The wind at Tracen Academy always felt artificial.
Maybe it was the manicured hedges, clipped to geometric perfection by groundskeepers who worked with the silent efficiency of ninjas. Maybe it was the looming concrete of the stadium stands that blocked the natural airflow from Tokyo Bay. Or perhaps, it was simply the sheer density of ambition in the air—the psychic weight of two thousand girls all desperate to outrun their own shadows, creating a static pressure that made the air feel heavy, stagnant, and recycled.
Kagura Seiran didn't like it.
She stood at the main gates of the Twinkle Series Training Center, a solitary figure against the morning rush. Around her, the future of Japanese racing flowed like a colorful river. Girls with ears twitching in anticipation dragged wheeled suitcases behind them, their chatter a high-pitched drone of excitement. They spoke of trainers, of debut races, of the legendary Triple Crown. They looked like idols. They looked like athletes.
Seiran looked like she had gotten lost on the way to a convenience store.
She wore the standard issue Tracen blazer, but it hung loosely on her frame, the buttons misaligned by one slot. Her gym bag was a generic, unbranded duffel that looked like a hand-me-down from a retired salaryman. Her hair, a pale, washed-out blue that recalled a winter sky just before a snowstorm, was tied back in a messy ponytail that defied gravity only through sheer stubbornness.
She blinked, her eyes—a dull, stormy gray—scanning the expansive campus. She wasn't overwhelmed. She wasn't excited. She was just... looking.
"Excuse me! You're blocking the flow!"
Seiran shifted slightly to the left without looking back, allowing a trio of giggling girls to pass.
"Did you see that?" one whispered, not quietly enough. "Is that a transfer? She looks... sleepy." "Probably a staff member's kid. She doesn't have the aura, you know?"
Seiran didn't react. She didn't care about auras. She cared about the rhythm. And right now, the rhythm of this place was all wrong. It was too loud, too jagged.
She took a step forward, her sneakers scuffing against the pristine pavement. Step. Step. Step.
She needed to find the track. Not to run—not yet—but to listen.
The registration process had been a blur of paperwork she barely read. The admissions officer had looked at her file, frowned at the lack of a pedigree—no famous parents, no prestigious junior club record—and stamped her papers with the indifference reserved for filler candidates. Kagura Seiran. Parents: Unlisted. Origin: Rural Hokkaido. Note: Scholarship entry based on raw time trial.
Raw time trial. That was the only reason she was here. She had run once, in a muddy field back home, while a scout happened to be driving by with a flat tire. She had run because the bus was leaving, and she didn't want to wait an hour for the next one. The scout had forgotten his flat tire. Two weeks later, she was in Tokyo.
Now, she stood at the edge of the secondary training turf. It was early, barely 7:00 AM, but the track was already busy. The air smelled of crushed grass and sweat.
"Alright, pick up the pace! Knees high! Don't let your form collapse!"
A trainer with a whistle around his neck was barking orders at a group of hopefuls running laps. Seiran leaned against the chain-link fence, watching.
She watched a girl with chestnut hair struggle to maintain her breathing rhythm. Too shallow. Two in, one out. She'll burn out at the 800-meter mark.
She watched a tall, grey-haired girl pushing for a lead. Stride is too long. She's fighting the turf instead of using it.
It wasn't a calculated analysis. Seiran didn't know the terminology. She didn't know "VO2 Max" or "Lactate Threshold." She just knew that it looked... uncomfortable. Like a song played out of tune.
"You're staring."
The voice came from below her. Or rather, from someone sitting on a bench near the fence, obscured by a stack of books and a thermos that smelled faintly of chemicals.
Seiran looked down.
The girl sitting there was a mess of contradictions. She wore a lab coat over her tracksuit, the sleeves stained with colorful reagents. Her brown hair was wild, sticking up in tufts that suggested she had slept on a pile of textbooks. But her eyes—red, sharp, and deeply unsettling—were locked onto Seiran with the intensity of a laser sight.
"I'm looking," Seiran corrected softly. Her voice was low, raspy from disuse.
"You're analyzing," the girl in the lab coat countered. She tapped a pen against her chin. "I've been watching you for three minutes. Your eyes track the runners' center of gravity, not their faces. Most rookies look at the faces. They look for rivalry. You look for mechanics."
Seiran blinked. "I do?"
The girl's eyes narrowed. "Don't play coy. It's inefficient." She stood up, the movement jerky and energetic. "I am Agnes Tachyon. You may have heard of me. Or you will. It's a statistical inevitability."
"Agnes... Tachyon." Seiran tasted the name. It sounded sharp. "I'm Kagura Seiran."
"Kagura. 'God-entertainment.' A lofty name." Tachyon stepped closer, invading Seiran's personal space. She sniffed the air around Seiran, much to the latter's confusion. "No distinct scent of muscle liniment. No high-grade supplements. You smell like... soap. Cheap soap."
"It was on sale."
Tachyon paused, her analytical processor seemingly jamming on the simplicity of the answer. Then, a slow, slightly manic grin spread across her face.
"Interesting. A blank slate. A null variable." Tachyon pointed a long sleeve at the track. "Tell me, Kagura Seiran. What do you see out there?"
Seiran looked back at the runners. The group was rounding the fourth corner. The chestnut-haired girl was falling behind, gasping for air, just as Seiran had predicted. The grey-haired girl was leading but her shoulders were hunched, tension radiating through her spine.
"Noise," Seiran said.
"Noise?" Tachyon's eyebrows shot up.
"They're loud," Seiran murmured, her gaze unfocused. "Their feet hit the ground too hard. They're fighting the ground. The ground is supposed to help you."
