Chapter Text
Snow drifts down gently outside a certain trainer’s window at the prestigious Tracen Central Academy. It frosts the glass ever-so-slightly, masking the view of the winter wonderland outside and leaving him to rest in the privacy of his dorm with a warm mug of hot chocolate in hand.
It’s the day after Christmas, leaving him feeling a bit… unmoored. The festivities had been nice enough, even if he didn’t exactly have a special someone to spend the date with. He exchanged gifts with his trainee and even joined a small party the other trainers had decided to put on as a bit of a last-minute event. He stayed around the edges of the congregation, but… he had fun. And he’s sure that New Year’s Eve will be much the same.
But for now? For the few days between the two holidays? He doesn’t have much to do. It’s too early to start taking down any Christmas decorations, or to start preparing for New Year’s . And even if he wanted to work, there isn’t any work left to do, not when he’d given this week off to his trainee.
…he still doesn’t know what to do about her. Sakura Bakushin O…
She’s an amazing sprinter. One of the best he’s ever seen, not that he’s seen many up close. He’s still a fairly new trainer, after all. But still, Bakushin’s sheer speed is hard to beat, as she’s proven with an incredible track record. Three races, two wins, including a G2. If she keeps at it, Bakushin could become one of the most accomplished sprinters of her generation!
But… she doesn’t want to keep at it. Bakushin wants to run longer races and… well… she could probably handle a Mile race or two! But anything even close to the Triple Crown she wants…?
He’s seen how Bakushin’s stamina is. Like a light switch, the moment she passes a certain threshold, she goes from full tilt to barely able to keep herself upright. There’s just very little that they can do about that fact, and they’d tried. The month he’d set aside to train and improve her stamina by any amount was… depressing, to say the least.
So the Triple Crown is out. And her desire to run the Arima Kinen, the race she’d taken him to see just the past week…?
“...and it’s Mejiro McQueen! She overtakes Twin Turbo, she’s passed Nice Nature! It’s Mejiro against Mejiro at the front, who will take the lead as we get into the final stretch of the race?! Mejiro Ryan is looking winded – and she falters! Mejiro McQueen extends her lead! Mejiro McQueen! Mejiro McQueen!”
The crowd exploded into cheers and lamentations alike, the dreams of countless fans frayed to the limit by the brutally long race.
“Mejiro McQueen has won the Arima Kinen! She’ll be closing out her career in the Twinkle Series with a spectacular finish, and a race worth remembering, folks. In second, Mejiro Ryan, Nice Nature in third…”
The trainer feels his leg bounce, a smile stretching his lips. What a race. What must it have felt like…?
…maybe in the next life.
He sighs. This is why he feels so bad for Bakushin, truly. Her dream, however far out of her reach it seems, is at least… possible. Maybe. If they work hard enough. What right does he have to try and tell her no…? If he can’t achieve what he wants in his heart, then… well, she should get to, at least.
The chocolate’s gone cold in his hands. Right. That’s enough self-pity, he’s dealt with feelings like this all his life. He can shove them down again and do something productive, at least.
…maybe he’ll bake something and send it over to the Mejiros as a parting gift, before they leave. He didn’t know them well, but… it really was a damn good race. Yeah, that sounded like a plan.
…well, with only one problem.
“...dammit, I’m out of eggs.”
One trip to the store later sees the trainer in his dorm’s tiny little kitchenette, setting the oven to pre-heat. He decided he’ll bake some simple sugar cookies – it’s the holiday season, nobody needs him to break out the fancy sweets when there’ll probably be plenty of leftover Christmas cake and snacks from various parties. Plus, he has some cookie cutters shaped like running umas which he hasn’t gotten to use in ages.
He’ll have to make a large batch, considering he wants to feed at least two umas, and probably have enough to share with his trainee…
He’s got all the ingredients set out, he’s ready to get going… and then there’s a knock on his door. A very distinct one.
Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock–
A sound not unlike a woodpecker, or perhaps a submachine gun, heralds Sakura Bakushin O’s arrival. She really will just knock as fast as she can until she’s made to stop, he’s seen it happen before. He… ought to go and rescue his poor door. Plus, Bakushin is eccentric, but she wouldn’t visit without good reason.
He opens the door. “Hey, Bakush– whuh?!”
