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Chapter Text

…

“All right… Please state your full legal name.”

…

“…Katsuaki Itonaga.”

That’s it. That’s the one.

[10:28 JST] — INTERVIEW ROOM — ARRI ALEXA MINI LF / PANASPEED

24fps · ƒ/2.4 aperture · Lens 40mm large-format · Static two-shot; restrained push-in · Kodachrome-inspired saturation, soft highlight roll-off

I’d cleaned myself up for this.

Trimmed off the scruff. Tried to smooth down the parts of me that never quite smoothed. My face had been puffed up and gloomy for months, but at least the bags around my eyes had faded to something I could blame on the humidity. I even managed five hours of sleep. That was practically a spa vacation by my standards.

Creak. Creak.

They’d parked me in one of those gray boxes where sound curled up and died before it reached the walls. Not a speck of personality anywhere. A place designed so you’d hear every tiny thing your body did. Only this time, the silence kept getting sawed apart by the guy across from me slowly rocking in his swivel chair.

Creak. Creak.

A stack of papers waited in front of me. Real thick stack, enough to stop a bullet. Official-looking enough that my stomach did that slow tightening thing it does when a patrol car would ease up behind me on the highway. The man himself had a face that looked like it had been shaped by years of criminal interrogations.

Creak. Creak.

He clicked his pen once. Then he wrote something down. His pen made those soft scratching sounds that reminded me of cops making quiet little judgments sneaking onto paper. I told myself he was doodling a bunch of dicks just to keep my shoulders from tightening.

He turned a page.

“And… what can you say about the team placed under your watch?”

My gaze drifted a hair to the side. The stack of forms had started to lean like it was eavesdropping.

Creak. Creak.

“My team, huh?” I said. “Well, where do I start… One of ‘em’s barely five foot tall, but could probably kill you in your sleep without so much as a whisper. Another one treats the Hippocratic Oath like it’s a nursery rhyme someone made her memorize against her will.”

He didn’t react. Just flipped another page.

Creak. Creak.

“Go on…”

I reached for my cup of water, spun it around. “I’ve got one girl who plans her races down to the minute, probably a side-effect of that massive head of hers. Then there’s this other girl—a sprinter with too much battery acid in her bloodstream. Talks so fast you start hearing the words pile up behind her. And then, there’s the one who thinks she’s from an alien planet. Kid sees the code under the world. I just try to keep her from breaking down the simulation.”

That was when he finally stopped moving.

“And you believe,” he said, folding his hands over the file, “that you are capable of safely overseeing such… diverse personalities?”

I leaned back, felt the stiff plastic of the chair pinch my shirt, and let out a long, steady breath through my nose.

“Frankly, Officer,” I said, “I think I’m the only one out there who is.”

“That’s… quite the bold thing to say.”

“Well, that’s because it’s the truth.”

He didn’t move a twitch. Just kept staring at me with those narrow little inspection-lamp eyes of his, like he was ready to cuff my wrists to something metal and cold.

I stayed put. My shoulders went still the way they used to when Yamabe and I got pulled over in our twenties and he’d whisper Don’t say anything stupid under his breath.

He held my stare.

My eyes narrowed a hair.

The seconds stretched—thin, brittle things—until the whole room felt like it was balancing on a ridge.

If he decided to lean forward, even a fraction, we’d both tip into something ugly.

But nope.

“Well then,” he said, voice smoothing out, “congratulations, Itonaga-san.”

His whole expression reset. A shutter flicked open behind his eyes, and the stiffness in his cheeks drained out fast, like he’d finally remembered the script he was supposed to be following.

He extended a hand.

Not to arrest me. Not to haul me off to some back room where a clock with no numbers ticks loud enough to age you.

A handshake.

“Welcome back to the URA.”

It took my brain a second to change gears. The part of me that had braced for cuffs had to unclench one joint at a time. I shook his hand, felt the dry heat of his palm, and realized the static in my chest was just leftover adrenaline.

He slid the stack of forms over to me. Same stack that had looked ready to swallow my career whole. Now it just looked like work.

“You’ll get your physical certification in two to three business days,” he said. “Full accreditation pending review of the summer schedule, incident reports, and team conduct assessments.”

“Right,” I said. “Naturally.”

“Mhm.” His lips pressed into a smile. “And since Astrum is no longer in a probationary state, you’re free to recruit any new students you see fit. Just… make sure your methods don’t involve a giant burlap sack.”

“Do I even need to ask?”

He stood, tucking his papers under one arm. My eyes followed the stack the same way you watch a stray dog decide whether it’s about to bite or wander off.

He reached the door, then paused. Didn’t turn. Just let his voice drift back over his shoulder.

“Oh. And, Itonaga-san?”

I kept still.

“The past is all water under the bridge as far as we’re concerned. You were never being evaluated for punitive action. This is just the licensing interview. You’d be surprised how many applicants misunderstand the tone.”

I huffed something that might’ve passed as a laugh if you squinted.

“Yeah,” I said. “Imagine that.”

He nodded to no one in particular. “Well then… Enjoy the rest of your summer.”

The latch clicked behind him.

The silence he left behind had… corners now. Friendlier ones. The kind you could lean into without worrying they’d shank you in the ribs.

I gathered the papers, my palms moving slower than they needed to. There was a strange kind of novelty to handling documents that weren’t actively trying to ruin my life or get me arrested.

One of the sheets slid free from the stack, spinning on the table until it landed face-up.

日本ウマ娘トレーニングセンター学園 教職員身分証明書
氏名：糸永 克彰
役職：上席トレーナー (Senior Trainer)
所属：中央トレセン学園

My own mug stared back at me from next to the kanji. It was today’s photo, thank god—not the one from the fake file where I looked like a damp ghost who’d just crawled out of a storm drain. This version of Itonaga actually looked like he ate full meals instead of scrounging for lost coins under the driver’s seat of a Fairlady Z.

Something in my chest did a small adjustment, like a tight screw backing off a quarter turn.

I slipped the form into the folder, nudged everything into a tidy stack, then got up.

Out in the hallway, the air felt looser. I hadn’t realized how clenched the interview room had been until my lungs started stretching out again, pulling in that faint institutional smell every office in Japan seemed adamant on plastering all over. A trio of junior trainees walked by, chatting about lunch plans, barely sparing me a glance. Good. I wasn’t ready for the whole welcome-back parade routine. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready for that.

And there, standing next to a water dispenser like she’d been assigned to guard it with her life, was my alien child. Same silver hair, same stupid brown hat sitting on her head.

Gold Ship straightened the moment she spotted me, ears pricking in that way she did when she thought something dramatic might be about to happen. The water dispenser burbled once behind her.

“The hell are you doing here?” I asked. “You playing hooky again?”

“What?” She gave this loose-shouldered shrug. “Can’t exactly train without a trainer, can I? Besides, I wouldn’t wanna miss your crowning moment.”

I stopped a few paces from her. “Crowning moment?”

She nodded, eyes brightening like she’d just spotted a UFO landing through the window. Which was her baseline, really.

“Well?” Gold Ship asked, grinning.

I kept my face perfectly flat. Held it there until my cheeks started giving off a faint reminder that I was, in fact, human and not stone. Then, very slowly, I lifted my trainer’s badge between two fingers.

The grin on my face started creeping up before I could stop it.

Gold Ship’s jaw dropped so hard I thought it might’ve unhinged.

“WH— NO WAY—” She slapped a hand over her mouth, like she was physically restraining a scream. Her ears kicked backward so fast they fluttered. “You actually passed, Old Man? Like… passed passed? With the real name? The insurance benefits? The personalized parking spot?!”

“Yep.”

That finished her. She did this tiny hop in place, feet barely leaving the floor, just a little vertical jolt like someone stuck a battery pack under her heels. The movement rattled the water dispenser, sending a little tremor through the jug.

“Sensei Old Man is back! Old Man’s legally back!” she yelled out. A couple junior trainees slowed their walk just to get a look. “Better watch out, world! Because Super Gol and her loyal sidekick Captain Five-O’Clock Shadow are here to enact righteous fury upon the racing universe!”

“Hey, hey—easy.” I put both hands up like I was trying to calm a skittish dog. “Nobody’s enacting any righteous fury anywhere. I still gotta figure out everyone’s schedules.”

She stopped mid-celebration, one heel still half lifted, then lowered herself like gravity had just remembered she existed. “Right… Yeah… Scheduling. Naturally.”

Her eyes did that fast little dart she did when her brain grabbed the wheel. “So, that means you’re making all six of us duke it out in the Arima Kinen, right?”

“What—no!”

“Why not?” she said. “We could make it a battle royale! Winner gets bragging rights and a commemorative supply of éclairs. Losers get slightly smaller éclairs.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Because the Arima isn’t a playground free-for-all—it’s a fan vote… And because I like my job and prefer to keep it at least until next year.”

Golshi rocked back on her heels, hands sliding into her pockets like she’d just accepted her sentencing. “So… no battle royale.”

“No.”

She made a small grunt. “Welp, there goes my year-long plans.”