Tachyon went rigid. Her playful demeanor evaporated, replaced by a cold, predatory focus. She clicked the top of her pen. "Elaborate."
"If you hit the ground hard, it hits back," Seiran said, as if explaining that water was wet. "You have to... slip between it."
"Slip between the ground?" Tachyon whispered. She scribbled something furiously in a notebook. "Kinetic energy conservation through minimizing vertical impact... implies a stride efficiency bordering on friction negation. Theoretical, of course. Impossible in practice."
She looked up, eyes burning. "Show me."
Seiran tilted her head. "Show you?"
"Run." Tachyon pointed to the track. "The lane is open. Go. One lap. 2000 meters. I need data."
"I don't have a trainer."
"I don't care. I'm asking for a demonstration, not a contract." Tachyon shoved a stopwatch into her pocket and pulled out a more complex-looking device, something with wires and a digital display. "Unless you're scared?"
Seiran looked at the track. The morning mist was lifting. The "noise" of the other runners had moved to the far side of the field. For a moment, the near stretch was empty. Silent.
It was inviting.
"Okay," Seiran said.
She dropped her duffel bag. She didn't stretch. She didn't do a warm-up jog. She simply walked onto the turf.
The grass felt synthetic, different from the wild fields of Hokkaido. It was springy, eager. It wanted to be run on.
She took her position at the starting line. She didn't use a crouch start. She just stood there, relaxed, arms hanging loosely by her sides.
Tachyon, watching from the fence, frowned. Stance is amateurish. Center of mass too high. No preparatory tension in the quadriceps. Expected result: Slow start, rapid fatigue.
"Go," Tachyon muttered under her breath.
Seiran moved.
There was no explosion of dirt. No grunt of exertion. One moment she was standing still, and the next, she was simply... away.
It wasn't fast. Not at first. Her start was sluggish compared to the explosive gate exits practiced at Tracen. She loped along the first straight, her head bobbing slightly.
Disappointing, Tachyon thought, checking the timer. First furlong: 14.2 seconds. Pedestrian pace.
But then, they hit the first corner.
Usually, a runner decelerates slightly entering a curve to maintain balance. Centrifugal force demands a tribute of energy.
Seiran didn't decelerate. She leaned.
She didn't fight the turn. She poured herself into it like water flowing down a drain. Her body angle became acute, dangerously low, yet her stride didn't shorten.
What? Tachyon's eyes widened. She didn't lose momentum. She converted it.
Seiran felt the wind pick up. This was better. The noise in her head—the anxiety of the city, the confusion of the new school—began to fade. All that was left was the rhythm.
One, two. One, two.
No, that was too simple.
The track whispered to her. It told her where the soft spots were. It told her where the wind was pushing back.
She entered the back straight. The "End Closer" instinct—though she didn't call it that yet—began to stir. It was a pressure in her chest, a desire to be done. To be at the finish.
She wasn't trying to go fast. She was just trying to finish the song.
Tachyon watched the numbers on her device spike. Heart rate is... stable? No, it's dropping. She's accelerating, but her physiological stress is decreasing. That's biological nonsense.
Seiran passed the 1000m mark. The other runners on the track had stopped to watch. The "sleepy" girl from the gate was moving with a terrifying fluidity. She wasn't stomping the earth; she was ghosting over it.
The final corner.
This was where the "End Closer" woke up.
Seiran's eyes snapped open wider. The grey dullness vanished, replaced by a flash of steel. The finish line was visible. It was so far away, yet she could feel it pulling her.
She didn't sprint. She surged.
It was a change in atmospheric pressure. The air around her seemed to collapse into the vacuum she created. Her stride lengthened impossibly, her legs becoming a blur that the eye couldn't track.
Whoosh.
A gust of wind hit Tachyon, ruffling her lab coat and blowing her notes onto the dirt.
Seiran crossed the finish line. She didn't celebrate. She didn't raise a fist. She jogged for another twenty meters to slow down, then stopped, turned around, and walked back toward the gate.
She wasn't panting. Her chest heaved slightly, a gentle rhythm, like someone who had just walked up a flight of stairs.
The entire track was silent. The trainer with the whistle had dropped it.
Seiran walked up to the fence where Tachyon stood frozen, her complex device displaying an error message: INPUT VELOCITY EXCEEDS EXPECTED PARAMETERS FOR TRAINING MODE.
Seiran picked up her duffel bag.
"The ground is nice here," Seiran said, dusting off her shoulder. "But the wind is fake."
She looked at Tachyon, waiting for a response.
Tachyon stared. Her red eyes were wide, the pupils dilated. Her brain was screaming a thousand questions, a million variables, a billion possibilities. The data was erratic. The form was terrible. The logic was nonexistent.
And the time...
Tachyon looked at the stopwatch in her hand.
1:58.2.
On a training run. Without a pacemaker. Without a warm-up. Wearing cheap sneakers.
A shiver, electric and terrifying, ran down Agnes Tachyon's spine. It was the thrill of discovery. It was the horror of the unknown.
"Who..." Tachyon's voice cracked. She cleared her throat, regaining her composure, though her hands trembled. "Who are you, really?"
Seiran yawned, covering her mouth with her sleeve.
"I told you," she said, hoisting her bag. "Kagura Seiran. Do you know where the dorms are? I'm hungry."
As Seiran walked away, fading into the morning fog like a phantom, Agnes Tachyon remained gripped by the fence, her knuckles white.
"The Singularity," Tachyon whispered to the empty air. "I found it."
Somewhere in the distance, a roar echoed from the gym—the loud, boisterous laughter of a girl named Jungle Pocket. But Tachyon didn't hear it. She was too busy listening to the silence Kagura Seiran had left behind.