On Friday night, Dyna did not sleep well.
Because she had said she wanted to see the flowers in her mental world, Sea the Stars and Cody's Wish had dragged her in together the instant she closed her eyes. Entering that place by choice in a dream felt completely different from being yanked inside.
Her head spun for quite a while before she could barely stand, yet the dull heaviness deep in her mind never fully went away. But when she stepped out of the little house, she was stunned by the sea of red before her.
She felt no beauty in it at all.
The wildly overgrown, blood-red roses only filled her with an indescribable sense of unease.
Some of the rose vines even stretched out right in front of her eyes, stopped before her, trembled as if they had been stimulated, then sprouted buds from their tips and bloomed, lush and vivid. That only made Dyna take several steps back in fright.
"What are these things? Why are there so many...?"
She did not dare touch the bizarre roses, yet every time she stepped back, the bloom before her simply lengthened its stem and followed. When she stopped, it stopped too, as though it had a will of its own.
Cody's Wish casually snapped off a flower and tossed it onto a patch of exposed soil. The moment it touched the dirt, it rooted itself again, became a new plant, then stretched out another branch, found Dyna, and bloomed in front of her as if showing off.
"When you weren't here, they were just growing and blooming aimlessly. This is the first time either Sea the Stars or I have seen them chase after you and flower like this. Maybe they grew out of some thought inside you?" Cody's Wish could only make that guess.
After all, these things did nothing but crowd out the soil, and in this mental space, the soil represented the parts of Dyna's mind that were still free and unoccupied. If all that room in her mind were taken over by these flowers, what effect would that have on her?
No one knew.
Sea the Stars had sensed a certain malice in them, which was why she had been clearing them away every day. If they really could affect Dyna, then at least doing this would buy her some time during the day.
But by now, their growth rate had clearly surpassed the rate at which Sea the Stars and Cody's Wish could remove them.
"Is this related to me? And not in a good way either..."
Dyna could not understand it. She had always been perfectly kind and approachable in her daily life, so why had her mental space turned out like this?
To her, blood-red roses were less beautiful than eerie. In the Chinese imagination, too much red gathered around a single person could easily become deeply unsettling.
Even if that red decorated a wedding, it still felt creepy.
The more Dyna looked at them, the more her eyes ached. While she and Cody's Wish were talking, Sea the Stars was still pulling up roses that kept invading the garden. Even the rosemary Dyna had asked them to plant seemed to be growing poorly because of the roses.
The soil in this mental space should have been the most fertile possible. Or had the part of Dyna's mind that nourished the rosemary been eroded by those invasive roses?
The more she thought about it, the stranger it felt.
At last, Dyna gathered her courage and reached out to snap off one of the roses herself. But the instant her fingers brushed the smooth stem, a sharp sting shot through her fingertip, making her jerk her hand back at once.
"It hurts—!"
A bead of blood welled up on her fingertip.
When she looked back at the rose, sharp thorns had sprouted from what had been a smooth stem.
"So this place can actually make me feel pain...?"
"Hm? Strange..." Cody's Wish stretched out her own hand. The thorns immediately withdrew in front of Dyna's eyes, and Cody's Wish snapped the flower off without difficulty. "For the past week, Sea the Stars and I have been breaking these without any problem. Why are they reacting so violently to you?"
Dyna suddenly felt like her own mental space had absolutely no goodwill toward its owner. These roses even knew how to target her specifically?!
"Hey, Cody's Wish! Why are these things growing even faster now?"
Sea the Stars had already been crouched in the garden for hours, yet she had made no progress at all. Instead, the roses had pushed her all the way back to the garden entrance. The moment she stepped outside it, they completely sealed the way in.
Cody's Wish tossed the rose in her hand into a bin designed to isolate anything growing too wildly, then shook her head.
"I don't know. The moment Dyna came here, everything got more abnormal. We need to figure out how to eradicate these things. My instincts are telling me they're bad news. If they fill this place up completely, Dyna might start having real mental problems."
"Huh?"
Dyna felt a little frightened now.
Still, with Cody's Wish and Sea the Stars here... surely nothing too bad would happen, right?
