When Toujou Kaisoku showed up for class the next morning, she was sporting a pair of world-class panda eyes.
She looked like someone who’d pulled an all-nighter for all the wrong reasons—listless, drained, barely functional.
The images from last night and Manhattan Cafe’s matter-of-fact explanations had played on loop inside her skull like a broken record.
From the moment she’d crawled into bed, she hadn’t shut her eyes once.
It wasn’t until dawn arrived without any further supernatural incidents that she’d finally exhaled.
Her state hadn’t escaped the ever-watchful Satono Diamond.
When Kaisoku nearly nodded off for the third time, Diamond had had enough.
She raised her hand and told the teacher she was taking Kaisoku to the infirmary.
The exit stirred a small commotion in the classroom, and the gossipy umamusume began whispering among themselves.
“Why does the Tōdai girl look so wrecked?”
“She was definitely studying in secret last night!
How else do you think she got into Tōdai?”
“Yeah, the Tōdai girl is incredible.”
“I heard the Student Council President personally invited her.
She must have amazing racing talent too.
Is this what a genius looks like?”
“A genius, huh…
I wonder how she’d match up against Tokai Teio.”
“I’m curious too—”
“Come to think of it, what’s the Tōdai girl’s real name again?”
“…Can’t remember.
Everyone just calls her ‘the Tōdai girl.'”
Kaisoku had no idea her actual name was being quietly erased from collective memory.
Her condition was rough, but not infirmary-level rough.
She’d been through far worse.
This wasn’t a physical problem—it was the aftershock of a night spent wound tight as a spring.
“Did something happen at your dorm?” The school nurse was out, so Diamond could only settle Kaisoku onto one of the beds.
Having lived through the hellish lead-up to Kaisoku’s Tōdai entrance exams, she was especially attuned to warning signs.
Even umamusume bodies varied in resilience, just as two champion mid-laners could have completely different matchup spreads.
Kaisoku was on the frailer end of the spectrum.
“The nurse isn’t here yet.
Why don’t you rest for now?
I’ll wake you when she comes back.”
“…I’m fine, really.” Kaisoku shook her head.
“Last night…
how do I put this?
You probably wouldn’t believe me.
And it’s pretty flimsy as stories go.
Forget I said anything.”
“How do you know I won’t believe you if you don’t tell me?” Diamond shot back.
“None of this happened when you were staying at my house.
Why don’t you just move back?
I’ll cancel my dorm too and we’ll commute together.
It’s a bit far, but the bus works fine.”
“That’s way too much gas money—” Kaisoku mumbled.
“And I can’t keep imposing on your family.
A week or two is one thing, but any longer and I’d just be freeloading.”
“Other people would kill for the chance and can’t get it.
What’s your problem with freeloading?” Diamond planted her hands on her hips.
“I don’t mind!
And my parents really like you.
Sis Crown too—she said it felt lonely after you left.”
“That’s because your whole family is made up of good people.
But I can’t take advantage of that.” Kaisoku shook her head again.
“Thank your parents for me, though.
And Sis Crown.
Once I’ve made it, I’ll pay everyone back properly.”
“You already got into Tōdai…
honestly, I think you’ve suffered enough for one lifetime.
Just leave everything to us from now on—you could be a total freeloader and that’d be fine.” Diamond’s words were, frankly, dangerously tempting.
The girl who’d always dreamed of becoming a professional do-nothing was this close to caving.
But Kaisoku was the kind of person who, no matter how badly she wanted to leech off someone’s kindness, simply couldn’t bring herself to rely on others’ goodwill.
Was it insecurity?
Was it the guilt that came with depending on people who were too good to her?
The reasons were tangled, and most of them traced back to her inexplicable, self-sabotaging sense of pride.
She was a certified professional when it came to making life harder for herself.
If not for that stubborn pride and a fleeting impulse to become an artist, she’d never have abandoned a near-guaranteed shot at Tsinghua or Peking University to enroll in an art college. This story is hosted at g.com.
At least she’d had the sense to course-correct when the path turned out to be a dead end.
In this world, she’d chosen Tōdai instead.
