Chapter 112: There is no retreat for the Emperor.

“Dragon,” someone murmured.

The voice reached my ears—dazed, stunned, as if the word had slipped out before they could stop it. Precisely because it was an instinctive remark, it struck at the heart of the matter.

That was why so many people silently agreed. Yes—what stood before us really did resemble the kind of dragon that appears in myth.

…Well, that was only natural. An unbelievable miracle was unfolding right before our eyes.

Tap-tap-tap—footsteps rang out. The sound of an Uma Musume running across the field. Not at the blistering pace of an official race, of course—more like a light jog.

…The problem was that the one running was blindfolded.

With both eyes covered, she jogged forward and swung the stick in her hand down in a clean vertical arc. It slid as if being drawn straight toward another participant’s head—

Smack! A crisp, satisfying sound rang out, and one of her competitors was eliminated.

“…!”

Startled by the sound—or perhaps frightened—another participant swung their own stick. Whether guided by sound or sheer coincidence, it was a direct hit aimed straight for her head. With her vision blocked, everyone must have thought her elimination was inevitable.

But—

Thud.

The swung stick cut only air before slamming into the ground.

She had slipped aside at the very last instant. As if answering in return, she swung her stick once more—and landed a perfect, clean hit. Another competitor was knocked out.

…Yeah. I mean, I knew this was how it would go, but seeing it in person, it was so absurdly one-sided that it almost made me sigh.

The one dominating the field before us was Hoshino Wilm—my friend, and at the same time my greatest rival. An Uma Musume you could fairly call the eye of the storm in the current Twinkle Series.

Her pale, beautiful light-brown semi-long hair streamed behind her. A blindfold covered her pale blue eyes. In her hand was a flexible, softly bending stick. Jogging lightly across the field, she mercilessly picked off any Uma Musume who noticed her presence and tried to move, striking them down one by one.

…Yes. Picked off.

Normally, if an Uma Musume has her vision blocked, she can’t even run properly. Of course she can’t. We rely on our eyes to know where the rails are, where the other Uma Musume are—everything.

But she’s different.

Even without seeing, she knows.

As if to prove my thought, Wilm—still blindfolded—dodged incoming swings, avoided Uma Musume she was about to collide with, and raced freely across the field. And without a shred of mercy, she cut down her victims in a completely one-sided fashion…

In the end, it didn’t even take thirty seconds from the start for the match to be decided.

A sweeping victory that knocked out the vast majority of the participants. It was no longer just a win—you could only call it a brutal, overwhelming massacre.

The spectators, who had been murmuring in confusion throughout the match, erupted into cheers the moment they saw Wilm defeat the final opponent.

They might not understand the logic behind it, but Hoshino Wilm had dominated through sheer presence alone. And it was exactly the kind of spectacle the unusually large crowd wanted to see—even if parts of it didn’t quite make sense.

So naturally, they got fired up.

Moving that freely while blindfolded might be abnormal—but then again, Wilm is abnormal to begin with. A normal Uma Musume can’t pull off a full-on breakaway and still unleash a powerful finishing kick at the end. Nor can they go undefeated to claim the Triple Crown like the Chairwoman, or accomplish so many feats once thought impossible.

That she’s beyond common sense is old news. Which is why the confusion stayed minimal, and people were able to immerse themselves fully in the thrill of her victory.

…Well, from my perspective, it ended exactly how I expected.

“Huh… figured as much, but this pretty much confirms her hearing’s enhanced all the time.”

I muttered under my breath and slipped away from the excited crowd.

---

I pushed through the waves of people and walked through the school building for a while.

The Fan Appreciation Festival is one of the biggest events at Tracen, and since outsiders are allowed in, there aren’t many places where you can really relax… but as the saying goes, it takes a snake to know a snake. After two years here, you start to get a feel for which spots are likely to be empty.

Normally, that place is packed with academy Uma Musume—especially on rainy days. But today, only someone sharp like me would think to use it, so it should be practically deserted.

Yes. That place is—

The gym facility inside the academy.

Not many people train on festival days. Racing Uma Musume may be professional athletes, but they’re still kids, too. The ones who stay stoic enough to train even on one of the twice-a-year festival days are a minority.

…Well, there are exceptions, like Wilm—a running junkie who treats running itself as her greatest form of entertainment and wants to run even on her days off. But that’s hardly normal.

