Shinji arrived at the training ground early as usual. Thanks to his well-disciplined body clock, no matter how early he got up, he never lacked energy.
This secluded training track was only maintained once a week, so he had no choice but to do it himself. Using the most primitive method possible, he took a rake and painstakingly filled in the pits one by one.
As he worked, his mind drifted back to the faintly disdainful look Air Groove had given him yesterday. Thinking about it now, that photo really had not turned out very well. Even Shinji found himself regretting it. He really should have taken another one.
[But whether it looked good or not, you didn't really care that much, did you?]
The system's teasing made Shinji pause mid-motion. He sighed.
That's true, in principle.
He did not explain further. Deep down, it was not that he disliked looking somewhat unattractive in the photo. More than that, because it was his first photo together with Offside Trap, he had wanted to leave behind a better image of himself.
Thinking of that, he unconsciously smoothed the sleeve around the crook of the arm Offside Trap had hooked yesterday.
No one was tugging at it now, yet Shinji could almost still feel the lingering warmth there.
Offside Trap's palm had been burning hot. Since he had been wearing short sleeves yesterday, the sensation had left an especially deep impression on him.
[She's here.]
At the system's reminder, Shinji composed himself and turned to look at Offside Trap in the distance.
There were dark circles beneath her eyes. She had probably not slept well last night. Before even entering the training ground, she let out an enormous yawn.
"I told you already," Shinji said, his voice edged with surprise as the status panel clearly showed sleep deprivation. "The training from now on is going to be hard, and you still dared to stay up late? You know I'm not going to reduce your workload just because you didn't get enough sleep."
"I understand."
Looking at Shinji's stern expression, Offside Trap forced herself to sound alert.
She was not about to admit that she had tossed and turned all night because of the way he had instinctively pulled his arm away yesterday. She should not have been such a sensitive horse girl. They had only just officially become a trainer-and-horse-girl pair.
Even if, before that, he had already been guiding her for a while.
"That's good."
With that, Shinji headed toward a dedicated lane at the side of the training ground.
There, a huge stack of tires had already been prepared. To train a horse girl's explosive power, the pile rose to nearly one and a half stories high.
Offside Trap regretted everything.
Shinji's training order really never progressed step by step. After only a basic warm-up, he was already going straight into high-intensity work. She felt as if her heart hurt just looking at it.
This was probably just the psychological aftereffect of staying up late, she told herself.
Gritting her teeth, she finished warming up and then strapped the thick harness for the tires around herself.
At Shinji's command, Offside Trap formally began today's training.
In an instant, the immense strength in her body poured forth, while the tires behind her, heavy and unyielding, slowly began to move under her pull.
Even on the sandy track, the tires still gave off a harsh scraping sound. Shinji stood beside her, watching with his own eyes as sweat rapidly beaded on her forehead and her face flushed red.
Her chestnut hair flew with each strained growl, shining brilliantly under the newly risen sunlight.
Shinji ignored all of it.
He focused only on her expression. The moment he sensed even the slightest sign of her losing heart, he barked at her to hold on just a little longer.
"Hah... hah..."
In the end, she still stopped.
Offside Trap felt as though her chest were on fire. Even though Shinji was still shouting at her to keep going, she was certain she could not take another step.
From the corner of her eye, she caught the dark look settling over Shinji's face. Turning around, she looked at the trail the tires had left behind—
Nearly fifty meters.
This stack of tires was already more than twice as heavy as what normal tire training called for. Offside Trap felt she had truly given it everything she had.
"Why did you stop?"
"Trainer, normal tire training..."
...was only fifty meters.
Offside Trap was sure she had already pushed herself to her absolute limit.
"But this isn't normal training."
Shinji's chest rose and fell slightly.
"I hate that kind of thinking. I've already entered you in the Kyoto Daishoten. After that comes the Autumn Tenno Sho—a G1 race. If you're not here to win, then why are you standing here at all?"
Offside Trap looked at him sharply.
But Shinji did not meet her gaze. He only pointed to where they had started.
"Put it back where it was first."
Gritting her teeth, Offside Trap forced her trembling legs to drag the tires back to the starting point.
The fire in her chest only grew fiercer, as though it were about to spread all the way to her brain. The sweat rolling from her forehead seemed to evaporate before it could even fall.
She did not dare imagine what this would feel like if it were late morning instead of dawn. She might already have collapsed from the heat.
She wanted desperately to sit down and rest for a moment, but her breathing refused to calm even a little, and that made her afraid to sit at all.
"All right. Two minutes have passed. Start again."
Shinji's words made Offside Trap stare at him in disbelief.
She could no longer maintain any trace of dignity. Dust covered her hair, and her grimy face looked utterly wretched. Her eyes were full of hesitation.
"What are you waiting for?"
"Trainer, my legs..."
"Your legs are fine! Besides—if you don't have exceptional looks, if you don't have breathtaking natural talent, then without the resolve to stake everything, you'll never win the Kyoto Daishoten."
The sudden denial made Offside Trap's vision blur. She just stood there, stunned, staring at Shinji.
"What are you spacing out for now?"
"Why," she suddenly asked, the words bursting out from the depths of her heart, "did the Three Goddesses make my legs this fragile?"
