[Negative Emotion +100]
[Negative Emotion +100]
[Negative Emotion +100]
...
It was clearly a memory steeped in pain, yet a faint smile appeared on King Halo's face.
Like the sky itself, the smile looked pure and bright at first glance—but there was also something fragile about it, as though it might shatter at any moment.
Terumi Shinji watched her quietly. He had always felt that somewhere deep inside King Halo lurked a trace of madness, something neither Overrun nor Narita Brian possessed.
A double-edged sword, he thought.
"You know what feels the most powerless?" King Halo turned her head. Tears shimmered in her moist eyes, and yet her stubbornness kept them from falling, turning them instead into glittering points of light that only made her already beautiful eyes more striking.
Beneath them, the crimson lines stood out vividly. Shinji once again felt that his handiwork was actually pretty good.
Those bloody streaks were astonishingly straight.
"When I failed to come in first—even if I only came in second—everyone would say that despite all the help my mother gave me, despite all the effort she put in, I still couldn't win. That I had disgraced my mother's honor and support."
As she spoke, her emotions swelled. Shinji could easily imagine the kind of despair a little girl would feel hearing those words.
The girl before him had obviously never been good at socializing. If she hadn't debuted and shown some actual ability, then her peers probably never would have approached her on their own.
Without that, she might well have spent her entire time at Tracen alone.
That, too, was probably tied to those early experiences. The thoughts bottled up inside her had never had anywhere to go.
That, more than anything, explained why she always behaved so extremely in races and simulations.
A child raised in that kind of environment was bound to turn out extreme.
It wasn't that she wanted to be this way. It was simply that controlling herself wasn't so easy for her.
Shinji took a deep breath. The situation felt troublesome, yes, but one thing was beyond question—
If King Halo wanted to become a G1 horse girl, a truly first-rate runner, then she had to learn to overcome this.
After a long silence, Shinji suddenly said, "Did you know? The Osaka Hai has been upgraded."
"Upgraded?"
King Halo looked startled, but understanding came to her almost immediately.
Now that Overrun had become the first Autumn Triple Crown winner in history—and after defeating so many powerful runners, with many in Japan already rating her at least among the top five in the nation's history despite having only three G1 wins—the Osaka Hai's upgrade made one thing obvious:
A Spring Triple Crown, to stand opposite the Autumn Triple Crown, was now in sight.
A flicker of naked ambition ignited in King Halo's eyes.
Of course Shinji saw it. That was exactly why he had said it.
The mare in front of him had taken a beating, but he wanted to bring back the girl she had once been. She could suffer setbacks, yes—but she also had to learn how to keep her confidence intact even while weathering those blows.
She had once been able to do that. Those good qualities hadn't vanished completely, and above all, that stubborn persistence in herself could not be lost.
"I'll arrange another simulation race for you," Shinji said. "If you win that one, we'll go straight to the Osaka Hai."
His words stirred her exactly as he had hoped. King Halo sat up straighter, looking more like her usual self again.
She wanted to go. She did not want to miss this chance.
Of course, Shinji had already considered whether this was too hasty.
First, it completely overturned the schedule he had planned for her.
Second, the Tenno Sho (Spring) lay somewhat outside King Halo's most comfortable distance range, which would create all sorts of additional complications from a training standpoint.
And yet Shinji still felt that, for a racehorse, sometimes it was more important to give her momentum and confidence than to fine-tune her improvement with perfect precision.
On the track, the amount of ability you possess does not necessarily equal the amount you can display.
And that did not just mean underperforming. Throughout history, there had been runners who had surpassed themselves in the crucial moment, pouring every scrap of their will, every emotion, every fragment of their past into a single race.
Maybe that was what King Halo needed now: that kind of momentum.
Overrun's Autumn Triple Crown campaign had certainly come with plenty of outside hostility, but in terms of the races themselves, her path had not actually been that dangerous.