He’s pushed aside by the inexorable strength of an uma on a mission; Bakushin O strides on long legs into his kitchen, taking the barest moment to look around before the self-assured smile that’s a constant fixture on her face broadens into a satisfied grin. “A-ha! Perfect!” She hefts the still-unopened carton of eggs on the counter, freshly bought.
“Bakushin, what–” is all he can get out before she’s opened the carton and picked up an egg. She looks at it consideringly, ears drooping in thought for a moment, before they straighten up, and the trainer’s heart is filled with dread. He recognizes the face of a Sakura Bakushin O who’s just had a terrible idea.
The first egg hits the floor and shatters into so many pieces, with a throw speed the trainer has only seen from professional pitchers. “H-Hey, wha–”
Another egg joins the first as yolk splattered on the floor, then another. The trainer tries to step up and… well, it’s not as if he could physically stop Bakushin even if he tried, but maybe if he can at least snap her out of whatever train of thought is barreling through her mind…! “C-Come on Bakushin, just–”
The sound of a fourth crushed egg cuts him off, joined by a fifth and a sixth; Bakushin’s got a rhythm going now, and it’s created an unpleasant puddle of gooey egg innards on the floor that the trainer doesn’t want to step on. “That’s… half the carton now and… you're not even listening…” Already, the trainer is making plans to go out to the market again, at least once he’s made sure Bakushin won’t break the second carton of eggs too.
And then, as he resigns himself to going along with Bakushin’s wild ride–
SMASH!
The sound echoes strangely, a bassy reverb under the shattering shell. It washes over the room, and time seems to… slow…
Watching the egg shards fly through the air, the trainer feels something shift. Something slithers past his skin, past muscle and bone, wraps itself around his heart. A key turns in a lock that’s been kept tightly secured for a decade and a half. The things kept at bay inside their cozy little prison spring loose, never to be caged again.
And for the first time in so, so long…
She can truly feel.
Time resumes. The trainer(?) lets out a shriek of surprise at the surge of emotions in her chest. “Eeeh?!” Her eyes widen. Whose voice was that?! A high-pitched squeak escapes her throat as she puts a hand to her neck. A very small hand, with slender fingers and soft skin. “Eeeh?!”
Her heart hammers at her chest, a staccato thu-thump-thu-thump-thu-thump that has her whole body shaking. She doesn’t want to look down, but Bakushin is staring at her with… satisfaction? Pride? What did she do?!
The ground is so much closer now. Where– where did the trainer’s clothes go?! Why is she in the Tracen uniform? A-And why does it fit so well, why is her chest so…!
Her lungs tighten as she begins to hyperventilate. The weight of hair, so much hair, she should not have this much hair is comforting even as it reminds her of the reason for her distress.
Bakushin says something, but she can’t even hear it. Her trainee is out the door at bakushin speeds, leaving her alone with a mess of eggs on the floor and whatever she is now.
…she? She??? No, she’s a… she’s a girl– no, she means she’s a girl– why can she not even form the thought of that other gender in her head?!
On shaky legs that feel too powerful for how short she is now, kept upright only by the weight at the base of her spine that she does not want to think about, she makes her way to the bathroom. She doesn’t want to look in the mirror, she really, really doesn’t, but she has to see she has to know.
A tight grip on the sink tears a chunk of the porcelain right out. She jumps at the noise, throwing it to the ground. Thankfully, she didn’t cut herself. Did she… did she do that? With hands like these?! O-Oh no, oh no…
She stares at the chunk of missing sink, because bringing her eyes up is simply too terrifying. She can already see pink on the corner of her vision, and it feels like all her heart can take. She feels so… raw, so exposed. She just wants to go back, to put all these rampant emotions back in the boxes they belong…!
But the boxes are even worse off than the sink. There is no going back.
She looks up.
A girl stares back at her, looking like any other Junior that would soon be taking her first year at Tracen… complete with the bundle of anxiety clogging up her throat. She’s very… well, there really is no word to describe it better than pink, is there? Her skin has a healthy blush to it, her hair falls in thick clouds of dark pink that cover her like a blanket down to the small of her back, with a lighter spot over her forehead, and her eyes… her eyes are a shimmering light pink, marked with the same sakura petals as her trainees’ and rimmed with unshed tears.
Her gaze trails up, just a bit further, and she bites back a sob. Twitching atop her head, currently pinned back in open distress, are two pointed uma ears. She reaches one shaky, slender hand up to touch one and… “E-Eep!” Yup, real, very real, not a dream.
