The 5:00 AM alarm didn’t ring; it shrieked like a dying banshee.
Kazuma’s hand shot out from under the futon, slamming down on the plastic button with the violent efficiency of a man who had spent twenty-six years in this world—and a brief, chaotic stint in another—learning that early mornings were a personal insult from the cosmos.
He sat up, staring blankly at the wall of his small apartment.
His spine popped thrice.
His hamstrings, still tight from yesterday’s forced five-kilometer jog, screamed in low, dull unison.
*Twenty-six years,* Kazuma thought, rubbing his bloodshot eyes.
*I grew up in a nice, quiet foster home.
I went to a nice, quiet local school.
I passed a perfectly normal trainer exam using sheer, statistically impossible luck.
So why am I standing in the freezing dark, wearing a faded green tracksuit, about to run alongside a human-shaped pink torpedo?*
In his mind, he kept his past life strictly locked away—a bizarre, feverish memory of giant squids, explosion magic, and a blue-haired goddess whose crying face was still the stuff of nightmares.
He never spoke of it.
Why would he?
He had lived a full, grounded twenty-six years in this world.
He was a local.
He knew the train routes, the best local convenience store bargains, and the exact legal limits of Tracen Academy’s trainer stipends.
Thirty minutes later, Kazuma stood at the edge of the secondary dirt track, groaning as he reached down to touch his toes.
His lower back let out a ominous *crunch*.
“Oh, sweet relief of death, please claim me,” Kazuma muttered, groaning loudly as he pulled himself upright.
“Why does a trainer have to run?
Why can’t I just sit in a golf cart with a megaphone and a bucket of fried chicken like a civilized human being?”
“Trainer!
Look!
I’m a helicopter!”
Haru Urara was currently spinning in circles thirty feet away, her arms stretched wide, her pink twin tails swinging wildly enough to generate a noticeable breeze.
She was wearing her favorite mismatched leg warmers over her Tracen training kit, her short ears twitching to the rhythm of her own humming.
“Urara, if you spin any faster, you’re going to drill a hole straight to China,” Kazuma called out, adjusting his whistle.
“And stop wasting energy!
We have to run three miles before the sun comes up.”
“But spinning makes my tummy feel like a roller coaster!” Urara giggled, immediately losing her balance and flopping sideways into a puddle of mud with a wet *splat*.
Kazuma didn’t panic.
He didn’t even sigh.
He simply walked over, grabbed the back of her tracksuit collar, and yanked her upright with the practiced motion of a mother cat picking up an uncooperative kitten.
“Mud adds weight.
Weight reduces efficiency,” Kazuma said, scraping a glob of dirt off her nose with a napkin.
“Do you want to run with five extra pounds of dirt on your shoes, or do you want to finish quickly so we can hit the local lottery stand before the morning rush?”
Urara’s ears perked up instantly.
“Lottery stand?!
The one with the shiny wheel that goes *clack-clack-clack*?!”
“The exact one,” Kazuma smirked, a dark, opportunistic glint passing through his eyes.
That was Kazuma’s secret weapon.
Tracen’s baseline training stipend was peanuts—barely enough to buy basic sports drinks and standard-issue grain mixes.
But Kazuma had his high luck stat, an anomaly that had survived his rebirth into this world.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, he would take three hundred yen from his personal savings, walk down to the local shopping district’s scratch-off kiosk or the traditional *Fukubiki* lottery wheel, and casually turn three hundred yen into five thousand yen worth of premium grade-A Ibaraki carrots.
He didn’t use his luck to buy sports cars or high-end suits.
That would attract attention from the tax office or the academy board.
He used it exclusively to keep his athlete fueled on high-grade produce without touching his rent money.
“Alright, pay attention,” Kazuma said, pulling out a white dry-erase board he had carried under his arm.
He held up a black marker and drew a messy, oval-shaped track.
“This is the Kochi Regional Dirt Loop.
Length: 1300 meters.
Prize for first place: three hundred thousand yen and a shiny trophy.”
Urara gasped, clapping her hands.
“A trophy!”
“Which we do not care about,” Kazuma immediately added, tapping the board with the back of the marker.
“First place means high expectations.
High expectations mean reporters.
Reporters mean early morning interviews, extra training sessions, and corporate sponsors asking why you aren’t wearing their branded socks.
Do we want corporate sponsors asking about your socks, Urara?”
