Chapter Text
1 – A bet
Some names pass into history through the great deeds of those who carry them. Some family names outlast those names and live on, perennially, in the hearts of people and societies, because the sum of their bearers' legacies makes them strong, eternal, invincible.
Such was the name Mejiro.
The name that began with the legacy of Mejiro Asama, the legendary runner who turned her parents' surname into not only the name of a great company, but the symbol of speed and power on the turf. The lightning bolt, the tornado, and the victory all bore the name Mejiro, in Asama's shadow.
Time passed and the lightning bolt had to retire. Asama's daughter, Aurora, was not a runner. Under her stewardship, however, the Mejiro companies grew into an international conglomerate. Spanning contracts with the Umamusume Racing Association, URA, for short, real estate, construction, clean energy and sustainable development, the Mejiro Group became one of the most important in Japan, and its members near royalty.
Asama wanted, however, for the Mejiro legend not to leave the track. For the family name's legacy to remain within the turf, and not only outside it. A cousin of hers, Aurora's aunt, named Hiryu, married an heir to the Symboli Group named Mogami. Their daughter was named Ramonu. Looking into her eyes, Asama knew she would be the first to keep the legacy of the Mejiro runners alive.
And so she did. Ramonu won the first Triple Tiara in history, the name given to victories in the Oka Sho, the Japanese Oaks, and the Shuka Sho, and was inducted into the URA Hall of Fame. Glory, honor, legacy. A legacy for which, like her grandmother before her, she had to pay a price. Desmitis, the family illness, closed the track to her. There would be no more racing for Ramonu, who took over the executive directorship of an overseas branch of the conglomerate, grieving the loss of the turf. Asama, still hungry for a legacy on the track, would set her eyes on her direct heir, Aurora's daughter: McQueen.
Born and raised a princess, McQueen learned elegance, bearing, and power from an early age. Educated with her mother's compassion and her grandmother's legacy, McQueen grew accustomed to carrying the weight of her surname on her back, the legacy of the strong, destined for greatness.
McQueen would run and win. That was a given. And yet, so would the desmitis that had taken her aunt and her grandmother. Both her mother and Asama knew that if McQueen ran, she would eventually suffer the same fate. Faced with this, Aurora convinced her mother to adopt a plan to keep the full weight of the family name from falling on her daughter's shoulders:
They would adopt young, promising, strong uma musume to be the champions of their surname, and thus lighten McQueen's burden. The source: the orphanages sustained by the Mejiro Group's corporate social responsibility programs.
The first to be adopted was Ryan. Athletic, strong, powerful. She served as McQueen's childhood friend, providing a counterweight to the refinement of her delicacy with her own brute strength.
Then came Ardan, slight of build and fragile of bone, but recommended by Ramonu. She had grown up sickly, though she showed remarkable speed in trials. Gentle and humble in personality, keenly aware of her own fragility, always filled with wonder at the world around her.
Afterward came the sisters Bright and Dober, who came from the same orphanage as Ryan. Bright was sweet and a little scatterbrained; Dober, a dreamer and a romantic, though fearful of contact with the opposite sex. Both were powerful runners, though Dober's speed, the younger of the two, paled beside her older sister's.
There was one additional blood heir, McQueen's cousin, known as Mejiro Gold. She, however, had always felt suffocated by Asama and the mansion, and one day she left, seeking her freedom. Her name was erased from the family's history books, forbidden to be spoken aloud.
And so a mansion that had once been ruled by silence became a training center, with young uma musume training, refining themselves, honing their edges, striving to be the best, with McQueen, the only blood heir, at the center of it all, and Asama in the background, demanding, coaching, driving them forward.
And yet that initiative of power, speed, and legacy lacked one fundamental component. All of them adopted, each competing on her own to be the best, the worthiest, the finest representative of the name, yet missing something that only McQueen, thanks to her mother's influence, truly understood.
Warmth.
They shared a surname, yes. But they were not sisters. Not truly. Something Asama could not have cared less about, though her daughter did.
Aurora was ill. Years of running the companies without rest had taken their toll, even though she had never raced a single day. Before dying, she arranged one last adoption, one that was not about power, or speed. On her deathbed, she begged McQueen to look after that last girl. McQueen, in tears, agreed. She held her mother's hands until they lost their warmth, weeping in silence. Asama, suddenly the sole person responsible for everything, thought her daughter's request had been irresponsible, and decided not to honor her dying wish, even in the face of McQueen's insistence.