Something swishes behind her, dragging at her skirt(!!!), and she turns around to look in disbelief at her tail, equally pink and fluffy as her hair. It’s wagging, like a dog’s, a furious whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of displaced air in its wake. She’s been around umas long enough to know what that means.
Is she… happy…?
And with that question alone, that intent to finally examine the roiling knot of joy and anxiety and surprise and… too many other emotions to name… it’s enough to make the beast take notice of her too. Her heart runs cold, years of the things inside it being suppressed taking their toll as she sinks to her knees. The bathroom tile is cold and bracing. She’s overwhelmed by all the things she pushed down. She can’t think, can barely breathe…!
The girl on the bathroom floor does something that her soul has yearned to do for a long, long time.
She lets her head fall back.
And she cries.
“Understanding!” Director Akikawa cries, raising her head in an exuberant motion that nonetheless doesn’t seem to disturb the cat that clings to her hat. Her fan is open, bold letters on it reading ‘MYSTERY SOLVED’. “And that, then, is the point at which Miss Abukuma must have heard your distress and rushed to assure your safety!”
“Yeppers!” The white-haired trainer sitting beside the freshly-minted umamusume chirps, one arm hung lazily over the back of her chair. “Lucky the door was unlocked, or I’d be worried sick for missy here! Guess that Bakushin girl didn’t bother to close it.”
The girl sighs. That… yeah, that sounds like Bakushin, doesn’t it? And she can’t say she would have noticed if the door had been left wide open, given… everything else happening at the time. She sniffles, still not fully out of tears to cry. Frankly, she’s starting to think she might never be.
“On that note”, Miss Hayakawa says, from the back of the room, “Miss Bakushin O has been informed that she is expected to be here as soon as her classes are finished. Her side of the story remains a mystery in all this…”
The girl frowns, pulling up her legs onto her chair and hugging her knees. She’s aware it’s a fairly rude thing to do, and yet… well, the voice that would usually prevent her from doing things like this isn’t even quiet, it’s barely there at all. More of a hole left behind in its vague shape. She takes a breath, and speaks. “I… d-don’t think she needs to be punished.”
“Oh?” Director Akikawa’s voice is light, and… maybe amused? The girl shrinks in on herself. She’s not going to elaborate, if it means she’ll just get teased for it. Everyone in the room knows what she’s getting at, surely.
The Director relents. In a softer voice, she asks: “In that case, I assume you would like to go by a different name now? Or would you still prefer–”
“No.” The plea, the demand comes out much more forcefully than she intended. The girl’s shoulders shake, and her hair is made a mess as she furiously shakes her head. “...n-not that. Please.”
A hand lands between her ears (“Eep?!”) and delivers a few pets. Trainer Abukuma smiles her carefree grin down at her. “Whatcha gonna be called then, missy?”
…too many things swirl in her mind and her heart, thoughts and emotions caught in a hurricane and made impossible to pick out and parse. Shouldn’t she know? If she was an umamusume now, wouldn’t her name be something granted by the Goddesses?
(You’re not an umamusume though, are you?)
She clenches her jaw, and tries, so very hard, to push that thought down. It’s become so much harder, but she can still do it. She lets out a shuddering breath. “I… I-I don’t know. Um… is just… S-Sakura fine for now…?”
“Splendid!” Akikawa’s fan opened again, now impossibly displaying the word ‘ACCEPTABLE’. “In that case, Miss Sakura, the next question becomes this: what shall be made of your career?”
Sakura, newly named but no less nervous, tilted her head. “M-My… career, ma’am…?”
“Y’do kinda look like a pipsqueak, missy. It’d take a lot of explaining if you still wanna help that Bakushin girl out.” Trainer Abukama leans back in her chair. “We don’t have a lot of uma trainers to begin with…”
“Quite! And even setting aside the matter of your appearance, there is something else to decide… after all, Tracen Academy exists to enable the dreams of all umamusume, including yourself!” Akikawa smacked her fan down onto her desk, the near-manic smile that allowed her to bulldoze past many an awkward conversation now proudly on her face.
“B-But… I’m not really…” She can’t even bear to get the sentence out. Why? She knows she’s not– she can’t be a real–
“Miss Sakura.” Miss Hayakawa’s voice sounds behind her, and she whirls around in a panic. The woman is now behind her chair, hands on the backrest; for all that her tone is firm, her smile is… kind. “I will not allow you to insult a prospective student of this school in such a way. Especially if that student is yourself.”
