Ikegoe was suffering, Curren Chan was eating watermelon, and Whale Journey was sipping a drink.
Meanwhile, Orfevre was chasing Ikegoe on an electric scooter.
"Nobody told me training was going to be like this!" Ikegoe wailed.
A horse girl could easily catch up to a car on an ordinary road. Their speed would drop a little on soft grass, sure, but not by so much that an electric scooter could compete. Not even close.
Orfevre had given Ikegoe a thirty-second head start. The instant Curren Chan finished counting down with her stopwatch and announced, "Time's up," Orfevre shot out like a bullet, even taking corners cleanly as she tore after him.
The reward for catching him was making Ikegoe pay for all the things he had been saying about her over the last few days.
And because she could collect a little of that debt every single day, Orfevre approached training with unprecedented enthusiasm.
Of course, when it came down to it, she could never bring herself to actually kick her own trainer for real. Once she overtook him, she would slow down and stop.
"Whew. No good. If this is all the speed I'm chasing, it still isn't enough. Glittering Dyna moves like a supercar. This is still too slow."
Wiping the sweat off her forehead, Orfevre took the sports drink Ikegoe handed her and gulped down half the bottle before dropping onto the grass without the slightest concern for appearances.
"You've got to build up to it. Honestly, the fact that you're in this state already is pretty impressive. Orfevre, do you know that?"
Ikegoe sat down beside her a little too close, close enough that Curren Chan, still holding her slice of watermelon, frowned slightly.
The mud splashed up from the lawn was still dotting Orfevre's face. When she heard him, she turned to look at him, puzzled.
"Know what?"
Even Orfevre herself hadn't realized it, but compared to any point since her debut, she was stronger now by a wide margin. Ikegoe could say with certainty that just the results from these past two days of training were worth more than everything she had done since the start of the year.
"Right now, you're way stronger than you were at any point after your debut race. I've always believed you could win a G1, and that you'd never be a one-G1 horse girl."
Even Ikegoe wasn't sure why he was saying so much all at once. But once he'd started, he figured he might as well get it all out.
In his eyes, his Orfevre was the strongest horse girl in the world.
That conviction did not require logic. It was simply the trust a trainer had in his racer.
Orfevre lifted her chin slightly. Her lips parted, but for a long while no words came out.
In the end, all she managed was a stiff, awkward:
"Thanks."
That was about all she had to offer him.
Any other trainer probably would have thrown her out of the team the moment that debut race ended. After all, a horse girl getting disqualified for a foul in her very first race was almost unheard of.
"I'm going to win a G1," she said at last.
This time, she said only that. She didn't mention Glittering Dyna once.
"All right then! In that case, tonight we're going out for a big meal. A real team dinner. Sound good?"
Ikegoe clapped his hands and forced the topic away from anything too heavy. The moment he did, Whale Journey, whose emotional intelligence lagged somewhat behind, reacted immediately.
"Wow! Awesome!"
The words burst out of her before she could stop herself. Then she noticed the unreadable look Curren Chan was giving her and coughed.
"Ahem. I mean… I'd like to go too…"
This silver-haired girl had recently entered what everyone jokingly called her "silverization" phase, the original gray in her hair gradually bleaching itself white. That was why her long hair now had those irregular streaks of gray and white running through it.
Curren Chan bit into her watermelon and said, "I'm good with it too. Curren-chan's been wanting to shoot a vlog."
She wanted to help Orfevre in her own way. But as someone whose strengths lay in online branding and video editing, this was about all she could contribute.
She intended to capture as many of Orfevre's genuine expressions from these days as she could: joy, anger, frustration, sadness. Though ideally, mostly the cheerful ones. Then she would edit it into a finished video and upload it online.
After all, sincerity was the best weapon.
"In that case, tonight it's yakiniku!" Ikegoe declared.
And with that, Orfevre—who had not technically expressed an opinion at all—was dragged into the plan by default.
"Wuyou" Officially Expands! The First Wuyou Bakery in Takarazuka City Is About to Open!
Since Changying had brought in a top-tier renovation crew, the new location had been transformed in only two days, working from the skeleton of the old shop.
