With less than a week remaining before the Niigata Regional Dirt Open, the air surrounding the Annex training track was thick with a tense, razor-sharp focus.
The autumn leaves fell in dry, golden spirals onto the clay, but no one was watching the scenery.
Satou Kazuma stood near the inner rail, holding two clipboards instead of one.
His eyes were bloodshot, his dark circles had deepened to a bruised purple, and his green tracksuit jacket was zipped halfway up, revealing a shirt covered in mechanical pencil smudges.
Beside his boots sat a folding table loaded with two distinct stacks of performance logs, a mechanical metronome, three different stopwatches, and a flask of lukewarm barley tea.
“Listen up, both of you,” Kazuma barked, his dry voice cutting through the crisp morning breeze.
Haru Urara was bouncing on her heels, her pink twin tails fluttering as she executed her high-knee dynamic stretches.
Next to her, Rice Shower stood neatly in her dark training kit, her dark blue ears pinned back slightly, her hands trembling as she adjusted her left running shoe for the fifth time in ten minutes.
“Training two athletes does not mean throwing you both onto the dirt and telling you to run until you throw up,” Kazuma stated flatly, tapping the top clipboard with his pencil.
“That is how incompetent, meat-headed trainers ruin an athlete’s body.
Every Uma Musume has a completely different physiological profile, a different center of gravity, and a different psychological trigger on the track.
Copy-pasting a routine is an insult to basic engineering.”
Rice Shower looked up, her large blue eyes wide with quiet shock.
“T-Trainer…
you…
you made a whole different plan…
just for Rice…?”
“Of course I did,” Kazuma grunted, rolling his shoulders, which popped loudly due to his stubbornly improved posture.
“Urara’s routine is built around energy conservation, high-friction stride suppression, and psychological distraction.
It is designed to force her into a hard speed ceiling so she doesn’t accidentally win another race and drag us into Grade 3 territory.”
Urara cheered loudly, raising both fists.
“Four strawberry rolls for Fifth Place!
I remember, Trainer!”
“You better,” Kazuma muttered, before pointing his pencil directly at Rice Shower.
“Now, as for you, Rice.
I spent three nights analyzing your old race footage from your previous stable.
Your issue isn’t stamina, and it certainly isn’t speed.
Your former trainer tried to force you into a standard power-sprint model, which completely destroyed your natural rhythm.
You are a light-frame, long-distance endurance specialist with an exceptionally rare stamina-to-weight ratio.”
Rice Shower froze, her breath catching in her throat.
Her former trainer had always called her frail, telling her she lacked the muscle mass to compete with high-tier sprinters, leaving her feeling like a useless burden.
“Your body is built like a needle,” Kazuma continued smoothly, his voice devoid of any empty praise, speaking purely in cold, unyielding facts.
“You don’t smash through wind resistance; you slip through it.
The moment you try to run with heavy, forceful power-strides like Special Week or El Condor Pasa, your hamstrings take seventy percent more force than they are designed to handle.
That’s why you get cramps in the final furlong.”
He pulled out a brand-new, handwritten training sheet and held it out to her.
“From today, your routine is the **Ghost-Draft Cadence**,” Kazuma instructed.
“Zero power-pushing on the straightaways.
You will run directly behind Urara’s shadow during wind-tunnel simulations.
You will learn to drop your heart rate while maintaining a high-efficiency stride rate of 185 steps per minute.
We are turning you into a ghost on the dirt—invisible to wind drag, effortless in movement, and utterly untired when everyone else is choking on dust.”
Rice Shower stared at the sheet.
It was filled with intricate graphs, stride-length calculations, and heat-map diagrams showing her exact muscle load distribution.
It wasn’t a generic template.
It was a masterclass in custom athletic design, tailored exclusively for her small, fragile frame.
Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes.
“Trainer…
you stayed up for three nights…
just to figure out how Rice’s legs work…?”
“I stayed up for three nights because I refuse to do extra paperwork if you injure yourself!” Kazuma yelled back, his face flushing with a mix of irritation and embarrassment as he clicked his stopwatch.
“Enough emotional lingering!
Urara, set your 4:2 Suppressive Cadence!
Rice, get into her draft pocket!
Lap one begins in three seconds!”
“Aye-aye, Captain!” Urara shouted, shooting forward down the track.
Rice Shower wiped her eyes with her sleeve, her small face suddenly setting into a firm, fiercely determined expression.
She dug her toes into the clay, her dark ears pinning back as she accelerated silently into Urara’s wake.
“I’m going…
Rice will do her best, Trainer!”
Kazuma watched them glide across the dirt oval through his binoculars.
Urara ran with a wide, mechanically suppressed stride, while Rice moved behind her like a dark, silent shadow, her footsteps making almost no sound against the gravel.
*Look at that,* Kazuma thought, a cold, stubborn smirk rising on his lips as he checked his stopwatch.
*Urara is capped at twelve-point-four seconds per furlong.
Rice is mastering wind protection without wasting a single calorie.
The math is ironclad.
Niigata is in six days.
This time, my Luck stat won’t be able to do a single thing.
Fifth Place for Urara, a quiet, stable debut for Rice, and zero attention from the public.
I am an absolute genius.*
Four days before the team’s departure for Niigata, the Annex office had been transformed into an official race-logistics war room.
Maps of the Niigata Dirt Track were pinned to the walls, covered in sticky notes detailing weather forecasts, soil moisture percentages, and turn angles.
