The morning sun filtered through the thin curtains of the small apartment, casting a warm glow over the modest room. Shota Aizawa stirred beneath the covers, his dark eyes blinking open as the reality of the day settled in. He lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his lips. Reborn into this world—the world of Umamusume, where horse girls with legendary names dashed across tracks with unyielding spirit. It still felt like a dream, but no, this was his new life.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, running a hand through his messy black hair. Tall and lean at 176 centimeters, with a perpetually tired expression that made him look older than his years, Shota rose and stretched. No more procrastinating. Today marked the beginning of everything he'd been waiting for.
The approval letter from Tracen Academy sat on the desk, crisp and official. Central Trainer status earned through sheer determination, interviews, and a bit of that lingering knowledge from his past life. No magical system panels, no training points or support cards popping up like in the game he'd played obsessively back then. Just pure effort, trial, and error. But that was fine. He knew the anime, the manga, the intricacies of races and legacies. It would be his edge.
"Alright," he muttered to himself, voice low and gravelly as he began tidying the room with efficient movements. He folded the blankets neatly, stacked a few scattered books old racing magazines from this world, dog-eared with notes and wiped down the small table. The apartment had been a temporary stop, a place to crash while grinding through the certification process. No point leaving it a mess; who knew if he'd ever return? "Let's do this."
With a final glance around the now-spotless space, he slung a simple duffel bag over his shoulder containing essentials, a few changes of clothes, and notebooks filled with strategies and locked the door behind him. The city outside buzzed with the distant cheers of morning practice sessions echoing from afar. Umamusume, born to run. Their fates intertwined with names of glory and tragedy from another world. And now, he was stepping into that whirlwind as a trainer.
The bus ride to Tracen Academy was uneventful, the vehicle rumbling along wide roads lined with cherry blossoms just beginning to fade. Shota stared out the window, mind racing ahead to the possibilities. Which Umamusume would he be assigned? How would he apply what he knew without the crutches of the game mechanics? Excitement simmered beneath his calm exterior.
The bus pulled up to the grand entrance gates of Tracen Academy, a sprawling campus alive with energy. Vast tracks stretched in the distance, dormitories and training facilities gleaming under the sun. Shota stepped off with the others a small group of new trainers, about eight in total. Most were women, sharp-eyed and enthusiastic, chatting animatedly about their dreams. Only three men, including himself, rounded out the batch this year. He kept to himself, hands in his pockets, observing quietly.
A figure approached from the main building, her steps confident and welcoming. Tazuna Hayakawa, the academy's secretary, with her dark brown hair tied back in a long ponytail secured by a yellow bow at the middle, short fringes framing her face. Her green eyes sparkled with warmth beneath the brim of her signature green hat, and she wore her fitted green uniform that hugged her figure though such details hardly registered in the moment. Black stockings completed the professional yet approachable look, and she carried herself with the gentle poise of an older sister ready to guide lost newcomers.
"Welcome, everyone!" Tazuna called out, her voice bright and reassuring as she clapped her hands lightly to gather attention. A clipboard was tucked under one arm, and she smiled at each of them in turn. "I'm Tazuna Hayakawa, secretary here at Tracen Academy. It's wonderful to have such promising new trainers joining us this year. Congratulations on your approvals you've all worked hard to get here."
The group murmured excited responses, a few of the female trainers bowing politely or waving. Shota nodded silently, his tired eyes meeting hers briefly. She seemed exactly as he remembered from the anime supportive, a touch strict when needed, but always kind.
"Please, follow me," Tazuna continued, gesturing toward the campus paths. "I'll give you a quick tour before we head to orientation. This is your new home, after all."
The tour began smoothly, Tazuna leading them along manicured walkways, pointing out key spots with enthusiastic explanations. "Over there are the main training tracks state of the art, with surfaces tailored for every condition. And those buildings? The dormitories for our Umamusume. They're lively places; you'll hear the energy from miles away!"