With Dyna's own reputation and network smoothing the way, even the post-renovation inspection had gone through at incredible speed.
From the moment they had found the site to the moment they secured the operating license, only three hours had passed.
That same afternoon, Changying had plunged straight into the talent market to recruit a full pastry team for the new branch.
Because there was only one branch for now, her plan was to stay on in Takarazuka herself as the acting manager, guiding the new staff by hand and teaching them how the shop was meant to operate.
There would definitely be more branches in the future. That was why Changying had already started considering a formal training program. There was no way she could personally travel to every new location forever.
As for Dyna herself, she was sitting in the break area of the new shop. The wicker chair felt oddly pleasant beneath her. Her elbows were braced on the wooden table in front of her, her chin resting on her clasped hands.
"With Changying handling everything, I'm suddenly completely free. I honestly can't think of anything I need to do."
She felt a little emotional saying it. When she had first hired Changying, the woman had seemed so reserved. Who could have guessed that once she started working, she would turn out to be such a powerhouse?
"Heh. The fools who laid her off must have been blind."
That was what Changying had said during her interview.
Even now, Dyna genuinely could not understand what kind of boss would fire someone this capable. She was basically the company's aorta.
Oguri Cap's stomach had started growling. Unfortunately, the shop was still completely empty, so she could not just reach behind the counter and grab a loaf the way she could in Tokyo. That left only one option.
Forage.
"Boss, should we go buy lunch?"
Rubbing her stomach, Oguri stared down at it as though she could already hear it drumming. She had originally planned to go alone, but since she didn't know the area, she was worried she might not find her way back to the shop afterward. So she had decided to drag Dyna along.
"Hm? Huh? It's already noon? That fast?"
Only when Oguri called out did Dyna finally realize how much time had passed. Her own stomach was complaining too, so she grabbed her shoulder bag and headed out with Oguri.
Since Changying's recent routine had settled in, she wouldn't be back until around two in the afternoon. That meant Dyna only needed to pick up one portion for her.
There were plenty of places to eat along the street.
But Dyna and Oguri settled on a different strategy:
They would eat their way through the entire street.
They swept from one shop to the next, buying something for Changying from every single place. By the time the two of them were full and returned to the store entrance, Dyna realized something was wrong.
Their hands were so full they couldn't even take out the key to unlock the door.
"Oguri… Changying is human, right?"
"Hm? Yeah? That would be kind of strange if she wasn't—"
Oguri was about to answer normally, then stopped dead when she looked at the mountain of food in Dyna's hands and the stack of takeout boxes cradled in her own arms.
By ordinary standards, one human meal equaled about half the appetite of a normal horse girl. Even stuffed to bursting, maybe seven-tenths.
But Glittering Dyna and Oguri Cap were both now eating at the level of roughly five normal horse girls each.
Which meant that if Changying ate all of this by herself, she would need about six days of three meals a day to finish it.
"Let's open the door first. Oguri, hold this for me…"
Dyna hung one bag off Oguri's finger, took out the key, unlocked the door, and shoulder-checked it open before piling all the food onto the table inside.
The two horse girls sat down opposite each other and stared. A long, wordless silence stretched between them.
Not long after, Changying returned, having successfully finished the staff recruitment. She had found a group of pastry chefs who already had experience and genuine interest in the work. With a little training, the branch would be ready to operate.
"Whew, I'm exhausted… But everything's finally settled. Wow, that smells amazing…"
The moment she walked through the door, she was hit by the aromas of oden, takoyaki, and half a dozen other things. The hunger she had been suppressing all day immediately exploded.
"Good work. Come eat. We basically bought out the whole street…"
Dyna said it matter-of-factly.
Changying, who had already assumed Dyna was exaggerating, finally looked at the food spread out across the table and remembered that Dyna was not actually a horse girl who used exaggeration much at all.
"So… all of this… is for me to eat?"
She sat down at the table, draping her coat over her lap and staring at the mountain before her.
Her stomach cramped slightly.
Not from joy at the sight of good food. From sheer dread.
There was absolutely no way she could eat all of this.
Naturally, Oguri and Dyna ended up polishing off most of it for her.
By the time the trash was packed away at the end, even Dyna was feeling her stomach swell a little, and that almost never happened anymore.
