The morning air over the outer dirt loop wasn’t just cold; it had a damp, heavy density that settled into the fabric of Kazuma’s green tracksuit.
It was barely 5:15 AM.
The sky above Tracen Academy was a gradient of bruised indigo and pale violet, showing only the faintest rim of amber along the distant eastern horizon.
Kazuma stood against the outer rail, holding a metal thermos in one hand and a black digital stopwatch in the other.
He took a tiny sip of hot green tea, watching the steam rise and immediately dissolve into the fog.
*This is fine,* Kazuma thought, feeling the faint warmth spread down his esophagus.
*No cabbages trying to bite my face off.
No succubus bills to hide.
No giant frogs.
Just fog, cold tea, and…
a complete catastrophe.*
On the track three paces away, Haru Urara was currently engaged in what she believed to be a dynamic warm-up stretch.
She had placed her left boot up on the middle white rail, but in doing so, her right leg had locked up, her center of gravity had shifted entirely backward, and now she was frozen in a comical, V-shaped posture.
Her pink tail was twitching in rapid, panicky bursts, kicking up tiny puffs of dry soil behind her.
“Trainer…
Trainer, help,” she whimpered, her pink ears flopping completely flat against her hair like damp leaves.
“My leg got glued to the wood.
I think the rail ate my boot.”
“It didn’t eat your boot, Urara.
You just have the core stability of a wet noodle,” Kazuma sighed, setting his thermos carefully on the wooden post.
He walked over, his boots making a soft crunching sound in the dirt.
Instead of pulling her, he simply reached out, placed his hand firmly against her waist—noticing, despite her tiny frame and goofy posture, the incredible, dense muscle tone beneath her jacket that marked her as a true Uma Musume—and lifted her two inches off the ground.
He shifted her weight back over her right heel and set her down.
“Woah!
Floating!” Urara cheered, immediately bouncing on both feet as if her life hadn’t been in peril two seconds prior.
She rubbed the back of her head, leaving a fresh streak of gray dust across her temple.
“Hehehe, thanks, Trainer!
My legs just kind of go wherever they want today!”
“Well, instruct them to go forward in a straight line,” Kazuma said, stepping back and tapping his stopwatch with a fingernail.
“We’re doing a baseline five-kilometer jog.
Not a sprint.
Not a race against your imaginary friends.
Just a steady, low-intensity pace.
Think like a turtle.
A very lazy, extremely patient turtle.”
“Aye-aye, Captain Turtle!” Urara snapped a crisp, utterly incorrect salute with her left hand, lining her pink sneakers up against the chalk line.
“Go,” Kazuma said, pressing the side button.
*WHOOSH.*
The air exploded.
A double curtain of red-brown dirt blasted straight into Kazuma’s face, coating his green jacket and forcing him into a sudden fit of coughing.
Urara hadn’t jogged; she had launched off the line like a artillery shell, her twin tails flying straight out behind her like pink banners as she tore down the straightaway.
“Hey!
Slow down, you maniac!” Kazuma yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth, his throat scratchy from the dust.
“I literally just said the word ‘turtle’!
You’re going to burn out before the first turn!”
“I am the wind!
I am a super pink race car!
Vroom vroom!” her voice echoed back from fifty yards away, completely unbothered by logic or physics.
Kazuma looked down at the digital display.
*2.1 seconds for forty meters.* Her raw initial acceleration was staggering.
For a fleeting, foolish second, Kazuma felt a tiny spark light up in his chest.
*Wait.
Could it be?
My luck stat…
did it give me a secret monster?
A hidden gem who just needs the right structure to break the entire racing world?*
Exactly three hundred and twenty meters later, the pink comet hit a brick wall.
Urara’s head dropped.
Her stride length collapsed from six feet to eighteen inches.
Her tongue popped out of the corner of her mouth, and her pink ears went completely limp, dragging as if weighed down by lead.
She drifted helplessly toward the inside rail, her feet dragging through the dirt until she came to a full, shuddering halt, leaning her entire body weight against the plastic barrier while gasping like a stranded carp.
“Haah…
haah…
Trainer…” she wheezed, her tail resting flat in the dust.
“The air…
turned into…
heavy jelly…”
Kazuma walked over at a leisurely, unhurried walk.
He stopped right in front of her, resting his hands on his knees so his face was level with hers, and clicked the timer.
“Three hundred and twenty meters,” Kazuma said, his voice flat, devoid of surprise.
“That is the grand total of your operational lifespan.
You ran at a world-record pace for twenty-four seconds, and now you look like a discarded rag doll.”