Urara shook her head rapidly, her ears flopping left and right.
“No!
My socks have little strawberries on them!
They’re mine!”
“Exactly,” Kazuma said approvingly.
“Now, look at fifth place.
Prize: thirty thousand yen, a box of local specialty sweet potatoes, and a participation ribbon.
The gap between fourth and fifth place is purely emotional.
Nobody remembers who came in fifth.
Nobody interviews fifth place.
You cross the line, grab the sweet potatoes, sign the payout receipt, and we are in the van heading to the hot spring buffet by 3:00 PM.”
He drew a massive green circle around the number **5** on his board.
“This is our golden zone,” Kazuma declared with the pride of a military general outlining a masterstroke.
“We enter the race, we run at a comfortable, steady pace, we let the crazy girls with the thunderous eyes burn themselves out on the front stretch, and we coast smoothly into fifth place.
Minimal effort, maximum comfort.”
“Yay!
Fifth place sweet potatoes!” Urara cheered, doing a little leap in the air.
“Hey!
What kind of ridiculous lesson are you teaching her?!”
A loud, sharp voice shattered the morning quiet.
Kazuma turned his head to see Oguri Cap walking toward them down the apron, holding a giant paper bag overflowing with steamed meat buns.
Beside her was King Halo, her hair immaculately styled even at 5:45 AM, looking at Kazuma’s whiteboard with a mixture of profound horror and utter disgust.
“Are my eyes deceiving me?” King Halo gasped, placing a manicured hand over her chest.
“Are you explicitly instructing your athlete to aim for…
*fifth place*?!
Is this a joke?!
Where is your pride as a Tracen Trainer?!
Where is her noble ambition?!”
“In my back pocket, right next to my discount store loyalty card,” Kazuma replied without a single second of hesitation.
He took a slow sip from his thermos.
“Morning, King.
Morning, Oguri.
You’re up early.”
Oguri Cap didn’t say anything.
She was staring at Kazuma’s paper bag, her tail twitching in rhythmic cadence with her chewing.
“Is that…
a sweet potato?” she asked, her voice low and resonant.
“Hands off, Oguri,” Kazuma said, moving his bag behind his back.
“This is performance-enhancing produce for team members only.
Go eat your twenty meat buns.”
“A true racer strives for the top!” King Halo scoffed, stepping closer and crossing her arms haughtily.
“To enter a race without the sole intention of standing on the center podium is an insult to the turf!
It is an insult to the crowd!
Urara, you must not listen to this lazy, green-coated fraud!”
Urara tilted her head, blinking innocently up at the elegant girl.
“But King-chan…
if I win first place, I have to stand on the high step.
What if I trip and fall off?
It’s super tall!”
King Halo choked on her own breath.
“That—that is not the point!
The point is glory!
The crown!
The admiration of millions!”
“I like the sweet potatoes more,” Urara said simply, reaching into Kazuma’s pocket and pulling out a dried slice, munching on it happily.
“Trainer makes them extra chewy!”
“You’re corrupting her!” King Halo pointed a finger at Kazuma, her face turning a light shade of crimson.
“She has heart!
She has boundless energy!
Under proper guidance—under *my* guidance—she could at least lose with dignity in a Grade 2 event!”
“I don’t want to lose with dignity,” Kazuma grunted, stretching his sore hamstrings again.
“I want to finish fifth, eat barbecue, and go to bed at 8:00 PM.
Now, if you’ll excuse us, King, we have a very rigorous training session of ‘not overexerting ourselves’ to get to.”
Kazuma turned to Urara, waving his hand toward the track.
“Alright, torpedo.
Two laps at fifty percent speed.
If you pass me, I eat your afternoon carrot.”
“Noooo!
My carrot!” Urara screamed in terror, immediately taking off at a surprisingly controlled, perfectly moderate jog.
Kazuma sighed loudly, his lungs burning as he fell into step three paces behind her.
*My knees are going to explode before we even reach the regional qualifiers,* he thought, inwardly weeping.
*Why couldn’t I have reincarnated as a cat?
A fat house cat on a warm porch.
That was the dream.*
As they jogged down the backstretch, King Halo stood by the rails, her jaw slightly slack, while Oguri Cap quietly finished her twelfth meat bun, watching the pink-haired girl and her reluctant trainer move in perfect, lazy harmony through the morning fog.
