The race was exactly one week away.
A week could feel long or short depending on the situation.
If vacation didn't start until a week later, everyone felt like the wait was endless. You'd instinctively start calculating how long it was until freedom, wishing every second of those miserable days would blink by faster.
But if finals were a week away, then suddenly time felt far too short. You'd want nothing more than to stab yourself with a Stand Arrow and awaken some broken power like Time Stop or Bites the Dust—anything, as long as you never, ever had to make it to finals...
Of course, for top students, finals only made them a little nervous. It didn't affect them all that much. They still did whatever they were going to do.
But for the academically hopeless, finals arriving was like a dinosaur in the Jurassic era looking up and seeing that brilliant star drawing closer and closer in the sky. That wasn't the beautiful golden flash of pulling a top rarity in a gacha game. That was the curtain call on your complete and utter annihilation.
You knew full well this thing was going to kill you, and yet there was no escape.
Some people die, yet still live on; some people live, yet are already dead.
For example, Mizuno, who was currently doing coordination training with Maruzensky...
Up until now, whether in racing or running, Maruzensky had been the kind of pure breakaway runner who cared only about taking first place. She had never once thrown anything at an opponent before, which meant her item-race experience was exactly zero. Mizuno was worried that when the actual race came next week, if his rhythm up front and Maruzensky's item-throwing rhythm from the back seat didn't line up, then he wouldn't be able to drive properly, and she wouldn't be able to throw accurately either. That would be a disaster.
So, in order to improve their teamwork, Mizuno asked Fujiwara-san to kindly play the role of an opponent, and they ran through a few mock-race scenarios.
Mizuno had originally assumed that even though he and Maruzensky had barely practiced together and didn't know each other that well yet, a so-called team was really just a matter of splitting up the work.
Like teammates in an esports game—sometimes, even if you've only just met, all it takes is one tiny movement, or a question-mark ping over your head, and you already know what your teammate is thinking.
As long as both sides had enough patience and communicated properly, there usually wouldn't be any major problems. Sometimes they could even be more in sync than couples who'd been married for decades.
Besides, they only had one mock opponent: Fujiwara-san. No matter how strong he was, there was no way he could gain that much advantage against a two-person team, right?
Because of that, Mizuno had treated the mock battle with Fujiwara like a beginner-zone tutorial. He hadn't taken it seriously at all, and had confidently set out with Maruzensky riding behind him.
The result was that Fujiwara beat Mizuno so badly he nearly started questioning his whole life.
Seriously, could someone please explain why there were people in this world who could drive with one hand and throw things at other people at the same time?
Did you know how terrifying it was when the other guy was already spotting you one hand and could still beat you senseless with ease?
Mizuno was riding a wheelchair—pulling off one drift already took everything he had. But Fujiwara could not only take corners one-handed, he could even casually pull a sandbag out of his pocket halfway through and fling it straight at Mizuno's face.
There were only a few turns in the entire mock race, but Mizuno still ate dozens of items just while cornering. It was like being paraded through the streets as a criminal, getting plastered in the face by a storm of rotten cabbages and stinking eggs.
Maybe it was gentlemanly conduct, or maybe attacking the driver's seat was simply more efficient, but every single item Fujiwara threw ended up on Mizuno. There wasn't one clean spot left on him.
Maruzensky, on the other hand, didn't take a single hit. She looked as fresh as if she'd just stepped out of the bath, forming an almost absurd contrast with Mizuno up front, who looked like he'd just come back from World War II.
And yet, even though Maruzensky hadn't been interfered with at all, her performance left Mizuno dumbfounded in a completely different way.
Mizuno realized that not only had he underestimated the strength of Fujiwara, lord of the starter village, he might also have slightly overestimated his teammate Maruzensky's accuracy as the gunner.
Because throughout the entire mock race, he never once saw her hit Fujiwara.
Mizuno had never been confident in his own driving skills to begin with. Against Fujiwara's grandson, Jei Chou, he figured his odds of winning were maybe thirty percent at best, which already had him tense enough to die. So when he saw Maruzensky hurling items in a torrential barrage, only for every last one of them to fly right past the target, he almost wanted to pass out on the wheelchair right then and there.
