Chapter 25: The Two-Mile Struggle and the One-Mile Sloth

The impulse that blasts through at the speed of light!
A resolve so strong you'd sacrifice anything to make it real!!

With my fist thrust forward, the glow sticks in the crowd whirl like waves of light.
Music and voices surge over the roaring cheers, pressing down on the wide stage with overwhelming force.

If luck is part of the fight—then I'll drag fate itself into my hands!!

A flash races through the arena, and the stage lights snap back to center on us.

Run! Don’t stop—not yet!
There’s a place I have to reach!!

After all the chaos at the Satsuki Sho, Trainer has been rewatching the Winning Live footage almost every day.
Honestly, I kind of get it. The music has that driving momentum, and the lyrics feel… well, extremely convincing.
When I was dancing, I got a little too fired up halfway through, and things were getting questionable near the end.

Thankfully, I managed to rein myself in by focusing on my new game: counting how many glow sticks I can spot before I blink.
It barely kept me on track—though I have to be careful. The longer I do it, the more my eyes start to water.
My tip is to focus on spots with lots of different colors. The variety makes counting easier.

Even if you fall short or get laughed at—keep going!!
Hold tight to the afterimage of your frustration!!

In the footage, the camera pulls away from me and zooms in on King-chan’s face.
Sparks of light scatter across the stage, making everything shine.
From the outside it looks beautiful. From inside… it’s honestly a little too bright.

Face it without fear!!
Clutch even your tears tight against your chest!
This is where your story begins—
Endlessly unfolding, winning the soul!!

And after the song ends, Trainer said something like:

"A trainer’s greatest joy is drawing courage from their Uma Musume’s Winning Live. And if it’s winning the soul, nothing tops it."

It was one of those old-guy-sounding lines.
Turns out Trainer really does like that song.

When I said, "I’m excited to dance it again next month," his response turned strangely sluggish.
Well, whatever the case, sharing tastes with Trainer is a good thing.

Compared to Make Debut, which is bright and cute like an anime opening, winning the soul and the next song I’m dancing, Instinct Speed, are fast-paced with that cool, driving energy.

That’s fine… but I really wish they wouldn’t schedule me to dance winning the soul → Instinct Speed → winning the soul in that order.
If it slips from my mind even once, it takes time to bring the performance back. I’m scared the routines will start blending together unless I rewatch the video again.

Trainer seems worn out, probably because a lot happened after the Satsuki Sho.
First, someone proposed putting up a bronze statue of me—and when I joked that a glass statue would be funnier, they apparently started actually making a glass one.
There’s this younger Uma Musume a grade below who keeps making ridiculously fancy statues around the academy, so I assumed it was her kind of gag. Apparently not.

Then there were the interviews. Trainer told me not to watch TV or read the papers, so he must have done something embarrassing.
Not that I watch them anyway, so as an act of mercy, I decided not to check.

El-chan, who won her race the week after the Satsuki Sho, is also entering the NHK Mile Cup with me.

According to her, she’ll "defeat me before the Derby, deeees!" or something like that.

And of course, King-chan reacted with, "I won’t allow you to lose before I defeat you," and then Spe-chan and Grass-chan jumped in too.
It turned into the kind of argument you see in a game with a terrible reward system, where everyone fights over who gets to land the finishing blow on the boss.

It seems the downside of all of us being in the same class is finally showing.

Once May arrives, the spring Tenno Sho comes right away.
My roommate went off to Kyoto to race, so I have the whole room to myself. The only problem is that without her waking me up in the morning, I end up sleeping until the sun is directly overhead.

By the time I groggily finished lunch and completed my daily afternoon nap, it was already past three.
If I don’t watch the Tenno Sho (Spring), I’ll probably get choked out later, so I hurried to the trainer’s office.

"...is a two-win-class race, the Akan Lake Tokubetsu, but she also placed second in the Diamond Stakes, another long-distance race. Her ability as a stayer is extremely high. Next, number ten..."

I turned on the TV in a panic, making it just in time before the start—they were lined up at the gate, waiting for the fanfare.
The entry list on the screen showed she was ranked tenth in popularity. No doubt her personality is dragging her down.

Just the other day, she almost bit my tail, and before that she was dragging her trainer along the ground when he tried to escort her to training. That kind of behavior definitely leaks out.

"Here comes Bright! Bright takes it! Spring belongs to the Mejiro family! Second place is number nine!..."

Mejiro Bright-san won the race.
She was running with such sharp focus it was hard to believe she was the same floaty, dreamy Bright-san we always see.

Still, the spring Tenno Sho is a long race. I kept thinking it wouldn’t end, and then found out they run 3200 meters.
Most races I’m in are around 1600m, so that’s literally double—two full races’ worth.

In that sense, I’m grateful the NHK Mile Cup is set perfectly at 1600m.

But still… why are all Uma Musume races at least 1000m? Humans have short sprints like 100m.
Probably because spectators are paying. If the race is too short, it wouldn’t make for much of a show. A show that leaves people feeling like they bought a game with no content won’t last long.

Then I realized something in the opposite direction.
I’ve never heard of an Uma Musume race longer than 4000m, but humans run races as long as 40km. Marathons are around that.
Meaning, if someone imported that idea here, we could end up with things like "Uma Musume Grass 40km."
Best not to disturb sleeping gods. I’ll avoid asking Trainer any weird questions.

By mid-May, advertisements for the NHK Mile Cup start increasing.
Posters of me are plastered all over the pillars everywhere.
It’s amazing they can make this many posters in such a short time.

Apparently, there are two types of posters featuring me.
The first is a shot of me in my racing outfit, running from the side. It has great motion and looks really nice. With the background removed, it looks like I’m sprinting through the air.

The problem is the other poster.
It looks like they took a frame from the Satsuki Sho Winning Live footage—my eyes sparkling as I point forward.
I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to use a close-up of my face for a poster, but it’s honestly painful to look at.

It feels like the shining-eyed me inside the poster is scolding me.

Unable to endure it, I took a black marker and drew sunglasses on the versions of me posted along the road I use most often.
Now I can nap in peace without being judged.

But that peace didn’t last long—Air Groove-senpai stopped me with a worried look.
Apparently, only the posters featuring me had been vandalized, so she called out to confirm whether it was harassment directed at me.

Naturally, my attempt to hide the truth was exposed instantly, and after confessing, I was thoroughly scolded.