The gate buzzed once.
Low, electric barely audible beneath the rustle of copper leaves stirred by a coastal breeze. The autumn air carried the scent of cut grass and chalk, the usual aroma of late-season drills at Tracen Academy.
And yet, something in that single sound made the field pause.
Not completely. Not in the dramatic, cinematic sense. It was subtler like a shift in barometric pressure. Like the moment before a thunderclap, when clouds stall mid-roll.
The gate creaked open, just wide enough for one girl to step through.
She didn't arrive. She entered.
No escorts. No luggage. No entourage. No formal announcement. Just a school-issue duffel slung over one shoulder and a face that might've been mistaken for aloofness if not for the way she walked.
Kagura Seiran.
Her gait was unnaturally smooth. Balanced. Long strides that didn't seem hurried but somehow still efficient. Her uniform blazer was slightly oversized, sleeves catching the breeze in a way that looked accidental but the longer you stared, the more deliberate it felt.
The breeze itself… changed.
A subtle swirl that reversed the path of a few falling leaves, tugging them upward, spiraling briefly around her shoulders before letting them fall again. Not enough to make anyone scream "magic," but enough to make at least a dozen girls glance twice.
She passed the bronze statue of Symboli Rudolf, eyes forward, expression unreadable. She didn't stop. She didn't bow. She didn't acknowledge the significance of the landmark that every other Uma Musume stopped to pay respect to during their first day.
The silence spread in her wake like ripples behind a skipping stone.
"Who's that?" Erimo Excel murmured, breaking stride.
She had just finished her laps and was toweling off sweat when she saw the girl pass.
Standing next to her, Admire Vega raised one brow and lowered her shake. "Transfer student?"
"Did we get one?" Erimo asked. "No one said anything."
"Nope. There wasn't anything on the whiteboard this morning," said Dantsu Flame, stretching her calves nearby. She squinted. "She's not heading to the main office either. Look."
They all turned.
The girl had turned toward the dorm compound, not the administration wing. Her steps never paused at the crossroads.
"She Walkin' like she's moving through a movie," Flame muttered.
Ahead of them, Jungle Pocket stopped mid-jog and turned toward the commotion. Her towel slipped off one shoulder.
Pocket tilted her head, squinting with the kind of mild disapproval she reserved for things she couldn't immediately understand.
"Who walks like that?" She muttered. "Like gravity's optional."
"Like she's testing the ground with every step," Vega added, narrowing her eyes.
The girl didn't look back.
Pocket scowled, more unsettled than annoyed. "Weird stride. Too quiet. You hear her land?"
"No," said Excel softly. "I didn't hear anything."
Two stories up in the eastern science wing, Agnes Tachyon stopped what she was doing.
Her screen was paused mid-frame 83 of a slow-motion sprint test, where she'd been reviewing rotational knee torque data. Her stylus hovered in the air.
Then dropped silently onto the tablet.
She turned her chair toward the window.
From her view, the world should have looked exactly as it always did: students moving between drills, coaches shouting intervals, autumn shadows cutting across the pavement.
But the rhythm had shifted.
It was like hearing the song skip a beat not enough to be obvious, but just enough to realize something was off.
Agnes leaned closer to the glass.
The girl below walked with no hurry, no destination in her body language yet somehow with absolute certainty. The kind of confidence that didn't need to be seen.
Kagura looked up.
Just once.
They didn't make eye contact there was too much glass, too many angles but the movement was precise. Unmistakably intentional.
Their vectors crossed.
Agnes frowned.
Something prickled at the back of her neck.
Then, without a word, she turned back to her desk and pressed play.
But the footage wasn't the same anymore. The data didn't hold her attention.
That afternoon, drills resumed as usual.
The main oval buzzed with activity. Coaches shouted numbers, students lined up by gate group, and water bottles clacked together in their crates. The sun had begun to lower, painting gold lines across the track.
Kagura stood quietly beside Gate Group 3 her name hastily printed on the clipboard, a placeholder ID badge clipped to her collar.
Dantsu Flame, Erimo Excel, and Admire Vega flanked her. No one said anything to her.
Not because they were being rude.
But because they didn't know what to say.
Her energy wasn't just reserved it was sealed. There was a kind of stillness around her that repelled conversation. Not with hostility, but with indifference. She wasn't unfriendly. She simply didn't exist within the same tempo.
The whistle blew.
"Pace target: 63 percent," the coach called. "Hold it clean. Red flag at end loop."
They took off.
First 100 meters: clean.
Kagura matched pace exactly. Her arms moved like metronomes, her strides clocked cleanly against the inner markers.
Then, just before the first bend, she exhaled.
Softly.
Like a breeze through tall grass.
And the rhythm snapped.
Dantsu Flame twitched.
"Wha "
She clipped her own heel and stumbled. Not enough to fall, but enough to break flow.
Erimo Excel's breath caught in her throat.
"What's she doing?" Excel muttered. "That rhythm she's off-beat. She's… too smooth?"
Vega didn't speak.
She adjusted her breathing, recalculated her stride, eyes narrowing on Kagura's back.
The strange thing was Kagura wasn't going faster.
But it felt like she was.
The wind picked up again, a strange swirling tail that seemed to curve unnaturally in her lane, as though her body was cutting it in reverse. The trees at the far end of the field rustled out of sync.
The coach frowned.
"63 percent," he repeated, louder this time.
No one answered.
The red flag went up.
Flame, Excel, and Vega slowed, panting.
Kagura kept running.
One more lap.
No surge. No emotion. Just movement.
Then she slowed, pivoted off the track, and exited quietly through the southern gate.
That night, Agnes watched the lap footage.
Her finger hovered over the playback speed setting, dialed it down to 0.5x.
Flame stumbled again. Excel fell behind. Vega's form adjusted mid-loop.
Then Kagura entered the frame.
And the playback glitched.
Not a file error. Not a drop.
Just a ripple.
The air around her shimmered for three frames exactly three. Like heat over asphalt. But there was no heat. No wind spikes on the atmospheric sensor. No explanation.
Agnes blinked. Reversed the video.
Played again.
Same ripple.
She paused.
Opened a blank note in her private research file.
[ZONE_RESEARCH_THESIS_DRAFT]
She hadn't added anything to it in six months. It was more a fantasy than a project. A compilation of unexplained anomalies in stride data, rhythm fluctuations, and pace corruption that never held up under academic scrutiny.
She typed:
[Variable #04 – Seiran, Kagura]
[Unknown Field Type. Turbulence suspected.]
[Rhythm ripple. No visible exertion.]
[Possible latent Zone user.]
She tapped her stylus against her chin.
Then underlined it.
Twice.
Back in Dorm Block B, the rumors were already blooming.
"She didn't even bow to the statue."
"Did you see her curve into the wind like that? Like, with it?"
"Her stride is totally silent. It's not natural."
"I heard she trained in some coastal temple with monks who race with the clouds."
"Monks don't race, idiot."
"I heard she got kicked out of her last academy for messing up weather sensors."
Flame lay on her bunk, one hand over her forehead, whispering to herself:
"She doesn't run to win…"
Pause.
"She runs like she's listening for something."
And somewhere, in the dark between midnight and morning, Kagura stood barefoot at the open dorm balcony, letting the night wind cut across her face.
No expression.
No words.
Just breath and the sound of the wind folding inward.