"Tamamo...!"
The hospital room door was shoved open a little too hard, and Oguri Cap stood in the doorway, breathing heavily, her eyes sweeping the room in urgency before instantly locking onto the white figure propped up in bed.
"Oh? Oguri!"
At the sound of her voice, Tamamo Cross turned her head, and a bright, cloudless smile immediately spread across her face.
One of her legs was wrapped in a thick cast and propped up in a brace, but that did not seem to affect her mood in the slightest.
She even gave Oguri a casual little wave.
"Perfect timing! I was getting bored. Come sit."
That greeting—far too cheerful, far too ordinary—pricked straight into Oguri Cap's surging frustration and unwillingness like a needle.
All the questions she had piled up on the way here, all the confusion, even that trace of anger, caught in her throat at the sight of Tamamo Cross's clean, open smile.
Oguri Cap stood frozen in the doorway, her chest rising and falling hard, unable to say a single word.
She looked at Tamamo Cross.
The rival who had been like storm and lightning on the track, the one she had chased and challenged with everything she had, was now sitting there in a plain hospital gown, forced into stillness—and yet the smile on her face was calmer than the one she had worn after winning the Arima Kinen.
This was wrong.
This felt...
Awful.
A nameless fire, mixed with something deeper—a sense of helplessness—surged up inside her.
Oguri Cap clenched her fists so hard her nails nearly dug into her palms.
She wanted to shout, Why are you giving up so easily? She wanted to yell, You're not allowed to retire before I beat you back. She wanted to demand, Was our racing really so meaningless to you?
But the moment she met Tamamo Cross's utterly clear, unguarded eyes, every fierce word jammed in her throat.
Awkward as she was, faced with a smile that pure, she could not find any words that fit the storming, chaotic sea inside her.
All she knew how to do was run straight ahead and race with everything she had. Faced with an ending this complicated and this calm, she felt more lost than ever before.
In the end, Oguri Cap only stared at Tamamo Cross and forced a few words out through her teeth, her voice low and tight.
"I... won't accept this!"
The words were stiff, not even quite saying what she meant, but it was the most direct refusal she could manage.
"Won't accept it?"
Tamamo Cross looked faintly amused.
"Won't accept what? Oguri, you've gotta say things properly, y'know~ Otherwise nobody's gonna understand what you're trying to say~"
"I won't accept... I just... I won't accept you being like this!"
Oguri Cap suddenly stepped forward. Her voice rose with urgency, but a clumsy tremor leaked into the end of it.
She seemed to want to overwhelm Tamamo Cross through sheer force, but against Tamamo's easygoing expression—one that even carried a hint of teasing—her toughness looked a little flimsy.
"I don't want you to retire!"
At last, she blurted out the heart of it, her blue-violet eyes burning with stubborn fire.
"How can it... end like this? We—we still haven't..."
"Haven't raced enough?"
Tamamo Cross picked up the thought for her. The smile on her face faded a little, though it stayed bright.
She lightly patted the leg encased in plaster, producing a dull thunk, thunk.
"Oguri, take a good look. This right here is the real thing—it's over. The doctor said that even after it heals, it won't be able to handle the strain of racing anymore."
She waved a hand as though brushing aside some unrealistic fantasy.
"So c'mon, quit being stubborn. No matter how much you want it, I can't run anymore."
"..."
It was like a bucket of cold water had been dumped over Oguri Cap's head. She parted her lips, but only a short, empty sound came out.
She wanted to argue. She wanted to find even the slightest possibility. But the glaring white cast on Tamamo Cross's leg, and the calm way she stated the facts, stood like an impenetrable wall in front of her.
That nowhere-to-go frustration surged up again and clogged her chest.
She clenched her fists until her knuckles whitened, lips pressed into a hard line, her gaze fixed on Tamamo Cross's face as though trying to find even the tiniest crack or trace of pretense in that sunny smile.
But all she saw was a clarity so open it was infuriating.
In the end, all those violent emotions came out as a low mutter, almost wounded, squeezed through clenched teeth with a tremor she herself did not notice.
"But... I just... wanted... to race you one more time..."
The words were light, yet heavy enough to feel as though they carried every last ounce of strength she had.
This was not a rebuttal of the facts, nor a rational plea. It was simply the purest, most unwilling longing one Umamusume could have toward another.
Buried beneath her fixation on wanting to win, perhaps there was also the unspoken unwillingness to lose a rival like this. But awkward as she was, she still could not turn that feeling into clearer words.
The smile vanished fully from Tamamo Cross's face, replaced by a calm expression tinged with both helplessness and understanding.
Looking at this opponent, taller than herself and now almost like a sulking child, she let out a small sigh.
"Oguri..."
Her voice softened, but it held a sharpness that pierced straight through the surface.
"Don't get hung up on this. What you really care about isn't wanting to race Tamamo Cross again, is it?"