The Great Empress Toujou Kaisoku, blessed with a second chance at life, was obviously going to ditch her past life’s bad habits and pick the path of least resistance—
“Look, I’m just moving out, not disappearing.
I’ll drop by on my days off.
Think of it like a house cat that goes outside to hunt sometimes.” Kaisoku offered this baffling analogy.
“…Kaisoku, sometimes you say things that make it really hard to keep a conversation going.”
“…Sorry.”
Diamond sighed.
She’d hoped that if things weren’t working out at the dorm, she could drag Kaisoku back home.
She’d been the one to veto her parents’ adoption proposal, true, but the reality was she’d wanted Kaisoku to stay longer.
Her parents adored the girl—her drive, her intensity, the way she threw herself into everything with single-minded focus.
Someone that earnest was always easier to like than someone flippant, and that went double for someone as effortlessly adorable as Kaisoku.
Gloomy streak aside, she was basically the idealized “somebody else’s kid” every parent dreamed about.
Both Kitasan Black and Diamond had invited the then-homeless Kaisoku to stay with their families.
Compared to an empty dorm, they’d both felt more comfortable keeping her within arm’s reach.
When Kaisoku had hesitated but ultimately chosen Diamond, the joy had been real.
Diamond had marshaled every ounce of ladylike composure to suppress the surge of triumph, but there was no question—she wanted Kaisoku by her side.
Just being around her was a source of boundless motivation.
And besides, Kaisoku had actually said she liked her!
Kita couldn’t compete with that.
What Diamond didn’t know was that Kaisoku had turned down Kitasan Black because she’d spotted suspicious bulges in the jacket pockets of the two men in black suits standing behind her.
That had been enough to scare the girl off.
“It really is something, though,” Diamond said, smiling.
“I thought for sure we’d end up in different classes, but here we are together.
Kita wasn’t so lucky.”
“True.
Tracen has so many students, after all.
Having you next to me is a relief—” Kaisoku’s mood darkened mid-sentence.
“Otherwise nobody would even talk to me during breaks.
I’m starting to wonder if I did something wrong.”
“…Ahaha…” Diamond waved her hands frantically.
“It’s just that everyone assumes you’re the unapproachable type.
You know, given how you, um, look…”
“Sorry for being a gloomy otaku…” The cloud of despair around Kaisoku thickened.
At this rate she was going to start growing mushrooms.
“At least having you here keeps me from feeling completely invisible.
Ha ha…
without you, Dia, I’d probably become a full-time shut-in in record time.”
“…Kaisoku, you get really heavy sometimes.”
“…Sorry.”
“Instead of telling me all this, why not think of ways to get people to approach you?
Everyone’s curious about you—they just don’t know how to start a conversation.
Especially after your class introduction was, um…” Diamond brought up a memory so mortifying it made Kaisoku’s brain literally boil.
“No!
Don’t!
Stop talking!”
Kaisoku’s reaction was that of a slug doused in salt—writhing, sizzling, dissolving in agony.
She’d meant to make a good impression.
But a sleepless night had left her brain running on fumes, and the timing of that malfunction had been exquisite.
She’d stood up for her self-introduction with a draft still running in her head: My name is Toujou Kaisoku, I’m an exchange student from the University of Tokyo, pleased to meet everyone.
I may not talk much, but I’m not antisocial.
I hope we can all get along.
My name is Toujou Kaisoku…
She’d been mentally rehearsing when the teacher called on her.
Every pair of eyes in the room converged on her at once, and her mind went blank.
The boiling-over brain combined with panda eyes from zero sleep gave her an aura that was, to put it diplomatically, intimidating.
And what made her want to delete this memory from existence was what came next: standing there in brain-dead silence, staring down the entire class, only to finally force two words past clenched teeth—”Toujou Kaisoku”—before short-circuiting back into her seat.
She couldn’t bear to look at her classmates’ faces.
She knew, with absolute certainty, that any chance of a normal social life at Tracen had just died.
A self-introduction so terse that even the teacher fell silent.
Probably a first in Tracen Academy history.
If it hadn’t been literally her first day, she’d have hopped a train out of town that night.
“The intimidation factor was certainly there, but an introduction that brief gives people nothing to work with.” Diamond’s assessment was fair.
