"...I lost?!"
With both hands braced against her knees, sweat running down the sides of her face, and a scorching pain in her lungs as if they had been seared with red-hot iron, Oguri Cap finally understood what had happened in those last few seconds.
She had lost.
Lost to Tamamo Cross.
In the final few meters.
She had been defeated.
The regret came crashing over her a beat too late, like a rising tide, and a look of frustration surfaced on her face.
Her nails dug into her palm hard enough to draw blood, which seeped through the gaps between her fingers.
But even more suffocating than the pain in her body was the victory that had slipped past her by a hair.
She had failed to put Tamamo Cross away.
If only she had been a little faster on the final straight.
Just a little faster.
Then she could have taken the Arima Kinen trophy back to Ryo.
Just a little.
Only that little!
On the giant screen at Nakayama Racecourse, Oguri Cap's placing was displayed.
[SECOND PLACE: OGURI CAP]
While Oguri Cap was still drowning in regret, the two runners behind her did not look pleased either.
"Ha... haah... she's... so strong..."
Super Creek let out a long breath as she looked at Tamamo Cross, still standing at the finish line, her body trembling faintly.
She had awakened to the Zone during the Kikuka Sho.
Back then, newly awakened to it, she had thought her power now stood at the pinnacle of all Japan.
But the Arima Kinen had taught her a lesson.
The Zone was not the finish line.
Mastering the Zone was only the threshold to entering the ranks of the elite Umamusume...
And above the Zone...
There was something even greater.
"I've learned my lesson..."
Fourth Place: Super Creek.
As for Dicta Striker, who had finished third, she felt a little lightheaded.
"Tch, did I lose a little too much blood...?"
She touched her cheek and felt the wetness on her fingertips.
Her vision was stained red by blood, making it hard to see what was in front of her.
"...Man, this is annoying! So annoying!"
"Seriously, even like this I still couldn't win! Are Oguri Cap and Tamamo both monsters or what?!"
Dicta Striker was not all that hung up on the result itself.
Being able to face opponents like this on a stage like this was exactly what she wanted.
What frustrated her was her own performance.
She had split her head open on the gate right at the start and thrown herself off her game.
Not being able to face top-tier opponents at full strength—that was what really stung.
...
Sakuraba Ryo, meanwhile, stared at the result with an unsettled heart.
To be honest...
When he had watched races before, he had never felt all that much.
The girls might be pouring out sweat on the track, but as an investor, Sakuraba had never really been able to empathize with the Umamusume.
In his eyes, these so-called races had always been little more than empty glory...
They had never seemed nearly as meaningful as the prize money afterward.
And yet the girls always seemed to think that glory mattered more than money.
That was something Sakuraba had never really been able to share.
But today...
Watching Tamamo Cross burn herself to the brink out there on the track, he felt like he finally understood a little.
It was not that the Arima Kinen had value, and that was why everyone fought so desperately for it.
It was because the girls running in it burned themselves up that the Arima Kinen carried so much meaning.
"That really was an incredible race..."
Looking at Tamamo Cross bathed in the roar of the crowd, Sakuraba murmured the words with a touch of awe.
One of his own Umamusume had won a race, and he did not feel all that miserable about it.
Instead, there was even a faint trace of happiness in his chest.
He was happy for Tamamo Cross's victory, and that feeling outweighed the small frustration of having made money.
Just as Sakuraba stood there, lost in thought, with that rare stir of emotion rising in him, Symboli Rudolf—who had been quietly standing beside him the whole time—suddenly spoke.
"Sakuraba, go call the trackside medical team."
Sakuraba froze and turned to her, some of that lingering emotion still on his face.
"The medical team? Why all of a sudden—"
He had not even finished the question before Symboli Rudolf gave a slight shake of her head and turned her eyes toward the white figure still standing by the finish line.
Tamamo Cross had her head lowered, her shoulders faintly rising and falling, as though she no longer even had the strength to turn and acknowledge the cheering crowd.
Symboli Rudolf let out a soft sigh, tension threading through her voice.
"Tamamo Cross... probably can't move anymore."
...
Tamamo Cross's last clear memory of the Arima Kinen was not the ecstasy of crossing the line, nor the deafening roar of the crowd.