Under normal circumstances, you’d want to forget training on your rare day off and enjoy your hobbies instead. On top of that, during the spring Fan Appreciation Festival, strong senior-class Uma Musume are often required to participate in events, and many others want to rest their bodies with races coming up soon.

That’s why the usually crowded gym turns into a perfect place to take a breather.

And so—

That’s where I had arranged to meet one Uma Musume.

Walking briskly to the meeting spot, I found my friend waiting on a bench set along the wall in one corner of the gym space.

“Oh, you’re here.”

“Sorry—kept you waiting!”

“In situations like this, aren’t you supposed to say, ‘I just arrived’? Well, I haven’t been waiting that long, so don’t worry about it.”

Mejiro McQueen—both my rival and my close friend—raised a hand lightly, her lips curved in a composed smile as always.

“Sorry for taking up your time.”

“It’s no trouble at all.”

“How about your event schedule?”

“The nearest one is in two hours. Factoring in lunch and gathering time, I can spare about an hour.”

“I don’t plan on using that much.”

“Oh? I wouldn’t mind if you used the whole hour, you know. I believe exchanging opinions with the current you is worth that much.”

The current me, huh…

…Is that something I should feel happy about, or embarrassed by?

Well, whatever. If she acknowledges who I am now, that’s not a bad feeling.

I sat down next to McQueen on the bench and opened my mouth.

“All right then—let’s start the study session.”

Some time ago, after McQueen caught me researching Wilm, one thing led to another, and we started holding regular study sessions about her.

Well, “research” might be overselling it—it’s nothing as formal as what the trainers do. We watch footage of Hoshino Wilm running, talk about how it felt to run against her, and share impressions from the perspective of fellow Uma Musume.

Honestly, though, I’m not all that useful.

To put it bluntly, I don’t know much about the current Hoshino Wilm. I’ve only run with her four times in total: once in a mock race, then the Satsuki Sho, the Japan Derby, and the recent Arima Kinen.

And aside from the Arima Kinen, those three races were nearly a year ago. Even in the Arima Kinen—the sole exception—I couldn’t close in enough to really feel Wilm, since my legs stopped responding halfway through.

All things considered, it’s fair to say I haven’t run with the recent version of Wilm at all.

In contrast, McQueen is well acquainted with the recent Wilm.

Well, “well acquainted” might not be quite right—but she did run in the Japan Cup and the Arima Kinen that Wilm competed in most recently.

She placed second in the Japan Cup and fourth in the Arima Kinen—strong results—and naturally, she pushed Wilm hard in both races.

It’s probably no exaggeration to say that McQueen is the Uma Musume who knows the current Wilm best.

Which means that, in this study session, I’m at a disadvantage when it comes to firsthand experience…

But hey, I’m still a genius, you know. I’m the one who tends to notice things just from watching Wilm run, and when you factor in my analytical ability, I think it balances out nicely.

So then—

That’s why, even today—on the very day of the Fan Appreciation Festival—McQueen and I are holding another study session.

“So, what about the issue we raised last time? Did you give it some thought?”

“I did… and yes, there were parts where I felt you were right. It was only a subtle sense of unease, though.”

The topic from our previous session was whether there was any difference in Wilm between the Japan Cup and the Arima Kinen.

I mean, thinking about it normally, of course there was a difference.

The trainer she trusted—the trainer who guided her—was caught up in an incident and fell unconscious. There’s no way she could run the same way she did in the Japan Cup, where she was presumably in peak condition.

…But that’s not the important point here.

“What matters isn’t whether her condition was perfect.”

“I do believe there was a difference between Wilm-san in the Japan Cup and in the Arima Kinen. But putting that difference into concrete words is…”

McQueen tilted her head slightly.

Yeah—this is the kind of thing that’s all about feel. It’s harder to verbalize than to sense.

The best I can do is at least narrow down the suspicious points.

“Personally, I want to focus on the first half of the race.”

“The first half… you mean the battle for the lead with Silence Suzuka-san?”

“No, before that. The three-way contest including Turbo.”

“Oh, there… ah, I see.”

McQueen lifted her gaze, resting a fist lightly against her lips as she thought.

Then she quickly looked back at me, clearly having reached the same conclusion.

“Now that you mention it, when I reviewed the race with my trainer, there was a part that bothered me as well. Why did Wilm-san wait until the contest between Turbo-san and Suzuka-san was completely over before making her move?”

“Exactly. Don’t you think it wouldn’t have been a bad idea to go in around the time Turbo started to fade?”