She walked with a graceful stride, occasionally glancing back to ensure no one lagged. The new trainers oohed and aahed, some snapping photos on their phones, others whispering about famous residents they'd glimpsed in passing. Shota trailed near the middle of the pack, absorbing it all. The air smelled of fresh grass and determination, the distant thuds of hooves on turf a constant reminder of why he was here.
As they rounded a corner near one of the administrative buildings, shaded by overhanging trees, something caught his eye. A man one of the trainers, perhaps in his late twenties, looking disheveled and pale stumbled weakly out from behind the wall. He locked eyes with Shota for a split second, mouth opening as if to call out, his hand reaching feebly. Help... was that what he was trying to say? His face twisted in desperation, voice a faint, garbled whisper lost in the breeze.
Before Shota could process it fully, a shadowy hand swift and unseen shot out from the corner, grabbing the man's collar and yanking him back into the shadows with surprising force. He vanished as quickly as he'd appeared, swallowed by the building's edge.
Shota blinked, pausing mid-step. What the hell was that? The group continued walking, Tazuna's voice droning on about the cafeteria ahead. He shook his head slightly. Probably nothing. A trick of the light, or maybe the guy was just drunk and got pulled away by a friend messing around. Wind, yeah... or something. No need to make a scene on day one.
He quickened his pace to catch up, pushing the odd moment to the back of his mind. Focus. This was Tracen Academy. That must be a wind.....yea totally
The tour flowed onward like a gentle stream, Tazuna's voice weaving through the chatter of the group as she pointed out the medical center, the indoor pool with its glass walls reflecting the midday sun, the massive cafeteria that smelled faintly of hay-fried rice even from the path outside. Shota walked with his hands in his pockets, nodding when expected, but his mind was already sketching the campus map from memory every shortcut between the dorm blocks, the blind spot behind the equipment shed where certain horse girls liked to sneak extra snacks, the exact angle of the setting sun on the home stretch of the main track. Years spent binge-watching the anime, grinding the game until his eyes burned, rereading every manga side-story… it was all paying off. He didn't need the paper map Tazuna offered with her usual warm smile. He already knew this place better than most veterans.
"And that concludes the official route," Tazuna announced at last, clapping her clipboard lightly against her thigh. The green brim of her cap cast a soft shadow over her gentle green eyes. "You have two hours of free time before orientation proper begins. Feel free to explore, introduce yourselves to the staff, or watch the afternoon practices. Just please stay within the public areas no entering private dorm wings without permission."
The moment the words left her mouth, the group scattered like startled pigeons. Most of the rookie trainers especially the women made a beeline for the training yards, eyes shining with the hunger of people who had spent years dreaming of this exact moment. Shota heard excited whispers: "I heard Gold Ship is doing gate practice today!" "No way, I'm aiming for Silence Suzuka if she's still unassigned!" "Dream big, rookie, dream big…"
He didn't follow.
Instead, he lingered near the central fountain, pretending to check his phone while his mind chewed on the growing pile of wrongness.
First: that trainer who got dragged into the shadows. No one else seemed to have noticed. Not even Tazuna, who had been walking right in front of the group.
Second: the veteran trainer he'd glimpsed earlier through a half-open door of the rehabilitation wing sitting motionless in a sleek black wheelchair, staring out the window with hollow eyes. Veteran trainers didn't end up in wheelchairs. Not in the world he remembered. Injuries happened to horse girls, not to the humans. Something cold crawled down his spine.
Third: the feeling. The constant, low-level itch at the back of his neck, like the campus itself was watching him through a thousand hidden eyes.
And fourth his gaze flicked, just for a second, to Tazuna as she answered a question from one of the friendlier rookies. The way her green cap never, ever shifted. The way no one ever saw her ears. The art book from his old world had shown them once delicate, proud horse ears the color of fresh chestnuts. But here, in the flesh, the hat was welded to her head like it had grown there. Was she…?
He shook the thought away. Paranoia. That's all this was. Jet lag from reincarnation, or whatever the hell you called it.