This time, Dyna woke up even earlier than usual.
Her mind felt foggy. But when she sat up and saw the dried blood on her fingertip, she went wide awake.
The blood had already crusted over, as if it had been there quite some time. Yet her phone showed it was only two in the morning, meaning she had slept for less than two hours.
So the blood must have appeared almost as soon as she had fallen asleep.
But she could not have spent that long inside her mental space, could she?
Where had the rest of that time gone?
As she washed and bandaged her finger in the bathroom, Dyna kept thinking about that question. Nothing in the room had changed. The only difference from before she slept was the blanket, but tossing around in bed and messing up the blanket was normal enough.
In the end... she could not solve it. So she decided she might as well focus on Sunday's race instead.
When dawn came, Dyna found that reporters were once again staking out the front of her shop.
Over the past two days, every time she had gone out for her morning run, she had heard the click of shutters. She very much wanted to tell them that if they were going to secretly take photos, they should at least set their cameras to silent mode. But after thinking it over, she let it go.
She really did not care that much.
On Saturday, all she wanted was to drop by the convenience store. It did not matter whether she bought anything or not. She just wanted a change of air after the previous night, because that red glow still lingered in her mind. Everything she looked at seemed faintly overlaid with crimson, like the afterimage left from staring at a red light too long.
There, she ran into Kitasan Black and Satono Diamond.
They seemed to be shopping for camping gear, which meant they were probably planning to camp outside the racecourse again to secure good viewing spots.
Then came Sunday.
That morning, the racecourse once again looked very much like it had during the Satsuki Sho—only this time, the number of campers outside had multiplied several times over. And at the very front of the line were the same four as before: Kitasan Black, Satono Diamond, and those two guys. They had even set up a little self-service stall on Saturday night to entertain the people camping out.
"What's amazing is that nobody's making a scene," one JRA staff member remarked while heading in to work.
Using the path the campers had left open down the middle, they entered the racecourse. Then, around seven or eight in the morning, when the gates opened, they found that everyone had already packed away their tents and lined up neatly.
The first race would not begin until after nine, but because the G1 Japanese Derby would be held in the afternoon, the stands were already packed soon after opening. Those who had failed to get seats could only press up against the rail in front. They were probably going to be standing there the entire day.
"Ohhh! Dyna! We finally get to see Miss Dyna in a G1 again! I'm so excited! Little Dia, Little Dia!!"
Kitasan Black grabbed Satono Diamond by the neck and shook her back and forth, completely failing to notice that her childhood friend's face was already turning purple and blue, as though her soul were about to leave her body.
"Idiot!!"
At last, Satono Diamond gathered enough strength to yank on Kitasan Black's tail instead. She had learned her lesson from last time—hitting Kitasan's skull only hurt herself. Better to attack the tail this time.
"Gwah!"
Kitasan Black jumped straight up, but at least she let Diamond go.
The two guys watched the energetic pair with wry smiles, then turned their attention to the horse girls now making their entrance.
"Dyna really does control the whole narrative of this race. I can't think of how she loses."
"She'd lose if she couldn't handle the distance. But I think 2400 meters is nothing for Dyna."
For once, the two of them were in perfect agreement: this particular horse girl was going to win.
And perhaps that shared prediction was itself a milestone in their friendship.
The horse girls who entered before her all seemed little more than supporting characters in comparison, because for a Japan that had suffered through a massive earthquake, the undefeated queen had become something like medicine for a wounded national spirit.
"Golden Master, who finished second in both the Spring Stakes and the Satsuki Sho, looks very different today. She's brimming with confidence! She almost looks like the tyrant she was at debut—it feels as though this Derby may bring an unexpected turn!"
Golden Master stepped out from the tunnel and onto the turf. Looking toward the stands, she knew full well that no one there truly cared about her.
But... so what?
Her cloak rippled in the air as she walked toward the starting gates.
"And next comes the horse girl with a towering 70% support rate in this Derby—the undefeated Dyna!"
Since her debut, Dyna had never lost. And now she would once again face off against her old rival Golden Master on the greatest stage of their generation.
