Chapter 103. Kikuka Sho Part 2
Shuta An had no idea what was going through Kurofune's mind.
His eyes never left Tokai Teio's figure on the giant screen.
Ahead, Leo Durban steadily closed the gap to the tail of the leading pack, her advance immediately placing immense psychological pressure on the runners in front of her.
Vraie Etoile was the first to crack.
Having been racing directly behind Tokai Teio, she couldn't ignore Leo Durban's looming presence any longer. Choosing not to be boxed in, she urged herself forward, accelerating around Tokai Teio in an attempt to create breathing room.
Exactly as Leo Durban had hoped.
"The first domino has fallen."
If one runner committed early, the rest of the pack would likely follow.
But Tokai Teio never reacted.
She remained perfectly composed, calmly allowing Vraie Etoile to sweep past on the outside without matching the move in the slightest.
She refused to be drawn into Leo Durban's rhythm.
The Uma Musume racing between Vraie Etoile and Tokai Teio immediately noticed the contrast.
One had chosen impatience.
The other remained utterly unmoved.
Almost instinctively, they trusted Tokai Teio's judgment. Instead of chasing after Vraie Etoile, they continued maintaining Tokai Teio's measured tempo.
As a result, Leo Durban's carefully crafted plan achieved only partial success.
Only a single domino had fallen.
The rest of the line remained firmly in place.
Tokai Teio's mental fortitude is truly formidable.
Leo Durban couldn't help the thought that rose unbidden in her mind. Most Uma Musume would bend, sooner or later, to the rhythm their rivals set. But not Tokai Teio. She ran at the pace of her own choosing—and worse, she dragged the rest of the leading group into that rhythm with her, unraveling the scheme Leo Durban had so carefully laid.
But I suppose it makes sense, she told herself, though the sting of disappointment refused to fade. She's the only one in this race who's already won a G1.
As Tokai Teio crossed onto Yodo Slope for the second time, she never broke stride from her steady cruise. VraieEtoile's early surge cost her a place—sixth slipping to seventh—but nothing about her bearing so much as flickered. She remained calm. Composed.
To Rice Shower and Kurofune, watching from Sadalsuud, that composure was magnetic. To the Trainers of her rivals, it was maddening.
"This is it—the race that decides whether she becomes an Undefeated Triple Crown winner, and she still looks bored?!"
Leo Durban's Trainer looked ready to come apart at the seams.
Shuta An glanced sidelong at the man but said nothing.
He had no interest in trading barbs.
What he wanted was for time to leap forward—straight to the final sprint, to the moment that would reveal whether six months of work, his and Tokai Teio's both, could outweigh everything their rivals had poured into this race. To see if her final push could tip the scales once and for all.
The last bend stretched roughly five hundred meters. As Tokai Teio entered it, she finally drifted outward, carving open a lane for herself.
So she's making her move.
Leo Durban had climbed up behind the leading pack and had been shadowing Tokai Teio ever since. The instant her greatest rival stirred, something in her chest caught fire.
Then I'm going now!
But Tokai Teio didn't accelerate. She'd only opened the space—nothing more. Leo Durban, already committed, had no choice but to grit her teeth, surge forward, and swerve wide around the bend to avoid slamming straight into her.
Tokai Teio, meanwhile, looked entirely unbothered.
This is a downhill stretch. I need to save my legs here so I can spend everything in the final straight.
She wasn't foolish enough to fight the terrain the way Leo Durban just had.
Holding your balance while accelerating downhill demanded precision most Uma Musume simply didn't have—Tokai Teio could do it without a second thought, but that didn't mean everyone could.
While the others conserved their strength on the descent, Leo Durban had just burned hers fighting her own momentum.
"How amusing,"
Shuta An murmured, eyes flicking toward Leo Durban's Trainer. If Leo Durban abandoning the game plan earlier was mostly on him, then this—watching his Uma Musume mismanage a downhill straightaway—was proof he'd failed at the more basic job of teaching her in the first place.
Shuta An's sympathy for his colleague, already thin, evaporated entirely.