"Hey, you're Aizawa, right?" A bright voice snapped him out of his spiral.
The speaker was one of the other two male rookies tall, golden-brown hair that somehow looked windswept even indoors, eyes burning with the kind of pure, shounen-protagonist confidence that made Shota instantly wary. The guy flashed a thumbs-up that practically sparkled. "I'm Kaito Reiji! Man, can you believe we're actually here? I'm gonna revolutionize training methods no one's gonna come close once I get my first girl on the track! G1 sweeps, baby, all the way!"
Behind him, another rookie a soft-spoken girl with round glasses and a shy smile nodded enthusiastically. "I-I just want to help someone reach their dream… even if it's only one race at a time…"
And there it was. The classic cast. The hot-blooded rival. The gentle heroine. The quiet guy in the back who notices too much that would be him, apparently.
Shota gave a noncommittal grunt and a half-wave. "Yeah. Good luck with that."
Kaito laughed, undeterred, and clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to make Shota's teeth click. "You too, man! See you at the rookie showcase race tomorrow!"
They dashed off toward the yards, leaving Shota alone with the fountain's gentle splash.
Tomorrow. The exhibition race where unassigned first-years and a handful of older horse girls would run a special 2000m to let the new trainers scout potential partners.
But would Spica even exist here?
Shota rubbed the bridge of his nose. He had no reputation, no flashy background, no mysterious rich patron. Just knowledge from another world and a brain that—ever since he'd woken up in this body seemed to process details faster. Angles of stride, micro-expressions, the way a horse girl's ears flicked when she was hiding fatigue… things he'd only ever read about before now felt almost intuitive.
Maybe it was a reincarnation perk. Maybe it was just adrenaline. Didn't matter.
He exhaled slowly, watching the sunlight fracture across the water.
"Fine," he muttered to no one. "I'll play the normal rookie trainer for now. Watch the race. Pick whoever looks like they need someone who actually understands what they're carrying."
His gaze drifted once more to the distant track, where faint silhouettes were already warming up tails swishing, hooves flashing, the eternal rhythm of a world that lived to run.
The sun had dipped into that lazy golden hour when Tazuna reappeared at the fountain, clapping once to round everyone up like a gentle shepherd.
"Time to head to your dormitories, everyone. The bus is waiting at Gate 3."
The rookies trickled after her, still buzzing about tomorrow's showcase race. Shota fell in at the back, hands in his pockets, already mapping the shortest route to Gate 3 in his head.
Then he saw the bus.
It wasn't the cheerful academy shuttle he remembered from the anime, painted in soft pastels with the Tracen logo smiling on the side. This thing was matte black, windows tinted so dark they looked like voids, and reinforced mesh grilles bolted over every glass pane. The doors hissed open like the maw of something that transported dangerous cargo, not first-year trainers.
Tazuna's smile never wavered. "This will take you directly to the Trainer Residential Block. It's a restricted area only staff and registered trainers are allowed entry. For security, of course."
Security. Right.
Kaito pumped a fist. "Sweet! VIP treatment!"
The shy girl with glasses nodded politely, already climbing the steps. Nobody else batted an eye.
Shota's stomach twisted. In the anime, trainers lived in normal apartments or on-campus dorms with big windows and balconies where horse girls sometimes snuck in for midnight snacks. There were no bars on the windows. There were no armed guards (he could see two now, standing discreetly at the gate, earpieces glinting).
Something is very, very wrong here.
But the alternative was standing alone in a darkening courtyard while everyone else boarded. He swallowed the protest crawling up his throat and followed the others up the steps. The doors sealed behind him with a pneumatic thunk that sounded disturbingly final.
The ride never happened.
Tazuna glanced at her watch. "Actually, it's only 3:30. The driver won't leave until five. You're all free to explore a little more if you like just be back here by 4:50, okay? Curfew starts at six sharp for rookies tonight."
Freedom, sort of.
