draws scattered the field, no matter how Sea the Stars and Sea the Stars's mother got boxed in along the way, they always found their lane on the final straight and surged clear together.
The ferocity of Sea the Stars's finishing kick was almost impossible to believe. Dyna could do nothing but watch her and her mother sweep across the line first every single time. The fact that she had managed to rise from last place to not last place at all was already progress.
She had woken because she'd gotten too worked up and choked on her own saliva. Grabbing the phone by her pillow, she saw it was only a little past five in the morning. After slapping her cheeks a few times, she decided there was no point trying to sleep again.
She was going out for her morning run.
"How'd that feel?" Sea the Stars asked from where she stood leaning against the doorway. After an entire night of grinding her down, she looked utterly unaffected, which made Dyna click her tongue inwardly.
"I never thought I'd get this excited over managing seventeenth," Dyna said, exhaling long and slow. "Do you really race against opponents like that in G1 company, Miss Sea the Stars?"
She could already relax her body during training now, so physical exertion also came with some mental rest. But when Cody's Wish and Sea the Stars sparred with her, it was more like they were consuming their own stamina as well. They needed rest too.
Dyna had always imagined them as inexhaustible.
"Of course," Sea the Stars replied, casually flipping two cards between her fingers. "Europe has an absurd number of G1 races. Any horse girl who knows she isn't strong enough to compete in the truly prestigious ones simply avoids them and enters different G1s instead. Over time, the famous European G1s naturally became events contested only by the strong."
"Because the weak find soil that suits them. They don't stubbornly throw themselves against thorns forever."
"And the simulated race I prepared for you just now…" She smiled faintly. "That was the Irish Champion Stakes. Same distance as the Satsuki Sho—two thousand meters. But the overall intensity was closer to the Arc."
Dyna pressed a hand to her chest and breathed out again. "So it was that race… Whew. But since Japan doesn't have that many G1s, does that mean some horse girls might never properly understand their own level, or even miss chances to enter that kind of stage?"
She thought of Opera O. Hadn't she nearly misunderstood her own strength because of a string of defeats? If not for the right people stepping in, the world might truly have lost the Tyrant legend before it ever fully began.
Maybe having lots of G1 races really was a good thing…
"More importantly, Miss Sea the Stars…" Dyna's eyes never left the cards in her hand. "Those are…?"
Sea the Stars flicked them toward her. "Catch."
Dyna caught them neatly.
One depicted Sea the Stars herself, a silhouette as she crossed the line at Longchamp. The other showed her mother in the instant she won the Arc.
"Eh?!"
Dyna stared. She had always thought that the power cards only appeared when she hit the proper moment to use them. How could Sea the Stars hand over two at once?
"Your special constitution works on us too," Sea the Stars explained. "So I can also deliberately lend you more power. But it's not limitless. The more you train, the more you can get."
Dyna ran her fingers over the cards, then carefully tucked them into her deck case.
Because in this time period, the tokusatsu franchises were in something of a lull, and even the later New Generation's big brother, Ginga, hadn't been made yet. The true age of debt-ridden Kamen Rider heroes was still a few years off.
Still, Sea the Stars had apparently devoured every scrap of entertainment preserved inside Dyna's brain. In the mental space, every memory, even the ones Dyna had forgotten, was stored away in a ramshackle warehouse somewhere. Sea the Stars had been so bored that she'd gone rummaging through it and wound up sampling bits of entertainment from the future. That explained why she now knew about things like debt-ridden heroes.
And when combined with Dyna's own special power… if she couldn't beat the enemy herself, she could call in help and equip extra abilities.
That really was the way a warrior of light fought.
"Then I'll take good care of them," Dyna said. "There'll be a time when these cards become fully mine, right?"
She thought of how Arc-en-Ciel had already fused completely into her strength, and a surge of energy ran through her.
Sea the Stars waved a hand lazily. "Do your best. You'll be fine in the Satsuki Sho."
Then she went off to rest.
Dyna finished washing up and went downstairs. Every morning lately, bouquets had been appearing outside the shop, anonymous gifts from fans. Their feelings were kind, of course, but when they were lined up so neatly by the door, the overall effect was uncomfortably similar to a memorial.
"Sigh. I'm almost out of flower vases."
As always, Dyna transferred the bouquets into vases and lined them up beneath the big front window so they could catch the sunlight. Most of the potted greenery there had come from the same source.
After thinking it over, she decided to hang up another little sign at the entrance.
It read:
Thank you all so much for your support, but there's no more room for flowers or potted plants inside the shop~ If you'd like to support us, please come visit and buy something instead!
She checked it over several times to make sure it sounded fine, then placed it beside the older sign that had once read:
Golden Artisan Not Allowed Inside
Standing there in the doorway, Dyna looked at that second sign and let out a quiet breath.
The anti–Golden Artisan sign didn't really have any use anymore. So she took it down and tossed it carelessly onto the floor of the storage room.
Maybe she'd find a way to reuse it someday.
"Oh! Hah! Yoooo, Boss!"
The shop door almost got kicked open. Dyna poked her head out of the storage room and saw Gold Ship charging in with armfuls of bags and boxes, which she then dumped onto the table in one heap.
"Eh? Gold Ship? What are you doing here?"
Dyna had specifically given Gold Ship paid leave so she could focus on preparing for her debut. Why on earth was she back in the shop?
Gold Ship held up each bag in turn and announced proudly, "These are all supplements and tonic goods for you, Boss! This one's from me, this one's from Big Sis Journey, this one's from Dream Journey Sis…"
She introduced each item one by one—food, drink, things to help with recovery—until she hesitated at the final small box.
"This one is actually from Artisan. We didn't expect her to proactively prepare something for you either. I dunno what's inside, though. Gotta protect her privacy and all that~"
"I see…" Dyna smiled helplessly as she put away all the food and drink, leaving only the little box from Golden Artisan on the table. "Thank you all. By the way, how's your debut race prep going, Gold Ship?"
Gold Ship slapped her chest. "Pfft, with my ability? Taking a Triple Crown in my classic year would be easy! No need to worry about me, Boss!"
"Mm… true enough. Want breakfast?"
"Nah! I've still got special training after this. I just stopped by to deliver this stuff~ Boss, do your best in the Satsuki Sho! We're all going to watch! And I'll be cheering for you!"
Then Gold Ship dashed right back out the door.
Dyna let out a sigh and picked up the little box.
A few minutes later, she decided she might as well open it.
She undid the clasp and lifted the lid.
Inside lay something she didn't recognize—but looking closely at the packaging, it seemed to say… American ginseng slices.
"Hah!!"
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 138)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter155)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter98)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter172)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 158
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 144
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 100
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 165
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 140
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 120
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 69
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 90
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 66
Uma Musume: From Beginner 95
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 70
Uma Musume: I Want All 80
I Can Copy Unique Skills 65
Summoning an Evil God, but the 52
Supernatural Multiverse 65
My Harem Is Indescribable 50
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 55
"I'm just a Valkyrie passing through." 40
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 50
Still playing traditional Honk 30
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