Fujiyama Kenzan noticed the same restraint. When Tokai Teio pulled a full body length wide, Fujiyama Kenzan's heart had lurched—this is it, she's finally coming for me—
only for the acceleration never to come.
Relief flooded her.
Almost.
Why won't she just pass me and get it over with?! She has more than enough in the tank!
Fujiyama Kenzan's thoughts spiraled with each stride.
Tokai Teio, must you make me suffer like a prisoner staring down the executioner's blade, just waiting for it to fall?
But Tokai Teio owed her no explanation. Pulling wide without accelerating wasn't for Fujiyama Kenzan's benefit at all—it was bait, set for the Uma Musume trailing close behind her.
Leo Durban had wanted to bully the rest of the field into forcing Tokai Teio's hand early. So Tokai Teio answered in kind: a feint, one calculated to bleed Leo Durban's stamina at a moment that meant nothing.
Don't rush, Tokai Teio thought, satisfaction curling quietly beneath her calm exterior. The strength you waste now is the same strength you'll be missing when we hit the final straight, Leo Durban.
Shuta An caught the intent behind the move immediately.
"So Teio has a mischievous streak too."
He allowed himself a small, approving smile. As long as no rule was broken and no one was hurt, a clever, legal trick was exactly the kind of thing a great Uma Musume ought to know how to wield. Even someone as dominant as Secretariat had leaned on a well-placed trick or two to make victory come easier.
As the field approached the final straight of Kyoto Racecourse, Tokai Teio began, at last, to truly quicken her pace. Leo Durban caught it instantly and matched her.
I refuse to let her pull away clean! I want to beat her—just once, even if it's only this once!
Stamina reserves critical, condition far from ideal, Leo Durban threw herself forward on will alone, closing the gap until she seemed, for a fleeting moment, to be running even faster than Tokai Teio herself.
It was an illusion. Tokai Teio could read it in the ragged rise and fall of Leo Durban's chest—she was holding on by sheer stubbornness now, nothing more.
Four hundred meters to the line. Let's see if that resolve of yours lasts that long.
Tokai Teio spared her rival one last glance before turning her focus fully forward, gathering herself for everything she had left.
—
Well. Looks like Teio's really opening it up now.
Nice Nature, out ahead of the trailing group, watched the two front-runners break away and made up her mind.
Guess it's my turn to close the gap.
She knew her own limits well enough. If everyone's stamina were running at full reserves, there'd be no catching Tokai Teio—not a chance. But Nice Nature had run this Kikuka Sho holding back, conserving far more than the leader ever could.
That reserve was the very reason she'd dared to wait, patient as a coiled spring, until Tokai Teio made the first move.
"Is Necha going to be okay?" Ikuno Dictus's brow furrowed. "I mean it—starting her kick after Tokai Teio is a genuinely dangerous gamble."
Minamisaka gave a rueful shake of his head.
"Believe me, I tried talking her out of it. But she's betting that Tokai Teio's stamina can't support a normal finishing kick after running a leading tactic over this distance."
"If you don't gamble against Tokai Teio, you never get the chance to beat her."
Ikuno Dictus understood the logic all too well. Rooming with Mejiro McQueen meant she'd absorbed more second-hand knowledge of Tokai Teio than most. But understanding it only deepened the ache she felt for her teammate.
She knew, better than anyone on the team, exactly how hard—how desperately—Nice Nature had fought just to stand on the Kikuka Sho starting line.
Who checks the Kyoto Shimbun Hai entry list the moment she's finished winning the Kokura Kinen? Who comes home so exhausted after winning the Kyoto Shimbun Hai that she falls asleep before she's even back at the dorm?
The more Ikuno Dictus thought of that effort, the harder it was to watch Tokai Teio pull steadily away from the leading pack, overtaking rival after rival with room to spare.
Her stamina consumption is the lowest of anyone out there.
Ikuno Dictus had run enough long-distance Twinkle Series races herself to read it in the shape of Tokai Teio's stride alone.