“Perhaps… though provoking Suzuka-san’s fighting spirit is always a risk.”

It’s probably just intuition, but—

What really matters here isn’t whether she could run at full capacity.

It’s whether she ran with her usual “Hoshino Wilm–style strategy.”

“Overall, I don’t think Wilm ran badly in that Arima Kinen. But… if there’s one thing you could nitpick, I think it’s that moment.”

“Nitpick, you say…”

“Well, her running style is so unusual that it’s hard to tell what’s ‘wrong’ in the first place. She had her usual outstanding start, didn’t overheat, and controlled Suzuka on her own with just the right sense of pace. It wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely Wilm-like…”

“But the fact that she didn’t make her move there feels off… not like Wilm-san?”

“It’s really only a margin-of-error kind of feeling, but yeah.”

It’s all very intuitive, so I struggle to find the right words to convey it to McQueen.

“Racing’s like this—you can’t be too cautious, but you also can’t be too bold, right? Normally, Wilm strikes that balance perfectly. But that day, it felt like she leaned a bit too far toward caution.”

“…Ah, I see. Now that you put it that way, I agree. That day, Wilm-san did feel more cautious than usual.”

Hoshino Wilm is an Uma Musume who employs extremely bold strategies.

The very concept of a full-on breakaway is dynamic to the extreme, and if you look at her abandoning the breakaway in the Takarazuka Kinen, or her ferocious lead battle with Silence Suzuka in the Arima Kinen, there’s no way you could call her cautious.

And yet, what makes her remarkable is that she isn’t merely bold.

A full breakaway is an absurdly difficult running style—if you’re just fast, you’ll fade like Turbo. You have to maintain your own internal pace with extreme precision, and in Wilm’s case, probably also grasp the distance to other Uma Musume to find the pace that’s right for her.

Hoshino Wilm executes that delicate adjustment correctly every single time. That’s why she can win G1 races back-to-back with a breakaway.

All things considered, her running is both fearless and exquisitely careful—neither outweighing the other, but coexisting in perfect balance.

…Well, that’s true of strong Uma Musume in general, to one degree or another.

But that day, Wilm’s running was different.

Specifically when it came to making her move against Suzuka, she felt skewed toward caution—or, to put it bluntly, she felt timid.

“Hmm… I’ve heard that Wilm-san’s tactics are constructed by her trainer. But in the Arima Kinen, her trainer was absent. Which means… the overall framework of the strategy was complete, but the fine details weren’t fully refined. So Wilm-san hesitated over when to make her move and chose caution instead?”

“Sounds plausible, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. Quite plausible.”

McQueen and I nodded to each other and once more replayed that day in our minds.

The unprecedented Arima Kinen—the one who claimed victory there was Special Week, who overtook Hoshino Wilm at the very end.

The gap between Special Week and Hoshino Wilm was a mere three centimeters.

To say that gap was born from Wilm being just a little too cautious… doesn’t feel like much of a stretch.

“If this hypothesis is correct… then that means—”

“Yeah. We can start to see Hoshino Wilm’s ‘weakness.’”

McQueen and I nodded gravely.

Hoshino Wilm is, for all intents and purposes, an Uma Musume without weaknesses.

Despite adopting the outrageous running style of a full breakaway, and being a stayer who handles long distances, she has no obvious flaws.

Her starts are extremely precise, she doesn’t have a tendency to overheat, her cornering is smooth, her tactical judgment is excellent, her stamina is more than sufficient, and her top speed is very high.

As a stayer, she possesses more than complete aptitude.

…However.

That evaluation only holds when “Racing Uma Musume Hoshino Wilm” and “Trainer Horino Ayumu” are together.

“If she’s on her own, without her trainer’s intervention, then in moments requiring split-second judgment, she tends to err on the side of caution?”

“Yeah. I think Wilm’s decision-making might be fundamentally conservative. …Or maybe she just never really had many chances to develop judgment in those kinds of situations.

I’ve mentioned it before, but her contracted trainer is kind of abnormal. His observational skills and race reading are insane. Honestly, I think he’s sharper than me.”

“Sharper than you, Teio…? You’re not joking?”

“Nope. Dead serious.”

I think it was back when I was hospitalized together with Wilm—I talked with that trainer a bit.

He’s a logic guy, but his race reading is even sharper than mine, and more than anything, his knowledge of Uma Musume physiology is absurd.