“I saw…
a really shiny beetle,” Urara gasped, pointing a trembling, dirt-stained finger toward the grass outside the track.
“It was…
sitting on a rock…
I wanted to show it to you…”
Kazuma stared at her.
He took a deep breath, reaching into the deep pocket of his green jacket, and pulled out a small, sun-dried slice of sweet potato he had grabbed from the cafeteria pantry that morning.
He didn’t offer it to her; he just held it between two fingers, letting the sweet, earthy aroma drift through the cold air.
Urara’s ears snapped upright like spring-loaded antennae.
Her big, brown eyes widened until they were practically glowing, and her tail gave a sudden, eager *thwack* against the rail.
“Sweet potato…” she whispered, her mouth watering instantly.
“You want it?” Kazuma asked, his voice adopting the smooth, low tone of a black-market merchant dealing in forbidden artifacts.
“Yes, please!
I worked super hard!
I ran very fast!”
“No.
You ran like an idiot,” Kazuma corrected gently, stepping back three paces.
“Here are the new rules of Team Kazuma.
We jog together.
You stay exactly three paces behind my right shoulder.
If you pass me, no sweet potato.
If you lag behind more than five paces, no sweet potato.
If you stop to inspect a bug, a bird, or a pretty flower, I eat the sweet potato in front of your face while maintaining eye contact.
Got it?”
Urara gasped, her hands flying to her mouth as if he had just announced a plot to steal the moon.
“Trainer…
you are a super-villain!
A monster!”
“I’ve been called worse by actual gods,” Kazuma smirked, pocketing the snack and turning his back on her.
He set off at a slow, rhythmic, highly casual jog.
“Three paces.
Move your feet, pink torpedo.”
Urara scrambled off the rail, her desperation for the dried root vegetable far outweighing her physical fatigue.
Her feet began their rhythmic *patter-patter-patter* against the damp earth, locking in right behind his right elbow.
For the next forty minutes, the quiet morning track became the stage for a ridiculous dance.
A young man in a dusty green tracksuit led a pink-haired horse girl around the oval at a pace that could only be described as an energetic stroll.
Whenever Urara’s ears twitched toward a passing bird, Kazuma would clear his throat, and she would instantly snap her eyes back to his right jacket pocket, her small feet working in obedient sync with his.
By the time they completed the five kilometers, Kazuma was drenched in sweat, his lungs stinging from the cold fog—he was, after all, just a former shut-in with average human stamina—but Urara was barely breathing hard, her heart rate having leveled out perfectly once her wild speed was suppressed.
“See?” Kazuma panted, leaning heavily against the railing, his chest heaving as he tossed the slice of sweet potato toward her.
“Pacing…
it…
actually works…”
Urara caught the snack in mid-air with her teeth, crunching down with pure delight.
“Munch, munch…
Wow!
Trainer, you’re a wizard!
My legs don’t feel like jelly at all!
They feel like…
crisp apples!”
“Great.
Crisp apples,” Kazuma grunted, wiping his brow with his sleeve.
“Tomorrow…
six kilometers.
Same time.”
“Eeeeeh?!” Urara wailed, her ears drooping into her hair again.
“But the sun will still be sleeping!”
Kazuma laughed, a genuine, easy sound that felt strange in his own chest.
But as his laughter tapered off, he noticed a shadow standing near the gap in the white fence near the track entrance.
A tall, striking woman stood there, wrapped in an elegant dark trench coat.
She had long, flowing chestnut hair, deep amber eyes, and two distinct white streaks running through her sleek ears.
A silver clipboard was tucked under her arm.
Symboli Rudolf.
The “Emperor.” The President of the Tracen Academy Student Council, and arguably the most powerful figure among the student body.
Kazuma froze, his old survival instincts flaring up.
*Great.
The local authority figure.
Am I getting fined for feeding an athlete sweet potatoes on official track grounds?
Is this a contract violation?*
Rudolf didn’t speak immediately.
She looked at the muddy, smiling Haru Urara, who was currently trying to lick a tiny crumb of potato off her own nose, and then shifted her gaze to Kazuma—sweaty, disheveled, standing in a dirt-stained green jacket that looked five years old.
A quiet, subtle smile touched the corner of the President’s lips.
She offered a single, respectful nod toward Kazuma—a recognition between two people who understood the heavy weight of responsibility, even if their methods were worlds apart—and then turned gracefully, walking away into the thinning mist without a word.
“Who was the fancy lady with the big ears?” Urara asked, her nose finally clean.
“Someone who operates in a completely different galaxy than us,” Kazuma said, exhaling a long plume of steam.
“Come on.
Let’s get you cleaned up before the cafeteria closes.
