In the mornings, Fujiwara Chiya trained with Byerley. In the afternoons, he trained his uma musume.
Compared with Byerley's training intensity, Chiya suddenly realized he was practically gentle. He had always tried to consider both his uma musume's physical condition and their mental state.
Byerley, however, did not care about any of that.
As long as the training did not kill him, she pushed him as hard as possible.
Several times, Chiya fell asleep the moment he sat down to rest.
Byerley admired that fighting spirit of his very much. Every time she saw him train until he could no longer get up, her stern face would show a smile. Then she would pat him on the shoulder and praise him.
"Not bad. You have the qualifications to shoulder an important duty."
Then she would give him a few walnuts.
The number of walnuts was not fixed. It matched the number of times Byerley praised him.
Not only that, those walnuts tasted like fruit. They had a strong sweetness, and after eating them, his body became warm, with a comfort he could not quite describe.
Were these really walnuts?
Chiya noticed that after eating them, aside from the warmth, there were other changes too.
Normally, when Shirayuki smelled his sweat, it carried an alluring sweetness. But after he ate the walnuts, Chiya found that even when he was not sweating, his body still gave off that scent.
Once, after eating six in a row, Shirayuki, who was sitting beside him, was directly overtaken by instinct and pushed him down onto the sofa.
When they came back to their senses, Chiya found that Shirayuki had left marks all over him.
His chest, neck, and arms were covered with traces of her lips.
Even his belt had been half undone.
Sitting on top of him, Shirayuki could feel a heat from him that seemed almost hot enough to burn her skin.
They separated in a panic, and Chiya went to the bathroom to take a cold shower and calm himself down.
He suspected something else might have been added to the walnuts. All these strange changes had appeared only after eating them.
He sent one back to Agnes Tachyon for analysis, but the rest had already ended up in his stomach. Even knowing there might be something wrong with them, Chiya still could not resist cracking them open and putting them in his mouth.
It was like a cat licking catnip.
Like Shirayuki tasting him.
Chiya had become addicted to that scent that seemed to nourish his body.
Besides, he did not think Byerley would give him anything harmful. He could not explain why, but he had an instinctive trust in her. He felt that Byerley would not hurt him.
Even setting that strange trust aside, it would make no sense for her to go through so much trouble just to feed him a few suspicious walnuts. And the number was based on how many times she praised him. If she really wanted to do something strange, wouldn't it be easier to just force a whole pile of them on him?
Still, Chiya was not about to let Byerley lead him by the nose.
He wanted to figure out what she was really planning.
She was an unbelievably powerful uma musume, yet she did not race. Instead, she kept talking about genes, descendants, and the future of all uma musume. In the end, she had even started training him in order to draw out his potential.
No matter how he thought about it, it was strange.
Chiya wanted to quietly learn more about her. At the same time, he hoped Agnes Tachyon's analysis would give him some hint about what Byerley was feeding him.
Was it an energy supplement, or some kind of stamina drug?
After eating those things so often, even his body scent had begun to change.
Before, when Shirayuki tasted him, it was sweet.
Now, it was not only sweet, but intoxicating. Almost like something addictive had been mixed in.
Simply satisfying the craving no longer worked.
Shirayuki could no longer "eat her fill" from him. The price of letting her taste his sweat was that his skin would end up covered in marks.
And even then, she was not satisfied.
Wherever the scent was strongest, Shirayuki wanted to taste it.
And in summer, there was one place where sweat gathered most easily.
She would often stare at Chiya's middle in a daze, then swallow repeatedly, as if trying to supplement herself with something other than sweat.
It seemed to her like an even better dessert than cream.
Every time, Chiya had to use tremendous effort to suppress the impulses in his heart.
To prevent himself from losing control, Chiya now showered three times a day. Even so, his body still carried that faint, tempting scent.
"Trainer, why aren't you training with us anymore?"
At Paris Tracen's training field, Gold Ship and the others called out to Chiya.
The man raised his head. He was wearing a high-collared shirt, and the red marks near his collarbone were faintly visible.
"I've had things to do recently, so I won't be running with you for now."
"How can you slack off like that?" Gold Ship complained.
Chiya did not tell them that his current training load was already twice theirs.
If he trained again in the afternoon, he was afraid he might actually die from overwork.
Byerley really was a devil instructor.
Of course, aside from the training load, the main reason Chiya did not want to train with Gold Ship and the others was still his own change.
The scent's attraction was becoming stronger even for people other than Shirayuki.
Every time he returned after morning training and passed by the student dormitories, some students would approach him. They would move in closer than strangers normally should and ask for his contact information.
It happened every time.
In this world-class academy, uma musume were everywhere. If he wandered around after training, he had no idea how many of them would end up surrounding him.
So, just like Shirayuki back then, Chiya had to avoid contact with others after exercise.
The hormones his body was now producing might be even more excessive than Shirayuki's at her peak.
It was practically a charm buff applied to everyone nearby. If affection were measured numerically, one sniff might add thirty points.
Gold Ship and the others called him a few more times. Seeing that Chiya refused to train no matter what, they stopped forcing him.
They knew that if Chiya truly would not come out, he must have his own reason.
Gold Ship also knew when to read the situation. If he really had something going on, she would not deliberately ruin things.
During this period, she had also noticed Chiya's changes.
The trainer she had always teased seemed to be becoming more and more tempting.
Gold Ship could not explain exactly what was tempting about him. But sometimes, when Chiya said something to her, her heart would suddenly skip.
That had been extremely rare before.
Normally, only when his wavelength matched hers would Trainer hit her weak spot. Most of the time, teasing him was far more fun than listening to him.
Gold Ship guessed that Trainer must be hiding some secret he could not talk about.
Her intuition told her so.
Gold Ship decided she would strip Fujiwara Chiya clean and dig out all his secrets.
Tempting or not, mischief could not stop.
That was her source of happiness.
Even if she someday accidentally fell into Trainer's clutches, she would definitely still be like this.
A relationship with her was destined never to be normal.
So let me see exactly what shameful thing you're hiding, Trainer!
After training ended, Chiya briefly told them the meeting time for tomorrow, then dismissed them.
He planned to go back and take a shower.
After standing under the sun for so long, he had started sweating again.
On his way back, Rice Shower chased after him.
"Onii-sama, do you want to eat together?"