“They are…
surprisingly synchronized,” Oguri Cap mumbled around a mouthful of pork.
“They are lunatics!” King Halo huffed, though her eyes lingered on the lighthearted laughter echoing from the track.
“Absolute, unmitigated lunatics…”
Training with Haru Urara was less like coaching an elite athlete and more like trying to keep a sun-crazed golden retriever from jumping into a lawnmower.
By 2:00 PM, the scheduled “High-Intensity Endurance Phase” had devolved into an absolute farce.
They were supposed to be doing hill repeats behind the main dormitories, but thirty minutes in, Urara had spotted a family of ducks swimming in the annex pond.
“Trainer!
Look!
The baby duck has a little orange mouth!
Just like a tiny carrot!” Urara squealed, currently lying flat on her stomach in the tall grass, her chin resting on her crossed wrists, her tail wagging so violently it was flattening the dandelion patches around her.
Kazuma sat on a wooden bench nearby, a straw hat pulled low over his eyes, a half-eaten ice pop melting in his hand.
“Urara,” Kazuma said lazily from under his hat.
“We have thirty minutes of hill sprints left on the schedule.”
“The baby duck is named Piyo-chan,” Urara announced, completely deaf to the concept of schedules.
“Piyo-chan says hill sprints are silly.
Piyo-chan wants to swim.”
Kazuma pulled his hat up slightly, looking at the tiny yellow duckling paddling aimlessly in the green water.
Then he looked at Urara’s muddy knees, her red, flushed cheeks, and the bright, pure enthusiasm dancing in her brown eyes.
He let out a long, theatrical sigh, tossing the wooden stick of his ice pop into a nearby trash can.
“Fine,” Kazuma grunted, sliding down the bench until his head rested back against the wood.
“Piyo-chan makes a compelling tactical argument.
Hill sprints are officially canceled due to duck-related distractions.”
“Yay!” Urara cheered, turning onto her back and throwing her arms into the air.
“Trainer is the best!
Can I jump in the pond?”
“If you jump in that pond, I will personally feed your evening carrot to Oguri Cap,” Kazuma warned smoothly.
Urara froze mid-motion, her eyes widening in sheer horror.
“Not Oguri-san!
She eats carrots in one bite!
It’s scary!”
“Then stay out of the water,” Kazuma smirked, closing his eyes again.
This was their routine.
For every thirty minutes of real, focused training Kazuma managed to wring out of her, there were twenty minutes of catching bugs, lying in the grass, or wandering down to the school kitchen to see if the cook had any leftover pumpkin peelings.
To an outsider—to someone like King Halo, or the rigid instructors at the Trainer Development Center—it was an absolute mockery of athletic discipline.
But Kazuma knew better.
He knew Urara’s brain wasn’t built for rigid, high-pressure sports science.
If he pushed her like a normal runner, her spirit would break long before her legs did.
He didn’t need her to be a machine.
He just needed her to be happy enough to keep moving forward.
“Trainer,” Urara’s voice came soft, floating over the gentle rustle of the grass.
She had crawled over and was now leaning her elbows on the edge of his bench, looking up at him.
“What?” Kazuma asked, opening one eye.
“Are we gonna go to the race next week?”
“The Harukaze Maiden Stakes in Kochi?” Kazuma pulled out his worn pocket notebook, flipping to the official registration page.
“Yeah.
Papers are signed.
Stamp is affixed.
We leave on the early train Thursday morning.”
Urara’s pink ears twitched downward slightly, a rare sight of hesitation creeping onto her cheerful face.
“What if…
what if I come in last place again?
Like in the academy time trials?”
Kazuma sat up properly, his hat slipping off his head and landing on his lap.
He looked down at her.
He didn’t offer a fake, sugar-coated speech about the power of friendship, nor did he promise her that she was going to magically win through sheer belief.
That wasn’t who Satou Kazuma was.
He reached out, his hand resting firmly between her sleek pink ears, giving them a brief, reassuring rub.
“Urara,” Kazuma said, his voice quiet, grounded, and entirely lacking his usual sarcastic bite.
“Did you read the strategy on the board this morning?”
“Um…
green circle around number five?”
“Right,” Kazuma said, nodding.
“We don’t care about first place, and we certainly don’t care about last place.
If you come in last, you know what happens?”
Urara sniffled slightly, her big eyes looking up at him.