She pressed the button on the dispenser beside her and let the paper cup fill. The dispenser burbled again in that faintly desperate way like it knew who it was dealing with.

While she drank, I let myself drift a step back, taking in the corridor where the posters about ankle-strain prevention still held up. I’d walked these halls a long time ago when everything still felt possible. Coming back now… Well, the place didn’t exactly look better or worse. But it was definitely familiar in a way that nudged the old parts of my head awake.

Golshi crushed her empty cup and tossed it into the bin with a little flick. “So what now, Old Man? You gonna go sign more things? Kick open a door and demand tribute?”

“You and I are going back to school,” I said, deadpan. “Before Rudolf takes off my head for clocking in late on day one.”

“Wow, look at you. Very responsible,” she said. “Starting to feel like forever ago when you got your ass kicked by a bunch of yakuza thugs.”

A junior trainer walking past froze. She turned her head, reconsidered her life choices, and kept going.

I let out a slow sigh and didn’t dignify anything with a reply. Just headed for the parking signs.

Golshi trailed behind me with that loose, bouncing gait of hers. “Hey, so, you ever get your car fixed? I mean, it got rained on pretty bad that night. Like, biblical-flood bad.”

We stepped into the elevator. The doors slid shut with that tired mechanical wheeze every old building develops.

“Don’t worry about the Z,” I said. “I left it at a friend’s garage.”

Her ears twitched. “A friend? You have friends? With garages?”

The doors opened at the basement level. Cool air drifted out reeking of concrete and faint oil. I kept walking. Golshi fell into step beside me, sniffed once like the place offended her nose, then shook off the thought.

“So then, wait… If the Z’s left behind,” she cocked her head, “why’re we coming down here?”

“Thought I’d treat myself with our second-place winnings.”

I reached into my pocket, felt around until the fob nudged my thumb, and clicked the button.

Somewhere ahead, a set of headlights gave a brief, sharp blink. Sharp enough to slice the dim basement in two.

Golshi’s ears shot upright. She looked towards the row of reserved spots.

Then she stopped dead.

Her eyes went wide in a way I’d only ever seen when she caught sight of something that rewrote the rules of her personal universe.

Sitting under the low ceiling, with that badass silver paint catching what little light dared wander down here, was a brand-new Saleen 302 in Ingot Silver. The kind of machine built with the subtlety of a sucker punch. Hood vents, aggressive stance, lines that made the whole thing look like it was waiting for someone to give it an excuse for their mere existence.

Golshi made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a confused bark. “What, wha— Is that yours?”

I shrugged one shoulder. “Keys seem to think so.”

She whipped towards me. “Okay, hold on… Since when do you drive something like… like that? Thought anything made after the nineties gave you cancer or something.”

“Just figured it was time for an upgrade,” I said. “Besides, the dealership guy gave me a discount after I corrected his grip on a torque wrench.”

That little sliver of my old self—the one with bad decisions and worse haircut choices—lit up in the corner of my voice. I could feel it. The part of me that used to run headlong into stupid trouble just because someone told me not to.

I opened the driver door. The cabin lights flicked on, catching the immaculate interior leather. I could still smell the dealership on it. That sterile, expensive scent that tells you someone else polished it before you ever touched it.

Golshi hovered behind me, tail swishing in baffled circles.

I slid into the seat, letting the door rest against my knee. She blinked and shook her head fast, like she was resetting her brain.

I turned the ignition.

The V8 woke up with that deep, throaty churn that filled the whole garage and pressed against the concrete pillars. Dust shivered off a pipe overhead. Even the EXIT sign flickered once, like the car had startled a piece of wiring.

Golshi went still. Her expression slipped from awe into something quieter, the kind of wide-eyed look she saved for the simulation-breaking moments of her week.

“Oh,” she said under her breath. “Oh that sounds very illegal.”

I let one corner of my mouth tip up. My fingers tapped the wheel with a loose, familiar rhythm.

“Don’t just stand there,” I said. “Get in.”

She climbed in slowly, bracing one hand against the door like the leather might vanish if she moved too fast. The cabin swallowed her in one smooth motion, all that careful stitching nobody ever appreciates until the first spill.

“So,” she said, “we tearing the school gates off their hinges with this beast or what?”

“We’ll get to that part later… Gotta make a stop first.”

I eased the shifter into first. My heel settled on the throttle, and for a split second I felt the whole chassis give this eager little roll, like a dog bracing for the throw of a frisbee.

Then I pressed down.

The rear tires snapped loose before the car actually moved—a brief, frantic scrub of rubber on concrete. When the grip caught, it shoved us forward with that blunt, honest violence you only get from American steel and poor impulse control.

The V8 rolled through the basement. I felt the floor tremble under my heel. Beside me, Golshi let out a noise that was too delighted to be legal.

Her grave stood out from the rest, clean in that way a grave gets when someone comes by often. Someone with time and better habits than me. Fresh chrysanthemums sat in the vase, stems trimmed tight. A little towel rested on the stone ledge, folded in a way that told me whoever came here had a careful pair of hands. Definitely not mine.

MIRACLE KINGDOM
その努力を愛し、その疾走を憶う
(Beloved in Effort, Remembered in Motion)

Caught me off guard. I’d barely visited after the funeral. Had plenty of excuses over the years. Distance, work, shame, you name it. But standing here now, they all felt like old receipts I should’ve thrown out ages ago.

I crouched beside the stone and fished around for the incense packet. I slid a stick out, thumbed the tip, and dug for the lighter I kept forgetting to replace. Took three tries. The flint kept skipping, metal scraping against my thumb until the damn thing finally caught. A narrow orange flame wobbled in the breeze, and I cupped my hand around it like I was nursing something fragile back to life.

I planted it in the little brass holder someone had left in front of the stone. Probably the same someone who kept the moss from creeping up the sides.

Then I dropped to my knees.

Cold seeped through my pants almost immediately, that slow wet chill that reminded me I hadn’t done this in a long time. I pressed my palms together. Held them there in front of my chest, fingers lined up the way my mom taught me when I was too young to understand why it mattered.

I closed my eyes.

“Hey.”

My voice came out rough. Like I’d been chewing gravel all morning.

“Been a while, huh? I mean… Where do I even start?”

The wind picked up, rattling the trees behind me. A crow called out from somewhere overhead.

“I, uh… got my badge back today.” A small snort left me before I could wrangle it. “Yeah. Shocking, I know. Took me long enough, right? But I’m training again. For real this time. You’d love them. Real messy bunch. They don’t always know what to do with themselves, but… Hell, neither did you at first. Or me.”

The smoke thinned for a moment.

“I should’ve dropped by sooner… That’s on me. All of it is, if we’re being honest… I thought about all the times I should’ve fought. ’Bout all the times I should’ve given you a proper send-off…”

My throat tightened just enough to make swallowing feel like threading a needle.

“Guess what I’m trying to say now is… I’m trying. That’s the truth of it. Trying to be someone you wouldn’t mind being trained by again. Someone who doesn’t sink every time he thinks about the past.”

The incense tip glowed a soft orange. Faint ash trembled at the edge.

“Oh, and I got a new car, too. You’d probably hate it. Too loud. Too showy. You always did like the Fairlady—never wanted to hit a race without it.”

A breeze ran through the camphor branches overhead. The leaves rustled in this soft, dragging sound.

“Someone’s been taking care of this place,” I said. “You’d… like that, I think. Being remembered in the right way. I should probably buy them a drink if I ever come across them.”

The breeze slid across the stones, low and cool, lifting a few strands of hair off my forehead.

“But now I’m back in the job. Got a team counting on me. And I figure… I figure you’d want me to see it through this time. You ran your race. I can’t change how it ended. But I can damn well make sure the next ones don’t end the same way.”

I opened my eyes.

The gravestone sat in front of me, unchanging. Same letters. Same smooth surface.

I eased my hands down onto my thighs, felt the damp through the fabric. My knees had started giving off this mild ache. I pushed myself upright. One knee popped in a way that suggested it wanted a union rep present.

The incense had burned down to a nub. The smoke thinned out, barely visible now against the sky.

Behind me, Golshi stood with her weight rolled onto the sides of her loafers, tail hanging still. No space-cadet babbling this time. Just her standing there, arms folded like she’d been posted as my emotional lookout.

“Well,” I said, dusting off the dirt that clung to my palms, “that’s that done.”

Golshi gave this soft, crooked smile. “She seemed like a good kid.”

I huffed. “Yeah, well, that’s what she’d want you to believe. Why do you think I can handle you so well?”

She just cracked a small laugh.

We headed back to the Saleen after. The air around the car still held that faint warm-metal smell left by the engine. Golshi circled the hood, then slid in with more ceremony than she used for anything related to training.

“All right,” I said, settling in. “Enough of the sappiness. What do you say we switch things up?”

“Oh yeah?” Golshi said, leaning back until her hat bumped the seat. “Whatcha got in mind?”

I turned the key halfway, and the stereo chose that exact moment to spring to life.

