The joint lecture hall for the Junior Athlete division was usually a battlefield of high aspirations.
It was 10:30 AM on Tuesday.
Sunlight poured through the tall, arched windows, illuminating the pristine wooden desks where dozens of Uma Musume sat taking notes on racing tactics, track moisture degradation, and post-race recovery nutrition.
At the front row sat Daiwa Scarlet and Vodka, their pens practically digging through their notebooks in a quiet, competitive fury.
A few rows back, Special Week was nodding off slightly before being nudged awake by El Condor Pasa.
And sitting near the window, her chin resting in her palms as her tail swished lazily against her chair legs, was Haru Urara.
She wasn’t taking notes.
Her notebook was currently open to a page containing a surprisingly detailed drawing of a sweet potato wearing a top hat.
“Urara-chan,” a soft, elegant voice whispered from the next desk.
Grass Wonder leaned over, her sleek brown ears twitching with quiet curiosity.
“You seem particularly cheerful today.
Did something nice happen during your morning session?”
Urara turned her head so fast her pink twin tails nearly slapped her own face.
Her big brown eyes lit up like lanterns.
“Grass-chan!
Yes!
Trainer gave me a dried sweet potato that was *this* long!
And he didn’t even yell when I fell in the mud three times!”
The surrounding desks went instantly quiet.
In a room full of girls whose trainers ran them through grueling heart-rate monitoring, strict dietary scales, and precise lap-time analytics, the phrase *”he gave me a sweet potato and didn’t yell”* sounded like a message transmitted from an alien civilization.
Daiwa Scarlet turned around in her seat, her blue eyes narrowing as she looked at the pink-haired girl.
“Wait…
Urara.
Is it true?
You actually signed an official contract?
We all saw you at the secondary dirt track, but everyone thought it was just a temporary trial.”
“Yup!
Official!” Urara puffed her chest out with immense pride, holding up a small green plastic pass that hung around her neck—her official Team Kazuma access badge.
“I’m in Team Kazuma now!
We’re a team of two!
Me, the pink torpedo, and Trainer, the sneaky ghost wizard!”
“Sneaky…
ghost wizard?” Vodka echoed, resting her elbows on her desk and raising an eyebrow.
“What kind of name is that for a trainer?
Who even is this guy?
I saw him walking around the faculty building in a dusty green tracksuit that looks like it survived a war.”
“He always looks like he wants to fall asleep,” King Halo added, huffing softly as she adjusted her sleeve cuffs.
“I saw them practicing this morning at dawn.
Do you know what his primary tactical instruction was?
He told her to aim for *fifth place*.
Fifth!
It is an absolute outrage to athletic ambition!
He is an unmitigated slacker!”
“Eeeeh?!” Special Week gasped, her hands flying to her cheeks.
“Fifth place on purpose?!
Is that even allowed?!”
“It’s super allowed!” Urara declared happily, completely unbothered by King Halo’s indignation.
“Trainer says fifth place gets sweet potatoes and no reporters!
Reporters ask scary questions, but sweet potatoes are sweet and squishy!”
Grass Wonder tapped her chin with her pen, a subtle, intriguing smile playing on her lips.
“A trainer who intentionally avoids the spotlight…
How unusual.
But Urara-chan, how does he actually train you?
Does he use the modern telemetry gear?
The high-speed cameras?”
Urara tilted her head, her pink ears flopping to the left.
“Um…
no?
Trainer doesn’t have cameras.
He has a big heavy ball that almost knocks me over, a plastic sheet that makes a *whoosh* noise, and an old silver watch that goes *tick-tock*.
Oh!
And he runs with me!”
“He runs *with* you?” Vodka asked, her interest genuinely piqued now.
Human trainers rarely ran full workouts alongside their athletes; the physiological gap between an ordinary human and an Uma Musume was simply too wide.
“A human running dirt laps?”
“Yeah!” Urara smiled warmly, her eyes softening into a look of pure, affectionate devotion.
“He groans a lot.
He makes noises like a rusty door every time he bends his knees, and he complains that his back is exploding!
He says he hates running, he hates early mornings, and he hates dirt.
But…
he never stops!
