"Are all these things hers?"
Takayama Gamu pointed at the bottles, jars, and assorted lab apparatus crammed into the empty classroom. It was hard to imagine an ordinary horse girl could even get this kind of equipment—this "vacant room" had basically been converted into someone's private laboratory.
And not the safe kind, either.
…Though, to be fair, the people in Alchemy Stars had built setups that were even more outrageous.
"Yes."
The brown-haired horse girl crouching on the floor looked up from her meal—two grains of rice still stuck at the corner of her mouth.
"This is my lab."
"It's only half mine," Manhattan Cafe added flatly. "The other half is where I keep my coffee beans."
"Cafe, who's this?" Agnes Tachyon kept eating, her words muffled. "Your trainer? He's kinda handsome. And young, too."
"Gamu. Give it to me."
Manhattan Cafe took the silver helmet Gamu pulled out of his backpack and walked straight toward Tachyon.
Because Gamu was Friend's friend, that meant he was her friend too—so calling him "Gamu" was appropriate.
"H-Hey, Cafe—what are you doing? What's that helmet supposed to be?!"
Tachyon jolted, instantly alert. She had been licking out her bowl, and now she was staring at her old friend with pure suspicion.
Cafe was approaching with a rough-looking, clearly hastily assembled silver helmet—its purpose completely unclear—and her expression carried a faint, hard-to-read excitement.
…Is she getting revenge?
Remembering all the times she'd tricked Manhattan Cafe into drinking "medicine," Tachyon guiltily scooted backward. But before she could even stand up, Cafe forced the helmet onto her head.
"Ngh—NOOO!!"
Tachyon was pinned to the floor, flailing and screaming.
"…Huh?"
Nothing happened?
No—wait!
"Why are there two Cafes?!"
Tachyon's head spun. For the first time in her life, the "distinguish hallucination from reality" skills she'd honed by personally testing her own concoctions… weren't working.
"It worked, Gamu," Manhattan Cafe said, smiling faintly. "Tachyon can see Friend."
She was happy—partly because Gamu's invention had let someone else see "Friend," and partly because she'd finally made Agnes Tachyon experience what it felt like to be treated like an experimental subject.
"Good." Gamu nodded.
He'd spent two full weeks building the device specifically for this. So far, it seemed stable.
"Observation is the first step of research. As for a method to give Friend a physical body… I think I've got an idea."
"Wooo! A body!!"
Friend leapt up and hugged Gamu's head, spinning around him several times.
Because she was a ghost, her body was incredibly light—Gamu could barely feel any weight at all.
But her cheeks brushing against his face was really itchy.
"So… is nobody going to explain?" Tachyon knocked on the helmet enclosing her entire head, producing a crisp metallic sound. "What even is 'Friend'?"
"And why are you glowing?"
...
"So, what you're saying is…"
After taking off the helmet, Agnes Tachyon put a pen between her teeth and narrowed her eyes in thought.
"Cafe's ghost friend wants to run on the track like a normal horse girl. And you, to help her, are going to develop a special device to give her a physical body."
"Friend says she can't feel the ground when she runs," Manhattan Cafe explained. "It doesn't make her happy."
"And this thing is your 'test-the-waters' prototype?" Tachyon asked.
Gamu nodded.
Tachyon frowned. For the first time in her life, she'd met someone who might actually surpass her in pure technical capability.
That guy even had a trainer's badge hanging on his chest. Was he seriously a trainer?
Aren't trainers supposed to be stiff, old-fashioned fossils? How is someone like this even real?
"You built a device that lets people observe ghosts… for that reason?" Tachyon stroked her chin, contemplative.
So he's just… an absurdly kind, hopeless do-gooder?
"Then what is that light you're giving off?" she asked.
Vast, warm—almost overflowing.
"Is it… accumulated virtue?" she muttered.
"Secret," Gamu replied cleanly.
You couldn't lie in front of horse girls. But most of the time, you didn't need to.
If you simply made it clear you didn't want to answer, these kind-hearted kids usually wouldn't press you.
"I see." Tachyon put on an unconcerned face and silently offered Gamu a cup of black tea.
"Interested in working together?"
Ignoring Manhattan Cafe's visibly disgusted expression, Tachyon pulled out a small box of sugar cubes and dropped four of them into her own cup—at once.
"Work together?" Gamu echoed.
"To explore the limit of horse-girl speed. To explore the 'Gate' that stands before every horse girl." Tachyon took a sip, savoring the sweetness spreading through her mouth, and her expression turned unusually serious.
"The scenery at the end of the road their instincts point to. The world beyond the summit—after flesh and bone have reached their absolute peak."
"So… you want to run faster?" Gamu scratched his head.
She'd said a lot, but wasn't that what it boiled down to?
In other words: she wanted a trainer.
"It's not as simple as 'faster,' Takayama Gamu—Trainer." Tachyon lowered her gaze.
"It's the kind of fast that reaches the limit of these legs, this body. No—still not enough. It's the kind of fast that breaks the limits of horse girls. The kind of fast that reaches a new realm of possibility!"
"But traditional training can't do that." Her voice sharpened. "We have to use science. You can feel it too, can't you—Trainer Takayama Gamu?"
"Traditional training methods… are completely insufficient!"
But innovation wasn't easy. Even Agnes Tachyon had to admit it: everything she'd produced so far was only mediocre in effect. It couldn't possibly reach the goal she was describing.
To reform training itself, she needed a partner—someone as brilliant as she was.
And the best candidate was standing right in front of her.
Tachyon had once tried to investigate what exactly Manhattan Cafe's "Friend" was… and came up empty. Yet Takayama Gamu had built a ghost-observation device in just two weeks.
He was the real thing.
"Yeah. I feel the same way," Gamu said brightly, genuinely pleased. He hadn't expected to meet a horse girl at Tracen who shared his outlook.
"Then, Trainer Takayama Gamu," Tachyon said, satisfied, "will you become my collaborator?"
She smiled with confident certainty—as if the partnership was already decided.
"Let's improve the existing training methods together."
"No need," Gamu said, scratching his head. "I already have a set of training methods I think are pretty scientific—and highly efficient."
"Let's add each other on LINE. I'll send it to you when I get back."
"…Huh?"
Tachyon tilted her head, almost spilling her tea.
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