That same day, the Mejiro heir was enrolled in Tracen Academy and, suddenly, two years passed.
Two years in which the Mejiros won races and accolades. Two years that took their toll on McQueen: desmitis threatened to emerge, and she suffered her first fracture.
It was at that moment that Asama remembered her daughter's dying wish, convinced in part by her granddaughter's pleas to honor her mother's final request. On her desk, an open folder. The photograph of a chestnut horse girl, smiling. A name written beneath her: Palmer.
* * *
Palmer had always thought her life was made of small things.
The sound of brooms in the orphanage at dawn. The smell of plain rice in the kitchen. Afternoons spent sitting by the window, watching other girls run while she observed, learned, memorized. She was not the fastest, or the strongest, or the brightest. She was ordinary. The most ordinary of the ordinary. And she was all right with that.
The orphanage was funded by the Mejiro companies; she knew that much. From time to time, recruiters who looked like they had stepped out of the secret service of some small monarchical government would arrive to run tests on them. There was a 1200-meter track that served as the evaluation site. This was one of those days.
Her style was not elegant, not like the powerful runners she saw on television. She had grown up doing obstacle races, since someone had looked at her as a child and decided she would do better at those than in regular racing. That day, however, they asked her to run a sprint. She did not do badly; she won the race, though not by the margin she would have liked. Then she managed to overhear them, arguing.
"But… with these results, she's far below even Lady Ardan."
Said one of them, concern in his voice.
"The file says it's her, so there's nothing more to discuss."
Replied the one who appeared to be the supervisor.
Palmer understood that she had not shown what they were looking for, whatever that was. She was about to return to her activities when the woman placed a hand on her shoulder, offering a smile of mild indifference.
"Miss Palmer?"
It felt strange to have someone address her so formally.
"Y-yes, what is it?"
She answered, stiff.
"We need you to come with us. You have an audience with Mejiro Asama."
Palmer felt as if the woman were speaking a foreign language. Was she referring to the president of the Mejiro Group? And she was calling for her? Why? What for?
She forced herself out of the stupor her questions had dropped her into, and looked back at the orphanage director, who gave a confirming nod.
"Congratulations, Palmer."
"…Huh?"
* * *
Palmer stepped out of the limousine that had brought her. The mansion rose before her like a foreign world. White marble, perfectly trimmed gardens, fountains murmuring with elegance. Palmer nervously adjusted the hem of her faded clothes, the only ones she owned, worn thin from constant use and washing. She felt as though she was dirtying the place simply by being there.
"Welcome to the Mejiro residence."
The voice was soft, and polished, the voice of a princess.
Palmer looked up and saw her: Mejiro McQueen. Lavender hair, straight posture, a bit short in stature, but with an elegance that seemed natural to her, as though she had been born with it. She was smiling with genuine courtesy.
"I'm McQueen. Thank you for coming, Palmer."
Palmer bowed awkwardly, almost too deeply.
"I - thank you for receiving me."
McQueen held her gaze a beat longer than necessary. Her eyes were kind, but there was something behind them, a well-hidden shadow. Then she turned her body slightly.
"My grandmother is waiting for you. Please, follow me."
Palmer followed McQueen with her back slightly hunched, in silence. They passed through long corridors decorated with marble sculptures and original oil paintings.
The main hall was one of those sceneries from an epic film. A vast, elegant space. It, however, wasn’t empty.
They were all there.
Mejiro Dober, rigid against a column, arms crossed and gaze lowered, as though she would have preferred to be anywhere else. Mejiro Ryan, standing, stretching with energy, radiating athletic vitality even at rest. Mejiro Bright, sitting in an armchair far too large for her, staring distractedly at the ceiling, counting something invisible on her fingers. And Mejiro Ardan, delicate as porcelain, seated with a light blanket over her legs, breathing carefully.
At the center, seated with quiet authority, was Mejiro Asama.
"Palmer," she said. "Thank you for accepting our invitation."
Palmer swallowed.
"Ma'am… I'm not sure why I'm here."
"You are here because it was my daughter's dying wish that you be."
Asama replied.
