Four Days Later
"Seiun, let's go fishing."
"Not going! Never going! Absolutely not! Seiun's gonna throw up! It's too hot rightnow!"
Seiun Sky practically launched herself behind King Halo, grabbing her shoulders as her life depended on it. Using King Halo as a shield was her only hope right now.
Seiun Sky's finger shot out, pointing accusingly at Hayato. "Seiun wants to quit the team! File a complaint! This trainer idles around all day, doesn't do proper work, and isn't serious about his job!" Her voice rose with each word. "It doesn't deserve to be a trainer!"
King Halo's face went through about five different expressions in two seconds flat. She twisted around to stare at Seiun Sky as the sun had just started rising.
"Who's the one idling around all day?" King Halo's eyebrow twitched. "You've got some nerve saying that."
"Exactly. Seiun, don't slack off. Hurry up and go fishing." Hayato nodded along seriously, like he was giving legitimate training advice.
"Wait, that's not what I meant!" King Halo's hands flew up, waving frantically.
"Absolutely not going! Seiun wants to train! Never fishing again! Besides, it's too hot for me to go fishing!" Seiun Sky's ears plastered themselves flat against her head. Her tail lashed behind her. "This guy makes Seiun go fishing while calling it training. Seiun's never seen such a weird training method!"
Look, training alone? Fine. She could handle that. Running laps? Bring it on. But this guy had her casting a fishing rod over and over for literal hours. The same motion. Again and again. Until her arms felt numb, it was like trying to beat the autumn wind into submission.
And he called this training?
Sure, she'd wanted to learn fishing techniques. But that didn't mean she signed up for a casting marathon that made her question reality itself.
This wasn't training. This was torture disguised as a hobby.
So today? Absolutely not. She'd rather eat dirt on the field than cast another fishing line. She'd rather run a hundred laps. Anything but that rod.
Compared to fishing hell after three days, actual running sounded like paradise right now.
Hayato let out a long sigh. Seiun Sky really wasn't budging on this one. His grand plans for developing angling and scheming skills would have to wait, apparently.
He pulled out his tablet, fingers swiping through the data screens. Time to check their progress instead.
Four days of training. Nearly 20 attribute points were gained between the two of them. Not bad at all. Except speed was lagging behind everything else, which was weird.
He'd been keeping an eye on other horse girls around the training facility. The ones without trainers? Lucky to gain one point in a week. Even the hardworking ones only saw sporadic increases, nothing consistent.
The ones with trainers did better, sure, but they maxed out around 3 points per day. Most days it was just one or two.
Do the math, and a trainer-guided horse girl gained roughly 300 points a year. Maybe 350 if everything went perfectly.
His girls were already outpacing that average. So their training speed wasn't the problem.
He stared at the schedule on his screen. Why isn't jogging increasing their speed?
That didn't make sense. Hayato figured intelligence would be the hardest stat to raise. Speed being hard to raise? That caught him off guard.
Their speed wasn't even at 100 yet. Jogging should still work at this level. But once they hit 100, jogging would probably stop doing anything.
Hayato grabbed a pen and crossed out the jogging line with a decisive stroke. Wrote "Sprint for one and a half hours" in its place.
Treadmill training. Adjust the speed settings to whatever they needed. Problem solved.
Hayato pushed back from his chair, the legs scraping against the floor. "Alright, new plan. Seiun, your training's on hold for now. You'll do basic exercises with King Halo. I need to teach Suzuka about escape runner tactics first."
The words "escape runner" made Silence Suzuka's ears snap to attention. She leaned forward, completely focused. Everything else in the room might as well have disappeared.
Hayato glanced at all three of them. "I'm gonna teach you stuff you won't hear anywhere else. Otherwise, you'll be out there not even knowing how to run properly."
He walked over to the whiteboard mounted on the back wall. Picked up a marker. The cap came off with a satisfying pop. His hand moved across the board with deliberate strokes.
Front-runner
Pace-chaser
Late-Surger
End-Closer
Hayato tapped the marker against the first term. "These are pretty self-explanatory, right? Front-runner means exactly what it sounds like. You run at the very front of the pack."
"Pace-chaser sits near the front too, but doesn't fight for first place in the beginning. Good position for someone like Oguri Cap who saves energy for an explosive finish."