Most of the others scattered immediately (some toward the practice tracks, some toward the cafeteria for an early dinner). Shota slipped away in the opposite direction, weaving through lesser-used paths until the noise faded behind him. He needed quiet. He needed to think.
Wheelchair-bound veterans. Vanishing trainers. Prison bus. Tazuna's hat that never moved an inch.
This wasn't the bright, hopeful world of the anime. It was the same stage, same faces, but someone had cranked the shadows up and painted over the cracks with forced smiles.
He rounded the corner of the Ritto Dormitory annex and stopped dead.
A tiny figure was skipping (actually skipping) down the flower-lined path, humming a little tune that sounded suspiciously like the Kochi local anthem. Rose-pink ponytail bouncing with every hop. Red headband slightly crooked. Three band-aids on her legs like badges of honor. Ear covers the color of ripe plums. Huge cherry-blossom eyes sparkling even in the fading light.
Haru Urara.
In the game he used to Called her "my daughter" in every comment section. Just like everyone she indeed our favorite umamusume
And now here she was, in the flesh, no trainer ribbon on her jacket, humming like the world was made of candy.
Haru Urara noticed him staring and lit up like a firework.
"La la la~♪ Oh! You're one of the new trainers, right?" She bounded over, stopping just short of bowling him over, hands clasped behind her back and rocking on her heels. "I'm Haru Urara! But you can call me Urara if you want! Everyone does!"
Up close she was even smaller than the numbers suggested 140 cm of pure, concentrated sunshine. Her pink eyes were so wide and earnest that for a moment every dark thought in Shota's head stalled like a scratched record.
He managed to find his voice. "…Shota Aizawa. Nice to meet you."
"Shota… Sho-chan?" She tested it, grinning when he didn't correct her. "That's a cool name! Are you excited for tomorrow? There's gonna be a big race and everything! I'm running too, even though I'll probably come in last again, teehee~"
The self-deprecation was delivered with so much cheer it looped right back around into something heartbreakingly brave.
Shota felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward despite everything. "You never know. Someone out there might see something special in never giving up."
Urara's ears must have perked, because her whole face brightened another impossible watt. "Really?! You think so? That's what I always say! Even if I lose a hundred times, the hundred-and-first might be different!"
She stuck out her pinky, the universal sign. "Promise you'll watch me tomorrow, Sho-chan? Pinky swear!"
Without thinking, he hooked his much larger pinky around hers. Her hand was warm, callused from endless training, yet impossibly soft.
"I'll be there," he said quietly. "Front row if I can manage it."
"Yay~!" She did a little spin, ponytail whipping like a victory flag. "Okay, I gotta go shower or Nishino Flower will nag me about smelling like the track again! See you tomorrow, Sho-chan!"
She waved both hands over her head and dashed off, humming louder than before, leaving a trail of imaginary cherry blossoms in her wake.
Shota stood there long after she vanished around the corner, staring at his pinky like it had been branded.
For the first time since arriving in this twisted version of a world he thought he knew, something felt right.
Tomorrow, he decided, watching the shadows lengthen across the path, he would sit in the stands and watch a tiny girl in bloomers run her heart out.
Shota watched the tiny whirlwind of rose-pink disappear around the corner, her humming still echoing faintly in the warm air. For a few precious seconds the campus felt almost normal like the world he'd watched on screen a lifetime ago. He exhaled, shook his head once, and started walking again, hands buried in his pockets, letting muscle memory guide him along the winding paths.
He didn't intend to circle back to Gate 3 so soon, but the academy's layout pulled him the way a track pulls a sprinter. Before he realized it, the black prison-bus loomed ahead again, its reinforced sides gleaming dully under the late-afternoon sun. Most of the rookies had already drifted back, clustering in loose knots, laughing too loudly, nerves disguised as bravado.
Near the front steps of the bus sat a man in a wheelchair.