He even gave me advice—like, “With the way you’re walking, it puts a bit of strain on your legs, so you should adjust it like this.”

Trainer Horino Ayumu is… a little abnormal.

That phrasing is honestly rude, and it’s hard to put into precise words anyway, so it’s not something I’d ever say out loud to anyone, but…

How do I put it—he gives off the impression of being a foreign element that simply shouldn’t exist in this world.

That’s the kind of outrageous trainer Wilm had.

So it makes sense that she rarely needed to make decisions on her own.

“Because that trainer was too strong on the tactical side, Wilm didn’t need to judge things for herself. If she just ran the way he told her to, she’d win. There was no need to think about whether to be bold or cautious in the middle of a race.

And on top of that, if the race development ever strayed from his envisioned scenario, I’m pretty sure he had countless sub-plans prepared. And even if things went completely off-script… well, Wilm’s own judgment isn’t bad—it just leans a little cautious. Up until now, that’s been enough to deal with things.”

Which basically means… yeah, those two really are a cheat-tier combo.

Wilm has absurd natural talent and chooses the hard-to-counter style of a full breakaway.

And her trainer compensates for what you could call her only weakness—her slightly conservative decision-making—with insanely sharp observation and overprepared strategies.

When those two are together, there’s nothing you can do.

They become an almost flawless, unbeatable pair.

But conversely—

If only one of them is present, then there’s still a crack you can exploit.

Well, calling it a “crack” might be generous. It’s the kind of microscopic opening where you need to pit two giants like Silence Suzuka and Special Week against her just to barely scrape out a win… like threading a needle.

Still, no matter how small, a weakness is a weakness.

If someone else could exploit it… then so could I.

“If there’s anywhere to break through, it’s probably here. Honestly, at the moment, I don’t see any other opening. Trying to get outside of Trainer Horino’s expectations… that’s rough. I don’t think I can win a battle of wits against him as he is now.

So maybe if there’s some uncertain factor introduced into the race… no, but with his observational skills… how much of us would he see through…?”

As I muttered half to myself, McQueen suddenly spoke up.

“…You really have changed, Teio.

The old you would’ve said something like, ‘If it’s head-on, I’ll just win,’ wouldn’t you?”

…She’s right.

The me from before—before experiencing that Derby, or the Arima Kinen—would absolutely have said that.

I genuinely believed there was no greater talent than mine in this world.

If I worked just as hard as anyone else, of course I’d win. That’s what I thought.

…But not anymore.

“I already lost when I went head-on in the Derby. I gave it everything and still lost, so I’m not arrogant enough to think I can beat Wilm on raw talent alone anymore.”

“…That said, I still plan on winning. I might lose in physical talent, but I don’t think I’m losing to her when it comes to racing instincts.”

If you compare us on just that one point—race sense—I’m pretty sure I beat her.

Her body is absurdly gifted. To be blunt, I honestly think no Uma Musume besides the Chairwoman herself could beat her in sheer talent alone.

But if you ask whether her mind—or the direction of her mentality—is perfectly suited for racing in every respect, the answer is no.

Hoshino Wilm’s overwhelming cheat factor seems limited to her body and her “thinking-boost” ability. It doesn’t extend to every last nuance of how her thoughts move.

We literally just reached the conclusion that there’s still a tiny gap there.

That’s exactly why we’re sitting here, hashing out strategies against Wilm.

It’s not like Wilm’s side won’t come in with a rock-solid plan either. If anything, matching her requires perfect preparation just to reach even footing.

…Yeah, that kind of sounds like I’m making excuses.

But maybe this is what it really means to get serious as a racing Uma Musume.

Do everything you can. Think through everything you can think through. Run as hard as you possibly can, and throw yourself straight at the wall in front of you.

That’s the only thing I can do right now—

And I think it’s something deeply important to Tokai Teio, as an Uma Musume.

“Hmm… if you don’t mind, may I ask one thing for reference?”

“What is it?”

Pulled out of my thoughts, I turned to McQueen as she asked her question.

Her expression was… more serious than I’d ever seen it before.

“Why are you so fixated on Wilm-san?

Right now, it feels less like you’re chasing running itself or victory in races, and more like you’re obsessed with beating her specifically.”

---

For Tokai Teio, the Uma Musume named Hoshino Wilm is a deeply complicated existence.

She’s the hated enemy who appeared out of nowhere and stripped away Teio’s pride at its roots.