Her ears flatten against her head. “S-Student…? You can’t mean…”
Akikawa’s fan opens: ‘WELCOME’. “Indeed! It would be a great tragedy to rob you of this chance that has been denied to you for so long, Miss Sakura! Should you be willing, Tracen’s doors – and the Twinkle Series itself – are open to you!”
…they were? They were. She could… she could run in the Twinkle Series? No, that couldn’t be. That isn’t right, no, not someone like her, surely–
A hand settles on her head again, and her breath hitches. She was hyperventilating again. Why, why did everything have to set her off now, why– “Hey, hey… chill, missy. It’s just an offer. Think it through, yeah?”
Miss Hayakawa speaks with a smile in her voice. “Umamusume were born to run, or so the saying goes. I’m sure that it might have seemed like an empty platitude to you before, when you were a human, but… I assure you, Miss Sakura, it is a very real desire in the hearts of most umamusume. To some, it is a need. You don’t need to decide on an answer right now, or even today, or this week… but I do suggest you search in your heart for that desire, and see how strongly it resonates within you.”
Sakura can feel the storm of emotions in her chest, moving and buzzing like a nest of angry wasps. It’s all too much, too fast; any ‘searching in her heart’ would yield less than nothing right now, she’s sure. “I-I… I need time. Please.”
The three women around her nod, and Sakura sags in relief. Trainer Abukuma stands, though not without ruffling Sakura’s hair one last time. “Aight, Imma head out for now then. But hey, missy, you ever need anything, you let me know, ‘kay? Bet you’re gonna need a buddy to go clothes shopping with.” She grinned, and Sakura felt her ears pin back in despair as she realized the woman was right. Oh. Ohhh she was not looking forward to that…
Abukuma cackles, then makes her way out the door. Sakura waits a moment before speaking up. “U-Um… could I… also go back to my dorm, for now?”
“Ah.” Miss Hayakawa’s voice came out… unusually strained. “Well, that would be a tough discussion to have normally, given it might be strange to have a student be frequently seen coming and going from the trainer dorms, but you see…”
Suddenly, Sakura’s ears perked up, as a very distinct siren blared by. “...w-was that a fire engine…?”
Miss Hayakawa looked away. There was the subtlest hint of a blush on her cheeks. “Were you perhaps cooking something this morning, Miss Sakura…?”
…Sakura’s heart dropped. It sunk into her chest like angry glass shards. “...I LEFT THE OVEN ON?!?!”
“I-It’s an understandable thing to slip your mind given the situation, and I assure you that you won’t be punished for it. We have the fire department on speed dial for a reason.” She coughs. “Still, the fact remains that… in all likelihood, your room will be in need of extensive repairs for the foreseeable future.”
Sakura sniffles again, thinking about the things she lost. All her nice pans… and… and…
…she didn’t actually have much that would be lost in a fire, did she? That was more depressing than hearing her room burned down. Dammit…
“Take heart!” Akikawa stood on her chair now. “Worry not about your living situation, Miss Sakura! In the end, we have the perfect solution! Miho Dorm happens to have a room free, and you shall be paired with an umamusume who deeply understands your situation!”
Something about that felt… off. “T-The student dorm…? But… the only student that…” She blinked. Oh no. “P-Please director, I-I can’t live with her! Surely you understand!”
“Whyever not? If anything, I imagine Miss Bakushin O would be the perfect roommate for you!” Akikawa spoke with the joy and bliss of someone whose exclusive job was not to wrangle Tracen’s most infamous Class Rep for the last fifteen months.
Sakura let out a despairing whimper, turning to Miss Hayakawa… who, despite the sympathetic smile on her face, refused to make eye contact with her. Traitor!
Then finally, to seal her fate with one final nail, as if she was a demon summoned by the call of her name, the door to the director’s office slammed open to reveal Sakura Bakushin O in all her glory. “Director, I have come… hff… as requested!”, she huffs between labored breaths, skin shining with sweat. “What is it that… Trainer?! What’s wrong?!” Her trainee looks at Sakura, pink eyes and hair and all, as if she truly, genuinely has no idea what might be causing her distress in this moment.
Sakura smashes her head against the back of her chair and allows herself to break down. “Why meeeeee…!”