The rolling eventually ceased, leaving Kazuma and Gold Ship panting in the tall grass like two beached whales.
The world stopped spinning, though the burning sensation in their eyes remained a persistent, throbbing reminder of their fifteen-minute lapse in judgment.
Kazuma groaned, his face pressed into the dirt.
A soft, cool sensation touched his forehead.
He squinted—carefully—to see Daiwa Scarlet hovering over him, looking both annoyed and begrudgingly concerned.
She slapped a wet handkerchief into his hand.
“Don’t look at me like that, Trainer,” Scarlet huffed, crossing her arms.
“I’m just doing this so you can get back to work.
If you go blind, we’ll be the ones stuck with the paperwork.”
“Thanks,” Kazuma croaked, pressing the damp cloth against his eyelids.
He didn’t have the energy for his usual sarcasm.
“I think I’ve seen the edge of the universe.”
A few feet away, Gold Ship was applying her own medical technique.
She had retrieved a can of chilled carbonated sports drink from somewhere and was pressing the condensation-slicked aluminum directly onto her eyes with a satisfied, maniacal giggle.
“Ah, yes!
The frost of the gods!
It burns, but in a refreshing way!”
Vodka and Brian stood over the pair, looking down with a mixture of pity and confusion.
Vodka scratched the back of her head, her brow furrowed.
“So…
I still don’t get it.
Why were you two writhing around like that?
Did a swarm of bees attack you?”
Narita Brian, who was still rubbing her own teary eyes, let out a long, heavy breath.
She looked at Kazuma—who was currently lying in a heap of grass stains and defeat—and then back to the group.
“It was…
a tactical error.
A standoff of sorts.
We were engaged in a test of wills.
Fifteen minutes of unblinking focus.”
“Fifteen minutes?” Mejiro McQueen echoed, her voice laced with elegant disbelief.
“You two stood there, staring at each other, for an entire quarter of an hour?
Without blinking?”
“It was a battle for dominance,” Kazuma mumbled, still keeping his eyes closed.
“Or at least, that’s what I thought.
Turns out it was just a battle for who could be the bigger idiot.”
“You certainly won that battle, Trainer,” Scarlet muttered, though she didn’t walk away.
Kazuma sighed, letting his arms drop to his sides.
He was dirty, his clothes were ruined, and any ambition he had for the day had vanished into the ether.
He didn’t even want to move.
He just wanted to lie there and rot.
With Urara and Rice off with King Halo and the others, he was technically off the clock.
He didn’t get up.
He didn’t head to the office to clean his shirt.
He simply sprawled out, staring up at the shifting afternoon sky.
Slowly, one by one, the five Uma Musume—Brian, Gold Ship, McQueen, Scarlet, and Vodka—decided that standing around was too much work.
They settled into the grass around him, creating a bizarre, impromptu circle of silence.
“That one looks like a giant, angry potato,” Gold Ship pointed a finger toward a fluffy cumulus cloud.
“That is clearly a refined piece of architecture, perhaps a cathedral,” McQueen countered, her tone haughty as she tilted her head.
Kazuma, lying with his hands behind his head, squinted at the sky.
“It looks like a pile of rejected paperwork with a face of a bill collector who’s about to foreclose on my house.”
The girls went quiet for a moment, then burst into laughter.
It wasn’t the refined laughter of elite athletes; it was genuine, slightly unhinged amusement.
Even Narita Brian, who usually kept her expressions locked behind a steel door, let out a short, surprised huff of air.
“You really have a bleak outlook on life, don’t you, Sensei?” Vodka chuckled, leaning back on her palms.
“It’s not bleak.
It’s realistic,” Kazuma countered, his voice dry.
“But seriously, why are you five still here?
Don’t you have a track to run on or a student council meeting to ruin?”
“We’re ‘observing,'” Brian said, her gaze fixed on the sky, though her eyes flicked toward Kazuma every few seconds.
“We heard the commotion earlier.
The…
incident at the office.”
The atmosphere shifted.
The lighthearted cloud-talk evaporated.
“Yeah,” Scarlet said, her tone dropping to a probing, soft note.
“Everyone was shouting that you were dead.
It sounded like you’d been taken out by a sniper.
What *actually* happened?”
Kazuma felt a bead of sweat roll down his neck.
He couldn’t exactly tell them he’d been physically incapacitated by the pure, unadulterated moe radiation of two innocent horse girls sharing snacks.
That would sound like the ravings of a madman.
“I had a mild case of…
over-exertion,” Kazuma lied smoothly, his voice flat.
“Lack of sleep, too much paperwork, and a sudden, violent reaction to the lack of coffee.
I’m fine.
I’m immortal, sadly.”
They didn’t seem fully convinced.
They kept stealing glances at him—cautious, inquisitive, and oddly lingering.
Kazuma didn’t notice.
His mind was drifting back to the upcoming race.
He knew the odds.
He knew the stats.
He knew the “Luck” stat he’d inherited from his past life was probably working against him, but he kept running the numbers in his head.
*Fifth place,* he thought stubbornly.
*I just need Urara to hit fifth.
It’s modest.
It’s achievable.
And it’s going to be a nightmare to pull off.* He was so stubborn about this tiny goal that he didn’t realize the danger he was in.
He was surrounded.
Narita Brian watched him out of the corner of her eye.
She felt a strange, prickly sensation in her chest whenever she looked at him.
*Why am I still here?* she wondered, confused by her own behavior.
*I should be training.
I should be filing reports.
Yet…
here I am, watching a NEET in a dirty tracksuit discuss the existential dread of clouds.*
The feeling was entirely alien to her.
The man who had stared her down for fifteen minutes—a man she had initially deemed a threat—was becoming something else.
He was a curiosity.
A puzzle that she felt an irrational, growing urge to solve.
Kazuma remained blissfully ignorant.
He watched the clouds, sighed, and closed his eyes, thinking about the peace he had lost.
His “slow life” was a rapidly receding memory, disappearing over the horizon while he was trapped in a circle of girls who were pretending to be interested in the sky but were really, quietly, orbiting him.
“You know,” Gold Ship piped up, breaking the silence, “if you die for real next time, I’m claiming your tracksuit.”
“If I die,” Kazuma muttered, a small, tired smile on his face, “I’m going to make sure to haunt your dreams, Goldshi.”
“I’d like that,” she grinned.
The sun began to dip, casting long shadows over the training ground, and for a brief, fleeting moment, the cynical adventurer felt a strange, quiet warmth—one he would have died before admitting he actually enjoyed.