He was maybe forty, face gaunt and pale, hair prematurely gray at the temples. The sleeves of his trainer jacket were rolled up, revealing arms that had once been powerful but now looked thin and corded with scar tissue. Both legs ended just above where the knees should have been, hidden beneath a thin academy blanket. His eyes flat, exhausted, ancient were fixed on the group of new trainers as if measuring coffins.
One of the female rookies noticed him first. "Senpai? Are you waiting for the bus too?"
The man's lips twisted into something that might have been a smile if it had any life left in it. When he spoke, his voice was sandpaper over gravel.
"Listen up, new faces. I've got maybe five minutes before the handlers come looking for me, so shut up and hear this." He wheeled himself closer; the rookies instinctively formed a half-circle. Shota slipped in at the back, arms folded, every alarm bell in his head clanging.
"You'll be assigned your girls tomorrow," the veteran continued. "Some of you will get the sweet ones. Some of you will get the quiet ones. Doesn't matter. Rule number one: keep it professional. Always."
Kaito snorted. "What, like we're gonna—"
"Rule two," the man cut in, voice sharpening. "Never let affection go past a certain line. No late-night dinners when she asks with those big eyes. No patting her head every time she does something cute. No sleepovers because 'she had a nightmare.' No treating her like a friend, a little sister, or God forbid a girlfriend."
A ripple of uneasy laughter. The shy girl with glasses fidgeted. "Senpai, that sounds… extreme."
The veteran leaned forward, blanket slipping to reveal the empty space where his legs ended. "Extreme keeps you walking. You get too close, you let her get too close, and one night she'll come to your room. She'll cry about pressure, or nightmares, or just wanting to feel human for once. And because you're soft, because you care, you'll open the door. Next morning they'll find you in a hospital bed if you're lucky. Broken pelvis. Spine snapped like dry kindling. And that's if she holds back."
Dead silence. Even the wind seemed to still.
Shota felt ice crawl down his back. Umapyoi. The word surfaced unbidden from fragments of late night forum threads he'd once laughed off as creepy fan theories. The phenomenon nobody in the anime ever talked about. Horse girls whose instincts and raw physical power sometimes overrode everything else when affection and desire collided. A trainer who got too attached became a fragile toy in the grip of something that could outrun sports cars and kick through concrete.
The veteran's eyes swept the group and lingered on Shota for half a second longer than the rest.
"Some of us thought we were special," he rasped. "Thought love or friendship or whatever the hell we called it would protect us. Look at me now. Look at the ones who didn't make it to a wheelchair."
Kaito's face had gone red. "This is bullshit scare tactics! The academy would never—"
"The academy covers it up," the man snapped. "Pretty posters, happy races, smiling girls on TV. You think they want the public knowing their star athletes occasionally break their handlers like twigs when hormones and attachment get out of control? They call it 'overtraining accidents.' They pension us off quietly. And they send the girls to therapy for a week."
He wheeled back a few inches, suddenly tired. "Do yourselves a favor. Keep the walls high. Care from a distance. Or pick another career."
Two security staff in dark uniforms appeared at the edge of the lot as if summoned by remote control. The veteran's expression shuttered instantly.
"Time's up," he muttered. "Remember what I said."
He spun the chair with practiced ease and rolled toward a side gate that Shota hadn't noticed before, disappearing behind a screen of hedges before the guards reached him.
The rookies stood frozen.
Kaito broke first, forcing a laugh that cracked in the middle. "Old guy's just bitter. Probably washed up and looking for someone to blame."
A couple of others nodded too quickly. The shy girl hugged her clipboard to her chest like a shield. Someone else started talking about tomorrow's race, voice too loud, too bright.
Shota said nothing.
He stared at the empty space where the wheelchair had been, pinky still tingling faintly from Urara's promise.
Keep the walls high.
He thought of her blinding smile, the way she'd spun in place like a cherry-blossom hurricane, the unfiltered joy in her voice when she called him Sho-chan.
For the first time since arriving in this warped world, Shota felt something sharper than unease.
He felt afraid.