Huey Lewis’s “The Power of Love” blasted out. The drums thumped hard enough to kick a ripple through the plastic covers under her feet.

I dug into the center console, fished out two pairs of black sunglasses—cheap, flimsy, gas-station garbage. But they had that perfect, unapologetic tint.

I handed one pair over.

She didn’t even argue. Just slid them on with an adjustment at the bridge like she was calibrating her cool factor down to the millimeter.

Then I put the Saleen in gear and sent it.

The car slid forward onto the outer roads, engine humming that steady, low growl.

Traffic on the outer roads pulsed in slow waves. The Saleen responded exactly how a creature that size should: a steady, patient growl under my foot, never apologizing for taking up its space.

Golshi rolled the passenger window down. Warm wind rushed in, mixing the dealership smell with real world grit. She rested her arm along the door, copying the same posture I used without even thinking. Her hand hung loose at the wrist, fingers tapping at the breeze.

Tokyo blurred by in pieces. Salarymen weaved through sidewalk shade. A pair of delivery scooters sliced past with that faint two-stroke whine. The Saleen’s reflection followed us in the glass of street-facing shops: low stance, deep shadow under the chassis, sunlight skating over the hood in thin streaks. Air rushed through the cracked window and tugged at Golshi’s hair until a few strands broke loose from her hat straps.

She leaned into it.

The city thinned out, replaced by long stretches of noise barriers and low warehouses. A billboard passed overhead advertising some energy drink I’d never heard of. The logo looked like someone dropped a can of paint and tried to call it art.

We peeled off at the exit towards Fuchu. Pavement changed texture under the tires. The steering picked up those tiny vibrations and passed them straight into my palms, but the suspension held. It better have. Paid good money for this baby.

Near the academy outskirts, clusters of jogging Umamusume dotted the lanes that traveled beside the main road. Their ears flicked towards the Saleen as we rolled past. Most of them slowed, staring with that expression young athletes get when they spot a kaiju heading their way.

Golshi leaned her elbow a little farther out the window and gave them a small head nod. Casual, unhurried.

A couple of them nearly stumbled.

We turned through the main gate. The guard on duty blinked hard, probably not expecting a street-legal missile to appear in the middle of his shift.

The academy grounds opened up ahead, summer sun hitting every reflective surface like it was trying to blind someone. Students dotted the walkways, most carrying bottles of honey juice or rolled-up training mats. Heads turned as the Saleen eased past the courtyard.

The engine dropped to a quiet rumble as I slowed near the staff parking rows. The car’s shadow stretched across the painted lines, sharp and clean.

I pulled into an empty slot at the end of the row. The shade from a nearby tree broke across the windshield in uneven patches.

Somewhere out there, five girls were about to learn their washed-up trainer had returned to campus in a car built like a brick shithouse. If phoenixes drove, they’d probably pick something with a warranty. But the image stuck anyway—some half-burned bird behind the wheel of a Saleen with a grudge.

Didn’t matter. Point was, I was back.

I had one shoe halfway out the door when Golshi’s hand latched onto my forearm.

“Wait.”

I looked over. She wasn’t grinning. That was my first red flag. Golshi without a grin was like a stray firework with no fuse.

“I totally forgot to mention this, but we’ve got a little surprise for you in the team room— Do you… mind if I blindfold you all the way there?”

My brow raised. Took me a second to get words together. Realistically, she could’ve slung me over her shoulder and hauled me there like a misdelivered package. So I sighed, picked the option that involved less spine damage.

“Fine.”

If you asked twenty-year-old me where I’d be in the next twenty or so years, being marched through a building full of elite athletes while blindfolded like I’m playing the world’s biggest game of Pin the Tail on the Uma was probably not gonna crack the top fifty.

And yet here I was. Walking where my feet told me to, hoping my shins didn’t collide with anything expensive.

“Excuse us,” Golshi called out. “Comin’ through. Don’t mind the blind man, folks!”

Something brushed my left shoulder. Someone sidestepped too late.

“Was this blindfold really necessary…?” My voice came out gravelly.

“Heck yeah it is,” she said. I heard the jangle of whatever junk she kept in her pockets. “You ought to count your blessings, Old Man. If you were anyone else, I’d be haulin’ you around in a burlap sack right now.”

Suddenly, that URA officer’s warning made perfect sense now.

We’d barely made it ten paces before a voice, carried by someone who took pride in speaking in straight lines, cut from behind us.

“Gold Ship?”

We stopped. Or rather, Golshi stopped, while I kept going for half a step and bumped into what I suspected was her shoulder.

The voice came again, this time closer. “What on Earth are you doing?”

“Ah! Trainer Kashimoto!” Golshi said, sweet as a kid trying to convince a parent she hadn’t absolutely broken their vase. “Fancy meeting you here.”

By this point, I could practically hear the other woman’s eyebrow rise. Hell, I’d used my imagination enough times in the past, I could probably make out exactly what she was doing too, standing there with her arms locked tight across her ribs. Her mouth would be pressed into one of those thin lines that didn’t twitch unless someone mentioned a missed deadline.

“Why is that ‘fancy’? I work here,” Kashimoto said. She had one of those deep voices that sounded like she’d been born already disappointed in everyone. “Who is this man? And why is he blindfolded?”

I lifted a hand carefully, like I didn’t want to spook an animal. “Just so we’re clear, this isn’t a kidnapping… I did consent to this.”

Golshi cut in. “It’s a surprise, actually.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Kashimoto said.

Her footsteps approached. I could feel her gaze doing the slow elevator ride up my frame—the worn New Balances, the washed-out jeans, the pink and yellow Hawaiian shirt. Then finally, to my face.

Well, most of it, at least.

“…You’re Trainer Itonaga,” Kashimoto finally said. “The one who recently returned from retirement.”

“That’s me,” I said. “In the flesh.”

“And blindfolded.”

“…And blindfolded.”

Kashimoto turned that slow, judgmental stare on Golshi. Golshi responded with the kind of grin you give someone right before you commit a minor crime.

Kashimoto eventually broke the glare first, with a small tilt of her head. She stepped in closer, close enough that I caught the faint scent of her tea leaves and the stench of photocopier ozone on her blazer.

“Fine, then. I won’t interfere,” she said. “But just so you know, Trainer Itonaga—there were several journalists wandering around campus earlier looking for you. I suggest you address that before it becomes a problem.”

I let out a low grunt that might’ve been a sigh in another life. “Great…”

She gave a curt nod, barely any movement. Then she pivoted away, heels tapping out this metronome against the tile.

Golshi waited until she disappeared around the corner before leaning towards me with that conspiratorial squint she used when preparing for nonsense.

“Hey.” She nudged my elbow. “C’mon, let’s keep moving, before the press sees you like this—last thing Tracen needs is a story about a hostage situation.”

“Honestly? You could do way worse than that…”

The air had grown warmer, carrying that faint reek of floor polish and someone’s forgotten bag of honey juice. Team Room 3B. I’d spent enough nights in that place to recognize it blind. Literally, in this case.

The door hinges complained as someone pushed them open.

“Okay…” Golshi murmured behind me. “You can take it off now.”

I pulled the blindfold loose. The sudden brightness slapped my eyes around, and it took a second before my vision sharpened.

Team Astrum stood in front of me in a crooked semicircle. Every single one of them wearing these earnest, borderline-dorky smiles. Behind them hung a tarp with CONGRATULATIONS scrawled across it in letters that barely agreed on size or direction. Someone had used glitter glue. Someone else had clearly tried to ban glitter glue.

A buffet table sat off to the side. An honest-to-god buffet. Sandwiches perfectly arranged. Fruit skewers lined up like a crime scene exhibit. And a cake that looked like it had survived a tsunami.

Then—

“CONGRATULATIONS, SENSEI!!”

I practically spasmed. My eyelids fluttered like they were trying to cool down a circuit board.

“What… the hell is going on?”

Sakura Bakushin O practically bounced into my peripheral vision, her sprinter legs working overtime to contain all the voltage inside her.

“It’s your celebration, Sensei!” she declared, chest puffed like a parade marshal. “We wanted to commemorate the day you receive your official license!”

Biwa Hayahide drifted in beside her, adjusting her glasses with that little gesture she did when she thought she was being subtle. “We’ve had this planned for quite some time,” she said. “It seemed only appropriate.”

Rice Shower peeked from behind a stack of paper plates with a tiny smile, her dark hair catching the overhead lights.

“Welcome back, Uncle Katsu…! I made cookies with Bourbon’s help,” she said softly. “S-sorry if they look a little… angry. But I wanted to try a new recipe.”

I glanced at the cookies. They really did look angry somehow. But the presentation was enthusiastic. The tray had little toothpick flags stuck in them, each one bearing a tiny doodle of a running Umamusume.

From the other end of the table, Agnes Tachyon raised a sparkling cup of something green, something carbonated, something I was one hundred percent sure she’d brewed in violation of at least fifteen health codes.

