Chapter Text
It was supposed to be a win.
That’s what everyone said, didn’t they?
They said she had it. Said it was hers. The numbers, the splits, the form… All of it pointed in one direction.
But… if you’ve been around this game as long as I have, you start to learn a thing or two about hope.
Hope lifts them. Hope gives them wings, makes them fly. You see it in their stride. The way they lean into the wind like they were born for it… And they kinda are, if you think about it.
But hope is fickle. It doesn’t always land clean. And at the worst of times?
It sends them crashing back down.
…
It was supposed to be a win.
That’s what everyone hoped for, didn’t they?
I can still remember it: The PA’s voice surging above the cheers, distorted and electric, rattling the aluminum stands and shaking down like rain.
“—and now they’re coming into the final stretch! That’s right, folks, it’s the final stretch at Nakayama this afternoon, and just look at that speed—she’s still pulling ahead! Can you believe it!? Miracle Kingdom is giving it everything she’s got, and the other Umamusume just can’t seem to catch her!”
“300 meters remaining!”
“She’s opening up! Five lengths! Six! This might be it—this might be the record!”
“Just look at that stride! That power! That finesse! That—”
I blinked.
It’s strange how it happens… You blink at the wrong moment, and the world slips sideways. I remember hearing the announcer’s voice dip just a fraction. Like he’d lost his place on the script and had to improvise.
Silence. The abrupt, almost violent hush of stunned breaths that was once a thousand cheering voices. The speakers hissed softly, empty static filling air that was meant for applause. Someone beside me shifted uneasily. A phone buzzed somewhere behind.
Something had changed.
But it felt wrong to admit it.
The finish line cut through the winter air, still waiting.
But I couldn’t find her.
…
It was supposed to be a win.
[07:46 JST] — THIRD-FLOOR WALK-UP, KABUKICHŌ — 16mm / GRAINED
24fps · 180° shutter · Lens 50mm · Stock: Kodak 500T (+1 push) · Handheld; tungsten warm
BANG BANG BANG.
“Hey! Itonaga! Wake the hell up! You’re two weeks behind rent and I’m tired of having to remind your ass every day!”
BANG BANG BANG BANG.
My couch creaked as I stirred, dry-mouthed and neck-cramped with one sock on and the remote dug into my back. A fly banged against the ceiling light like it wanted out more than I did.
It was supposed to be a nap.
The TV tried to shout over the traffic, piping in dialogue from some drama about a dying CEO pouring his last regrets into a whisky glass. I don’t remember changing the channel. Maybe I did. Maybe it changed itself out of pity.
My mouth felt like I’d been chewing paper towels. I ran my tongue over my teeth and tried to sit up, but the remote, buried somewhere under my ribs, made itself known. On the screen, the CEO’s final words cut to some detergent commercial, something about stubborn stains.
I groped around for my other sock and found only a lottery ticket, expired. Overhead, the fly resumed its suicide mission against the ceiling bulb, each thud a reminder that some creatures can’t be talked out of bad ideas.
BANG BANG BANG.
“Katsuaki Itonaga! You got rocks in your head? I know you’re in there!”
Her voice ricocheted through the hallway, no need for a door between us. She didn’t knock so much as try to batter her way through the wood. I scraped together enough self-respect to stand, hiked up my sagging trousers, and yanked the door open before she could put her fist through it.
She was small but somehow took up all the space. Her apron was the color of boiled spinach. A thin pencil was jammed behind her ear, waggling dangerously every time she spoke.
“You think the rules stop for you, Itonaga? The rest of us pay on time. I’m not running a shelter here.”
“It’s not even the fifteenth yet,” I said. I cleared my throat, holding onto the frame so I wouldn’t have to meet her glare head-on. “Look, I can drive up to work right now, get my pay. Then I’ll bring you your rent. That make you happy?”
“I’d be happier if you did it before I had to climb four flights to wake you up. Last time, your idea of ‘right now’ took three days. You want me to believe you’ll actually show this time?”
“I’m going, aren’t I?”
“Not dressed like that, you aren’t,” she said. “People see you in that shirt, they’ll think we take in strays.” She eyed my single sock, the trouser cuff stained from god-knows-what, and the beer-stained tee I had on since Monday. “You got five minutes. After that, I’m showing your face to the pavement.”
I grunted—my closest thing to agreement—and went back inside, letting the door swing behind me. The noise startled the fly; it divebombed into the glass again and dropped onto the stack of racing forms by the TV.
I changed shirts, found the second sock balled in the couch cushions—finally—and checked my wallet for the third time that week. Still empty except for an old race stub. Not sure what I was expecting there.
Downstairs, the parlor’s machines shrieked; a noise I grew used to far too quickly. My Fairlady Z waited in the alley, parked at the angle only someone with nothing left to prove would risk. She was dented, white paint sun-faded, but she was defiant. A relic of better years, the one thing I still cared for that didn’t ask anything in return.
I swung into the driver’s seat, keys jangling. The seatbelt lock jammed again. I let it. I sat for a second, forehead pressed to the wheel, letting the car’s old vinyl catch the last bit of morning heat.
The memory rose again uninvited: the final stretch, the silence that fell over Nakayama like a dropped flag, the announcer’s voice skipping a beat. I wasn’t sure why it came up today. I thought I finally got it out of my head. But I guess some things just stick with you, huh?
The Fairlady coughed as I turned the keys, then rumbled to life. I reversed out, clipped the curb, and pointed her toward the only job I could stomach, anything that required routine. I let the radio run, some old Bryan Adams record. Call me a sucker for Western.
Above me, my window was already dark. I left it that way.
I took the long route.
Not out of nostalgia—gods knew I’d paved over most of that—but because my usual shortcut had been blocked again by a half-finished tower wrapped in tarps.
The Fairlady sputtered, then settled into her low growl. The city slid past my window in disjointed pieces:
A billboard for parfait-flavored toothpaste.
Another one for vitamin water.
And one for a betting app featuring a cartoon Umamusume flashing a peace sign.
Two elevated lanes beside me thrummed; Umamusume commuter tracks padded in impact-foam, green LED arrows herding the pack toward Odaiba. A chestnut sprinter breezed by, stride crisp as a sewing machine, her handler drafting on a scooter the way birds tailed a storm.
At the red light on Shiba-dori, I rested an elbow on the open window, feeling heat seep off the door skin. On the crosswalk’s edge stood two Umamusume in training jackets, probably fresh from morning track.
One was tiny, a breeze could probably spin her like a pinwheel: lavender hair, polite posture. The other was taller, wore silver-gray hair iron-straight beneath a brown hat, eyes iced as though halfway through a joke no one else could hear. She leaned on a hydrant, weight on one hip, chewing something that wasn’t gum.
Her gaze landed on me after a while, her expression didn’t change.
Green light. The horns started. She lifted two fingers in a lazy salute; I let the clutch out and rolled forward, the mirror catching a final flick of her grin before they vanished behind a bus.
The Fairlady swung hard into the industrial block, tail end fishtailing just enough to scatter gravel at the construction-site gate. A crane operator tossed me a half-hearted salute. I ducked beneath a rusted scaffold, killed the engine, and sat for a moment while the last bars of “Touch The Hand” fizzled into static.