Dyna entered the racecourse with an easy air, almost shyly waving toward the stands. It was the largest crowd she had ever seen—perhaps even more than Tokyo Racecourse had originally been designed to hold.
"Ohhh! Miss Dyna without glasses! This is incredible!!"
Some overexcited fan shrieked like a lunatic, but the people around him immediately restrained him and started "disciplining" him on the spot.
Dyna only laughed softly and continued toward the gates. As the far outside runner, she would be the last to load. Passing Golden Master on the way, however, she noticed that the latter said nothing at all.
Was that really Golden Master? Or had Dyna rattled her too badly at the press conference...?
Forget it. On the track, we're enemies. Why worry about my opponent?
She gave Golden Master no look at all and focused on preparing for her own gate.
Yet just as Golden Master calmly walked into her stall, every horse girl present suddenly felt a chill rise from the base of her tail.
It was Golden Master's aura.
It came like cold blades.
Inside the gate, Golden Master's fingers had clenched until they turned white. The tactics Iketoe had repeated over and over in her ear had long since been shoved to the back of her mind.
All she could hear was Dyna's voice from the press conference:
"Golden Master does have one chance to show her own brilliance—that would be if she had been born into an era without me."
That sentence had lodged itself in her chest, and festered there until the wound had swollen and rotted. That was the state Golden Master now stood in, waiting for the Derby to begin.
Finally, only Dyna remained.
She took a deep breath and stepped into her stall. In the narrow space, she could smell the mixed scent of grass and soil, as well as the violent pounding of her own heart.
She did not know exactly whose aura was affecting her, but once she stood on the racetrack, she knew she had to be prepared to resist any interference. So she calmed herself, and the chill subsided somewhat.
"Two thousand four hundred meters. This is my home turf. Show them what the world's number one middle-distance horse girl looks like."
Sea the Stars' voice echoed by Dyna's ear, confident and faintly proud—something rare for her.
Though that made perfect sense. Sea the Stars had never lost on her own territory, and in her eyes, a toy-level race like the Derby was hardly worth mentioning.
"Mm... Thank you, Miss Sea the Stars!"
Dyna nodded hard and crushed the card of Sea the Stars in her hand.
Warmth spread from her fingertips through her entire body. A faint golden glow overlaid the reddish-brown of her eyes. The power was so enormous that the warmth quickly turned into heat, and the breath she exhaled as she steadied herself came out almost scalding.
Temporary Attribute Enhancement
Speed A+
Will to Win S+
Mental Strength S+
Turf S / Middle Distance S / Stalker S / Chaser S / Deep Chaser S
Simulated Domain · Miracle Star:
During the final sprint, grants an enormous burst of instantaneous speed.
The sudden boost felt like rebirth itself.
The heat rampaged through her body, making her desperately want to release it all. Then, with a thunderous crash, the gates flew open and all eighteen horse girls shot out like arrows.
Dyna once again chose to run from last.
Coming from the extreme outside gate, she did not need to think much. She simply maintained her break speed and, within a few hundred meters, settled into the tail end of the field where her view remained clear.
Golden Master, meanwhile, used the advantage of gate 5 to slice rapidly into the outer side of mid-pack, avoiding the congestion near the rail. But her gaze never left that chestnut-colored shadow.
"All the runners got away beautifully—no one made a mistake. Dyna, as always, has chosen the back of the field. Golden Master, breaking sharply from stall five, has moved to the outside of mid-pack... hm? Golden Master's speed is dropping? She's easing backward? She's moving toward the rear?"
No one had expected Golden Master to surrender such a favorable position and deliberately drop back.
Kaishin Ballet, who had been behind her, was startled by the move, but quickly slipped past her along the side. As they changed places, Ballet caught a glimpse of Golden Master's eyes—and shivered at the chill in them.
It's that hateful red again.
That was what Golden Master was thinking.
But this time, she was certain of her target. She would not make the mistake of fixing on Kaishin Ballet. After all, she and that red-tinged "apple" had nothing between them, and this was only their first race together.
