The grand wrought-iron gates of Tracen Academy stood tall under the moonlight, casting long, geometric shadows across the pristine stone driveway.
Kazuma dragged his feet, his boots making a weary, scuffing noise against the gravel.
On his left shoulder hung the two bulging black trash bags filled to the brim with thirty-seven claw-machine plushies.
Under his right arm, he cradled the golden Harukaze Maiden Stakes trophy, which was surprisingly heavy and possessed several sharp, ornate edges that kept digging directly into his ribs.
Beside him, Haru Urara’s energetic bounce had finally succumbed to gravity.
Her short legs dragged through the dust; her pink twin tails drooped like wilted blossoms, and her large brown eyes were half-lidded, blinking slowly against the overwhelming wave of post-race, post-ramen exhaustion.
The giant stuffed pink horse girl and the massive carrot pillow were tucked tightly under her small arms, her nose buried right into the soft polyester fabric.
“Trainer…” Urara yawned, a long, squeaky sound that ended with her pink ears flopping completely flat.
“The gate looks…
super tall today.
Is the gate growing?”
“The gate isn’t growing, your eyelids are just shutting,” Kazuma grunted, shifting the weight of the trash bags so they didn’t crush his neck.
“Just keep moving your feet for three more minutes.
If you pass out on the driveway, I’m leaving you here as a lawn ornament.”
“Mmm…
lawn ornament…
I wanna be a garden gnome…” she mumbled, her head nodding forward mid-stride.
Before Kazuma could drag her through the entrance, a crisp, polite voice cut through the quiet night air.
“Good evening, Satou-sensei.
Urara-chan.”
Kazuma froze.
Stepping out from the warm yellow light of the security kiosk was Hayakawa Tazuna.
The Academy Secretary looked immaculate as always—her green suit pressed to perfection, her iconic hat angled just right, and her clipboard tucked neatly under her arm.
A warm, genuinely proud smile lit up her face as her eyes moved from the shiny gold trophy to the two massive trash bags of plushies, and finally to the exhausted pink-haired girl.
“Tazuna-san…” Kazuma sighed, his shoulders slumping even further.
“If this is about curfew, we have a valid regional travel permit signed by the administrative office.
I have the receipts right here.”
“Oh, please don’t worry about curfew tonight, Satou-sensei,” Tazuna laughed softly, her voice carrying a soothing, maternal warmth.
“The Chairman granted your team an official late-arrival dispensation the moment the race results were verified.”
She stepped closer, bowing her head slightly toward Kazuma before kneeling down to match Urara’s eye level.
“Congratulations on your victory in the Harukaze Maiden Stakes, Urara-chan,” Tazuna said gently, reaching out to pat the girl’s dusty head.
“It was a wonderful, thrilling race.
The whole faculty office was watching the live stream.
You ran with so much heart.”
Urara’s pink ears gave a faint, sleepy twitch.
A tiny, slow smile spread across her face.
“Tazuna-san…
I went *whoosh* in the inside lane…
and Trainer gave me pork belly…”
“I can see that,” Tazuna chuckled, looking up at Kazuma with a look of profound respect.
“It may have been a local regional race, Satou-sensei, but news travels exceptionally fast in this academy.
A maiden runner breaking her streak with a three-length victory on her debut under a new trainer?
It’s the only topic of conversation in the staff lounge tonight.
You’ve done something truly remarkable.”
Kazuma winced internally, feeling a fresh wave of cold sweat prickle at the base of his neck.
*Great.
The staff lounge.
The place where bored, hyper-competitive senior trainers gather to gossip.
My life is officially an open book.*
“It was just luck,” Kazuma muttered, staring firmly at the gravel.
“The front pack drifted wide.
We just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
“Luck is merely the alignment of preparation and opportunity, Satou-sensei,” Tazuna replied smoothly, her green eyes twinkling with an intelligence that made Kazuma deeply uncomfortable.
“You prepared her, and she took the opportunity.
There is no need to hide your achievement.
Though…” She gestured toward the two massive black trash bags overflowing with stuffed ducks, penguins, and giant carrots.
“…I must admit, I wasn’t aware that regional victory packages included a mobile toy store.”
“Don’t ask,” Kazuma said flatly.
“If I explain the physics of what happened at the arcade, my brain will start leaking out of my ears.
Can I please just drop this kid at her dorm before her legs collapse entirely?”
“Of course,” Tazuna smiled, stepping aside and opening the side gate wide.
“Welcome home, Team Kazuma.