“Sensei Itonaga!” she shouted. “Welcome back! As a celebration for your return, I’ve designed a custom isotonic drink for optimal neurological refreshment—”

“No experiments today,” I said.

She pouted. Then shrugged.

“Fine… Another time, then.”

Maruzensky—calm as a spring breeze and twice as dangerous—leaned against a pillar, arms crossed.

“Glad to have you back, Sensei, ♪” she said, voice honeyed enough to make Bakushin O choke on her own excitement. “We missed you.”

Golshi hopped forward, hands clasped behind her head. “So? Whaddaya think, Old Man? We did all this while you were off doing your… government paperwork thing. And just between us, Tachyon almost burned down the kitchenette because Hayahide threatened to alphabetize us by height.”

“I did no such thing,” Hayahide said.

Then, barely audible: “It would’ve helped…”

I blinked. Again.

“You all did this… for me?”

Golshi scoffed. “Don’t make it weird. You’re our trainer, o mighty trainer! Our messed-up, cranky, alcoholic trainer. This is just what teams do. Real ones, y’know?”

As I stepped farther into the room, the banner rustled overhead in the AC draft. The team shifted around me, a loose orbit forming out of instinct.

That was when I froze mid-step. Not dramatically, though. Just this stiff hitch like one of my joints hit a thought it couldn’t walk through.

“Hold on,” I said. “If… you guys had all this ready beforehand… What would’ve happened if I didn’t get my license today?”

Tachyon answered before anyone could blink.

“Oh, we would’ve had to throw all of this away,” she said, bright as a lab explosion. “That amounts to about thirty-thousand yen out of our pockets, mind you.”

I stared at her. She stared back, unbothered, already calculating the next poor life choice.

Bakushin O flinched like she’d just watched someone kick a puppy. “W-Wait, Tachyon-san! We weren’t going to throw it away! I told you we could repurpose it!”

“Repurpose how?” Tachyon countered. “Trainers failing a licensure exam is not usually a cake-worthy event.”

Rice tilted her head. “We were going to still have the party, actually.”

Gold Ship nodded. “Yeah. We even had the alternate banner ready just in case.”

I turned my head just enough to catch her expression. Too proud. Too suspicious.

“…Alternate banner?”

She reached under the snack table and pulled out a rolled sheet of butcher paper. The thing unfurled across the buffet with a loud papery whip, knocking over a stack of plastic cups.

The banner read, in violently red marker:

MAYBE NEXT TIME, OLD MAN

There was a caricature of me on the side. I looked like a sunburned zombie, stink lines and all.

Hayahide adjusted her glasses, refusing to look directly at the disaster. “For the record, I voted against using Old Man as the preferred nomenclature.”

Gold Ship tossed the banner away. “Yeah, well, democracy lost. Womp womp.”

I looked back at the mess of decorations and half-mangled banners, the buffet that was probably hours old but still arranged with the earnestness of a shrine, and the six idiots who decided my life was worth thirty thousand yen and a bad drawing.

And something in my chest shifted. Like it was shaking rust off of itself.

Bakushin O clapped once. Somewhere down the hall a freshman probably startled hard enough to mix up her training shoes.

“Sensei!” she announced, straight-backed and righteous. “You must eat before the food gets warm! It would be a shame to waste this moment!”

Then she whipped toward Maruzensky like a commander directing artillery.

“Maruzen-san! Please engage the musical accompaniment!”

Maruzensky didn’t even blink. “You got it, hombre.  ♪”

She tapped the button on my old boombox—something I’d left in the team room last season and expected to die from loneliness. Instead, it crackled to life, and Cyndi Lauper’s opening riff spilled out, too bright and cheerful for anything involving my name.

The girls moved in unison. Plates appeared. Tongs snapped. Golshi launched herself into the buffet, assembling a plate like she was defusing a bomb. Tachyon tore into the skewers with that hungry-scientist intensity. Bakushin O stacked food at frightening speed, somehow avoiding a single spill.

I wasn’t hungry yet, so I just grabbed something small—a pastry the size of a thumb—and pretended that counted as engagement. My human stomach was not designed to commune with the caloric shitshow that is Umamusume metabolism.

I ducked over to a corner near the whiteboard somebody had shrouded under a sheet. Took a sip from a bottle of honey juice—stuff the whole academy treats like liquid gold. Sticky-sweet with a weirdly floral drift on the back end. Not bad. Felt like it coated the inside of my ribs.

Then, right on schedule, Maruzensky drifted in beside me, leaning against the corner of the table with a posture so relaxed it felt rehearsed.

“Not hungry?” she asked, voice low enough that it cut through the music without competing with it.

“Nah, not really,” I said. “The folks in the URA office were handing out those Olive Garden breadsticks for free… I may have taken a bit more than the limit.”

Her laugh came warm and soft, like she let it out in pieces. “Yeah, those things’ll sneak up on you…”

I huffed. Something between a laugh and an exhale filtered through the old scar tissue in my chest.

Across the room, Tachyon had somehow convinced Golshi to hold her ankles while she tried to chug straight from a juice jug’s nozzle. Bakushin O stood beside them, bouncing in place like she was calling plays for a football team. Hayahide stood at the edge of the blast radius, arms crossed, wearing the facial expression of a woman rehearsing her own obituary.

Maruzen nudged my shoulder lightly. “Oh—by the way. Little Miss Rudolf wanted to see us in her office for a little celebration of our own. Doesn’t have to be today, though. We can drop by tomorrow.”

I turned to her. “Wait, you too? What’d we do?”

“It’s nothing bad, don’t worry. ♪ She just wanted to fill us in on the deets now that we’re off the chopping block, especially with summer camp around the corner.”

Took my brain a few seconds to dig through dusted-over memory drawers.

Then it hit me.

“Shit, you’re right,” I muttered. “Summer camp. I forgot all about that.”

That was when I noticed the whiteboard behind her, the one someone had draped under a sheet. Corners of the fabric sagged unevenly, barely hiding the fact that whatever was underneath had been manhandled into place by people who didn’t understand the concept of subtlety.

“Hey,” I said, squinting at it. “What’s with the sheet? I don’t remember putting that there.”

“Ah, that?”

I shot myself back out of reflex. Tachyon materialized at my elbow. She had that sideways-lean posture she used when she wanted to invade personal space under the guise of science.

“That is meant to be our final surprise for you,” she said. “We had intended to unveil it after our celebratory nutrient-loading exercise. But since you’re practically champing at the bit to know, I suppose we can accelerate the timeline.”

“Who said I was—”

“Golshi!” she announced. “It’s time for our feature presentation protocol!”

Across the room, Golshi stopped mid-conversation with Bakushin O and spun around like someone had yanked the crank on a jack-in-the-box.

“Now? Oh hell yeah!”

She barreled towards us with a grin so wide it could blind a lesser man.

The two of them flanked the board: Tachyon steering with the self-importance of an air-traffic controller, Golshi doing the grunt work with all the finesse of a forklift operated by a golden retriever. The wheels shrieked the whole way across the room, advertising our business to anyone with ears.

“Before we begin, Sensei,” Tachyon said, clasping her hands in front of her like she was preparing to defend a thesis, “I want to clarify that this entire endeavor is merely part of my ongoing case study regarding the psychological influence of visual identity on team synchronization and performance.”

Golshi muttered under her breath, “Translation: she likes it here now.”

Tachyon didn’t even turn. Her smile just tightened into something sharp enough to slice skulls.

I held up a hand. “All right, time out. What the hell are you two talking about? What did you do?”

Tachyon tilted her head. “Well… In order to understand the gravity of our decision, let us first begin with a bit of context. You are aware that Tracen Academy’s team names usually follow a theme derived from notable stars, yes? Pollux, Merope, Dubhe, just to name a few. Each name corresponds to a specific celestial identity intended to inspire competitive ambition.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “And yet, Team Astrum remains anomalous. ‘Astrum’ simply means ‘star’ in Latin. A generic categorization. Hardly evocative. Certainly not befitting a squad of our… unique behavioral variance.”

Golshi leaned against the board and whispered loudly, “She means we’re all weirdos.”

“Precisely!” Tachyon said. “And so we came to the conclusion that our team required a more… specific identity. Something distinct. Something reflective of who we are and what we intend to accomplish in the coming years.”

My stomach did a slow slide south. “Please tell me you didn’t try to rename the team.”

“Oh no, Sensei,” Tachyon said, grabbing the edge of the sheet. “We didn’t try to rename the team…”

“We succeeded,” Golshi finished, grabbing the other.

They looked at each other, nodded, and whipped it free.

Fwump! The fabric hit the floor.

My mouth opened. Took a while for the words to come out.

“…Team R-One?”

There it was, on the whiteboard—drawn in bold teal marker, accented with angry red underlines, and circled three times like a crime scene:

TEAM R136a1
(Team R-One for short!)

I blinked once. Felt the inside of my skull shift around.

“…Okay,” I said slowly. “Now walk me through why the hell my team looks like it got sponsored by a tech startup.”

Tachyon brightened. Her eyes took on that thin, sharp gleam she got whenever she smelled the chance to lecture someone.