The only one Golden Master cared about was Dyna.
"I only care about you, Dyna... This time, you are not winning so easily! Absolutely not!!"
There was already a trace of red hidden in Golden Master's purple eyes from the moment the gates opened, and now, nearly a thousand meters into the race, that red had become something tangible—an unseen interference binding itself around Dyna.
Locked Restraint:
Can disturb a single horse girl's mind and induce a faint agitation.
The moment it took effect, Dyna really did feel a brief lapse. But it was not enough to break the rhythm she had set for herself.
In racing, even the lead leg you choose around different kinds of tracks can matter. If that pattern is interrupted mid-race, reestablishing it costs both energy and concentration.
"Golden Master, huh? She's already reached the point of interference... She's improved so fast."
Dyna did not hesitate to acknowledge it.
But for someone with her mental fortitude, that level of disruption was not enough.
If Dyna had looked at the other horse girls instead, she would have noticed the abnormal sweat already beading on their foreheads.
Come on... final sprint. I'm absolutely not losing to Golden Master, either... With Sea the Stars' power, I absolutely will not lose!!
Simulated Domain · Miracle Star
On any track, once you come out of the bend, it becomes the closing stretch. And under the immense power now flowing through her, Dyna felt for the first time what it truly meant to move like wind and lightning.
The instantaneous increase in speed made the force of each step terrifying. One footfall left a crater-like mark in the turf, and at the same time, every other horse girl in the race felt a crushing tide wash over their minds.
It was like... being surrounded by seawater. Their bodies felt strange. Every step seemed as though they were trying to part some invisible liquid.
Golden Master, too, was affected by Sea the Stars' power, but her stride did not falter.
At the two-hundred-meter marker, she was still in front, with Kaishin Ballet closing in along the inside.
That utterly ordinary horse girl can still hold third even under this kind of interference? But... it means nothing.
In Golden Master's eyes, there were only winners and losers. The same held true for her and Dyna.
And this time, she would become—
"I've got you. I've got... you... now..."
From the outside, Dyna met Golden Master's gaze for a single instant.
Golden Master heard it then: a voice that was wet and clinging, unnervingly soft, the sort of tone that made one's skin crawl.
But Dyna's lips had not moved.
Had she... really not spoken?
Then where had that voice come from?
Dyna's center of gravity sank even lower than Golden Master's. Her supple body reduced wind resistance to the absolute minimum, and she began to pull away, inch by inch, from the gold at her side.
But Golden Master, who had sustained her aura from the start of the race until now, found at last that her body could no longer keep up with her will.
All she could do was watch Dyna's figure break the line first.
Yet at the very last moment, her body erupted with a burst of speed from somewhere unknown, allowing her to reduce the gap just a little.
Even so, that figure remained in front of her.
"It's Dyna and Golden Master in a dead heat at the finish! This time Golden Master has truly shown her full strength, but after their ferocious duel down the stretch, Dyna wins the Japanese Derby by half a length! The glory of an undefeated second crown!"
"Golden Master is second! Two lengths behind her comes Kaishin Ballet in third!"
Her debut disqualification.
The crushing loss in the Spring Stakes.
The gap in the Satsuki Sho.
Every defeat she had ever tasted came together at once, making Golden Master's vision blur.
A metallic sweetness surged into her throat, impossible to suppress any longer after crossing the line, and she began to gasp raggedly.
She was right beside Dyna, but the latter was no better off. Her face was flushed red, and the frequency of her breathing was no slower than Golden Master's. The two of them had poured every ounce of their pressure and disruption into each other, which, in a way, had been a mercy to the rest of the field.
Then, under the eyes of more than a hundred thousand spectators, Golden Master slowly raised her fist beside Dyna.
Smack!!
Dyna heard the sound of impact.
She looked up—
And saw Golden Master, who had just punched her.
I—I—I'm going to—...
Join here to read ahead.
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I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 81
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Checking In in Demon Slayer 60
The Reincarnating Trainer of Tracen Academy 65
I Refuse to Become a Heroic 35
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What Do You Mean by Using a Lab Mod to Be the Hero? 58
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