At the training grounds, a pink-haired Uma Musume wearing a fedora sat cross-legged in the middle of the grass. Her eyes were closed, and she did not move at all. Beside her, Nase Hideto read the newspaper while drinking coffee.
They stayed like that for three whole hours.
"Ya, Trainer. Whatcha doing?"
His arm trembled. Fujiwara Chiya turned his head and saw that silver alien weirdo, Gold Ship, grinning happily as she patted him.
"Peeping at girls, huh? As expected of Trainer. You won't stop until the number reaches triple digits. When are you gonna get yourself a hundred Uma Musume who super-super-super love you?"
Fujiwara Chiya could not be bothered to respond and continued observing the other side.
"I remember her name was Kyoei March, right?"
"You know her?"
"I ran into her when I was messing with Hayakawa Tazuna. I asked if she wanted to come with me, but she rejected me. What a cold and heartless high-spec type."
"What?"
"Trainer isn't thinking of signing with her, right? No good. That one's already taken, and by someone pretty impressive too. Don't tell me Trainer is planning to steal her away? In that case, you'd probably have to seduce her. The one she signed with is a senior trainer."
"Seduce your head! I'm observing the enemy!" Fujiwara Chiya snapped. "I want to see what they're training. That girl has been sitting there for three hours already."
Fujiwara Chiya could not understand what she was doing.
Gold Ship narrowed her eyes.
"She's doing zazen."
"Impossible." Fujiwara Chiya immediately denied it. "Don't compare other people to you. She must be doing something profound and mysterious."
"Trainer, isn't that exactly what I do when I sit zazen? The posture is the same."
"Do you really think a senior trainer, the so-called genius Nase Hideto, would make his Uma Musume do zazen? I don't believe it."
Gold Ship looked at Fujiwara Chiya with an inexplicably sorrowful gaze, then sighed.
"Eh…"
As if deliberately making sure Fujiwara Chiya heard it, her voice was very loud.
"Don't try to trick me."
Even if Fujiwara Chiya believed anything else, he refused to believe that Gold Ship, whom he regarded as a weirdo, was several versions ahead of everyone else. There was no way one of the world's top trainers would be doing the same inexplicable thing as her. Even a blind cat stumbling upon a dead mouse did not work like this.
"Poor Trainer. I know you doubt my identity, but have you considered the possibility that I really am an alien from Leo?"
"I'd sooner believe a trainer could turn into an Uma Musume than believe zazen can make someone stronger."
After saying that, Fujiwara Chiya stopped paying attention to her.
Another half hour passed before Kyoei March opened her eyes and stared blankly at the sky. For a moment, Fujiwara Chiya had the feeling that he was looking at a pink version of Happy Meek.
A yawn came from behind him. Fujiwara Chiya realized Gold Ship was lying on the ground, her hat tossed aside and her beautiful silver hair spread all over the grass.
The scene inevitably reminded Fujiwara Chiya of when he had first met her. Back then, Gold Ship had looked like a proper young lady, beautiful enough to make Fujiwara Chiya's breathing stop for a moment. Then she had revealed her true nature, speaking as if she had only recently taken human form.
I won't fall for your act again, Ship!
"Well, Trainer, did you figure anything out?" Gold Ship smacked her lips twice and asked with her eyes half-open.
"…No."
"I knew it. You can't tell just by looking. What that person is training is concentration."
"Concentration?" Fujiwara Chiya repeated.
"In other words, what we call a zone."
The moment he heard those words, Fujiwara Chiya's heart skipped a beat. He looked toward that Uma Musume again, his gaze changing.
"That's impossible. Something like that isn't something you can master through training."
Fujiwara Chiya shook his head.
That kind of thing could only be obtained by pushing oneself to the limit through high-intensity races. Every Uma Musume who had obtained a zone had said the same thing. And this training method was far too relaxed. If a zone were that easy to obtain, every Uma Musume would have one.
For an Uma Musume, a zone was something one could only encounter by chance, not something one could demand.
"Trainer, have you considered that maybe a zone isn't actually as grand as you think?" Gold Ship propped her face on one hand and rested her leg up, looking like some streetwise big sister. "Zones are actually pretty common. It's just that the depth of entry is different."
"There are different depths?"
"Think of an ordinary zone as C-rank and the strongest zone as S-rank. From C to S, the depth and intensity increase layer by layer."
"What is this, a game? C-rank and S-rank?"
Although he said that, Fujiwara Chiya still began thinking about Gold Ship's words.
In a sense, a zone really was concentration. And concentration had differences in strength and depth. Could it be that zones also had levels of strength?
Fujiwara Chiya scratched his head and looked again in Kyoei March's direction. That Uma Musume began moving her body and started training. After more than three hours of meditation, her body seemed to have undergone some kind of change. Fujiwara Chiya could not tell exactly what had changed, but the feeling her running form gave him was somewhat different from before.
Just as Fujiwara Chiya was watching carefully, a pair of sneaky hands slowly moved toward his waist, then squeezed hard.
"Uwah! Gold Ship, what are you doing!?"
Fujiwara Chiya looked at Gold Ship, whose face was full of mischief. She pinched her chin and spoke as if she were being completely serious.
"I don't know why, but for a moment just now, I mistook Trainer for an Uma Musume."
"Hah?"
"How should I put it? Your presence, maybe? It felt like Trainer had invisible ears and a tail. They sort of suddenly appeared, so I gave you a squeeze to see whether you'd been possessed by an Uma Musume ghost."
What kind of nonsense is that?
Fujiwara Chiya genuinely could not understand what Gold Ship was talking about.
Forget it. He would ignore that for now. Today, he absolutely had to make up for all the time he had lost because of Fumino.
Fujiwara Chiya shoved the stopwatch and notebook into Gold Ship's arms all at once.
"Help me time Kyoei March's training. I'm going to check on the Uma Musume over there."
After saying that, Fujiwara Chiya ran off.
"Trainer… hey!"
Gold Ship looked at his departing back with an expression like she had just eaten a fly.
I came here to slack off, not to be your assistant!
Damn it!
Looking at the trainer who had run away, Gold Ship sat on the ground sulkily. She really wanted to put down the stopwatch and go play somewhere, but if she did that, it would be harder to slack off next time. After weighing her options, Gold Ship decided to obey Trainer for now.
That aside, what exactly was that just now?
Gold Ship looked at her hand and recalled the sensation of squeezing Trainer.
For some reason, looking at Trainer had given her the illusion that she was looking at an Uma Musume. He was giving off a very strong Uma Musume-like presence, and the feeling when she squeezed him was different from before too. In the past, Trainer's body had been firm and solid, his muscles clearly defined. But now, Gold Ship somehow felt that he had become much softer.
It was not the kind of softness that came from not exercising for a long time. Gold Ship could not quite explain it. In any case, it was strange.
Suppressing the doubt in her heart, Gold Ship raised her head and continued looking toward Kyoei March. At that moment, she found that those pink eyes were staring straight at her.
It felt as if a knife had been stabbed into her heart. The other girl's gaze was cold enough to make one's blood freeze.
"Yabai…"
Gold Ship cursed under her breath, then turned and fled with Trainer's notebook and stopwatch.