He used the [Random Horse Girl Three-Choice Draw Ticket].
Three cards flew out into Tang Han's mind and materialized before his eyes.
There was even a trash can icon in the lower-right corner. Apparently, if he did not want one of the options, he could simply toss the card in.
The first one.
A petite horse girl with brown hair and aqua-blue eyes. A white crescent-shaped forelock hung over her forehead. She wore a blue-and-white race outfit with a bright red short cape, looking full of energy as she held up three fingers toward the camera.
Tokai Teio...
Whoosh!
Tang Han did not even spare the card a second glance before flinging it straight into the trash.
The second one.
Also a petite horse girl. Her ears were long like a rabbit's. Black hair covered her right eye. She wore a small tilted hat adorned with a blue rose at an angle that seemed to defy gravity, along with a black bridal-style race outfit and a dagger at her waist. Her resolute gaze stared straight at the viewer.
Rice Shower!
The moment Tang Han saw her, three huge words flashed through his mind:
Big-brother type.
Then another three followed right after:
Little gremlin.
"Pff—!"
Tang Han nearly coughed up blood as memories of his suffering while raising Rice Shower in the mobile game came flooding back.
Rice Shower—put simply, "rice shower," named after the European wedding custom of throwing rice over newlyweds as a blessing, symbolizing bringing happiness to those around her.
And yet, completely contrary to the meaning of her name, Rice Shower's life was one long streak of misfortune.
If she crossed the street, she was guaranteed to hit a red light. If she entered a shopping district raffle, the best she could hope for was a pack of tissues. She was also the type to absentmindedly mess things up—like mixing up salt and sugar and baking salty cookies, or accidentally kicking over a bucket and making other students slip all over the floor.
Because she stopped other people's great achievements twice—once by halting Mihono Bourbon's undefeated Triple Crown run, and once by stopping Mejiro McQueen's three-peat in the spring Tenno Sho—Rice Shower was branded the Black Assassin, the villain, the spoiler, cursed by the crowd even though all she had done was win through her own efforts.
Her real-life counterpart also suffered a fall and fracture in a race before retirement, and had to be euthanized. A genuinely tragic end.
And when that was combined with her soft, timid personality, it made people want to cherish her all the more.
Because Rice Shower called her trainer "big brother," the players who poured huge amounts of time and effort into raising her came to be known as the big-brother crowd.
Tang Han used to be one of them.
And after raising Rice Shower over and over and over again, he had ultimately arrived at the same conclusion most of the big-brother crowd eventually did:
She was a little gremlin.
No other way to put it—raising Rice Shower was just too hard!
Her race schedule was punishing and tightly packed, and she had a bad habit of dropping into a bad mood right before major races. Before her stats were even properly built up, she would already be thrown into the ring against a whole parade of monsters. One careless mistake and the training objective was blown.
By the time Tang Han and the rest of the big-brother crowd had burned through all their resources and realized Rice Shower was not even one of the strongest horse girls—that plenty of others had better stats than she did—they would begin to awaken, return to reason, slowly remove their clown makeup, and swear they would never again waste so many items and so much energy on Rice Shower.
But then all it took was one soft little, "Onii-sama..."
And the big-brother crowd would instantly snap back to attention.
"Present!"
The moment Tang Han saw Rice Shower's card, his instincts as one of the brother-types immediately made him want to choose her.
But the last scraps of reason in his brain stopped him, and with great reluctance he pulled his hand back.
Same as before—this was the cursed-fanfic version of the Uma Musume world.
Although Rice Shower belonged to the category of horse girls with extremely low danger ratings in this sort of setting—the kind where, as long as you maintained a normal distance from her, you were unlikely to get horse-girl-jumped at all—this did not mean she was completely safe.
What Tang Han actually feared was not Rice Shower's latent danger.
What he feared was himself.
As one of the big-brother crowd, he was afraid he would not be able to stop himself from closing the distance of his own accord.
Once you had been a brother-type for too long, reason disappeared.
After all, what kind of brother-type could look at Rice Shower and not want to protect her with every ounce of tenderness he had? It was like a fly seeing a cracked egg—there was simply no resisting the urge.
Even if Tang Han considered himself one of the most rational members of the brother-type camp, he still could not escape the curse of being one.
To reduce the chances of himself getting jumped, he had to do what a certain purple potato titan once did and painfully give up what he loved most.
Even so, Tang Han did not immediately toss Rice Shower's card into the trash. Instead, he decided to look at the last option first.
That way, if the final horse girl turned out to be some outrageously dangerous nightmare, he would not end up in a situation where he had already thrown away the first two cards and was forced to accept the third.
So, for the moment, he kept Rice Shower.
Tang Han looked at the last card.
The third one.
And yes—yet again, it was another petite horse girl, making Tang Han suspect the system was doing this on purpose.
Pink hair. Gemlike pink eyes. The lively smile on her face called to mind a radiant spring day, warm enough to melt glaciers. She wore a red-and-white race outfit and lifted both hands high in celebration toward the camera, like an angel descended into the mortal world.
Haru Urara!
A little angel of a horse girl who lost again and again, yet kept coming back again and again.
Back when Japan had entered the period later known as the "Lost Decade," when the economy had stalled, unemployment had hit record highs, and no one knew when things would finally improve, Haru Urara's real-life counterpart had been born into that era.
Urara was a regional racehorse. From her debut onward, she never won a single race. But even after losing sixty or seventy times, she still came bounding out full of energy and determination for the next race. Eventually, a racetrack PR manager noticed her and sent her story to forty newspapers across the country. In the end, she made the front page of the human-interest section of Mainichi Shimbun and became known nationwide.
Haru Urara began to attract attention. More and more people came to watch her. Even after twenty or thirty more races—and still not a single win—people's hopes for her only grew stronger. Even the Prime Minister of Japan said he wanted to see Haru Urara win. She became the ultimate symbol of not giving up, breathing a fresh spark of life into a nation crushed by despair.
The staff at the racetrack began receiving letters from people saying they had been encouraged by Urara's story. Cancer patients said her running had given them courage. Some said they had abandoned thoughts of suicide because of her. Some even took time off work just to come receive Haru Urara's "blessing." At the time, she became a star of hope for all the losers of the world.
After a hundred straight losses, Japan's genius jockey Yutaka Take decided to help Haru Urara get a win. In the end, she still finished dead last in that race—but afterward, they circled the track as though they had won, receiving cheers from the crowd.
Haru Urara had never won.
But she had also never once given up.
In the Uma Musume world, this little pink-haired angel inherited the same fate as her real-life counterpart: never winning, never giving up, and bringing lightness and healing to everyone around her whenever she ran.
What Tang Han remembered most clearly was one scene from the game: Haru Urara running in the Arima Kinen. Even though she finished dead last, miles behind the field, she still waved happily to the audience as she crossed the finish line. Tang Han had admired her deeply for that strength and optimism. And then, when she cried after the race, his heart had ached for her.
If he set aside his brother-type bias, then the horse girl Tang Han liked most was probably Haru Urara.
"Tch. This is troublesome."
Tang Han stared at the two cards, a headache coming on.
He liked both Rice Shower and Haru Urara.
He wanted to choose both.
His finger moved back and forth between the two cards as he hesitated, unable to decide which one to tap.
After long and careful thought, Tang Han finally made his choice.
"Well then... I choose you!"
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter116)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter82)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter144)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 118
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 111
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 80
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 112
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 95
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 89
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 53
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 61
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 65
Uma Musume: From Beginner 61
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 37
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