I was on my phone.
That was the first mistake.
Uma Musume Pretty Derby filled the screen, the banner bright and smug, shimmering like it knew something I did not. My thumb tapped rhythmically, muscle memory honed through months of repetition. Tap. Tap. Tap. No hesitation. No ceremony. Just the grind.
On my computer, season three clips played in a loop. Triple Crown highlights. Fan edits stitched together with dramatic music. Japanese commentary bursting with emotion I only half understood, yet fully felt. The announcers' voices rose and fell like waves crashing against ambition itself.
Anything to fill the space. Anything to distract from the waiting.
Grinding was never glamorous. It was hours of preparation punctuated by moments of hope and long stretches of disappointment. I had long since stopped pretending it was anything else.
I was not a pro.
Not even close.
Semi-pro at best, if I was being generous with myself. In real life sports, I was an all-rounder. I could run. I could react. I could endure. Decent reflexes. Decent stamina. An okay sense of strategy. Good enough to compete. Good enough to imagine, late at night, what it might feel like to race seriously. To live on a track instead of just circling it.
Enough to dream.
But dreaming did not win careers in Uma Musume.
The American version was brutal. The pull system alone was an insult. Half a percent. That was it. Zero point five percent for the actual banner Uma, a three star worth building a team around. Everything else might as well have been cardboard cutouts. And I was free to play.
No rerolls.
No safety net.
Every pull mattered. Every pull felt like a gamble with consequences that lingered for weeks. Each failure did not just sting. It compounded. You could feel the lost potential stacking up behind you, mocking every attempt at optimism.
I could not afford to chase luck forever.
Japanese players already had guides. Detailed spreadsheets. Optimal skill trees. Career routes refined down to near perfection. UR rank clears. Insane stat distributions. Videos breaking down frame-perfect decisions.
Here in America, in 2025, most players could not even clear S rank consistently.
And the AI.
I scoffed, shaking my head as another training session failed on screen.
"Twenty eight percent," I muttered. "A twenty eight percent fail rate."
Higher than any other rate in the game, and it showed. I watched runners stall at the worst moments. Skills fired early, late, or not at all. Perfect races thrown away by decisions no human with a functioning brain would ever make.
I joked about it all the time with friends online. Made memes. Posted clips.
But beneath the humor was frustration.
I knew how it should go.
I knew the pacing. When to conserve stamina. When to surge. When to trigger skills. I could see the correct line through the chaos, the race that existed only in theory because the system refused to let it happen.
I could do better.
I would do better.
Some of my free to play pulls were good. Better than most, honestly. Maruzensky. Symboli Rudolf. Oguri Cap. Powerhouses, even without premium support cards. Together, they dominated PVP team races. They crushed opponents that had no business keeping up.
But even they could not force a perfect career run.
The system always pushed back. Random events. Bad rolls. Training failures at the worst possible time. A constant reminder that control was an illusion.
I needed an edge.
Something more than knowledge. More than patience.
So I did something stupid.
I made a plea.
Not as a joke this time.
I lowered my phone, leaned back in my chair, and closed my eyes. The glow from the screen still burned faintly behind my eyelids. My room was quiet except for the faint hum of my PC fan and the distant sound of a commentator shouting victory in Japanese.
I whispered, barely louder than a breath.
"Alright. Uma gods. Just once."
I swallowed.
"Give me an S rank career. A perfect playthrough. Let me take Rudolf, Maruzensky, Oguri Cap, and win properly. The AI has problems. I can do better."
My lips twitched.
"I will do whatever it takes."
I opened my eyes.
Nothing happened.
Of course nothing happened.
I laughed softly at myself, shaking my head. People joked like that all the time before a pull. Superstitions. Rituals. Lucky taps. It was human nature. I had never had incredible luck anyway. Just decent fortune. Enough to get by.
I went to tap the screen.
That was when the shiver hit.
It crawled up my spine like cold fingers, sharp and sudden. The air around me felt heavy, as if gravity had quietly increased while I was not looking. My ears rang, a high-pitched whine that drowned out the video on my computer.
The screen went black.
Not faded.
Gone.
The light vanished in an instant, and with it, everything familiar.
When I opened my eyes, I was not in my room.
I was sitting on a bed.
White walls surrounded me, clean and sterile. A small table sat nearby, perfectly placed. A phone charger plugged neatly into the wall, the cable coiled with unnatural tidiness. There was no computer. No posters. No clutter. No window I recognized.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
"…Where am I?"
The words sounded thin in the quiet room.
I checked myself, hands moving fast. Arms. Legs. Chest. Everything felt normal. Human. My usual height. No horse ears. No tail. No uniform. Just me.
That should have been comforting.
It was not.
Panic crept in, slow and deliberate. The kind that did not explode, but pressed inward, tightening with every unanswered question.
No job. No bag. No wallet. No papers. No memory of getting here.
I grabbed the phone beside me.
The screen lit up instantly.
Unlocked.
No password. No face scan. No hesitation.
Only one app worked.
Uma Musume Pretty Derby.
Everything else was dead. Browser refused to load. Messages showed nothing. Calls failed immediately. Settings froze the moment I touched them.
My stomach dropped.
"…You've got to be kidding me."
The familiar opening music played, cheerful and oblivious to my growing dread. The home screen loaded without delay, bright colors mocking the stark room around me.
Career mode.
Character select.
My finger hovered above the screen.
I did not think.
Thinking would have slowed me down. Thinking would have given fear time to settle. I acted on instinct, the same instinct that had carried me through countless bad pulls and failed runs.
I tapped.
Maruzensky.
The screen flashed white.