“Excellent question, Sensei! You see, R136a1 is one of the most massive and luminous stars known to modern astrophysics. Three hundred times the mass of the sun to be specific, and seven million times brighter! It’s a Wolf-Rayet star—meaning it’s burning itself alive from the inside out, shedding mass in stellar winds so violent they reshape entire nebulae around it.”

“Translation: big, angry fireball,” Golshi chimed in.

Tachyon’s grin sharpened. “And here’s the beautiful part—you can’t actually see R136a1 with the naked eye. Not even with binoculars. It sits at the core of the Tarantula Nebula’s star cluster, but the cluster itself outshines it a hundred times over! You need speckle interferometry just to resolve it as an individual star. In other words,” she leaned forward, eyes gleaming, “it’s invisible unless you know exactly where to look and have the right equipment to perceive it properly.”

She straightened, arms crossed, looking enormously pleased with herself. “Much like our team composition, wouldn’t you say, Sensei?”

I stared at the board again. The teal letters stared back, smug.

“So you named the team after that,” I said.

She nodded. “We selected a star whose instability mirrors our—shall we say—behavioral distribution. The metaphor is scientifically elegant.”

I rubbed the side of my face, trying to massage some blood back into the part of my brain responsible for basic processing. The marker fumes weren’t helping. There was a sweetness to them, like someone had tried to flavor the ink.

“Okay,” I said. “Couple questions.”

Tachyon perked up. “Proceed.”

“…Whose idea was this?”

A ripple of silence passed through the pair. Tachyon spoke first.

“It was a collaborative endeavor,” she said. “Golshi approached me with a conceptual outline, and we merely progressed from there.”

“We pulled an all-nighter for it. Two, technically,” Golshi added, grin wide enough to flash molars.

I dragged a hand down my jaw. “And it never occurred to either of you how ridiculous it sounds? I mean how do you expect a normal person to say that?”

“Well that is what the shorthand is for, Sensei,” Tachyon said. “R-One. Phonetically robust and equally as memorable.” She tapped the board. “And it aligns with our newly-developed team catchphrase.”

“WE ARE ONE!” Golshi hollered, arms shot upward like she expected lightning to pick her up. “Pretty good, right?”

Half the room jumped. A stack of paper plates skidded sideways.

I let my gaze drift back to the name on the board—R136a1. Something about it did have a weird bite to it. Kinda like something you’d find scrawled on the side of a rotting pirate ship. The kids were buzzing about it, though.

And that was when it hit me.

The old team name? Astrum? It didn’t fit anymore, not with this absolute mess of personalities. And certainly not with what they’d clawed through.

Heh… Maybe it never had.

The next day, us adults had our own little party over at the student council office.

Symboli Rudolf had dug out something that probably wasn’t meant for mortal consumption: a 1983 Macallan 18-Year-Old Sherry Oak. I didn’t know the going rate, but judging by the way the amber stuff clung to the side of the glass, I figured asking for the price was its own kind of nightmare.

“So. ‘Team R-One,’ hmm?” Rudolf said, her tone doing that dry little curl. She filled two fingers’ worth into a squat tumbler, then slid it across the desk towards me.

Maruzensky drifted in from the window, all steady presence and quiet amusement. She’d been watching the campus from up there, with its usual summer prep chaos. She pushed off the sill and claimed the glass Rudolf had placed nearest her. The way she held it made the whisky look like a prop in a music video from the ‘90s.

“R-One has a ring to it,” Maruzen said, giving the glass a tiny tilt under her nose. “It’s got pizzazz. ♪ Definitely more than ‘Astrum’ if you ask me.”

“Don’t tell me you called us in here to tell us we should change it,” I muttered, taking my own glass. It tasted all right, but my taste buds are the furthest thing from old money you could get, so don’t take my word for it.

Rudolf huffed a quiet breath through her nose. “Not at all, Itonaga-san. You should know that I have a bit of a soft spot for clever wordplay.”

“That’s putting it lightly,” Maruzen said, turning the glass between her fingers.

Rudolf flicked her a sly glance.

“Still,” she said, eyes back on me, “passing the license examination after such a hiatus is no easy feat. From what I heard, only three other candidates passed this year.”

I leaned back in my chair, the edge of a grin sneaking in before I could stop it.

“Well, I mean… I did have a few decades’ worth of muscle memory rattling around beforehand. That tends to make things a bit easier.”

Maruzen winked. “Easy there, hotshot. ♪ Don’t go signing any autographs just yet.”

Rudolf’s smile lingered for half a second longer, then she packed it away. Fingers laced. Spine straight. The room shifted with her—same furniture, different temperature.

“In any case… The reason why I called you two here wasn’t simply to toast to your reinstatement—though that’s certainly overdue… It’s a matter of logistics. Specifically, regarding the upcoming academy-wide summer camp.”

The word camp landed in my head with the heaviness of old boots. I hadn’t heard it out loud since the nineties, and suddenly I could smell the sea salt and hear the cheap plastic whistles again.

See, back then, summer camp wasn’t much of a ‘program’ as it was a glorified survival test. You ate whatever the cafeteria coughed up, you slept in bunks that felt like penal colony leftovers, and you trained until the world went white at the edges. But who knows? Maybe things had changed.

Maruzen settled onto the edge of Rudolf’s desk, crossing one leg over the other. She looked at the president with that easy confidence of someone who’d survived enough committee meetings to earn immunity.

“All right,” she said. “Lay it on us, sister. What’s the sitch?”

Rudolf nodded once, business mode fully engaged. “Camp begins one week from today and runs through the end of August. As usual, the academy will be dividing the student body into rotating activity blocks—track work, conditioning, specialty workshops, guest seminars… the full spread. Its primary purpose is to consolidate development. And, for teams like yours, it’s a chance to benchmark their performance after a chaotic first half of the year.”

“Oooh kay…” I said.  “So what’s she meant to be doing here, then?”

I tipped my chin towards the right.

Dream Journey stood there like a ghostly librarian, half in the light and cradling her glass like she’d been born knowing how to hold one without spilling a drop. She cocked her head, ears twitching faintly.

“Oh?” she said. “Should I excuse myself?”

“It’s all right, Journey,” Rudolf said without looking over. “That’s just Itonaga-san being Itonaga-san.”

She just nodded in response.

Maruzen leaned forward a touch. “Okay, so far this all sounds like typical summer camp hullabaloo.” Her eyes flicked briefly to Dream Journey. “But why loop Expeditionary Support into this?”

Rudolf slid a screen towards us. Names stacked in tight rows. Team rosters split across columns. Bus manifests color-coded by departure time. Housing blocks labeled A through F like we were sorting laundry. The whole thing looked like someone had taken a spreadsheet and beat it with a stick until it confessed.

“As you may recall,” she said, “Team Astr— R-One… was not expected to survive the Constellation Cup. Planning for summer camp began months in advance. And at the time those decisions were made, your team didn’t exist on paper. That is to say,” she tapped a blank cell near the bottom of the manifest, “no transportation slots were ever allocated for you.”

I set my glass down, swallowing the drink harder than I meant to.

“You’re shitting me.”

Rudolf’s mouth thinned. “I wish I was…”

Maruzen leaned in, squinting at the screen like she could guilt it into changing. “Well—can’t you just talk it over with the top brass? I mean, there’s always a few no-shows. Kids pull out last minute all the time. You could probably get Journey to shake loose a couple seats that way.”

“Under normal circumstances, yes—that would be the ideal move. But, after what happened during the board hearing, I do need to tread carefully where your team is concerned.”

I felt my jaw tighten. “What do you mean?”

“Officially, I’m still the academy president. My word still carries institutional weight. But, the internal perception has shifted—and in a very subtle way, too… There are people in this building now who second-guess my judgment when it comes to R-One. They see your team as my personal project of sorts.”

Maruzen’s expression cooled, more focused than angry.

Rudolf picked up her own glass and just held it there. “If I push too hard on your behalf, even doing something as small as reallocate resources would confirm their suspicions. That I’m prioritizing R-One over fairness. And if that perception solidifies, it won’t just hurt me. It’ll hurt you and Gold Ship and everyone else in the team. Every win they earn will get an asterisk. Every opportunity I create for them will be called favoritism.”

Dream Journey stepped forward.

“I apologize, Trainer Itonaga.” Her voice was polite in the way diplomacy manuals teach—soft and completely useless. “I do wish there was a cleaner solution.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. The room went quiet except for the faint hum of the air unit in the corner. Maruzen swirled her whisky but didn’t say anything. Rudolf sat there like a statue commissioned to represent institutional regret.

I stared at the screen. All those neat little boxes, routes and beds accounted for. My girls weren’t in any of them. Not because they didn’t deserve to be. Because the paperwork didn’t think they’d even make it this far.

“Shit,” I muttered. “So what’s the play?”

Rudolf finally took a sip. Set the glass down with a soft click. “Well, that depends on how creative you’re willing to get.”

Her tone shifted a shade warmer, just enough that it started sounding like a weird form of encouragement.