If we miss the breakfast window, I’m not buying you extra carrots.”
The basement room of the Third Annex Building didn’t look like a high-performance athletic facility.
It had one small window near the ceiling that looked out onto a patch of wild clover, a creaky floorboard near the door that sounded like a dying duck every time someone stepped on it, and two long wooden desks Kazuma had salvaged from the maintenance shed.
On the wall hung a large, hand-drawn calendar, a chalkboard covered in messy scribbles, and a framed poster of a carrot with the words *WORK ADEQUATELY* written across the bottom in green marker.
This was the official headquarters of Team Kazuma.
It was 2:00 PM.
Outside, the afternoon sun was warm and golden, but inside the annex, it was cool and quiet.
Kazuma sat behind his desk, holding a pair of small scissors as he carefully trimmed the edge of a plastic coupon.
On his desk lay a neat stack of grocery fliers from the local market down in the town district.
Across from him, sitting on a low cushions on the floor, was Urara.
She was wearing a oversized yellow t-shirt that had a clumsy drawing of a frog on it, her short legs stretched out in front of her as she methodically sorted a handful of shiny river pebbles she had collected near the academy stream.
“Trainer,” Urara said softly, holding a smooth white pebble up to the sunlight filtering through the high window.
“If we win a lot of money from racing, can we buy a giant slide?
Like, a slide that goes from the top of the dorms all the way into the pond?”
Kazuma didn’t look up from his coupons.
*Snip.
Snip.*
“First of all, we aren’t going to win ‘a lot of money’ because we aren’t chasing Grade 1 trophies,” Kazuma said smoothly.
“Second of all, if you slide into the pond, the school headmaster will make me pay for the displaced koi fish.
Do you know how much a Japanese koi costs, Urara?
More than my entire monthly stipend.”
“Eeeeh?
Fish are expensive?” She placed the white pebble next to a green one.
“What about a giant sweet potato machine then?”
“We don’t need a giant machine.
The market down on 4th Street sells five-kilogram bags of slightly bruised sweet potatoes for four hundred yen every Thursday,” Kazuma replied, setting his scissors down and stacking his coupons into neat categories: *Vegetables, Dairy, Household Goods, and Snacks.*
He leaned back in his creaky swivel chair, lacing his fingers behind his head.
In his past life—or rather, his *middle* life—everything had been about stakes.
If he failed a quest, he starved.
If he made a mistake, a cabal of cultists burned down a village.
If he dropped his sword, a giant toad ate his companions.
The pressure had been constant, grinding, and utterly absurd.
Here?
The stakes were gloriously, beautifully low.
Tracen Academy provided a base operational budget for every registered Trainer, regardless of their team’s rank.
It wasn’t huge—just enough to cover basic equipment, track fees, and nutritional supplies—but for a master of penny-pinching like Satou Kazuma, that small budget was a goldmine.
He didn’t need expensive high-tech altitude training chambers or custom-imported foreign grain.
He needed local market sales, good pacing, and a strategy that kept them out of trouble.
“Urara,” Kazuma said, tapping his clipboard.
“Come look at this.”
Urara immediately abandoned her pebbles, scrambling up on her knees and leaning her chin on the edge of his desk, her short pink ears twitching with curiosity.
“What is it?
A secret map?!”
“It’s our official race calendar for the next six months,” Kazuma said, turning the sheet so she could see it.
There were no flashy names like the *Satsuki Sho* or the *Tokyo Yushun* written on the page.
Instead, the entries were modest, practical, and very specific:
* *Harukaze Maiden Stakes (Local Dirt – 1200m)*
* *Kochi Regional Open (Dirt – 1300m)*
* *Summer Sunflower Cup (Local Dirt – 1400m)*
“Notice anything?” Kazuma asked.
Urara squatted, her nose almost touching the paper.
“Um…
there are lots of little circles?”
“They are all short-distance dirt tracks,” Kazuma explained, pointing his pen at the locations.
“No turf.
No long-distance marathons.
No high-profile television coverage.
Dirt track races pay out stable finishing fees just for participating and crossing the line within the time limit.
Furthermore, the local vendors near these tracks offer free food stalls for participating teams.”
Urara’s eyes turned into giant saucers.
“Free food?!
Like…
fried bread?
And roasted corn?!”
“Exactly,” Kazuma smirked, a dark, triumphant glint in his eye.
“We aren’t going to break ourselves trying to beat genetic monsters who run like god-given thunderbolts.
We are going to build your stamina, run sensible races, complete the course safely, eat free roasted corn, and collect the baseline appearance checks.