Shinji could hear from her tone that this was sincere.
This was the grievance she had buried inside herself throughout that endless career of injuries.
No one could truly face the unfairness of fate with perfect magnanimity. Unfairness was unfairness. It did not change simply because a person rationalized it away or tried to make peace with it.
"Because they want to show off their power."
The tears that had been hanging there finally fell, but their owner froze in place.
"Believing in the Three Goddesses is foolish in itself. They use all of you to display their majesty and authority. But your legs belong to you. Instead of complaining about their unfairness or hoping they'll save you, put your hope for salvation in yourself—because the only one who can save you is you."
As he spoke, Shinji took out a blindfold and tied it over Offside Trap's eyes.
"Now try again."
The fire in her chest was still burning, but this time Offside Trap did not refuse.
"Do you want me to drag it a hundred meters?"
"There is no target. You just need to give it everything you've got."
She said nothing more.
After Shinji fastened the blindfold, she leaned forward and began slowly moving ahead.
"Stop dropping your knees downward. Shift the pressure to your thighs. Show me your power!"
Shinji shouted from beside her, and Offside Trap's breathing grew ragged. Her flushed face looked as if it might burst into blood at any moment.
With her eyes covered, she had to rely on Shinji's voice to judge whether she was still moving in a straight line. That let her keep her strength directed efficiently.
"Have I made it twenty-five meters yet?" she asked through clenched teeth.
Perhaps because they had finally spoken honestly, the silence she used to keep during training had begun to change.
"You don't need to worry about that. Just keep going forward!"
"Hah... hah..."
Offside Trap tried to hold her posture and steal just a little time to catch her breath, but Shinji noticed at once.
"Do not stop. Keep moving your feet."
"I only wanted to..." rest for a second.
"You must keep going! You must keep going—until you are completely out of strength, you must keep going!"
His voice forced Offside Trap to keep inching forward, one step at a time.
There seemed to be some commotion around them. The already-blurred darkness before her eyes swayed from side to side, and then she felt a pair of burning-hot hands touch her ears and press earplugs into them.
The noise vanished instantly.
Even Shinji's voice became distant.
But it was still clear enough.
Following the sound of his voice, Offside Trap continued to squeeze every last bit of strength from her legs.
"Use everything you have! That's it—keep moving forward. Come on!"
"My legs feel like they're burning!"
"Then let them burn!"
"My chest is burning so badly I can't breathe!"
"That's all in your head!"
Their hoarse shouts rose and fell across the training ground.
"Don't give up! Don't give up! Keep moving—you do not want to give up!"
That voice by her ear became the only trace she could latch onto in her world of darkness.
At some point, the fierce burning sensation had vanished. In its place there was only numbness.
"Two more steps! Just two more steps!"
She had no idea how many sets of "two more steps" she had already taken. Shinji's "two steps" repeated over and over, until suddenly Offside Trap lost the balance she had been struggling to maintain and collapsed. The tires behind her came to a stop with a heavy thud.
The ground in front of her seemed scorching hot, rough against her face. Offside Trap had no strength left to remove the blindfold herself, so Shinji did it for her.
Saliva dripped from the corner of her mouth, yet she no longer had any energy left to feel embarrassed. Gathering one more breath, scraping against sand and dirt, she looked forward with difficulty.
"Take a look. You've already reached the end."
Her eyes slowly widened.
A wall stood extremely close before her. The curve of the training ground was already off behind her to one side. The railing stretched away along the bend, and only Offside Trap and the tires behind her had made it all the way to the edge by the wall.
Only then did she realize the ground beneath her was no longer sand.
There was dirt, gravel, and green grass beneath her.
When Shinji removed the earplugs, the surrounding noise came rushing back in.
She turned her head.
Even on the platform overlooking this secluded training ground, several figures had gathered. Those horse girls stared at Offside Trap, whom Shinji was helping back to her feet, with expressions of shock—and even horror.
Only then did Offside Trap understand that the commotion she had heard earlier had not been her imagination at all.
She looked back at her trainer.
There was a faint trace of approval on the man's face.
And Offside Trap knew better than anyone how hard it was to draw that kind of look from him.
Her body was still in agony, but her heart was soaring.
So she threw herself at Shinji.
That soft body crashed into his arms. Shinji did not dodge. Offside Trap was so exhausted that if he had moved aside, she would have fallen straight to the ground.
"Don't set limits for yourself."
He spoke softly.
The head in his arms bobbed up and down, leaving behind a trace of dampness.
[So even after three cases of tendonitis... when it comes to moments like this, even a girl who's usually so strong will still cry.]
Hearing the system's reflection in his mind, and seeing both the rising Emotional Energy and the substantial increase in Offside Trap's attributes on the panel, Shinji nodded.
[Are you still going to keep training?]
Yes.
He looked toward the flat stretch of sand he had painstakingly leveled earlier that morning.
That was the result of over half an hour of work. Terazumi Shinji had no intention of letting it go to waste.
[That's so like 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 175)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 126)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter82)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter134)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 87
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 79
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 64
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 73
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 45
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 49
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 45
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 45
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 31
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 27
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 26
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