“Itonaga-san, your team is… adaptable.” Her eyes flicked to me, then Maruzen. “You survived probation, an identity scandal, and an entire tournament. I trust that both of you can resolve the transportation issue without losing anyone along the way.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment. Maruzen was already looking at me with that half-lidded, knowing expression.

“You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?” she asked.

I was.

The one guy who always had an angle. A connection. A phone call. A cousin whose cousin’s wife owed him a favor.

Except now, he wasn’t working any angles. He was behind a desk, paying the price for bailing me out.

“Yamabe-san can’t help,” Rudolf said, reading my silence. “I already asked.”

Of course she had.

She folded her hands again. “If R-One wishes to attend summer camp, you will need to secure your own transportation. And unless you plan to beg the wider faculty for favors, then I’m afraid it’ll have to come out of your own budget.”

Maruzen looked at me with a smile that was just as warm as it was clueless.

“That shouldn’t be a problem for you. Right, Sensei?”

I swirled the glass in my hand. My reflection stared back at me.

Yeah… Of course not.

I pulled the team room door open for Maruzen, and what greeted us looked like the final hours of a low-budget party rental return.

Someone had tried. They really did. The buffet table sat folded against the wall, its legs still carrying streaks of something sticky near the joints. A garbage bag slumped in the corner, tied but leaking the faint vinegar smell of old fruit. The congratulations banner hung at a diagonal now, one corner freed from its tape and curling toward the floor like it had given up halfway through the night.

But there were gaps in the cleanup effort. A few paper plates lay facedown under chairs, and the whiteboard with our new team name still dominated the back wall.

“Hey, it’s Sensei Old Man and Not-so-Sensei Old Lady!” Golshi hollered from across the room, perched cross-legged on one of the folding tables. She had a mahjong tile pinched between two fingers, waving it at us like a tiny rectangular flag.

I saw Maruzen’s jaw tighten. The muscle near her temple twitched twice.

“Where’s everyone else?” I asked, stepping over what might’ve once been a pastry wrapper.

“They’re on a… food coma recovery mission,” Golshi said, slapping her tile down hard enough to rattle the table legs. “Turns out when you eat ten times your body weight in party food, your insides start to act all funny. Tachyon’s got them all doing some kind of ‘digestive circulation protocol’ on the track right now.”

She picked up another tile, squinted at it, then discarded it with the decisiveness of someone who had no idea how mahjong actually worked.

“Hayahide tried to get everyone to clean this place up properly last night,” she continued, “but Rice went back to the dorms around nine, and the rest of us just kinda… followed. Came back this morning and it smelled like a bakery had a cage fight with a juice bar.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “You could’ve at least hosted party games with your friends somewhere less… grody.”

Maruzen walked past me towards the window, her shoes making soft sticking sounds on patches of floor we’d definitely need to mop later. She cranked one window open. Fresh air spilled in, cutting through the stale sugar haze.

The girl sitting to Golshi’s left flashed me a grin that was about sixty percent mischief, forty percent genuine warmth.

“Well, well, well. If it ain’t the Bossman himself. Don’t worry about us—the grime’s part of the charm.”

Nakayama Festa. I’d recognize that beanie anywhere. Pretty sure she wore it during a pool session once.

The third player was someone I didn’t clock right away. She sat across from Golshi with her back straight as rebar, one hand resting on the tile rack like she was posing for a portrait nobody asked her to sit for. Orange hair pulled back tight, expression somewhere between bored royalty and a cat that just knocked your drink off the table on purpose. She turned her head real slow and fixed me with a stare that could’ve been charged for murder.

“So,” she said, voice smooth and precise. “This, then, is the famed trainer of whom Golshi speaks with such… colorful language.”

I glanced at Golshi. She was grinning like she’d just set a fire and wanted to see how long it’d take me to notice.

“I believe this to be your first time meeting her,” Golshi said, leaning back. “Orfevre—Sensei Old Man. Sensei Old Man—Orfevre. We are… teaching her the ancient and noble art of tile-slapping.”

“Mahjong,” Orfevre corrected, still looking at me. “A game of strategy and calculation… Qualities I have observed your ward does not particularly possess in abundance.”

Great. Either this girl genuinely thinks she’s royalty, or she’s LARPed as a Dungeons & Dragons character so hard it overtook her real self. But considering she’s friends with Golshi—could go either way, really.

“Hey, FYI, I’m killing it hardcore style over here,” Golshi protested.

“You have discarded three tiles that would have completed my hand,” Orfevre said flatly. “Your generosity is noted.”

Nakayama snorted into her fist.

I stepped closer to the table, mostly because standing in the doorway made me feel like I was interrupting something, which I absolutely was. The tiles were scattered across the surface. Orfevre’s section of the table looked like it had been arranged with a ruler, while Golshi’s looked like a small earthquake had just passed through.

“Hey,” I murmured towards Golshi, giving her sleeve a little nudge. “Mind if I borrow you for a sec?”

She leaned back in her chair like she’d been waiting for a reason to eject. “Eh, sure. This round was already over for me. I’m more of a Sabacc girl, anyway.”

She slapped her last tile face-down like she was clocking out of a job she never applied for. “Sorry, ladies, this is my stop. Go make momma proud, will ya?”

Nakayama gave this lazy wave. Orfevre didn’t even shift her posture, just flicked her attention our way and dipped her chin the bare minimum required by law.

Golshi rolled off the table, boots thumping once against the linoleum, and the three of us drifted toward the corner where the R-One whiteboard lived. She crossed her arms, leaning one hip against the wall, eyes flicking between me and Maruzen.

“All right,” she muttered. “Who died?”

“We’ve got a problem,” I said. “Summer camp starts next week. And we’ve got jack shit for bus seats. As in nada. The academy’s spreadsheet thinks you’re all ghosts.”

Golshi’s ears tilted forward. “What? Why?”

“Because,” I said, “nobody expected you lunatics to make it past the Cup. And once we did, all the transport was already locked in anyway. We’re not on any manifests. We’re not even on the overflow lists.”

She stared at me, eyes narrowing just enough that I could’ve sworn something in her head calibrated itself. “Sheesh… Talk about a kick in the dick.”

Over at the table, Orfevre plucked a tile from the wall and set it down in front of her.

“Riichi.”

Nakayama slumped back with a groan. “Damn it, I walked right into that.”

Maruzen drifted closer to me, voice pitched low. “So here’s the deal. We’ve got seven warm bodies including Sensei here and none of our cars can haul that many without violating several traffic laws. So we’re looking at alternatives. Rentals, maybe. But that’s gonna cost money. A lot of it. We were hoping you and the rest of the girls could pitch in from the team fund.”

Golshi blinked at us. One of those long, slow shutters where you could almost hear the gears grinding behind her eyes. Then she dragged a knuckle across her cheek, thoughtful in the way that always meant prepare for impact.

“Yeah, soooo… Funny story.” A grin started creeping in. Never a good sign. “We, uh… kinda already spent most of what we got from the Cup.”

And there it was.

I kept my voice down, but the words still came out sharp enough to nick drywall. “How? You kids walked out of the Cup with enough prize money to renovate my apartment.”

Golshi’s mouth folded into a wounded little pout. “Yeah, well, you know how it is. Besides, nobody told us the academy was gonna pretend we didn’t exist. Can you really blame us?” She scratched her cheek with the blunt edge of her knuckle, eyes sliding everywhere except mine.

“What,” I said, slow and careful, “did you possibly buy that could cost that much?”

She perked up like I’d finally asked the right question. “Oh, y’know. The usual stuff.”

I sighed. Here we go.

“Ricey got this insane rare book collection from an author in Belgium. First editions and stuff. Hayahide ordered this ultra-premium designer hair spray pack from France—apparently it’s got minerals in it that can only be harvested during a specific moon phase. Anyway.” She waved a hand. “Tachyon had to renovate her entire lab. Again. But I’m not really sure what Baku-chan spent hers on. Had a chat with Laurel the other day and she said something about the world’s largest firework. Make of that what you will.”

“And you?”

She smiled, bright and proud.

“I invested in UmaCoin.”

“You what.”

She nodded, beaming. “As you do. But don’t worry—when that spike hits, I’m bringing everyone to Tahiti for a week. Overwater bungalows. Little umbrellas in the drinks. Think about it. Isn’t that super fun?”

I lowered my head until my forehead hovered a few inches above my chest. Didn’t touch anything. Just stayed there, eyes shut, breathing slow. The floor still smelled faintly like sugar and citrus cleaner.

Then I turned to Maruzen.

“And you,” I said. “You’ve been playing my little deputy this whole time, but don’t think I’m letting you slip out the back door here.”

She met my look without flinching. Gave me that soft, airy smile she used when she was already three moves ahead and deciding how gently to land the bad news. One finger came up to her lip.

“Well,” she said. “Let’s just say that Tata needed some overdue maintenance.”

I waited. I’m very good at waiting.

“And also,” she added, “a little detailing.”

More waiting.