"Late Surger hangs in the middle. Doesn't push forward, doesn't fall back. You stay in that comfortable mid-pack zone, then surprise everyone with a breakout move when they're not expecting it. Needs solid power and good positioning sense."
"End Closer is stay to the back of the pack. Lets you avoid the chaos up front and conserve your power and stamina. Not a lot of horse girls choose this style, but it's powerful against strong competition. Hang back, save everything, then unleash it all in one devastating blow at the end."
Hayato paused. Let that sink in for a second. "End Closer only works if you've got serious power in your legs. For you three right now? Too risky."
If anyone asked who mastered End Closer best, Gold Ship would win that conversation hands down. That girl had a skill that kicked in when she was running at the back mid-race. She'd just start accelerating. Faster and faster. Like watching a monster wake up.
Don't let Gold Ship's playful personality fool you, either. The Gold family sat at the top of the horse girl hierarchy for a reason. Every single member was absurdly strong. No weak links in that bloodline.
Any horse girl running End Closer needed high power stats. No getting around it. Front-runners, though? They didn't need as much power. What front-runner needed was quick acceleration and the Guts to hold their position when everyone else was trying to overtake them.
"You probably didn't know these running styles from class." Hayato set the marker down on the tray. "But knowing the basics and knowing the tricks? Completely different things."
"Your teachers give you the textbook version. Advantages, disadvantages, pick the style that matches your preference, and practice it. That's basic level instruction."
"What I explained before goes deeper than any textbooks."
Hayato picked the marker back up. The cap clicked off again. "Above those four standard styles, there's one more. Escape runner. You've heard the term, right? A normal frontrunner is sometimes called a casual escape. You take the lead and after that, pace yourself to manage your stamina."
"Great escape running style?" His voice gained intensity. "That's a horse that's not pacing anything. No strategy, no stamina management. Just pure, reckless speed from start to finish. You build such a massive lead early that no one can catch you even if you slow down later."
"Someone once said, if a horse girl can run a great escape style from the start and still have sprint power at the end?" Hayato let the question hang in the air. "That's the strongest running style possible." He paused. "And it's already been done. By one horse girl."
His eyes locked onto Silence Suzuka. "Suzuka."
"Yes." She straightened up instantly, her entire body at attention.
"Your running style is great escape. No rhythm considerations. No stamina conservation. You just run however you want, however feels natural to you."
"Yes, I understand." Her tail swished once. Acknowledgment received.
Hayato turned back to the board. "Running style matters, sure. But distance aptitude? That's even more important. You three all have different optimal distances." He pointed at each of them. "Suzuka, you're mile or medium distance. Seiun, you're long-distance. King, you're short distance."
King Halo's ears drooped. Her voice came out smaller than usual. "Does that mean I can't run long-distance races?"
The Kikka Sho flashed through her mind. That was a long-distance race. If her aptitude was not good...
"Not necessarily." Hayato was already writing on the board, the marker squeaking across the surface.
King Halo: Short A, Mile B, Medium B, Long C
Front-runner G, Pace Chaser B, Late Surger A, End Closer D
Hayato underlined the C rating twice. "Your aptitudes aren't perfectly balanced, I'll give you that. But the gap isn't insurmountable. Targeted training can make up the difference."
King Halo stared at that C rating. It meant one thing. She'd have to work harder than everyone else.
Distance aptitude wasn't something you could brute force with raw stats. That's what made it brutal. With her long-distance aptitude stuck at C, the Kikka Sho was going to be a nightmare. A serious uphill battle....
Just like in games, even if your Haru Urara has strong stats, it will be very difficult to win long-distance matches without distance aptitude.
But this wasn't a game where you could just adjust some support card and optimize the numbers. Real life didn't work like that.
Could horse girl improve aptitude through training? Technically yes. But it meant grinding day after day, putting in triple the hours everyone else did. Months and months of extra work just to close the gap between C and B.
King Halo's aptitude probably hadn't even started at C. She'd likely dragged it up to C through sheer stubborn effort over the years.
She could learn pace-chaser. That would help. And if they could develop one or two strong breakthrough skills for escaping the mid-pack chaos, then competing with top-tier horse girls wasn't completely hopeless.
Difficult? Absolutely. Impossible? Not quite.
"What running style would be most suitable for me?" Seiun Sky had somehow forgotten about her fishing trauma. She leaned in, ears perked up with genuine curiosity.