She was like a model student, overwhelming the track through sheer superiority, dominating both the races and every opponent in them.
King Halo was different.
People had always called her an excellent student, and once upon a time, perhaps she really had been one.
But not anymore.
From Shinji's perspective, this girl had a long list of problems.
Still, he had already signed her on. He could see how much more dependent she had become on him.
So naturally, he would help her.
This generation was already shaping up to be a formidable one, and Shinji wanted King Halo to rise above them all.
Thinking that, he slowly stood up and looked toward Hayakawa Tazuna in the distance. The academy secretary looked anxious. She did not know exactly how things were going over here, but she cared deeply for everyone at the academy—horse girls, trainers, everyone alike.
She did not want King Halo to take too heavy a blow, nor Shinji to be dragged down by his trainee's condition.
Shinji gave her a small nod.
Tazuna finally let out a breath of relief.
"Erimo Dancer is probably aiming for the Osaka Hai," Shinji said. "Her running style and pace are already starting to shift in that direction. Same goes for the graded races she's selected over the past couple of months, including that simulation race."
As King Halo listened, she clenched her fist.
She had no personal grudge against Erimo Dancer. Nothing about the process of that simulation race had actually been unfair.
Erimo Dancer had simply trapped her on the inside and, even in an eight-runner field, had crafted a perfect box around her.
And King Halo had walked right into it, exactly as Erimo Dancer had expected.
That was all. She had been read and outplayed.
She felt no special resentment toward Erimo Dancer. More than anything, she just wanted one thing:
To win back against her once. To defeat Erimo Dancer head-on with her own ability.
Compared to Erimo Dancer, what King Halo wanted even more was to shut those trainers up.
Overrun's story had already proved plenty of things, and one of them was this: when you win—and keep winning—the gossip eventually disappears.
Those trainers had praised her and tried to recruit her in the beginning for one simple reason: she had been brilliant in middle school.
And the way they spoke of her now stemmed just as plainly from her repeated failures in simulation races and her collapse on the Classic circuit.
Of course they wanted to keep seeing a failed King Halo.
But King Halo neither wanted nor intended to give them that satisfaction.
She rose to her feet as well, her determination to run in the Osaka Hai solidifying even further.
All those misunderstandings people had about her—at first, she had desperately wanted to explain herself.
But at this point, she no longer had the energy for that.
Life was like that. So many things in it were helpless and unfair. Just handling the handful that truly mattered was already hard enough.
King Halo reached out and lightly hooked Shinji's hand with hers.
He turned to look at her and met those still-bright, liquid eyes.
But now there was finally something more in them.
Something positive.
Shinji gave a small nod to himself.
He had already begun thinking of several methods he could try—
Ways to help King Halo grow faster, and further.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 147)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter185)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter105)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter215)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 185
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 170
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass Volume2/1
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 206
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 190
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 154
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player Volume4/23
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 106
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 67
Uma Musume: From Beginner 125
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 85
Uma Musume: I Want All 105
I Can Copy Unique Skills 90
Summoning an Evil God, but the 70
Supernatural Multiverse 90
My Harem Is Indescribable 80
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 86
"I'm just a Valkyrie passing through." 68
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 81
Still playing traditional Honk 65
The Most Filial Son Under Heav 65
What Should I Do After Switchi - Volume2/3
Reincarnated as a Demon, Skill 57
Hell-Difficulty Dungeon? 45
Transmigrated as Sukuna 59
Checking In in Demon Slayer 59
The Reincarnating Trainer of Tracen Academy 73
I Refuse to Become a Heroic 45
My Best Friend Into a Slime? 36
A Saiyan Stands Above Marvel 40
What Do You Mean by Using a Lab Mod to Be the Hero? 60
Tanya Starts from Re:Zero 30
Why did they assign me to Uma 35
MYGO Beauties 43
DanMachi: Emiya the Giant Hero 30
The Gacha Merchant Who Started 31
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