“…And maybe a full engine rebuild,” she said quietly, the shine draining out of her expression like someone had pulled a cord behind her eyes. Her shoulders sank.

I finally let the breath out. It tasted like a lot like floor wax and the creeping realization that I was absolutely going to have to fix this myself.

Golshi jabbed a thumb at my chest. “Hey, don’t think your hands are clean here either, Old Man. How much did that new Saleen run you?”

I froze. She had me dead to rights, the little shit.

Maruzen’s brow ticked up. “Saleen?” she asked, looking at me like I’d just confessed to a second family.

Golshi leaned in, eyes sparkling. “Oh yeah. He’s been parading around in that shiny new toy since yesterday.”

I scrubbed a hand through my hair. “All right, I get it—we’re all broke. You’ve made your point. But unless any of you have a secret stash under the floorboards, we’re gonna have to get creative if we want to show up to camp in something that isn’t a stolen delivery truck.”

Golshi perked up. “Hey… I might know a guy with a delivery truck.”

“No,” I said.

“You didn’t even hear the pitch.”

“I don’t need to. If you’re the one making it, then God help us all.”

Nakayama slapped another tile down at the table and chuckled. “Honestly, Bossman ain’t wrong.”

Orfevre didn’t look up from her hand. “Proceed cautiously, ‘Sensei Old Man’. Gold Ship’s stratagems often demand the most lionhearted of participants. Lower your guard even once, and she will devour you whole.”

I pressed my fingertips into the side of my forehead, trying to massage the incoming headache into something smaller.

The academy bell went off—one of those oversized, steel-lunged clappers the facilities office probably bought in bulk back when the Bubble still had air in it. Kids peeled off towards the cafeteria in noisy clumps. Trainers drifted with them. Even the pigeons got in on the commute.

But not me.

I stayed holed up in my office, blinds half-drawn, light slashed into thin yellow stripes across the desk. Bert sat there waiting for me. That’s right. Bert. The Sony Vaio Golshi had named like it was a rescue dog. The poor thing hummed in that strained, early-2000s register, with the fan whining like a smoker climbing stairs. One more tab and I was pretty sure it’d start coughing blood.

I pushed back from the desk and stood up slow. This was the part of the day that felt less like lunch and more like clocking in a nine-to-five.

First things first. Coffee.

Tore open the last bag of cheap ground coffee from the cabinet—ripped it straight across with my teeth because the tear notch never worked. Beans spilled into the grinder with a sound like loose gravel.

Coffee machine on. Water glugged in like it resented being awake. I leaned on the counter while it churned, staring at a crack in the wall.

I unwrapped a tuna sandwich from the wax paper Maruzen insisted on buying in bulk. Ate it standing up, over the sink, like a guy who didn’t trust himself to sit.

Coffee finished with a wet click. I poured it black, burned my tongue because of course I did, and didn’t react. Took another sip anyway.

I checked my pockets. Phone. Wallet. Fancy car key stub thing. The folded scrap of paper with bus routes scribbled on it like a ransom note. All there.

I sat back down, cracked my knuckles once, and nudged Bert’s trackpad. The screen brightened, stuttering into life. Somewhere outside, the day carried on without me.

I wiped my hands on a paper towel, squared my shoulders, and sat down.

All right… Let’s see how bad this really is.

Somewhere in Bert’s little guts was its insides working overtime just to load the Googles. I’d punched in every combination of “vehicle rental,” “fleet service,” “long-term,” “we’re desperate,” and “please, God” in the search bar. I was so far down the results list I’d found a company whose website still had Eurobeat as its background music.

Didn’t matter. I clicked it anyway.

No dice. Nobody wanted to hand over a van, or a bus. Not even a suspicious-looking kei truck for more than a weekend, let alone a few months.

I switched to my flip phone. The hinge still creaked like an old knee joint. I wedged it between my ear and shoulder, pen in hand, legal pad lying open on the desk.

“Yeah, hi, uh—yep. Just gonna be for a few months. Doesn’t have to be anything fancy… Hey, if it’s got four working tires, I’ll take it. I don’t have the full payment up front, but—”

The line cut off. Third time today.

“Asshole…”

I scribbled something on the pad so hard the pen made a tiny trench. Couldn’t even read what I wrote, looked like the medical notes of a doctor who’d died of a stroke halfway through.

Next number: a rental outfit down in Omori.

I punched it in.

The phone rang twice. Someone picked up. A bored voice said the company name in a way that made me think he was lying about both employment and consciousness.

“Yeah,” I said, straightening up in my chair. “Calling about a long-term van rental. I was told your shop might have something ready. Maruzensky sent me your way, said your dad owed her old man a fav—”

The guy barked a laugh sharp enough that my ear buzzed.

“You’re joking, right? Who is this?”

I frowned. “Uhh… Itonaga? From Tracen Academy?”

“Tracen? Oh, hell no. No, no, no, no, no—listen… Whatever favor my old man owed hers? That tab got paid off in ‘04 when he bailed her out of that… thing with the Countach. We’re square. All right?”

Then the line clicked.

I sagged back in my chair. Felt the springs in the seat complain under me. The hum of Bert’s cooling fan wobbled like it was losing altitude.

I dialed the next number anyway.

Another shop. Akabane this time.

The guy on the other end sounded chipper, which I should’ve taken as an omen.

I explained the situation. Simplified it. Took the desperation out of my voice.

He listened patiently, then said, “Absolutely—we can help with that.”

My spine straightened. “Yeah?”

“Of course. Need a van for summer? No problem. We’ve got one long-term package left.”

Finally. A sliver of hope.

“Only catch is… We don’t really specialize in normal vehicles.”

“…Meaning?”

“…Meaning it’s a funeral transport wagon.”

I hung up.

Next call. A place out near Sangenjaya. Guy said they did have an ‘85 Nissan Homy available.

Then told me it didn’t have seats.

“All right,” I said slowly, trying to keep my voice level. “Can we install seats?”

“You can… But I wouldn’t. Let’s just say the previous owner had a… creative relationship with livestock.”

I hung up again.

Another place wanted me to sign a six-month contract. Another wanted a deposit big enough to bankrupt a minor prefecture. One guy offered me an Isuzu Como with “personality,” which I translated as “more rust than car.”

Then I called a company whose jingle I vaguely remembered from late-night TV. Something with a smiling van and a man in overalls doing the hustle.

A woman picked up. Went straight down to business after a few words.

“Oh…! Okay, so for long-term rentals, we can definitely put you on our waitlist…”

She sounded sincere, sweet, like she actually wanted to help.

Which made it hurt more when she told me her next words.

“How’s February sound?”

I let my forehead drop onto the desk. The thud rattled Bert’s CD drive. My pen rolled off the desk, bounced once, and disappeared under the radiator like it was making a break for freedom.

“Sir… Are you still there?”

The coffee had already gone cold.

Couple days in, still no dice. I’d burned through another dozen calls—left three voicemails, got hung up on twice, and had one guy tell me his “available fleet” was currently impounded. The legal pad on my desk looked like a crime scene.

But the clock didn’t care. Training still happened. The world kept moving whether I had a van or not.

The afternoon heat had that lazy, syrup-slow quality that made the aluminum benches feel like old stovetops someone forgot to turn off. Tachyon came down the backstretch with her usual scientist-trying-to-outrun-her-own-hypotheses look, gait tight but efficient. I thumbed the stopwatch and watched the digits freeze. Two minutes and change.

She coasted to a stop near my spot in the stands. No crowd here, just the cicadas grinding out whatever argument they had with the universe.

“Two-oh-oh point three,” I said. “Not bad for a warm afternoon. Rest up. We’ll see how things shake out next session.”

“Very well.” She propped her hands on her hips, breath pulling through her like someone dragging dry cloth across a table. “If I keep this up, it will be as though R-One was never probationary to begin with.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, hopping down a step. “Let’s not go writing any speeches yet.”

“My thoughts exactly…”

Her sample vial sat on the next bench. Some cloudy, pear-green concoction that caught the light in a way liquids shouldn’t. Up close, the thing looked like it wanted to be left alone.

“This the stuff?” I asked, tapping the glass with a fingertip. The surface tension shivered like it was alive.

“That would be it. Why? Are you going to try it?” She asked it lightly, but her ears angled towards me like antennae waiting for the proper frequency.

I looked at her. Just held her stare with that dead, end-of-shift cop energy I’ve apparently cultivated.

“Does it taste like beer?”

It took her a couple beats.

“Somewhat.”

Good enough for me.

I brought the vial up and threw it back in one go. Whatever was in there hit my tongue with this odd, metallic snap. It slid down smooth and settled in my gut with a soft, slow bloom of heat.

Tachyon went still, eyes wide. Her smug little aura slid right off her face, leaving her looking like someone had nudged her worldview a few centimeters left without warning. She shook her head the way people do when they swat away a bug.

“Well?” she said, voice pitched sharper than before. “Go on. Say something. How was it?”

I held the empty vial up between us, peering through the glass as if the answer might still be clinging to the inside.

