Chapter 67. A Sunday Without God — Part 2
A 57.4-second opening kilometer was brutal on any course. On Tokyo's long stretch configuration, it bordered on reckless.
"What is she doing?" Shuta An's voice lost its usual restraint. "Why abandon the pre-race distribution? Did Sunny Brian drag her into this?"
Agnes Digital instinctively stepped half a pace away. She had never seen him this unsettled.
Even if she had gone slightly slower than planned, that would have been acceptable. Faster was the true danger.
Shuta An shut his eyes briefly and forced himself into calculation mode. Sectional decay curves. Lactate thresholds. Margin buffers. He mentally reviewed every contingency resource available to him, even the abstract "rewards" he had accumulated elsewhere. None of them could alter what was already unfolding on turf.
—
Beyond the 1000-meter marker, Silence Suzuka heard nothing.
Not the commentary.
Not the crowd.
Not the pursuing footfalls.
Only wind pressure and the metronomic rhythm of her own strides.
The world narrowed to a single axis: forward.
The vast expanse of Tokyo Racecourse felt like her private stage.
"Hold this state. Until the finish. Do not let anyone close."
Her eyes shone. A sensation unlike any she had experienced before enveloped her—weightless, frictionless, as though propulsion required no expenditure. A slight push and the ground retreated endlessly beneath her.
If I win this—if I defeat Sunny Brian, claim Japan's most prestigious autumn middle-distance title, secure my fourth G1—will I finally be able to be more honest?
The thought intruded unexpectedly as she approached the bend.
Her cadence faltered by a fraction.
She dismissed it.
"Finish the race first."
Just as she always did when thoughts of her Trainer surfaced—defer them. Complete the task.
—
From the stands, Shuta An saw the marginal deceleration and exhaled.
Good. She's correcting.
By his estimate, Sunny Brian's first 1000 meters had been approximately 60.1 seconds. A gap exceeding two seconds—roughly fifteen lengths—was statistically difficult to erase over Tokyo's final straight.
"Silence Suzuka enters the third turn with an astonishing lead!" the commentator shouted. "Sunny Brian trails by more than fifteen lengths! Could this be a runaway!"
Shuta An allowed himself a controlled breath.
Then Suzuka ran into the shadow of the great zelkova.
On the big screen, her figure vanished momentarily behind the massive tree.
He disliked that obstruction every time.
He recalled what Symboli Rudolf had once explained: when the URA relocated Tokyo Racecourse from Meguro due to urban rezoning, a historical gravesite lay at the center of the new grounds. The ancestor interred there, Iida Koremasa—retainer of the Hojo clan in the Azuchi–Momoyama period—had cultivated this land after his lord's death. The government designated it a protected cultural site. The zelkova stood above the ancestral grave.
Removal was legally impossible.
There were even rumors—failed logging attempts, mysterious deaths—but Shuta An dismissed superstition.
History, not curses, preserved the tree.
His attention snapped back to the present as the commentator's tone fractured.
"Silence Suzuka has slowed! What happened?! After emerging from behind the zelkova—she's clearly decelerating!"
Shuta An's head lifted sharply.
On screen, her stride had shortened. Her upper body no longer floated; it fought.
His expression hardened instantly.
His father's voice echoed from years ago:
"If you ever train a brilliant yet fragile Uma Musume, remember this—one victory is never worth a lifetime. Better fewer trophies than a broken career."
He turned to Agnes Digital.
"Stay here. Do not move."
"What are you—"
He was already over the railing.
"To save her."
He landed on the turf and ran.
—
Moments earlier, before entering the zelkova's shadow, Suzuka had felt invincible.
One step into darkness—
Her consciousness dropped as if a trapdoor had opened beneath her.
No gradual fading.
No warning signal.
Just void.
—
Elsewhere, in an activity room at Central Tracen Academy, Agnes Tachyon watched the broadcast with narrowed eyes.
"So Dr. Grace's concern was justified."
She remembered the email that had arrived after Silence Suzuka's Turf Classic victory.
The warning had been precise.
And now, on the screen, its implications were unfolding in real time.
"I wonder if Miss Agnes Tachyon could do me a favor. I would like to obtain all race data the Japan URA Association has archived on Silence Suzuka."