Rest well tonight.
Tomorrow, a brand-new chapter begins.”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” Kazuma grumbled under his breath.
As they crossed the threshold into the academy grounds, Urara let out a massive, body-shaking yawn, stumbling sideways until her shoulder bumped into Kazuma’s hip.
“Trainer…” she whimpered, her eyes completely closed now as she blindly reached out to grab his sleeve.
“My room is…
thirty miles away…
my bed is floating in the sky…”
“It’s two hundred meters away, you drama queen,” Kazuma groaned.
But despite his sharp words, he carefully lowered the two trash bags to the ground, adjusted the trophy under his arm, and squatted down in front of her.
“Get on.
But if you drool on my neck, I’m throwing your giant carrot out the window.”
Urara didn’t hesitate for a single second.
She flopped forward onto his back like a sack of warm flour, her small arms wrapping loosely around his neck, her plushies squished tightly between them.
Kazuma grunted, his knees letting out a sharp, audible *crack* as he forced himself upright.
He picked up the two trash bags in his right hand, balancing the gold trophy against his ribcage, and began the slow, agonizing haul toward the student dormitories under the quiet moonlight.
“Trainer…
smells like sweet potato…” Urara mumbled into his collarbone, her breathing instantly slowing into the deep, rhythmic pattern of absolute sleep.
“And you smell like dirt and cheap ramen,” Kazuma muttered softly, adjusting his grip so she wouldn’t slide off.
“Sleep tight, torpedo.
Tomorrow, the real headache begins.”
The Junior Dormitory courtyard was silent by the time Kazuma safely handed an utterly unconscious Haru Urara—along with her mountain of plushies and her precious golden trophy—over to the night dorm matron.
After assuring the bewildered matron three times that the black trash bags did not contain hazardous materials, Kazuma finally walked away, his hands thrust deep into his green jacket pockets, his boots dragging through the moonlit grass toward his small private apartment in the faculty annex.
The night air was cool and crisp.
The stars above Tokyo were faint, washed out by the ambient glow of the city, but the solitude was absolute.
Kazuma took a long, slow breath, listening to the gentle rustle of the wind through the courtyard cherry trees.
*Finally.
Silence.*
He reached into his pocket, his fingers brushing against his grandfather’s scratched silver watch, and then against his empty wallet—the place where his worthless, unfulfilled 5th-place betting slip had resided earlier that afternoon.
A heavy, familiar feeling of philosophical frustration settled into his chest.
*My Luck stat,* Kazuma thought, staring up at the moon with an expression of profound, weary judgment.
*It really is an absolute curse.*
He walked slowly, his mind turning over the bizarre, chaotic nature of his existence.
He had lived in this world for twenty-six years.
He had grown up in a modest foster home, studied at a normal school, and worked normal part-time jobs.
He knew how the world worked.
And he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the absurd, broken power of his own passive luck.
If he truly wanted to, Satou Kazuma could be a billionaire by next Tuesday.
It wouldn’t even be difficult.
He could take his entire monthly savings—a paltry fifty thousand yen—walk into a local stock brokerage or open an online trading account, and start buying penny stocks at random.
His Luck stat would bend market trends, trigger unexpected corporate buyouts, and skyrocket his portfolio by three thousand percent in a week.
Or he could buy a handful of cryptocurrency tokens, invest in obscure real estate plots that suddenly turned out to contain lithium deposits, or launch a blind e-commerce venture that inexplicably caught a global viral trend.
Money was the easiest thing in the world for a man with a statistically broken Luck stat.
“But if I do that…” Kazuma muttered aloud, his voice echoing softly against the brick walls of the annex.
“…I’m dead.”
He shuddered at the mere thought.
Wealth in a modern, hyper-regulated society wasn’t just a pile of gold coins sitting in a chest like in some fantasy dungeon.
Wealth meant *infrastructure*.
If Kazuma suddenly made fifty million yen on the stock market, the National Tax Agency would flag his account within forty-eight hours.
They would demand audits.
They would demand income verification forms, capital gains declarations, and source-of-wealth documentation.
Financial journalists would track him down.
Unscrupulous business partners would knock on his door offering “investment opportunities.” He would have to hire accountants, manage corporate lawyers, respond to board emails, and sit through endless three-hour strategy meetings about tax shelter compliance.
More money meant more documents.
More documents meant more work.
More work was the one thing Satou Kazuma hated more than giant toads and crying goddesses combined.
*I am smart,* Kazuma reminded himself, tapping his temple with his index finger.