Truly, a talent built to make you envious, she thought, fingers curling into fists at her sides.
She remembered once calling Mejiro McQueen "the most brilliant genius in Central Tracen Academy," only for her roommate to simply smile and wave the compliment away.
"I'm not the genius here," McQueen had said. "The real genius is someone like Tokai Teio."
To Ikuno Dictus, both of them were geniuses whose talent dwarfed her own—whatever gap might separate them from each other, it was nothing next to the gulf that separated them from someone like her.
But having watched the first twenty-six hundred meters of this Kikuka Sho unfold, and picturing herself out there on that same track, Ikuno Dictus arrived at a conclusion that chilled her.
If it were McQueen out there, I could at least imagine chasing her shadow. She shut her eyes, unwilling to watch her teammate hopelessly pursuing a figure she'd never catch. Why, O three goddesses, did you have to let Necha and Tokai Teio debut in the same year? She bit down on her lip, frustration she had no outlet for burning in her chest.
She wasn't even the one racing Tokai Teio today. And yet watching Nice Nature pour everything into two hundred meters of pursuit, only to find the distance unmoved, was enough to raise the hair on Ikuno Dictus's arms.
—
With two hundred meters left, Tokai Teio's steady acceleration carried her past the leader, Hokusei Ciboulette, clean and unhurried.
The moment she registered being overtaken, HokuseiCiboulette felt something in her chest loosen—relief, and the last of her resistance draining out with it.
Nothing to be done about it. Fate wants her to have the Triple Crown.
Hokusei Ciboulette's thoughts turned wry even as her body kept fighting on reflex.
Before the race, they all said she probably couldn't handle three thousand meters. Complete nonsense, apparently—look how easy she makes that acceleration look. Not a hint of struggle in her. She huffed inwardly. So much for the experts.
—
Is it just me, Tokai Teio thought, brow creasing slightly, or does no one's finishing kick have any real bite? Wasn't the whole field running slow from the start? Even with all that stamina saved, no one can bring the hammer down?
Then I will.
She could feel it—enough left in reserve for one more surge over the coming hundred-odd meters. Enough to end this decisively, right here.
Because the final straight of Kyoto Racecourse ran flat and true, without rise or fall to fight against, Tokai Teio found the acceleration almost effortless—nothing like the toll of Yodo Slope, nothing like the restraint she'd needed on the outer bend's downhill stretch to keep from losing her footing.
Not like Leo Durban, who had spent so much of herself just keeping her balance through that same bend.
And that was the difference now paying out in full.
Though she and Tokai Teio had surged forward at nearly the same instant, Tokai Teio still had a second wind in reserve. Leo Durban had nothing left to spend—only the will to hold on to what speed she still had.
"TOKAI TEIO COMES OUT OF THE FINAL BEND AND IS FLYING TOWARD THE FINISH LINE! LEO DURBAN RIGHT ON HER HEELS—COULD WE BE LOOKING AT ANOTHER DERBY REMATCH BETWEEN FIRST AND SECOND PLACE?!"
"THEY SAID TOKAI TEIO MIGHT STRUGGLE WITH THE DISTANCE! BUT WITH ONLY A FEW HUNDRED METERS TO GO, SHE LOOKS AS FRESH AS SHE DID AT THE GATE—NO SIGN OF FATIGUE ANYWHERE!"
"TOKAI TEIO HAS PASSED HOKUSEI CIBOULETTE! SHE'S AT THE FRONT OF THE FIELD! LEO DURBAN IS STARTING TO FADE! NICE NATURE HAS CLAWED HER WAY UP TO FOURTH—CAN SHE FIND ANYTHING MORE?!"
"TOKAI TEIO HAS BROKEN CLEAR OF EVERY RIVAL! IT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE ANYONE CAN REACH HER NOW!"
Through the final six hundred meters, as the commentary rang out over the speakers, Shuta An and the two Uma Musume of Sadalsuud found their excitement climbing past anything they'd prepared for.
They'd believed in Tokai Teio before the race—deeply.