I tanked all the damage and you didn't deal any at all?!
The only time Maruzensky managed to hit Fujiwara was when he took pity on the two of them, deliberately stopping right in front of them. He was practically one step away from sticking his face out and asking Maruzensky to hit him.
And even then, the chalk eraser she threw only landed limply against Fujiwara's arm, leaving behind a smear of chalk dust he could brush off with one casual swipe. Other than that, it had no negative effect whatsoever. It wasn't damaging in the slightest.
You're a top-class racer, so how are you also this "top-class" at aiming?
To figure out why Maruzensky's aim was so terrible, Mizuno took the initiative and offered himself up as a target, asking her to throw things at him instead.
"Try throwing one at me." Mizuno moved to a spot ten meters away and beckoned to her.
"Mm..." Maruzensky hesitated for a moment, then nodded and shakily picked up a banana peel.
"Hya!" she cried, and hurled it at Mizuno with all her might.
Whizz—splat!
The banana peel thrown by the Umamusume shot through the air like a sniper round, smacking squarely into Mizuno's face before exploding like a firework.
"Oof!" Caught completely off guard, Mizuno was sent flipping backward out of his wheelchair and collapsed onto the ground, sprawled there without moving.
A few seconds later, he finally came back to himself and struggled to climb up.
The force of that hit was so intense that for a moment, Mizuno felt as if he'd accidentally jumped off a building and elbow-dropped straight onto concrete.
"Huh?" Mizuno said, baffled.
How was she suddenly this accurate now?
"Again!" Mizuno refused to believe it. He rolled out to a spot twenty meters away and told Maruzensky to throw another one.
"Okay..." Maruzensky agreed.
Then, the very next second, another banana-peel bullet hit him square in the head. The impact was just as brutal as before, nearly knocking his neck sideways.
Mizuno: "?"
Why are you so fast, accurate, and ruthless when you're throwing at me?! Do I have some mortal grudge with you or something?!
Mizuno wiped the banana juice off his face and was just about to ask why when Maruzensky hurried over to apologize first.
"Sorry..." she said, trotting nervously up to him, eyes narrowed, voice small as she explained, "I... I don't really dare look at other people..."
"I... only dare look at you... so..."
Maruzensky lowered her head and curled her fingers awkwardly.
Mizuno froze for a moment, then suddenly understood.
Now he finally got why Maruzensky couldn't hit Fujiwara.
So that was it—she hadn't even been looking at where Fujiwara was the entire race. She'd been throwing on pure luck. With how slippery Fujiwara's driving was, there was no way she could possibly hit him like that.
But if the target was Mizuno, someone she actually dared to look at, then of course she could hit him...
But what good does that do?! We're teammates! Is she supposed to spend the race focusing on headshotting me instead?!
Once he learned the real reason, Mizuno's first reaction was to think of a way to solve it.
For example, he could encourage Maruzensky not to be afraid. Even if she couldn't manage to look directly at other people, it would still be fine if she sneaked a glance, memorized their position, and then threw.
Or he could have her train her intuition. Maybe even without looking at people, she could still become some kind of blind-shot genius.
But even after a long period of target practice, Maruzensky's aim at anyone else remained terrible. If anything, she only got even better at blowing Mizuno's head off.
Watching Maruzensky fail to hit anyone else at all while never missing when she threw at him, Mizuno was completely speechless. Never before had teaming up with someone felt this difficult.
Cheaters with aimbots always locked onto the enemy. So why did Maruzensky's aimbot keep locking onto his head instead...?
If that was the case, then what was the difference between forming this team and not forming one at all?
Mizuno began to doubt whether he could really take first place in the race with Maruzensky.
With that potentially fatal question hanging over him, time quickly carried him to the night of the race.
Tanabata, the Tanabata Couples Race.
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T/N: stastas
bonus chaps
200 stones -> 1 chapter
400 stones -> 2 chapters
600 stones -> 3 chapters
and so on
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