Oguri Cap froze, as though she had been struck right where it hurt.
Tamamo Cross tilted her head slightly, her gaze seeming to see straight through the frustration burning in Oguri's eyes.
"What you want is to beat Tamamo Cross, then take that victory back for Sakuraba to see, right? You want to prove to him that you did it. That you didn't let down what he expected of you... isn't that it?"
The hospital room fell quiet for a moment.
Oguri Cap's lips moved, but she did not deny it. Instead, the fire in her eyes seemed to flare even hotter, while a flicker of embarrassment crossed her face at having her thoughts laid bare, making her expression even more complicated.
"Honestly, Oguri, you're way too easy to read."
Tamamo Cross shook her head. There was no mockery in her tone, only a kind of rueful fondness.
"Your whole face says you want to win, and after you win, you want to show someone. There's nobody but you who's that straightforward."
She paused, letting her gaze drift away from Oguri Cap and out toward the clear sky beyond the window, and when she spoke again, her voice was steady and clear.
"But, Oguri."
"If your goal is to repay Sakuraba..."
"Then what you should be worrying about right now isn't Tamamo Cross, who can't run anymore."
She turned back and looked straight at Oguri Cap again, her eyes reflecting the stunned look on the other girl's face.
"It's all the ones who'll come after your name from here on."
"Once I step down, the title of Japan's strongest Umamusume opens up, doesn't it?"
"And there'll be more people than you can count trying to take that title away from you~"
"If you're not careful, it'll be gone before you know it~"
"The next era belongs to you now."
"And the one with the most right to take up that name—the one who should take it on most of all..."
A note entered Tamamo Cross's voice then, something almost like a solemn entrusting, beyond argument.
"Isn't that you, Oguri Cap?"
She lifted her chin slightly. Even sitting in a hospital bed, not a shred of the pride belonging to a champion had worn away.
"So stop locking horns with this cast on my leg. Open your eyes and look straight ahead, then—"
A familiar smile curled back onto Tamamo Cross's lips.
"—Take the name of strongest from me properly, nice and steady."
"And run my share for me too."
"You're the strongest I've recognized myself... so what kind of sense would it make for you to lose to somebody else?"
Tamamo Cross's words, one after another, struck Oguri Cap's muddled heart like hammer blows, like a sharp chisel cracking open the core desire buried beneath all that stubbornness.
To repay Ryo.
Yes.
Hadn't that been the source of it all from the very beginning? The thing that drove her to keep running, keep challenging stronger and stronger opponents, keep wanting victory?
She wanted to prove herself. She wanted to answer that trust and expectation with the highest honor she could win.
And beating Tamamo Cross had once been the clearest, brightest goal on that road.
Now that goal had been sealed away forever in this way.
The end of the road she thought she had been running toward had suddenly turned into empty space, leaving her lost and helpless, with nothing left but frustrated cries.
But Tamamo Cross had cut through that fog for her with her own hands and pointed toward another path—a burden heavier than the first, but more glorious too.
To inherit the title of strongest.
Not to chase the back of someone she could no longer run beside, but to become the back others would have to chase.
Not to defeat one specific rival, but to win an era, and protect the crown called strongest.
You're the strongest I've recognized myself... so what kind of sense would it make for you to lose to somebody else?
That line crashed into Oguri Cap's heart harder than any comfort or encouragement ever could.
The absolute recognition and trust placed in her by the strongest rival she had ever faced overwhelmed all her frustration and wounded feelings in an instant, turning into a heavy, scorching strength.
The air in the hospital room seemed to settle.
The turmoil roiling in Oguri Cap's eyes gradually stilled, replaced by a firmness slowly taking shape—a firmness she had never had before.
Her clenched fists slowly loosened.
She straightened her back.
Looking at Tamamo Cross, smiling brightly from the hospital bed but with blazing conviction in her eyes, Oguri Cap took a deep breath.
"I... understand now."
Her voice no longer trembled or dragged with restraint. It had returned to its usual steadiness, but now it carried a new weight.
"Next year," Oguri Cap said clearly, each word like a solemn vow, "I'll take the title of strongest."
Not that she wanted to.
Not that she would try.
She would take it.
This was her answer to what Tamamo Cross had entrusted to her, and her declaration for the road ahead.
"I'll win every race, in my own way."
"..."
She paused, as though she wanted to say more. In the end, though, all those thousand unspoken thoughts were distilled into the simplest promise she could make.
"So just watch, Tamamo."
The smile on Tamamo Cross's face deepened, and it was a smile of genuine relief.
"Yeah, then I'll be waiting to see it."
She answered lightly.
"I'll be looking forward to what you do, Gray Monster~"
Outside the hospital window, the sunlight was just right. Beside the ending of one era, the overture to another had already begun.
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T/N: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH anyway no bonus since holy fuck that race was 11k words!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! or to be more exact 10,670~ words.... im pooped