When Agnes Tachyon read Dr. Grace's request, she did not refuse—but neither did she respond immediately.
"I can access the data," she wrote back, "but I need to understand your research objective."
The reply came swiftly.
"After watching the Turf Classic Stakes, I became curious about what Shuta Trainer has done. Last year, Silence Suzuka's pace was fast but conservative. This year, her sectional distribution is adaptive—course-specific, track-specific—yet uniformly aggressive. Despite extreme early fractions, she still produces measurable acceleration in the final straight. That implies the pace is not merely reckless; it is metabolically sustained."
Grace continued.
"Her pattern reminds me of the Student Council President at West Coast Tracen Academy—Secretariat. Not identical in magnitude, of course. But tactically similar. Secretariat's Trainer is Shuta Ann's father. It is plausible the son has replicated elements of that conditioning model."
Agnes Tachyon frowned at the screen.
"So you want to uncover the training methodology? You and Shuta Trainer are on good terms. Why not ask him directly?"
Grace's answer was immediate and firm.
"No. I am not researching the method. I am researching the body."
A brief pause preceded the rest.
"Our institute studied Secretariat's physiology. With consent, we collected limited tissue samples. Her musculoskeletal density, oxygen transport efficiency, neuromuscular synchronization—astonishing. Statistically rare. Possibly once in several decades."
"But Silence Suzuka does not possess that level of innate biological excess. If she employs a similar high-intensity front-running template, how long can her body tolerate it? That is my question."
That clarified everything.
Agnes Tachyon transmitted the complete dataset.
Split times. Heart-rate proxies. Recovery intervals. Lactate estimations. Acceleration curves.
Weeks later, Grace returned her conclusion.
Projected sustainability window: approximately two years under current load intensity.
When Tachyon read it, she exhaled.
Two years was enough. Suzuka's transition into the Dream Trophy Series next year would naturally reduce competitive strain. The projection might never fully manifest.
But now—
Watching the live feed from Tokyo Racecourse—
She felt something misaligned.
"Why now?" she murmured.
This was premature.
Had they overlooked a variable? A neurological threshold? A psychological trigger embedded in race conditions?
Her brow tightened.
"To isolate the variable…must I enter the Twinkle Series myself?"
For the first time, she seriously considered debuting—not as a competitor in pursuit of glory, but as experimental subject herself under a neutral Trainer.
—
Back on the track, Shuta Ann had vaulted the railing and taken several strides before staff seized him.
Then all of them froze.
On the big screen, Silence Suzuka—who had clearly decelerated—suddenly re-accelerated.
The lost lengths began closing again.
"What happened?!" the commentator cried. "She's accelerating again! It was a false alarm! Silence Suzuka is fine!"
Relief flooded the stadium.
Shuta Ann's breathing was uneven.
"What just happened—"
No one around him had an answer.
—
But Sunny Brian had seen and perceive it.
Under the great zelkova's shadow, Suzuka's presence had vanished.
Not physically.
Existentially.
She had remained visible—but it felt as though the race's center of gravity shifted. As if Sunny Brian herself had been leading all along.
When Suzuka emerged, something was wrong.
The deceleration was surface-level. Beneath it, Sunny Brian had sensed an indistinct entanglement—an interference, subtle yet undeniable.
And then—It was gone.
Within seconds.
Now Suzuka's stride had changed again.
Not slower.
Not faster.
Different.
Their thoughts tangled.
Am I the only one who felt that?
Sunny Brian glanced behind on the bend. The others ran normally, unaware.
Only she—another front-running specialist—had sensed the anomaly clearly.
Her chest tightened.
This was not tactical.
This was not physical fatigue.
It was something else.
—
Shuta forced his consciousness inward and summoned the attribute viewer.
The interface did not display metrics.
It glitched—fragmented, unstable.
The same distortion had appeared once before, after he and Teio won the Kikuka Sho in the Dream World.
Second occurrence.
His pulse pounded.
Then, slowly, the panel stabilized—only to display a single question:
What Is The Essence Of An Uma Musume?
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(Readers, Imagine this panel as it was in the center with underline. I can write it fine in the Patreon, however Webnovel didn't support the form. It was either that or I don't know how to edit it.)
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