“I’ve definitely tasted worse.”

“Not that, you fool!” She stomped once, ears jolting upright. “I was referring to its effects!”

“Effects.” I echoed, rolling the word around like a loose bolt in my mouth. I waited. Felt my stomach. My head. My fingertips. Nothing dramatic. No sudden enlightenment. No engines revving behind my ribs.

“Well,” I said, shrugging. “Either it’s really subtle… or I’m just that broken on the inside.”

She stared at me. Proper stared. Her ears dipped low, like she was bracing for an aftershock that never came.

“So that’s it? You just… drank it? Without consulting me? Without even verifying its composition?”

“You said ‘somewhat’ tastes like beer,” I reminded her. “That’s basically a full endorsement where I come from.”

“Well yes but I didn’t expect you to actually—”

She moved closer, inspecting me with quick glances along my face, shoulders, everything.

“Do you feel anything at all? Tingling? Lightness? A sudden urge to ‘get jiggy with it’? Surely there must be something!”

I scratched at my cheek. The warmth in my stomach was still blooming, but slowly, like a radiator that had just been kicked awake.

“I feel like I could nap,” I said. “But that could just be my age catching up.”

She huffed, exasperated in the exact way scientists get when the universe refuses to cooperate with their charts. Then she took a deep breath.

“Okay… Okay… Perhaps the fault lies within my ratios.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, muttering something about control variables. “It would seem as though I had failed to account for subjects with… battle-hardened kidneys such as yours.”

“You’re saying alcoholics are immune.”

She ignored that. “Either way, this certainly warrants further investigation. Which means a couple more hours in the lab. Are you… picking up what I’m putting down?”

I passed the vial back. The glass was still warm from my hand. “Go on, then. We’re just about done here anyway.”

She took it gingerly. A little smile crept back in—genuine or not, didn’t really matter.

“Thank you, Sensei. Your tenacity in the face of the unknown continues to inspire us all.”

“Yeah, give it time,” I said. “Once you hit my age, all the weird shit just blends together.”

Something flickered across her face, small and bare.

“We shall see,” she murmured, heading off to her lab with that vial tucked to her chest like a newborn. “Have a good day, now!”

The sky had started bleeding into that bruised orange, like where everything looks like a photograph you left on a radiator too long. Students were shuffling back to the dorms, while staff drifted towards their cars or wherever administrators hibernate after hours.

I hit the vending machine near the parking lot. The metal buttons had that same warmth I associated with payphones in summer. I cracked open a can of iced coffee. The first mouthful went down sharp and cold, cutting through the ghost of Tachyon’s science hooch lingering in my throat.

I leaned against the machine, letting the cold can press into the mostly-cooperative joint halfway down my spine.

That’s when I heard it: a cluster of footsteps.

Too organized to be students and too quick to be security. Something in the air tightened, like when cicadas go quiet all at once because they know something’s coming and you don’t.

Then I saw the first camera poking around the corner of the clubhouse walkway.

“Oh, fuck…”

A guy in a polo three sizes too tight beelined straight for me, hauling a camera rig that looked like it used to film weather disasters. Two more reporters flared out behind him.

“Itonaga-san!” Polo Shirt barked, sunlight glinting off the sweat on his forehead. “Is it true that Team Astrum’s summer training budget was denied because of lingering disciplinary concerns?”

“First of all,” I said, “it’s R-One now—”

“Trainer Itonaga! How does it feel to be back in the training ring after all these years?”

                         “Is it true that you were blamed for the death of your ace trainee all these years ago?”

“I’m sorry, who the hell—”

“What pushed you to return to Tracen Academy after your hiatus?”

                                  “Do you believe Team Astrum can compete despite the—”

“Hey—back up!”

Didn’t matter. They’d smelled the blood of a sound bite. It wasn’t a conversation. It was a hailstorm. Every question hit before the last could fall to the ground.

One of them stepped square on my shoe. Another jabbed her mic into my personal space every time I inhaled. Tachyon’s science hooch churned warm at my insides.

Then the air shifted.

“Excuse me.”

Those two words sliced through the crowd like someone had cut the power to their hive-mind.

Reporters turned. I turned. My ears picked up the cadence before my brain did.

“I appreciate everyone’s enthusiasm,” the voice continued, polite in the way a finely sharpened letter opener is polite. “But has this interview been arranged beforehand?”

The pack parted just enough for her to step through.

Polo Shirt blinked at her. “I’m sorry… Who are you?”

The girl adjusted her glasses with two fingers, calm as a librarian addressing a particularly unruly book club.

“Ikuno Dictus,” she said. “General Affairs Committee.”

There was a pause. Reporters glanced at each other like the name might carry legal weight they weren’t prepared to respect.

She went on. “Campus regulations require that all interviews with staff or students be scheduled at least twenty-four hours in advance and approved by both General Affairs and Public Relations. Are you aware of this fact?”

Polo Shirt opened his mouth.

“We… We were told—”

“You were mistaken,” Ikuno said, tone unchanged. “As of this moment, you are conducting an unauthorized press activity on academy grounds.”

Someone tried to salvage it. “Well, I mean… We’re on a public walkway, aren’t we?”

Ikuno gave him the kind of small, courteous smile you usually see before a parking attendant writes you a very expensive ticket. “The walkway is public. The parking lot is not. You crossed into the latter when you pursued a staff member past the clubhouse gate. Please step back immediately.”

A softer murmur rolled through the group. Their formation unraveled, questions dropping off like fruit shaken from a branch.

Ikuno wasn’t done.

“If you wish to file for an official interview,” she said, “this is the request form.”

She pulled out a folded sheet, pre-filled in some sections, because of course she had these ready. She handed it to Polo Shirt with a little bow, the kind that offered respect while simultaneously closing the door behind you.

“I recommend submitting it before five PM tomorrow if you want a response within the week. Our review cycle is quite strict.”

I watched the man accept it like she’d just served him court summons.

Ikuno stepped fully between me and the reporters like a well-built fence. “Now… Unless there is a safety concern, this interaction is concluded.”

No one argued. Not a single one.

The pack turned, slowly dissolving back down the walkway in an awkward cluster. A few tried to save face with hushed debriefing murmurs. One kept glancing over his shoulder like I might suddenly do something newsworthy, like explode or whip my dick out or whatever.

But eventually, they were gone.

And I was left standing there with canned coffee and a stomach that felt both grateful and mildly humiliated.

Ikuno turned to me, posture straight as a survey marker. “Are you injured?”

“Physically? No,” I said. “Emotionally? Eh, they did poke around some stuff I wasn’t exactly dying to unpack at the moment.”

She frowned. I think. Her face moved about a millimeter, which for Ikuno probably counted as high drama.

I started over to my car, the gravel giving under my shoes with that faint, grainy crunch.

“For the record,” I said over my shoulder, “I could’ve handled them all by myself. Live physical altercations were all the rage back in my day.”

I heard her soft, neat steps fall in behind me.

“I… don’t think that would’ve helped your reputation,” she said. There was genuine confusion there, like she honestly couldn’t picture a scenario where decking a journalist was considered a viable strategy. “Look, I— There’s something I need to discuss with you.”

I kept walking. Could still hear her behind me, keeping exactly one pace of distance.

“Yeah?” I said, glancing back. “That why you’re tailing some poor old man all the way back to his car?”

She blinked real slowly. I wasn’t sure she realized she’d been trailing me at all.

We passed the row of staff cars: a bright pink Alto Lapin, an average-Joe Toyota Probox, and somebody’s Altezza with a body kit that had all the confidence of a teenager’s first tattoo.

Then, finally—the Saleen.

I slowed. She slowed. Shadowing me like a very polite, very determined satellite.

“Listen, kid,” I said, sliding my keys between my fingers. “If you thought pulling me out of that dogpile scores you brownie points with Pollux, you’ve got another thing coming. I mean, don’t you got better things to do?”

“…I’m not under Team Pollux anymore.”

That stopped me. So much so that my keys tapped against each other. I turned halfway, one foot still angled towards the car.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s… exactly what you think it means.” Her voice dropped, thinning out around the edges. “I withdrew from Team Pollux… From Trainer Kuroi.”

The words hung in the air like laundry still damp on the line. I exhaled slow. Felt it creep out of me in this long, uneven ribbon.

“…Sorry to hear that, kid,” I said, keeping my tone low. “But I’m kinda in a shitty spot myself. All right? You want some advice, go ask Maruzensky or something.”

And that should’ve been the end of it. I turned back, hand rising toward the car door, fingers brushing the warm metal.

But she didn’t back off.

“This is about summer camp… isn’t it?”

My hand froze on the handle like someone had paused me mid-frame.

I turned my head.

“You need transportation for the trip,” she said. Her tone was matter-of-fact, but there was something underneath it—this earnestness she didn’t know how to hold.

“I can help with that.”

I searched her eyes. Kid never lied well, and I could tell right then and there. Nothing in her face rang false.

And that, honestly, surprised the hell out of me more than Tachyon’s hooch ever did.