It was the moment her vision began to sway, when the cheers in her ears slowly warped into a distant hum, and the solid ground beneath her feet suddenly turned soft as cotton.
She tried to move, to step toward the stands that had erupted for her, but her body felt as though every last bone and ounce of strength had been pulled out of it.
It would not obey her at all.
The golden sunlight before her began to fracture and spin, mingling with the fine dust kicked up over the track.
Her consciousness blurred like fading ink, and the only thing that remained clear was the sight of several figures rushing toward her from the shadows at the edge of the course.
White coats.
And the worry and urgency plain on their faces.
The medical team...?
The thought drifted lightly through her fading consciousness.
I'm not gonna hold out...
Looks like Sakuraba's really going to nag me over this...
But somehow... that doesn't sound so bad either...
Then her vision was swallowed completely by white.
The color of the stretcher. The color of emergency uniforms.
The last sensation she felt before losing consciousness completely was the feeling of her falling body being caught—gently, but firmly—and held steady.
She did not know how much time had passed.
Her consciousness was like a stone sunken in deep water, slowly being lifted by some soft force that would not be denied.
The first thing to return was her sense of smell—
The sharp scent of disinfectant slipped into her nose. Then came the rough feel of the sheets beneath her, and the all-encompassing weakness that followed utter exhaustion.
Tamamo Cross's eyelashes trembled once or twice before her eyes slowly opened.
Her vision was blurred at first, then gradually came into focus.
What greeted her was an unfamiliar white ceiling, utterly bare.
The cool white light above was not harsh, but this was clearly neither the trainer's room she knew nor her dorm.
Fragments of memory began to flow back, fitting themselves together piece by piece.
"...Mm..."
A faint murmur barely escaped her dry throat.
Her voice was so hoarse that even she found it unfamiliar.
She tried to turn her neck slightly, but at once a sharp ache spread from her shoulders and back, drawing a quiet hiss from her lips.
Her body felt like a machine that had been driven too hard and finally shaken apart; every joint and every muscle was voicing its weary protest.
Even lifting a single finger felt terribly difficult.
Outside the window, the sky had already gone dark, a deep blue night replacing the dazzling afternoon sunlight she remembered from the track.
Only a small lamp on the bedside table gave off a warm yellow glow, barely pushing back the darkness in one corner of the room and sketching out the simple shape of the hospital room around her.
She had won.
She really had won the Arima Kinen.
But the price of that victory seemed, somehow, to have come in a much more concrete form than she had imagined.
As Tamamo Cross stared up at that unfamiliar ceiling, silently savoring this disinfectant-scented victory, a familiar voice came from beside the bed, touched with helplessness.
"So you finally decided to wake up?"
Tamamo Cross's ears twitched almost on their own.
With some effort, she turned her neck. The soreness made that simple motion slow and stiff.
Her eyes shifted toward the source of the voice.
At the edge of the bedside lamp's warm halo, someone was sitting in the chair by her bed.
Sakuraba Ryo.
He was sitting there with one arm resting on the back of the chair, leaning forward slightly, looking straight at her.
"You really..."
Sakuraba's voice paused, as though he had wanted to say something scolding, but seeing Tamamo Cross like this—pale and weak, yet with her eyes still bright in spite of everything—it all finally turned into a heavier sigh, swallowed by the stillness of the hospital room.
"Honestly... I don't even know what to say to you."
Tamamo Cross parted her lips. Her cracked lips brushed together, but no sound came out right away.
Looking at Sakuraba's face, full of exasperation and headache, that little bit of unease she had felt over collapsing and being brought to the hospital quietly faded instead.
Ah... yep. That expression.
She thought of the thought that had flashed through her mind just before she lost consciousness, and now it rose back up with perfect clarity.
So I did get nagged... but somehow... this really isn't bad at all.
"Sakuraba... I won, you know?"
Tamamo Cross forced her hand up and gave him a thumbs-up, smiling as she did.
"I saw."
Sakuraba took her hand in his and said, "You did well, Tamamo."
---
T/N: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH TAM TAM TAM TAM TAM TAM TAM TAM TAM TAM TAM TAM
bonus chaps
100 stones -> 1 chapter
200 stones -> 2 chapters
300 stones -> 3 chapters
and so on
discord.gg/wisetl
patreon.com/wisetl