He stays right behind my shoulder so I don’t get lost, and when I get tired, he pulls out a snack from his green pocket!”
The classroom fell into a strange, contemplative silence.
The image Urara painted was utterly absurd—a grumpy, sore-bodied man in a faded green jacket, groaning his way through dirt laps while handing out vegetables—and yet, there was something undeniable about it.
In an academy where trainers often viewed their runners through the cold lens of performance data, prestige, and institutional pressure, this unknown man named Kazuma was out on the dirt at 5:00 AM, wrecking his own human knees just to keep a hopeless pink-haired girl company.
“He sounds…
very kind,” Special Week said softly, her eyes shining with admiration.
“He’s the best!” Urara cheered loudly, earning a sharp *shhh!* from the teacher at the blackboard.
She lowered her voice to a loud whisper, leaning across the aisle toward Grass Wonder.
“And he promised!
If I finish the race on Thursday, we get to eat pork belly stew and extra bamboo shoots!”
King Halo crossed her arms, looking out the window toward the training fields, her lips pressed into a tight line.
“…A completely ridiculous man,” she muttered, though the sharp edge in her voice had melted into something dangerously close to respect.
*”ACHOO!”*
A violent, head-shaking sneeze echoed through the cramped confines of the Junior Trainer Faculty Office.
Satou Kazuma slammed a tissue against his nose, his shoulders slumped in utter defeat as he leaned over a mountain of official race declaration paperwork.
“Damn it…” Kazuma groaned, rubbing his watery eyes with the back of his sleeve.
“Someone is definitely talking trash about me.
It’s either that nagging King Halo girl or the disciplinary committee finding out I used the academy lawnmower fuel for my personal moped.”
He was exhausted.
Every single muscle in his lower body felt like it had been shredded and reassembled by an amateur tailor.
His quads were burning, his left ankle was heavily taped under his sock, and his back felt like a collection of broken glass.
*Why did I have to be so hands-on?* Kazuma complained inwardly, leaning back in his squeaky desk chair and staring at the acoustic ceiling tiles.
*Twenty-six years I’ve lived in this world.
I grew up, I ate my vegetables, I avoided dramatic fantasy battles, and I got a nice, respectable state certification.
So why am I subjecting my twenty-six-year-old human spine to the training regimen of a literal racehorse?
I should be sitting in an air-conditioned office drinking iced tea while an intern manages the clipboard!*
He let out a long, theatrical sigh, reaching into his green jacket pocket and pulling out two things: his grandfather’s scratched silver pocket watch, and a small, official betting slip from the local regional racing exchange.
Because the Harukaze Maiden Stakes was an unranked regional dirt event in Kochi, local registered trainers were legally permitted to participate in the regional sports lottery pools—a small perk designed to boost interest in low-tier circuits.
Kazuma looked at the slip in his hand.
He hadn’t placed his money on Haru Urara to win First Place.
That would be insane.
First place meant trophies, speeches, local news cameras, and elevated expectations that would completely ruin their peaceful, low-stress lifestyle.
Instead, Kazuma had utilized the complex, multi-tiered regional betting system to place a highly specific, conditional wager: **Haru Urara to finish exactly in 5th Place.**
The odds for predicting an exact 5th-place finish for an unranked, notorious losing streak runner were an absurd **150-to-1**.
“It’s flawless,” Kazuma muttered to himself, a brilliant, scheming smirk spreading across his tired face as he tapped the paper against his desk.
“Urara’s stamina is locked in.
Her pacing is set to the middle pack.
The other girls will burn themselves out in the first eight hundred meters, leaving the middle wide open.
She cruises into fifth, collects her participation prize, and my three-thousand-yen wager turns into four hundred and fifty thousand yen.”
Four hundred and fifty thousand yen.
That was enough to buy a high-end electric massage chair for his aching back, six months of premium grade-A carrots for Urara, and a brand-new gas stove for the Annex kitchen.
“Unless…” Kazuma froze, his smirk instantly evaporating as a cold, terrifying thought struck his brain.
His Luck stat.
His absurd, statistically anomalous, universe-defying Luck stat.
In his past life—and throughout his twenty-six years in this one—his Luck had a dark, twisted sense of humor.