“If I were meeting you for the first time, I’d probably assume you just didn’t want anything to do with anyone.”
Kaisoku knew.
Maybe the old her could’ve managed, but this body seemed to carry a genetic predisposition toward social shutdown.
Facing a room full of staring eyes triggered an involuntary urge to curl into a ball.
How was a body like this supposed to socialize?
The fact that she could even hold normal conversations with Diamond and Kitasan Black was already operating at maximum capacity.
Her original personality hadn’t exactly been sunshine and rainbows to begin with—nowhere near enough to overpower this body’s Supreme-Overlord-of-Introversion aura.
She was doing her best.
But on the path of social withdrawal, one glimpse of Toujou Kaisoku and all other contenders simply vanished.
Kaisoku’s introversion might be carved into her very bones.
The soul from her past life was simply too weak to override it.
“Ugh…
save it for next time…” Kaisoku burrowed into the blankets, rolling herself into a spring roll.
“The Way of Social Interaction…
vast and unfathomable.”
“…I think the problem is that you overthink everything, Kaisoku.” Diamond reached out and stroked her head.
“There, there.
Even if you never make other friends, I’ll always be right here, okay?”
“Uuu…
Dia, my hero.” Kaisoku’s face softened with relief.
“Without you, I’d devolve into something lower than a water flea—a tardigrade!”
“Yes, yes, there there—”
“Satono Diamond!
You traitor!!”
That trust shattered in the very next moment.
Kaisoku stared at Diamond’s helpless expression and let out a wail of despair.
“Stay away from me!”
“Don’t worry, it’s just a perfectly standard fever shot—” The doctor bearing down on her could have walked straight out of the Treasure Island anime—sporting a Dr.
Livesey grin and brandishing a syringe with cheerful menace.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of.
The pain only lasts an instant.”
As everyone knows, in the presence of Dr.
Livesey, refusing treatment was as good as death.
By the time Kaisoku limped out of the infirmary clutching her rear end, the grudge radiating off her was practically taking physical form.
“Come on, don’t be mad.
You had a fever—a shot was the fastest fix.”
“…Uuuu…
uuuu…
my butt…” Kaisoku cupped her backside, still reeling.
She hadn’t expected the school nurse to be so ferociously efficient.
The woman had to be at least fifty percent Russian—nothing else explained that level of imposing authority.
If that doctor showed up behind the runners during a race waving a syringe, every single umamusume would shatter their personal records on the spot.
What neither of them noticed was that a few umamusume on their break had witnessed the whole scene.
Inside their heads, nuclear detonations were occurring.
Two umamusume walk into the infirmary together.
One comes out clutching her backside.
And just like that—without either party’s knowledge or consent—the rumor that the Tōdai umamusume and the Satono heiress had been doing unspeakable things in the infirmary began making the rounds.
The umamusume who’d already been too intimidated to approach Kaisoku now didn’t dare talk to her in Diamond’s presence at all.
The looks they got when walking together turned unmistakably suggestive.
Perhaps out of the unique gentleness that umamusume shared, the rumor was the one thing that never reached the two people it was actually about.
Until—
“Kaisoku!
I heard you and Diamond were practicing Umapyoi Legend in the infirmary?!” Kitasan Black stormed over while Kaisoku was eating her boxed lunch.
She’d just returned Diamond’s tamagoyaki and fried egg to their rightful bento box and had been blissfully sipping her papaya milk.
At Kitasan Black’s words, the milk came spraying out in a spectacular arc.
Nutrients that might have shaped Kaisoku’s future were lost forever, reduced to an indescribable puddle on the floor.
“Hack—cough cough—” Choking violently, Kaisoku snatched the handkerchief Diamond offered.
The shock had sent papaya milk up her sinuses.
She mopped up the damage while staring at Kitasan Black in horror.
“What did you just say?!”
“Why would you only practice with Dia?
If you’re practicing, bring me along!
I’m great at Umapyoi too!”
“Do you even hear yourself?!” Kaisoku leaned back in a tactical dodge.
“Where is this rumor even coming from?!
Fake news!”
Oops, I overslept yesterday so I forgot to post the chapter hehe.
Thanks a million, guys!