That evening, Fujiwara Chiya dropped by Kitasan Black's dorm room.
Inside, Kita-chan was holding a little tea party with Satono Diamond. The table was loaded with sweets, enough to make the whole room smell faintly of sugar and butter.
"Chiba, come eat with us!" Diamond waved happily the moment Chiya stepped in. "These are new desserts from home. They wanted me to try them and give some feedback. You should taste them too!"
Chiya did not bother refusing. He sat down beside the two of them.
While Diamond went to brew the tea, Kita-chan quietly scooted closer.
"Sorry, Chiba," she whispered. "I didn't think Diamond would come back this early."
"?"
"I was planning to wait until she wasn't here… and secretly let you fluff my tail."
"Wait, that's not exactly something shameful, is it?"
"It is embarrassing…" Kita-chan's cheeks turned pink. "I've never let anyone touch my tail before. Not even Diamond."
"So I'm the first?"
"Mm." Kita-chan nodded. "Since it's my first time, it feels really embarrassing. I don't want anyone else watching."
Is there something wrong with me? With you? Or with Diamond?
Why does tail fluffing sound like an affair now?
And why does it feel like I'm sneaking around behind Diamond's back?!
"It should be fine, right?" Chiya said. "Tail touching is pretty common among Uma Musume, isn't it?"
"Mm… but besides touching tails, I also wanted to do something else with Chiba…"
"Something else?"
"N-Nothing."
What Kita-chan had wanted to say was that she wanted them to admire each other's sleepwear. But with Diamond in the room, they obviously could not make such a big event out of it. Diamond had said she was going home for a bit today, so Kita-chan had not expected her to return after only a few hours—especially not while carrying a mountain of desserts.
It was wonderful.
And also kind of a shame.
Sweets were great.
But they could not beat Chiba.
"Diamond, this room of yours…"
"What about it?"
Diamond returned with the tea, and the three of them ate sweets while chatting. Chiya glanced around the room and said, "It has a really strong festival vibe."
Red lanterns hung on the wall. Below them were posters of Shirayuki and Orfevre.
"Kita-chan loves festivals," Diamond explained. "So she wanted to decorate the room like this."
"That's right, Chiba!" Kita-chan beamed. "My goal is to give the audience a race that gets them as fired up as a festival!"
"That's very energetic of you."
"Right? Right~?"
Kita-chan's tail swayed happily, then curled around Chiya's waist and slowly tightened.
After they finished the desserts, Diamond returned to her seat and started reading.
Meanwhile, Kita-chan and Chiya sat together on the bed.
"Oh, this is nice."
Chiya's eyes lit up.
It was his first time touching a tail with such a powerful texture. Thick. Fluffy. Soft. Like a giant ball of fur. It even carried a faint, pleasant scent.
As an Uma Musume enthusiast who had touched every kind of ear and fluffed roughly thirty percent of the tails he had encountered, Fujiwara Chiya could responsibly declare that Kitasan Black's tail was at least A-rank.
The last Uma Musume he had seen with a tail this beautiful was Manhattan Cafe.
Back then, Cafe had visited their home. Agnes Tachyon and Shirayuki had been chatting with her when Cafe casually let her tail drift over. Shirayuki, acting completely on instinct, had grabbed it.
After a brief moment of embarrassment, Cafe quickly gave Shirayuki permission to touch her tail.
When asked why, Cafe had only said one thing.
"You have a beautiful soul."
Cafe had discovered the truth about Shirayuki and Chiya a long time ago. But she had never told anyone. She only watched quietly from the side.
Her favorite topics were always things like souls, ghosts, and other supernatural matters. She said Shirayuki possessed the most beautiful and complete soul she had ever seen. She wanted to be friends with Shirayuki for life.
Of course, Agnes Tachyon completely destroyed the mood with one casual comment.
"Then why not just move in?"
Still, Shirayuki was grateful to Cafe. Cafe had helped her many times in the past, and Shirayuki was more than willing to become her friend.
A pure friend.
For some reason, Shirayuki's friendships had a tendency to drift in strange directions. One moment, they were friends. The next, the atmosphere got weird. But she did have several very close friends who had never developed into anything strange.
Cafe was one of them.
Anyway, that was getting off topic.
Chiya looked at Kita-chan's large tail. It was like a passive skill had activated.
His fingers moved nimbly through the fluffy black mass.
Starting from a single lock of fur in the middle, he slowly stroked downward. Once he felt the faint twitch of the hair, he used that point as the center and spread his touch outward, carefully reading the tail's response while gradually adding strength to his fingers.
It was like playing a game.
Chiya explored Kita-chan's tail with terrifying freedom.
"Mm~"
Kita-chan let out a tiny, kitten-like sound.
Her waist softened, and she collapsed onto the bed. Under Chiya's fingertips, her mood climbed higher and higher. With misty eyes, she looked at the black-haired "girl" above her, who was putting her whole heart into fluffing her tail.
"Ch-Chiba…" Kita-chan called softly.
Her eyes were hazy, her voice almost melting.
Unfortunately, the man was not listening at all.
His entire attention was fixed on that fluffy black tail.
Bliss.
Pure bliss.
Was there anything else in the world this soft, this fluffy, and this nice-smelling?
No.
Only an Uma Musume's body could possess something this precious.
"Chiba… mm…"
Her vision started to blur. Kita-chan was so comfortable she almost wanted to cry.
It was a happiness that rivaled winning a race.
She reached out and, almost on instinct, hugged Chiya's big tail, gently sniffing it.
Chiba's scent…
It smells so good…
So nice…
Then, little by little, Kita-chan noticed something odd.
Under Chiba's scent, the tail had a strangely firm texture.
W-Weird.
What is this?
Kita-chan followed the tail upward with her hands.
And then, as if she had triggered some hidden switch, a subtle electric buzz came from the base of Chiya's tail.
A second later, the black tail spun in a circle.
"Kita-chan?"
Chiya finally noticed that Kita-chan had somehow crawled behind him. Her face was so red it looked like it might drip, and she was holding his tail with both hands, doing something he did not quite understand.
"Are you okay, Kita-chan?"
"I'm okay. I'm really okay."
Kita-chan looked at Chiya with watery eyes.
"This is my first time fluffing tails with someone. It felt really good… Chiba, it felt amazing."
"Is that so? As long as you liked it."
Chiya coughed a few times. Then he glanced at the clock on the wall and said, "It's getting late. I should go, Kita-chan."
"You're leaving already? You won't stay a little longer…?"
"If I go back too late, the others will get mad."
Chiya said goodbye to Diamond and Kita-chan, then left the room.
After the man was gone, Kita-chan hugged her own tail and bit down on it.
While biting, she softly murmured, "Chiba…"
"Kita-chan…"
Watching Kita-chan lying on the bed, completely forgetting Diamond was even there, thighs pressed together as she clung to her tail like she had slipped into some strange trance, Satono Diamond's expression turned complicated.
Kita-chan had fallen hopelessly for Chiba now.