“What?”
“We still get the participation check,” Kazuma said, a soft, genuine smile touching his lips.
“We still get to eat the local pork ramen at the station.
I still give you your carrot.
And then we get on the train, come back here, and go to bed.
The world doesn’t end, Urara.
Nobody dies.
Nobody yells at you.
We just try again whenever we feel like it.”
Urara blinked.
The subtle tension in her small shoulders melted away instantly, replaced by that blinding, sunny glow that seemed to define her entire existence.
“So…
even if I’m slow, I still get ramen?” she asked, her voice brimming with hope.
“You can get extra bamboo shoots,” Kazuma promised.
“Now, get up.
It’s 4:00 PM.
Time to head to the Annex kitchen before the dorm students hog all the stove burners.”
Their “team headquarters” in the Third Annex had a tiny, outdated kitchenette attached to the back—a single gas burner, a chipped laminate counter, and a mini-fridge that hummed like an old diesel engine.
While the high-tier teams ate scientifically measured, calorie-controlled meals prepared by certified sports nutritionists in the main dining hall, Kazuma and Urara cooked their own food.
The small room smelled rich and comforting—a heavy, aromatic blend of soy sauce, ginger, garlic, and simmered pork belly.
Kazuma stood over the single iron pot, holding a pair of long wooden chopsticks, carefully skimming the foam off the top of the broth.
Urara was sitting on a low wooden stool by the counter, her small hands busily peeling a stack of sweet potatoes Kazuma had won at the local lottery wheel two hours prior.
She was humming a wildly off-key song about carrots and clouds, her tail tapping rhythmically against the cabinet door.
*Thwack.
Thwack.
Thwack.*
“Stop banging your tail against the wood, you’re going to shake the dust into the soup,” Kazuma chided gently, though there was zero anger in his tone.
“Sorry, Trainer!
My tail is just excited!” Urara giggled, holding up a flawlessly peeled sweet potato.
“Look!
Perfect!
No skin left!”
“Not bad,” Kazuma admitted, taking the potato from her and cutting it into neat, uniform chunks before dropping them into the simmering pot.
“You’re getting better with the peeler.
Last week you almost took off your thumb.”
“Because the potato was slippery!” she protested, puffing her cheeks out.
Kazuma chuckled, stirring the thick stew.
In the dim, warm light of the tiny kitchen, surrounded by the smell of cheap pork and fresh vegetables, Kazuma felt a deep, quiet warmth settling into his chest.
It was a sensation he hadn’t experienced in any life—not in his lonely bedroom in Tokyo, not in the noisy, chaotic taverns of Axel.
Here, in this obscure corner of a massive, high-pressure academy, they had created a tiny, impenetrable haven.
No grand destinies.
No impossible standards.
Just a lazy trainer who worked too hard at pretending he didn’t care, and a hopeless runner who ran simply because the wind felt nice against her ears.
“Trainer?” Urara asked, her chin resting on her hands as she watched the broth bubble.
“Yeah?”
“I really like being in Team Kazuma.”
Kazuma paused, his wooden chopsticks hovering over the pot for a fraction of a second.
He didn’t look back at her, hiding his face behind the plume of savory steam rising from the stew.
“Don’t get mushy on me, kid,” Kazuma muttered, though his voice was unusually soft.
“You’re only saying that because I put extra honey in the glaze.”
“No!
I mean it!” Urara grinned, her pink tail giving one more sharp, happy *thwack* against the cabinet.
“Even if we don’t win any trophies, this is the most fun I’ve ever had!”
Kazuma set the chopsticks down, grabbed two heavy ceramic bowls, and began ladling the hot, steaming stew into them.
He handed one to her, making sure the biggest pieces of pork and sweet potato were buried right at the bottom of her dish.
“Eat up, torpedo,” Kazuma said, pulling out his own stool and sitting down beside her.
“We have an early train to catch on Thursday.
And if we’re going to aim for fifth place, we need to be fully fueled.”
“ITADAKIMASU!” Urara shouted happily, diving into her meal with pure, unadulterated joy.
Kazuma took a sip of the hot soup, leaning his back against the cool plaster wall.
Outside the small window, the evening sky was turning a deep, velvety shade of purple.
The road ahead was l
ong, dirt-stained, and completely devoid of glory.
And Kazuma wouldn’t have had it any other way.