Whenever Kazuma desperately wanted a quiet, low-profile outcome, his Luck had a nasty habit of over-delivering in the most inconvenient, chaotic way possible.
*What if my Luck triggers?* Kazuma thought, a bead of cold sweat rolling down his temple.
*What if the top four runners simultaneously trip over a stray turnip on the track?
What if a freak gust of wind blows Urara across the finish line first?!*
“No.
No, no, no,” Kazuma whispered, gripping his hair in mild panic.
“If she comes in First Place, we’re ruined!
Tracen will transfer her to the main division!
They’ll give us a senior advisor!
They’ll make me wear a suit!
I’ll have to do press conferences at 8:00 AM!
I will curse this godforsaken Luck stat to the deepest pit of hell if it ruins my fifth-place payout!”
He buried his face in his hands, groaning loudly.
The idea that a trainer was actively praying *against* his own athlete winning a race was a concept so utterly backward it could only exist in the mind of Satou Kazuma.
Yet, deep down beneath his cynical calculations and his terror of high-stakes success, Kazuma knew the truth.
He looked at the little wooden shelf beside his desk.
Resting there was a crude, hand-drawn paper origami horse Urara had made for him yesterday afternoon, painted with pink crayon and covered in sticky thumbprints.
Beside it was a small jar containing the river pebbles she had carefully washed and given to him as a “good luck charm for Trainer’s aching back.”
Kazuma’s frantic breathing slowly leveled out.
He reached out, his fingers lightly brushing the edge of the messy paper horse.
“She’s not going to win first,” Kazuma said softly to the empty office, a small, genuine warmth breaking through his weary expression.
“And she doesn’t need to.
She just needs to run without fear.”
Their training wasn’t a lie.
It was real.
Every painful kilometer Kazuma had logged beside her, every groan, every taped joint, every sweet potato bribe—it had all been designed to build a foundation that wouldn’t crumble when she stepped onto that dirt track in Kochi.
They weren’t seeking glory, but they weren’t throwing the race either.
They were pursuing the most honest, comfortable, human path available to them.
The door to the office suddenly creaked open.
Haru Urara poked her pink head around the frame, her twin tails slightly messy, holding two warm, foil-wrapped steam buns she had clearly smuggled out of the cafeteria.
“Trainer!” she chirped, trotting inside with her signature light, bouncy steps.
“Are you done with the boring papers?
Look!
I brought the ones with the extra pork!”
Kazuma quickly stuffed the betting slip into his desk drawer, smoothing down his green jacket and putting on his best stern, authoritative face—which was entirely ruined by the dark circles under his eyes.
“Urara, how many times have I told you not to run in the faculty hallway?” Kazuma scolded, though there was zero heat in his voice.
“But the steam buns were getting cold!” Urara declared, hopping over and setting one of the foil packages directly on top of his race registration forms.
She pulled up a folding chair, sat right beside him, and looked at him with bright, expectant eyes.
“Did you take your medicine for your back?”
“I don’t need medicine, I need a replacement spine,” Kazuma grunted, though he picked up the warm bun and broke it in half, steam rising into the cool air of the office.
He handed the larger half to her.
“Here.
Eat before we go over the travel itinerary for Thursday.”
Urara took the bun with both hands, her tail giving a happy *thwack* against the leg of his desk.
“Yay!
Pork bun with Trainer!”
Kazuma took a bite of his food, the rich, savory broth filling his mouth.
He looked at the pink-haired girl munching happily beside him, completely oblivious to betting odds, press expectations, or the grand history of Tracen Academy.
*Fifth place,* Kazuma reaffirmed in his heart, looking at the silver pocket watch sitting on his desk.
*We’re getting fifth place, eating station ramen, and coming home.
And if my Luck stat dares to mess this up by giving us first place…
I’m throwing my green jacket in the river.*
Urara looked up at him, her mouth full of pork bun, giving him a massive, greasy, dirt-dusted smile.
“Trainer!
Your nose is red!
You look like a reindeer!”
“Shut up and eat your bun, torpedo,” Kazuma muttered, though a quiet, contented smile touched
his lips as the golden afternoon sun faded outside the window.