At the usual familiar hour of three in the morning, Dyna jolted awake from sleep, clutching at her backside with a strange phantom ache and rolling around on the bed a few times.
"Ugh... why would I have a dream like that...?!"
Just thinking back to the faceless man in her dream, raising a whip and bringing it down on her rear over and over, sent a chill through her whole body.
"Did you have a nightmare? You look a little pale."
Sitting at the dressing table, Cody's Wish leafed through the book she always kept close. The darkness of night did nothing to hinder her vision.
Still sitting on the bed with her legs tucked beneath her, Dyna nodded. "Yeah. It felt way too real, like I could still feel it. Maybe it's because of all the stress from yesterday. Since I'm awake already, maybe I just won't go back to sleep."
Closing her book, Cody's Wish shifted over and sat sideways on the edge of the bed, pressing the back of her cool hand to Dyna's forehead.
"You're not warm. So you're probably not sick. That's good. Still, I'd suggest you try sleeping a little longer."
Her hand was cool enough that it only made Dyna feel more awake.
"No, no, I'm good. I'll get up and go try out Tracen's track..."
Then she paused, startled by a thought.
"Wait, will the gates even be open this early?!"
Barefoot, Dyna leapt out of bed, her feet slapping against the cold floor as she darted into the bathroom to wash up. Cody's Wish watched her and shook her head.
Deep down, she really was a rather lively horse girl.
Two streetlamps stood in front of Central Tracen's gate, bathing the entrance in bright light. A dim glow shone from the security booth, but the silhouette inside looked like someone had fallen asleep face-first on the desk with their phone screen still on.
Besides the main gate, Central Tracen also had an employee side entrance that could be opened by card. Seeing the little red indicator blinking beside it, Dyna walked over and swiped the card Rudolf had given her. With a click, the small gate unlocked.
"It really works... and the training grounds should be straight down the main road, past the classroom buildings..."
Relying on her memory from the day before, Dyna followed the road forward under the combined light of the streetlamps and her phone. But once she reached the teaching area, the whole place suddenly felt unnervingly eerie.
Ever since childhood, she had always believed that school buildings at night were full of all sorts of dirty, supernatural things. And now that she was actually standing in one, her imagination started to run wild. She kept feeling as though some hair-raising ghost might be trailing behind her.
"Ghosts do exist, you know."
The soft voice drifted up from behind her.
Dyna's tail shot stiff as a rod. She whipped around, only to find Cody's Wish following quietly at her back. Her cheeks puffed out like a pufferfish.
"Miss Cody's Wish...!"
"I'm only stating a fact," Cody's Wish replied. "There's even a horse girl at Tracen who carries a ghost around with her."
Dyna immediately knew who she meant—Manhattan Cafe, and the "good friend" beside her, Silence Suzuka.
Cody's Wish was quite familiar with Silence Suzuka too. After all, she was a famous horse girl from the same country. But she had never once seen her while staying at Dyna's side. If she ever got the chance, Cody's Wish thought she would quite like to meet her.
The gates to the training grounds were still shut, but Dyna used the access card again and let herself in. Standing on the turf, which looked almost identical to a real racecourse, she ground her toes into the surface a few times, then crouched down and scraped at it with her fingers.
Instead of the loose soil she had expected, she found a dense weave of grass stems—a tough, springy mesh beneath the surface.
Unlike the softer turf varieties used in Europe, Japan used special grasses suited to its native climate. While that made the tracks firmer and faster, it also made them much easier to maintain and more suitable for holding races through the winter.
Sapporo Racecourse was the only track in Japan entirely surfaced with Western turf, while Hakodate and Niigata used mixed or alternating sowings of Western grass and native strains.
That was why Sapporo had become one of the tracks some foreign-chasing horse girls used as a stepping stone, though more horse girls still preferred to use the Takarazuka Kinen as their launchpad.
"This feels completely different from the grass down by the riverbank. Running on it would be steadier, with less variation underfoot. And every time I push off, I wouldn't have to worry so much about whether the horse girl in front has kicked out a pit."
Instead of starting to run right away, Dyna kept circling the track in a slow clockwise walk, carefully feeling the ground through the soles of her feet.
When she had trained with Joffre in France, she constantly had to watch for footprints ahead of her, as well as flying mud and torn grass. In Japan, she could almost ignore those factors entirely. Unless the horse girl ahead of her was a monster on Oguri Cap's level, dense grass stems like these would never allow chunks of turf and dirt to be torn loose and thrown backward.
Fifteen minutes later, Dyna had more or less worked out the differences and started sketching a rough plan in her head.
"Miss Cody's Wish, want to run with me?"
She still felt that her training was far less effective when she was by herself. Even if Cody's Wish was technically a dirt specialist, that didn't really matter here, did it?
Cody's Wish looked at the track. It resembled the kind of turf she had once seen on the American West Coast during the Breeders' Cup. She hesitated.
The effect of accompanying Dyna as a spirit apparently differed depending on the kind of surface. But at this point, she might as well just give it a try.
After all, she could always overwhelm Dyna with sheer stats.
Both of them were best suited to closing styles, but at the start Cody's Wish did the opposite and deliberately took the lead. With someone in front to guide her, Dyna's line became much clearer. The lap wasn't especially long, and relying on the experience she had built up in France along with the techniques Joffre had taught her, Dyna actually managed to edge past Cody's Wish briefly on the straight.
No matter how much the other girl might have been holding back, that was more than enough to make Dyna happy.
The grass, the dirt, and the slope were all contained within this training ground. Before sunrise, Dyna and Cody's Wish had gone through all of them. By far the hardest was the slope. The first time Dyna tackled it according to Cody's Wish's standards, she nearly staggered forward at the top and crashed headfirst into Cody's Wish's chest.
"Haaah... I tried so many facilities in one go, and somehow I don't even feel that tired. I'm actually kind of excited. Did you train like this too, Miss Cody's Wish?"
Dyna sat down on a bench for a quick rest, rubbing at her calves. Just then, a staff member opened the gates to the training ground, and immediately a red-haired horse girl entered.
She, too, looked clearly surprised to find someone here even earlier than herself.
"Eh... that's Triumphal Ballet?"
Dyna's gaze met Triumphal Ballet's. The other girl seemed to feel, however faintly, that there was something a little similar about this chestnut-haired horse girl seated there—but it was an odd sensation she couldn't quite explain.
Carrying a bag that held her running shoes, Triumphal Ballet sat on the other bench, changed her shoes, and began her warm-ups on her own, with no apparent intention of greeting a stranger.
"Miss Cody's Wish... what do I do? This feels kind of awkward."
Using someone else's power in her debut race had let Dyna elbow her host's destined rival, and now she had actually run into the original owner in person.
More than anything, she was terrified that Triumphal Ballet might react the way Orfevre had and mistake her for that red apple too.
Luckily... the other girl seemed completely focused on her own training.
Yipe—so hot!
The card stored in Dyna's inner pocket suddenly heated up. Panicking, she fumbled it out and flung it onto the grass. Pulling open the collar of her shirt, she peeked down and found a neat rectangular red mark already forming on her skin where it had burned her.
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)
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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 80
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 74
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 48
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 50
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 47
Uma Musume: From Beginner 42
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