Two small cots had been set up in the back corner, where Urara and Rice Shower were currently fast asleep after a brutal five-mile light-cadence session, snuggled together under a large fleece blanket with Urara’s carrot plushie resting between them.
Kazuma sat at his desk under the dim light of a green desk lamp, his fingers flying across his laptop keyboard as he submitted the final, official entry forms to the Racing Association board.
His coffee was cold.
His back was stiff.
His mind was utterly exhausted.
Yet, he kept typing.
“Let’s review the parameters one last time,” Kazuma whispered to himself, his voice sounding like a mad scientist rehearsing an unholy ritual.
“Niigata is a 1,200-meter flat dirt sprint.
Twelve entries.
Urara is starting in Gate Seven—dead center.
If she maintains the 4:2 Cadence, she will let the three front-runners take the lead by two lengths at the turn.”
He leaned back in his squeaky chair, staring at the screen with intense, burning conviction.
“At the 400-meter mark, the mid-pack runners will attempt to push outside.
With her stride length restricted, Urara won’t have the acceleration to join the lead group, nor will she fall behind the tail-enders.
She will be locked into the fifth-place pocket.
It is mathematically, physically, and logically impossible for her to win!”
He slammed his fist onto the armrest of his chair, his eyes gleaming with a stubborn, unyielding defiance.
“Everyone thinks I’m some miracle-working mastermind!
The Student Council thinks I’m building a legendary team!
The media thinks she’s an unstoppable underdog!
I’ll show them!
I’ll show the whole world the true majesty of a calculated, unshakeable Fifth Place!
I will take that modest stipend, buy my cheap pork belly, and sleep for a month!”
A soft, hesitant voice broke through his glorious inner monologue.
“T-Trainer…?”
Kazuma jumped, snapping his head toward the back of the room.
Rice Shower had woken up.
She was sitting on the edge of her cot, rubbing her sleepy eyes, her dark hair messy as her horse ears drooped slightly.
She looked at Kazuma’s intense, wild expression with a mixture of awe and gentle worry.
“Rice…” Kazuma cleared his throat, instantly smoothing down his messy jacket and trying to regain his flat, deadpan composure.
“Why are you up?
It’s eleven o’clock.
Athletes need eight hours of sleep.”
Rice Shower stood up, her small bare feet stepping quietly across the wooden floorboards.
She walked over to his desk, holding a small thermos of warm honey water that she had prepared earlier.
“You’re…
you’re still working…” she said softly, setting the thermos beside his laptop.
“You always work so hard for us, Trainer…
Even when you grumble and say you want to be lazy…”
“I’m not working hard for you,” Kazuma lied instantly, taking the thermos and taking a sip to avoid her pure, trusting gaze.
“I’m working hard for my own future comfort.
It’s a purely selfish investment.”
Rice Shower smiled—a quiet, unbelievably gentle smile that made Kazuma’s stomach do a nervous, uneasy flip.
“Urara-chan told me,” Rice Shower whispered, looking down at her toes.
“She said…
before you came, nobody expected anything from her.
People just pitied her.
But when you look at us…
you don’t look at us with pity.
You look at our legs.
You look at our stride.
You treat us like…
real runners.”
Kazuma paused, the thermos held near his mouth, staring at the small girl.
“In my old stable…” Rice Shower continued, her voice trembling slightly, “everyone was scared of my bad luck.
They said if I ran, someone would get hurt.
But you…
you told me your own luck was even worse.
You made me feel like…
like my bad luck wasn’t a monster anymore.
Just a silly thing we can beat together with your math.”
She raised her head, her deep blue eyes shining with a radiant, absolute faith that hit Kazuma like a physical brick to the chest.
“Rice will run her best in the next race, Trainer,” she promised, bowing deeply.
“Whether it’s fifth place, or tenth place, or first place…
Rice will follow your plan forever.”
Kazuma stared at her.
His mouth opened, but no words came out.
His mind raced frantically, trying to find a sarcastic comeback, a cynical joke, or a lazy excuse to break the heavy, sacred atmosphere.
But looking at her innocent, unwavering trust, he couldn’t do it.
“…Just go back to sleep, torpedo number two,” Kazuma muttered softly, turning his eyes back to his computer monitor, his voice losing its harsh edge.
“We have an early train to Niigata on Friday.
Don’t make me carry your bags.”
“Hehehe…
Yes, Trainer!” Rice Shower giggled quietly, turning around and skipping back to her cot, pulling the blanket back over herself and Urara.
In the quiet, warm darkness of the Annex office, Satou Kazuma sat alone under his desk lamp.
He looked at his entry forms.
He looked at his complex Fifth-Place mathematical models.
He looked at his own reflection in the dark glass of the window—a man who was fitter, taller, and entirely trapped in a web of his own making.
He knew, deep down in his stubborn, cynical heart, that his “Fifth Place” dream was a fragile delusion.
He knew his Luck stat was a chaotic storm waiting to explode.
He knew that putting two devoted, fiercely determined horse girls on a race track with his custom routines was a recipe for another glorious, uncontrollable disaster.
Yet, as he clicked the final “Submit Entry” button on his laptop, a tiny, barely visible smirk touched the corner of Kazuma’s lips.
“Bring it on, Niigata,” Kazuma whispered to the quiet room, closing his eyes as he leaned back in his chair.
“Let’s see what kind of mess we make this time.”