After Fujiwara Chiya managed to enter the Zone, they began the next round of testing.
Now, Chiya needed both bodies to enter the Zone at the same time.
It sounded hard.
Doing it was even worse.
Thud!
Shirayuki hit the ground and skidded three meters forward.
The students around her screamed and rushed over in a panic. Fortunately, Shirayuki had prepared for this in advance. She had a face guard and knee pads on, so she avoided any serious injuries.
After refusing everyone's pleas to go to the hospital, Shirayuki continued training.
Not long after, Chiya went thud on his side too, and Mejiro Dober and the others scrambled over in a complete mess.
And so, amid that absolute chaos, Chiya ended the day's training.
Between him and Shirayuki, they had fallen no fewer than twenty times. Their bodies were covered in fine, dense scrapes and bruises. Even protective gear could not fully absorb the impact of an uma musume crashing at high speed.
Looking at the bloody marks on Shirayuki's arms and shoulders, Chiya carefully applied ointment to her wounds.
He had known from the start that training the Zone would be far harder than he imagined.
But seeing Shirayuki's beautiful skin streaked with blood still made his chest ache.
"It's fine… Just one more month of training. It's fine…"
Chiya muttered the words to comfort himself.
Right now, he only hated how lacking his own talent was. Everything he did had to be learned bit by bit, built through accumulated effort, trial, error, and experience.
If he had talent like Orfevre, he would have mastered this skill ages ago.
After finishing the ointment, Chiya sat by the head of the bed.
Shirayuki's sky-blue eyes caught sight of the wound on his neck. She shifted closer, then lightly stuck out her small tongue and gently licked the injured spot.
Trying to enter the Zone with both bodies at once was incredibly difficult.
Both of them needed to run at the same time, push their speed to the limit, then enter the Zone only after their body, spirit, and focus had become perfectly unified.
That was the theory.
In practice, only one side entered.
Either Chiya entered, or Shirayuki did.
The moment one of them slipped into the Zone, the other would lose control of their body and crash while running.
Even though Chiya had prepared protective gear beforehand, the sheer speed of an uma musume still made every fall dangerous. If there happened to be a hard rock hidden in the dirt, it could shatter the gear and pierce straight into the body.
This method would not work.
After training for a while, Chiya decided to search for another approach.
During that time, Orfevre participated in the first race of the Classic Triple Crown, the Satsuki Sho. From the moment the race began, she led the pack all the way to the end, ultimately seizing victory by a massive five-length margin.
Throughout the entire race, she displayed overwhelming strength.
Her ability was clearly on a different level from the other uma musume of her generation. When Shirayuki had been at that stage, she had needed to rely on the Zone just to fight against the other runners.
Orfevre, on the other hand, had already reached a height the others could not touch without relying on the Zone at all.
After seeing Orfevre like that, Chiya knew he had to pick up the pace too.
He needed to rethink his training method from the ground up.
"Running into trouble, Trainer?"
One day, Darley spoke up after seeing Chiya sitting in his chair, staring blankly into space.
"If you have a problem, you can ask me, you know. Who knows? I might actually be able to help."
"You?"
Chiya shook his head.
"Forget it."
"What's that supposed to mean, Trainer? I'm pretty amazing too, okay? I've already got enough experience to go out on my own. Central even sent me an invitation for the trainer certification exam."
"Really? When?"
"Next year," Darley said with a smile. "So, come on. What's bothering you, Trainer? Tell me."
"Eh…"
How was he supposed to explain this?
"How can one person focus on doing two things at the same time? Do you know anything about that, Darley?"
"Focusing on two things at once?"
"Yeah."
Chiya knew the question contradicted itself.
Focusing and doing two things were fundamentally incompatible.
Other than someone like Chiya, who had two bodies and genuinely needed to concentrate on two tasks at once, what normal person would ever have that kind of problem?
"Hmm… I see."
Darley pinched her chin and nodded.
"In that case, you need the right timing."
"Do you have a good method?"
"Try zoning out, Trainer. Just blank your mind and stop thinking so much. You have way too much going on in your head."
"You're telling me to slack off?"
"How is that slacking off? Zoning out is also a form of concentration. A brain that's completely focused and a brain that's completely still are actually in the same state. Trainer, you should learn from that child. She loves zoning out."
"Who? Sky?"
"No. Sky only looks like she's zoning out. She's actually thinking about all sorts of things. I mean that little white girl."
"Shirayuki?"
"The one who looks a lot like Shirayuki."
Chiya thought for a moment.
"Meek?"
"Mm. If we're talking pure talent, that child Happy Meek is even stronger than Orfevre."
"What? That's impossible."
Chiya could not believe that the little white horse who spent her days drifting around in a daze could possibly be stronger than Orfevre.
Because their race routes were different, Shirayuki and Happy Meek rarely raced against each other. Still, Chiya knew that Meek had participated in sprints, mile races, middle-distance races, and even… long-distance races.
As for running styles, she had used End Closer, Late Surger, Pace Chaser, and Front Runners.
She had raced on turf and dirt.
Thinking about it carefully, Happy Meek really did seem to enter every kind of race and use every kind of running style.
She did not have one particular distance she specialized in.
She did not have one particular running style she specialized in either.
But put another way, did that not mean she could run anything?
Not having one specialty meant she could do everything.
Once Chiya changed his way of thinking, he finally realized it.
Meek was a genius.
Because Meek was always so quiet, almost no one noticed. She usually did not talk much either. She would sit alone in a corner, perfectly still and perfectly silent.
Occasionally, she would go find Shirayuki, and the two of them would head out to buy crepes together. Other than that, most of the time, she simply sat by herself on a bench, watching the sky, watching the leaves, and quietly passing the entire day.
Shirayuki had once worried that Meek was being isolated, so she had secretly observed her from nearby.
But the students passing by all greeted Meek. None of them deliberately ignored her. That proved Meek's relationships with others were still decent.
She simply liked quiet.
"Are you saying Meek is actually amazing?"
"Trainer, what exactly made you think Meek was weak?"
Chiya had no answer.
Only when he looked back over Meek's race record did he realize, to his shock, that the little white horse had never lost a single race.
Four OP races.
Two GII races.
Two GI races.
Every race, every start, every result.
Victory.
Although most of them were won by a nose or a head, a win was still a win.
Central had originally published reports about Happy Meek too, but Shirayuki's Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe and Japan Cup had completely overshadowed them. Because of that, the public's attention toward Meek had never been especially high.
She was a genius hidden beneath Shirayuki's radiance.
"Can I find the answer from her?"
"That's something you'll have to ask yourself, Trainer."
Chiya nodded.
"I'll leave the work to you, Darley. I'm going to find Meek."
With that, Chiya ran out.
A short while later, in the garden on the east side of Tracen, he found Happy Meek sitting on a bench, quietly zoning out.