She’s the towering wall that must be challenged with everything one has.

She’s the second undefeated Triple Crown Uma Musume—the one Teio failed to become—after the Chairwoman she admired.

She’s a friend who, despite having some odd quirks, turned out to be a surprisingly normal girl once you actually got to know her.

…and, though this is surely one-sided, she’s also a slightly enviable rival—someone who possesses talent greater than Teio’s own.

Just to be clear, it’s not like Hoshino Wilm is a bad person.

If anything, taken on her own, she’s a pretty decent girl.

She’s considerate, fun to talk to, and never unpleasant to be around. If she weren’t, there’s no way we’d have become friends.

She’s undeniably my friend. If she’s in trouble, I’ll help her. If something good happens to her, I’ll celebrate it. That’s how much I like her.

But… it’s also true that, from my perspective, there’s a lot I can’t help but feel about her.

Up until last year—back when we were in our Classic year—springtime—

I was the overwhelming favorite to win the Triple Crown.

Everyone believed it was a given that Tokai Teio would take it.

…Looking back now, it almost feels unreal.

Back then, Wilm hadn’t fully stepped into the spotlight yet.

Well, that’s not quite right. She herself had—winning the Hopeful Stakes by a huge margin and all—but it felt like the public simply wasn’t willing to acknowledge it.

In this scene, there’s a term people use: “fluke.” Put simply, it means a lucky win.

Races between Uma Musume always involve a non-trivial element of luck—things like the day’s weather or the condition of the track.

Because of that, shocking upsets can happen, where a supposedly weaker Uma Musume topples a stronger one.

People call that a fluke… and at the time, that’s how they saw Wilm.

If you ask whether fluke wins really exist in this world… well, they do, to an extent.

Depending on how the luck of the race plays out, even a strong Uma Musume can sink, and someone who isn’t quite at that level can seize their chance.

Still, if you don’t have the fundamentals down, no amount of luck will actually let you win.

The moment Wilm won a G1 by a wide margin, she was undeniably the real deal.

But back then, the public… and I, too, completely missed that.

By the time the Satsuki Sho came around, that evaluation had flipped, and I’d dropped to second favorite by a narrow margin.

At the time, when I was riding high on the belief that I was the strongest, her very existence seriously got under my skin.

From a bloodline perspective—supposedly the absolute benchmark in this world—there was nothing special about her. Her trainer was a rookie who had only just taken on a dedicated role that year. On top of that, her style was that extreme, all-or-nothing runaway lead—ridiculously peaky.

And yet, after her debut race’s Winning Live, or when she was asked about me in interviews, she’d practically provoke me head-on.

You know how it is—tit for tat. If someone says something weird about you, of course it ticks you off, right?

…Well, after we got closer and I finally asked her about it, it turned out she hadn’t meant anything by the Winning Live appeal at all. And about the interviews, she said, “That was, um… well, at the time I was positioned as the ‘heel’ opposite Teio, so I was role-playing.”

It wasn’t that she wanted to pick a fight with me. There’d been an accident at the start, and after that she was just acting for the fans.

Hoshino Wilm wasn’t particularly conscious of Tokai Teio at all.

So yeah.

…In the end, it was all just me shadowboxing on my own. As frustrating as that is to admit.

I got completely demolished at the Satsuki Sho. Then I went all out in the Derby—pushed myself to the very limit—and still lost by a hair. And to make it worse, I fractured a bone there.

When I came back for the Arima Kinen, my running form still wasn’t complete, my condition hadn’t fully recovered, and I ended up with a thoroughly disappointing result.

…Honestly, it’s almost arrogant of me to even call myself her rival.

And yet—

Or maybe because of that—

I want to win the Osaka Hai.

I am Tokai Teio.

The Uma Musume destined to become an emperor, following after the Eternal Emperor.

My vow of being undefeated, my dream of the Triple Crown—those have already scattered to the wind…

Even so, the fact that I am Tokai Teio hasn’t changed one bit.

Just like the day Wilm wished for it…

I want to keep being a Tokai Teio I can be proud of.

That’s why I want to win.

Against that rule-breaking, myth-like stellar dragon.

And against the Eternal Emperor, whose back I can still only see far ahead.

There’s no complicated logic behind it.

No clear reason why I want to surpass them, or why it has to be those two.

If I had to give one answer…

“Well, because I’m a racing Uma Musume—and Wilm is still ahead of me.”