*I passed the Trainer Exam on my first try.
I know how to calculate velocity, drag, and resource allocation.
But I am not a business genius.
I am just slightly above average.
I’m an ordinary guy who knows how to game a system.*
If he tried to run a massive business empire relying purely on his Luck stat, the sheer volume of administrative labor would crush him.
His Luck stat would give him millions of yen, but it would pay for it by drowning him in a sea of corporate responsibility, public scrutiny, and legal headaches.
It was the ultimate trap.
“Small luck is a blessing,” Kazuma whispered to the quiet night air.
“A free box of sweet potatoes at the lottery wheel?
Great.
A two-for-one discount on pork belly?
Perfection.
A giant waterfall of plushies at the arcade?
Annoying, but manageable.
But a billion-yen corporate empire?
That’s just slavery with extra steps.”
He stopped outside the door of his ground-floor apartment, pulling out his key.
Besides, there was another, far simpler reason he refused to touch that path.
If he became a wealthy investor, if he built a high-profile business, his entire life would be consumed by meetings with suits, bankers, and corporate executives—arrogant, greedy, tedious people who only cared about margins and quarterly reports.
He would have to wear uncomfortable ties, smile politely at people he despised, and pretend to care about corporate synergy.
He looked across the dark courtyard toward the secondary dirt track.
In his mind’s eye, he saw the muddy, sunshine-filled morning from three weeks ago.
He saw a pink-haired girl sitting face-first in the dirt, rubbing her smeared nose, looking up at the sky and shouting that the sun was pretty.
He saw her holding a pen like a broadsword, painstakingly writing her name on a contract.
He heard her high-pitched, infectious laughter ringing out over the track as she chased a butterfly mid-jog.
Training Haru Urara was exhausting.
His knees hurt.
His back was perpetually stiff.
He had to wake up at 5:00 AM when the sun wasn’t even awake yet, and he had to constantly invent new ways to bribe her with root vegetables.
But it was *simple*.
It was honest.
When he stood by that dirt track in his dusty green jacket, he wasn’t a corporate asset, a public figure, or a chess piece in someone else’s grand game.
He was just Kazuma—the guy who held the stopwatch, kept her safe from her own clumsiness, and made sure she had warm food waiting for her when she crossed the line.
She didn’t care about his test scores.
She didn’t care about his strategy.
She just trusted him completely, unconditionally, simply because he was there.
“Investing in the stock market…” Kazuma scoffed softly, unlocking his front door and stepping into the dark, quiet hallway of his apartment.
“What a waste of time.
I’d rather spend four hours teaching an idiot how to jog in a straight line.”
He kicked off his dusty boots, leaving them neatly by the entryway.
He didn’t turn on the main overhead light, preferring the soft, warm glow of the moon filtering through his living room window.
He walked over to his small kitchen, poured himself a glass of cold water, and drank it down in three long gulps.
On his small dining table lay his trainer notebook, open to the page containing Urara’s training schedule for the upcoming month.
Beside it sat the small, hand-painted paper horse she had given him, resting peacefully under the moonlight.
Kazuma looked at the empty spaces on the schedule page.
Monday was going to be an absolute nightmare.
Symboli Rudolf would want a meeting.
Air Groove would probably demand a three-page tactical report on the Kochi race.
Local reporters would try to call his office phone, and senior trainers would give him those terrifying, respectful looks in the hallway.
His peace was officially broken, invaded by the unwanted fame his ridiculous victory had dragged into his life.
Kazuma reached out, closing his notebook with a soft *snap*.
“Bring it on, you overachieving school board,” Kazuma smirked, a sharp, cynical, yet strangely content glint flashing in his eyes.
“You can give me all the budget upgrades you want.
But if you think you’re going to turn Team Kazuma into some high-pressure G1 factory…
you’ve got another thing coming.”
He walked into his bedroom, unzipped his dusty green jacket, and tossed it over the back of a chair.
He collapsed onto his futon, pulling the heavy blanket up to his chin, feeling his exhausted muscles finally surrender to the deep, satisfying pull of sleep.
He was Satou Kazuma.
He was twenty-six years old.
He had a uselessly high Luck stat, a sore back, an empty wallet, and the worst tactical runner in the history of Tracen Academy.
And as he closed his eyes, listening to the quiet wind rustling the trees outside his window, Kazuma smiled—a genuine, peaceful, completely unburdened smile—knowing that tomorrow, at 5:00 AM, he was going to wake up, put on his green jacket, and do it all over again.