"And because you now have the opportunity to be of use to our family."
Palmer said nothing.
"I brought you here to run. To represent this family, to which you belong as of this moment."
Asama explained. She directed her gaze toward McQueen, who remained serious, watchful.
"But also," she added, "my daughter Aurora, may she rest in peace, entrusted me with bringing you here for another reason."
Palmer still said nothing. She remembered having met a woman named Aurora years ago, when she had been evaluated as poorly suited for track racing. That woman had looked at her with a strange tenderness, incongruous with the fact that Palmer had lost that demonstration so thoroughly.
"…What reason is that?"
She finally dared to ask.
Silence.
Ryan stopped stretching. Bright tilted her head, curious. Dober pressed her arms a little tighter against her body. Ardan coughed softly.
"That," said Asama at last, "I do not know myself."
Palmer's stomach tightened.
She felt small. Out of place. Surrounded by names that were synonymous with glory, with history, with power. Each of them had won something, had shone somewhere. What was she doing here? The girl from the orphanage. The one who ran well. Only well, and barely.
“But I… that… that doesn’t make any sense”.
“Think about it as a wager between my daughter and I. You, my dear, are the bet.”
“But…”
She didn’t know how to reply. She couldn’t even begin to understand what was going on. She was being adopted, by the Mejiros, no less, to run in races, but also, to do something mysterious not even the person who was adopting her knew about.
It sounded too overly complicated, but…
“Okay” She answered. McQueen closed her eyes, Ryan smiled, Ardan watched with curiosity. Bright and Dober looked as if they didn’t care she was there. No one was cruel to her, but the distance was palpable, as though all of them were waiting for something without knowing exactly what.
She observed them too. She had assumed they were sisters, or that they at least had some kind of bond. They were certainly amicable with one another, but there was a distance between them that seemed insurmountable. Bright and Dober on one side, Ryan on her own, Ardan apart. McQueen…
It was then that she noticed it.
McQueen stood to pour the tea and, for just an instant, her step faltered. Barely a gesture. A microsecond of tension in her expression. Palmer saw it because she always saw those things. She was a bit of an airhead but also had learned to observe in silence.
McQueen rested a hand on the table. She smiled again. She kept walking.
"Are you all right?"
Bright asked, without malice.
"Of course,"
McQueen replied softly.
But Palmer saw how, when McQueen sat back down, she adjusted her leg with care, as though a wrong movement might hurt her, how her breathing tightened slightly with each shift in posture. She saw what no one else did.
Des… desmi… desimi… the bone thing, the one that made your joints ache a lot.
She did not know it through words. She knew it through experience: she had watched other uma musume at the orphanage retire early. She had learned to look at others, because, where she was coming from, sometimes that was the only proof of someone’s existence.
McQueen did not complain. She did not mention it. She carried it in silence, with the dignity of someone who does not want to worry anyone.
And suddenly, everything became even more confusing.
Why her? Did they expect her to replace McQueen somehow? Impossible. She, whose greatest achievement was clearing a poorly placed hurdle, could not even picture herself sharing the same track as the heir to the empire standing before her.
Palmer looked down at her hands. Ordinary hands. Ordinary life. Ordinary career. She was not a Mejiro. She was not special. She thought about what Asama had mentioned concerning Aurora, and her mind became even more tangled. The last thing she registered was the near-baptism the matriarch pronounced at the end of the meeting.
"From this moment on, your name is Mejiro Palmer."
The weight of the name attached itself to her neck like the anchor that binds a ship to the depths of the abyss.
When the meeting ended, she bowed politely.
"Thank you… for everything," she said. "I'll do whatever you ask of me. Though I don't know if I can help."
Asama observed her with deep attention.
"I don't expect much from you, but we will discover what you're good for, and whether my daughter was right."
She said, with finality.
"Starting tomorrow, you will begin at Tracen alongside your stepsisters."
McQueen watched her with empathy. The others, with mild indifference. One more rival.
As she left the hall, Palmer felt something uncomfortable and heavy.
Responsibility. One that she didn’t have an hour ago and now was affixed to her like a cleat.
She had a silent, persistent intuition telling her she had not been brought there by mistake… even though she still did not understand why.
She was still Palmer. The most ordinary of the ordinary. And, without knowing it yet, the one who would change the course of the Mejiro family.