Zhigaotian had transmigrated.
It was the classic truck-kun routine. But come to think of it, as an orphan raised in an orphanage, she really was the ideal candidate for an isekai recruitment program.
Put that way, it did not seem strange at all.
The world she had arrived in, however, did not seem all that different from her previous one.
Thank goodness for that. At least she had not wandered into some bizarre nightmare setting full of weasel recruitment bureaus, prehistoric ghost girls elbowing cute little critters, or "people-first" urban horror stories.
If she really had ended up in a place like that, Zhigaotian would have had no choice but to say, "First time transmigrating, fresh account, please do not do this to me," before grabbing a brick and smashing it over her own head.
But fortunately, the tiny Zhigaotian who had ascended into an immortal totem must have been blessing her from heaven, because she had been sent to this world instead.
As the price, though... he—rather, she—had permanently lost her little Zhigaotian.
According to her memories, this world at least had a place for her to live. That said, it was still the standard opening of both parents dead.
But for the girl, that was something she had long since gotten used to.
She looked at the mirror beside her.
Reflected in it was a black-haired girl, her waist-length hair fading into a faint purple at the ends.
Her eyes shimmered with tiny flecks of violet, like a starry sky held within them.
And atop her head, a pair of horse ears twitched restlessly.
She had transmigrated into the world of Uma Musume and become an adorable horse girl herself, desuwa.
But before the girl could finish admiring her reflection, the "Zhigaotian" in the mirror moved on her own.
"Have you looked enough already...?" the mirror-Zhigaotian said with an annoyed look in her eyes. "You have been staring at yourself in this room for three straight days. If food delivery had not become so convenient nowadays, I would be wondering whether you were about to rot in here."
The Zhigaotian in the mirror was openly disdainful, clearly dissatisfied with the behavior of her real-world counterpart.
"Quit nagging, quit nagging... I suddenly realized I forgot something very important." The girl did not care in the slightest—or rather, she had long since grown used to the other's existence. "Perfect timing since you are awake. Now hurry up and turn sideways for me."
Mirror-Zhigaotian did not understand what she meant, but obediently turned ninety degrees anyway.
"What are you doing?"
"Mmm-hmm, just as expected of me... fifty-one, eighty-six, that unbelievably killer waist-to-hip ratio..." While tracing curves in the air with her hand, the girl shamelessly made extremely inappropriate comments at her sideways reflection.
"..."
That silence did not mean confusion.
It meant she had given up.
"Why did I not just send you off to fight for your life in some back-alley urban death match...?"
"Just kidding... honestly, my head has been wanting to test itself against a brick for a while too."
The Zhigaotian in the mirror had first appeared on the very day the girl arrived in this world and looked into a mirror.
Still, the girl had not found it particularly surprising. Isekai stories came with cheats these days, after all.
And Zhigaotian's cheat was the mirror.
More precisely, it was the ability to use mirrors to glimpse possibilities from other worlds.
That was right—basically the same mirror-and-personality tech as that bus.
There was one difference, though. Zhigaotian did not need any special equipment. As long as there was a mirror, or anything that could serve as a similar medium, she could observe.
Though, for now, she could only observe herself.
In the past three days, the only time Zhigaotian had gone out was to buy a full-length mirror big enough to see her whole body.
Do not ask why she had not just ordered one online. The answer was simple: she had been far too excited to wait.
"If box bro found out you were using the mirror to get worked up over your alternate selves, I wonder what he would think," said the Zhigaotian in the mirror.
"I have never used this thing for anything bad. Box bro would be very pleased," the girl declared with astonishing shamelessness.
"Enough messing around." Her reflection spread her hands helplessly. "Did you really transmigrate here just to slack off and be a salted fish? Is there not anything you want to do?"
"For example, becoming an Uma Musume."
It was a perfectly normal suggestion...
But the purple-eyed girl, who had been turned around fiddling with something, suddenly jolted violently.
"How did you know?" she asked, spinning back around. "I was going to surprise you... Have you been spying on my life?"
The accusation was utterly baseless.
After all, the two of them could only communicate when Zhigaotian was actually looking into a mirror.
"Are you an idiot?" said the other Zhigaotian. "Besides, you are in the world of Uma Musume right now. You do not even need to think with any particular body part to figure that one out, okay?"
In the world of Uma Musume, if you did not get involved with horse girls at all, it was like playing that bus game without the umbrella guy. It would not necessarily make your life a total failure...
But it would still be basically the same as coming here for nothing. Or wasting the whole trip.
"Ha... haha..."
Virgil having a talk with Don Quixote—yeah, she was cooked.
"Ugh..." Mirror-Zhigaotian found it hard to believe this idiot was supposed to be herself. Did coming to the Uma Musume world to retire in comfort come at the cost of your brain cells?
"So you are going to Tracen in a few days?" she asked. "Hmm... no, that is not right either. Tracen is not some no-name dump. How exactly did you get accepted?"
That was right, kids.
Although Tracen was famous for, among other things, "basements everywhere," "old men who had controlled the government for decades," and "mysterious weirdos lurking all over campus," to the point that people jokingly called it Tracen Vocational School...
Central Tracen was, in fact, one of Japan's top academic institutions.
Einstein face.
"Obviously~~~~ not." There was no way some nobody like her could pull that off. "But becoming an Uma Musume does not mean I have to go to Tracen..."
It just made it a little harder to go cuddle horse girls, that was all.
At worst, she could always sneak over in the middle of the night, climb the wall, break in, and abduct some delinquent horse girl who stayed up all night tormenting her trainer's blood pressure to make her the lady of her stronghold.
"So I signed up for a debut race. Kids, just wait till I shock the world..."
"When is it?"
"Four days from now. I signed up for the nearest one," the girl said proudly, puffing out her chest and looking exactly like someone waiting to be praised by herself in the mirror.
But the praise she expected never came.
Instead, the other Zhigaotian took a deep, heavy breath, the sort one used to keep oneself from resonating with the sin of wrath.
"First of all, I am also Zhigaotian..."
"Uh... and?"
"And I very clearly remember our 1000-meter time trial being five and a half minutes."
Even with a different body—arguably even a different race altogether—the core truth remained the same:
she was a complete athletic disaster.
"Doesn't that thing exist...?" Zhigaotian refused to admit that she had gotten a little carried away after waking up in the body of a beautiful girl, or that she had genuinely done something stupid. But she still had one hidden reserve power source left, and she was not ready to give up yet.
"That thing? Are you sure?" The Zhigaotian in the mirror clearly disapproved. "If you use it too much... after reading Leviathan and playing that bus game, you should know what kind of consequences it brings."
"If you do not use it when it matters, then what is the point of having it?" Zhigaotian said, utterly unconcerned. "Besides, it is not like I am not going to train... I will just scrape through the debut race first. After that, I will work hard for real in future races, okay...?"
Naturally, the Zhigaotian in the mirror did not believe a word of that nonsense.
But there was not much she could do about it.
"Mm... as long as you know what you are doing." Since the other girl had already said that much, there was little left for her, as the observer, to say. "Still, even if it is just a last-minute scramble, I suggest you spend the next few days getting used to—"
"Of course."
That had been exactly what she was thinking too.
After changing clothes, the girl returned to the mirror once more.
"Can you wish me luck, me?"
"Of course... Just remember to look in mirrors more often. I do not want you doing anything weird while I am not around."