After rinsing her mouth, Changying collapsed onto the shop's only long sofa and used her coat to cover her face for a nap.
Oguri sat beside the table, propping her chin on one hand as she watched Dyna scrolling through her phone for a long while. Eventually, her gaze settled on Dyna's lower belly.
"Boss… you haven't really been training lately, right?"
"Hm? No, not really. I've been busy with the branch, so about all I've done is my morning jog. All the other training's been on hold."
At first Dyna answered casually, trying not to wake Changying. Then she caught something in Oguri's tone.
She set her phone down and pressed at her stomach with her fingers.
Soft. Squishy.
Her mind blanked.
Eat more → gain weight.
Stop training → weight doesn't come off.
Weight doesn't come off → the extra turns into fat.
…Which meant she was getting chubby.
At first, Oguri shook her head. Then she nodded. In her memory, there really wasn't much difference between the Dyna who had just opened the shop and the Dyna sitting here now. Dyna's height hadn't changed. Her overall silhouette hadn't changed much.
The only thing Oguri had really noticed was that Dyna's chest had continued to develop. It was bigger than before. Even with a sports bra and a binder, certain movements had become something Dyna needed to think twice about, just because of how obvious the result looked to other people.
That said, having a good figure did carry certain advantages among horse girls. In minor bumps and collisions, extra softness definitely absorbed shock better.
Fat, after all, was a natural cushion.
For someone like Tamamo Cross, that was the stuff of dreams.
Though for certain big escape-runners, it was apparently the source of endless resentment instead—extra wind resistance and nothing more.
"Not that exaggerated," Oguri said at last. "The only thing that feels different is… your chest got bigger."
As she said it, she even made a vague measuring gesture over her own chest.
Compared to Dyna, Oguri was very firmly on the smaller side. If she'd had a figure like this herself, that notorious American horse girl with her rough elbows wouldn't have shaken her so badly back then.
"…I see…"
Dyna fell silent.
Then, very deliberately, she slid both hands under her chest and lifted.
Once upon a time, she'd been the kind of girl who envied voluptuous beauties.
Now that she had become a horse girl with that kind of body herself, all she could think was that daily life had turned into a massive pain.
These days, Dyna wore not only a sports bra but also a chest binder every time she dressed. It was the only way she could recover anything resembling her old sense of normalcy. She did not want to live her life having to factor her chest into every single thing she did.
That would be awful.
"Well… I'll just get back to proper training. Lose what I can, I guess…"
Dyna really had preferred her old figure. She had no desire whatsoever to turn into someone like Super Creek.
She was a horse girl, not a mother.
Honestly, what felt most comfortable to her during training was a tight sports tank top. But that option had long since been locked away from her. These days, she was forced to rely on Tracen's standard training wear instead.
At least it hid her figure reasonably well.
And that was the important part. It meant she could actually train without feeling self-conscious.
Even if it was a little uncomfortable, she could endure it.
There were still a little over three weeks left until the Japanese Derby.
Now that Changying had more or less taken care of the branch, Dyna could return to Tokyo for specialized training. Just like Ikegoe had said, the goal before the Derby was to convert all the weight she had gained during these past few days into effective weight, and then step onto the brightest stage in all Japan in peak condition.
Because this year's Japanese Derby would probably break attendance records.
Today my friend dragged me out to watch Demon Slayer.
I haven't even seen the main series.
Meow.
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 (Chapter160)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter98)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter175)
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 163
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 150
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 100
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 170
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 145
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 125
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 69
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 90
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 66
Uma Musume: From Beginner 100
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 70
Uma Musume: I Want All 90
I Can Copy Unique Skills 65
Summoning an Evil God, but the 52
Supernatural Multiverse 65
My Harem Is Indescribable 55
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 55
"I'm just a Valkyrie passing through." 66
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 55
Still playing traditional Honk 35
The Most Filial Son Under Heav 35
What Should I Do After Switchi 24
Reincarnated as a Demon, Skill 35
Hell-Difficulty Dungeon? 27
Transmigrated as Sukuna 27
Checking In in Demon Slayer 32
The Reincarnating Trainer of Tracen Academy 44
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