We will live comfortably, eat well, and never, ever deal with press conferences.”
It was a completely unheroic, utterly shameless strategy—and it was absolute perfection.
Urara didn’t care about glory.
She didn’t care about trophies or being praised in the newspapers.
Her pink tail swished back and forth in a rhythm of pure, unadulterated joy.
“Trainer!
You are the smartest person in the whole wide world!
I love roasted corn so much!”
“I know I am,” Kazuma said modestly, sweeping the coupons into his desk drawer.
“Now, put your running shoes back on.
We have afternoon core training.”
“Ehh?
More work?” Urara pouted, her lower lip sticking out in a dramatic show of misery.
“But my tummy is full of pebbles!”
“Don’t eat pebbles,” Kazuma said flatly, pulling his green jacket back on.
“And yes, more work.
If you want to finish 1200 meters without collapsing like a wet cardboard box, we need to build your core.
That means planks and medicine ball catches.”
Five minutes later, they were out on the small grass yard behind the Annex.
The training was simple, verging on primitive.
Kazuma sat on a wooden crate, holding a slightly worn, leather three-kilogram medicine ball.
Urara stood ten feet away, balancing on one foot with her arms outstretched, trying to maintain her balance while Kazuma tossed the ball to her at irregular intervals.
*Catch.*
“Oof!” Urara caught the heavy ball against her chest, stumblng back two steps before regaining her footing.
“Don’t just use your arms, use your hips!” Kazuma called out, leaning forward.
“An Uma Musume’s center of power isn’t in her chest, it’s in her pelvis and glutes.
If you catch with your top half, a strong dirt track will throw you off balance the second you hit a muddy spot.”
“Haaaah…
like this?!” Urara yelled, squeezing her core and tossing the ball back to him with surprising force.
Kazuma caught it—nearly getting knocked off his crate by the sheer, unbridled physical strength latent within her tiny frame—and blinked back his surprise.
*She really is strong,* Kazuma realized, rubbing his stinging palms.
*Her raw muscle density is ridiculous.
She just doesn’t know how to channel it because nobody ever bothered to teach her the basics.
They just saw her hyperactive attention span and gave up.*
He tossed the ball back.
*Catch.*
“Good!
Hold that stance!” Kazuma instructed, watching her short ears flick back with focus.
“Urara, listen to me.
When you run, you don’t need to worry about the girl next to you.
You don’t need to worry about the crowd shouting.
You just listen to the rhythm of your own boots hitting the dirt.
*One-two, one-two.* Like a clock.”
“Like a clock…” Urara repeated, her big brown eyes focusing on the leather ball in her hands.
“Tick-tock, tick-tock?”
“Yeah.
Tick-tock,” Kazuma said gently.
“If someone passes you, let them pass.
You aren’t running against them.
You’re just taking your body from the start line to the finish line so we can go get dinner.
Got it?”
Urara looked at him, her expression shifting from her usual goofy grin into something soft, warm, and intensely loyal.
She had spent her whole time at Tracen being told she was a failure.
Seniors had laughed at her times; other rookie trainers had walked past her clipboard without a second glance; teachers had gently suggested she consider administrative sports management instead of active racing.
Nobody had ever looked at her and said: *Just get to the finish line so we can eat dinner.*
It was the most romantic, absurdly comfortable philosophy she had ever heard.
“Okay, Trainer!” she squeaked, a giant, radiant smile breaking across her face as she tossed the ball back to him.
“I’ll be the best tick-tock race car ever!”
Kazuma caught the ball, feeling the weight of it in his hands.
He looked at the bright pink-haired girl bouncing on the grass, completely untroubled by the world, and felt a quiet, profound peace settle into his ribs.
In his old world, he had been surrounded by geniuses, goddesses, and champions who constantly dragged him into chaos.
Here, he was paired with a girl who was considered the absolute bottom of the athletic barrel.
And yet, as he watched her laugh while trying to balance on one foot again, Kazuma knew he wouldn’t trade her for a hundred Triple Crown winners.
“Alright, enough sentiment,” Kazuma grunted, tossing the ball back.
“Ten more catches, then we’re going down to the market.
They have a two-for-one special on pork belly, and I intend to make stew.”
“PORK BELLY STEW?!” Urara shrieked in absolute delight, catching the ball with such force that she accidentally threw herself backward onto the grass, rolling three times before sitting up with dirt in her hair and a triumphant grin on her face.
“TEAM KAZUMA IS THE BEST TEAM EVER!”
Kazuma just shook his head, a small, unstoppabl
e smile playing on his lips as the afternoon sun dipped low over the green hills of Tracen Academy.