But belief was one thing; watching the picture they'd imagined for months finally bleed into reality was another. Kurofune and Rice Shower were already clinging to each other, cheering without restraint, and even Shuta—who prided himself on composure—found he could no longer hold his own excitement in check.
The classic Triple Crown—
His grip tightened on the railing.
Oguri had to give up the third leg of French Crown over distance and track fit. Dober never suited that circuit herself. Suzuka wasn't even with Sadalsuud during her classic year.
His eyes never left the figure sharpening into focus down the track.
It's only now—only with Teio—that I finally get to call myself a Triple Crown Trainer.
"TEIO—GO!" he shouted, the words tearing loose before he could stop them.
"ONE LENGTH, TWO LENGTHS—THE GAP BETWEEN TOKAI TEIO AND THE FIELD KEEPS GROWING! IT REALLY DOES LOOK LIKE NOBODY CAN CATCH HER!" the commentator's voice cracked with the force of his own shouting.
"Tokai Teio has more than proven her adaptability to this distance," the guest analyst cut in, "delivering a decisive answer to every expert who doubted her before the race. Looking ahead to next spring's Tenno Sho—an undefeated Triple Crown champion against the pride of the Mejiro family. That might just be the race that decides who's the strongest Uma Musume of her generation."
But Tokai Teio had no attention to spare for any of it. Her focus had narrowed entirely to the finish line, growing sharper and closer with every stride.
Every step brings me closer to the promise Trainer made me. So—faster.
Driven by that single thought, her stride lengthened further, and the two-and-a-half-length lead she'd built refused to shrink no matter how desperately the field behind her fought to close it.
Inside Kyoto Racecourse, no one had eyes for any other horse. Every gaze in the stands had narrowed to a single figure.
And when Tokai Teio crossed into the final hundred meters—when the outcome was no longer in any doubt—the commentator finally delivered the line he'd clearly been saving for this exact moment.
"IN APRIL, STARTING FROM THE GATE CLOSEST TO THE STANDS, SHE CONQUERED THE SLOPE OF NAKAYAMA RACECOURSE AND PROVED HERSELF, AS THE ROOKIE QUEEN, THE FASTEST OF HER GENERATION!"
"AT THE END OF MAY, FROM THAT SAME GATE, SHE SINGLE-HANDEDLY HELD OFF NINETEEN RIVALS TO BECOME THE BRIGHTEST STAR FUCHU RACECOURSE HAD EVER SEEN, CLAIMING THE DERBY CROWN AND PROVING HERSELF THE LUCKIEST UMA MUSUME OF HER GENERATION!"
"AND NOW—TODAY—HAVING CROSSED YODO SLOPE TWICE, TOKAI TEIO TELLS THE ENTIRE WORLD: SHE IS THE STRONGEST UMA MUSUME OF HER GENERATION!"
As the words rang out, Tokai Teio crossed the line.
"FASTEST! LUCKIEST! STRONGEST! TOKAI TEIO CLAIMS HER UNDEFEATED TRIPLE CROWN! SADALSUUD HAS NOW PRODUCED BACK-TO-BACK UNDEFEATED TRIPLE CROWN CHAMPIONS! FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF HER SENIOR, MEJIRO DOBER, TOKAI TEIO HAS CLIMBED TO A GLORY ENTIRELY HER OWN!"
"ACROSS TWO THOUSAND METERS, TWENTY-FOUR HUNDRED METERS, AND THREE THOUSAND METERS, TOKAI TEIO HAS PROVEN EVERY EXPERT IN THE WORLD WRONG ABOUT THE DOUBTS THEY RAISED BEFORE HER DEBUT! LET US ALL WATCH WITH BATED BREATH FOR WHAT COMES NEXT—THIS UMA MUSUME IS DESTINED FOR THE WORLD STAGE!"
"WHERE DOES TOKAI TEIO'S LIMIT TRULY LIE? LET'S KEEP WATCHING—BECAUSE THE ANTICIPATION IS ONLY JUST BEGINNING!!"