"By the way, I didn't catch your name," she said, carrying her suitcase and following the round principal towards the only dormitory building still in use.
"Hah, such a polite child. No need for honorifics! My name is Kotaro Haihara. You can just call me Principal Haihara, or Uncle Haihara!" he laughed heartily, waving his hand.
"Uncle... Haihara? It must be very difficult to maintain this place." She looked at his half-white hair with some surprise. It seemed he had put a lot of effort into this school. He was a middle-aged man, yet his hair was already so white. Although the school looked unreliable, he not only kept it running but also served as a full-time teacher. The hardship was something ordinary people couldn't imagine.
Hearing this, he looked at her with surprise. He stroked his chin. "That's a rare thing to hear. Do kids these days understand these things?"
"Well, it is a big school. If you didn't work especially hard, it would have been impossible to keep it going." Walking behind him, she looked around. Even though the buildings had aged, the paths on the campus were still clean and tidy.
"Hard work? I prefer to call it passion." He looked up at the sky, stroking his beard as if reminiscing. "This is a school where a miracle once happened, after all. I was infected by that passion and decided to keep this place going."
"A... miracle?" She was confused. This looked like an ordinary local school. How could it be associated with a word like "miracle"?
"You don't know?!" He looked at her as if he had heard something horrifying. Under his gaze, she took two steps back, wondering if she had said something wrong.
But to her surprise, he then took out an old flip phone from his pocket and handed her the doll charm hanging from it. Not expecting him to have a doll charm on his phone, she took it, confused, and saw that it was a doll of an expressionless, ash-haired horse girl.
"This is..."
Before she could speak, he said in a suddenly passionate voice, "She's Oguri Cap! The legend from Kasamatsu Tracen! The genius who, as a country horse girl, shattered the pride of the prestigious families! The best representative of that Miracle Generation!"
Seeing him suddenly clench his fist and shout, she could only nod in response. Looking at the old but well-maintained doll charm in her hand, she muttered to herself, "I see. So Oguri Cap was the horse girl who led the Miracle Generation."
She had heard of Oguri Cap, but her knowledge was limited to her being a strong, ash-haired horse girl who had gone from the countryside to the central circuit. In her reality, there were many such horse girls. Plus, the system hadn't mentioned the ash-haired feature when introducing this world, so she hadn't connected the two at first.
"So you do know! I knew it! There's no horse girl in the world who doesn't know Oguri Cap," he said, laughing and patting her on the shoulder as if to say, "You've been approved."
"It's a shame, though. Miracles only happen once. That generation is over."
"But this is Oguri Cap's alma mater. As long as there's hope, I want to keep it going."
She handed the doll back to him and asked, a little confused, "Since this is her alma mater, there must be a lot of people who like her and want to support it, right?"
"But why..." is it in this state now? She left the rest unsaid, but he understood. He sighed, crossed his arms, and looked up at the sky, a little wistful. "A month, two months, that's fine. But who would keep investing so much time and money for a horse girl they like?"
"Everyone's attention is on that ultimate horse girl, Orfevre, who is said to be the culmination of all of Japan's technology now."
"Who still cares about an Oguri Cap who has already retired?"
She patted his shoulder comfortingly. "At least you're still training local horse girls. With the support of the local community, you should be able to keep going."
That seemed to be the wrong thing to say. He looked even more dejected. "There's almost no place for local racing in the world of horse racing anymore. Before, local horse girls had a chance to make it to the central circuit. They could be the breeding ground for talent."
"But now, all the champions on the central circuit are from prestigious families. They don't need local training. And the horse girls trained locally can't beat them. So local racing has gradually become meaningless."
"Plus, everyone's rushing to Tokyo. Never mind races, there aren't even many horse girls left here..."
"Sigh, it's hard. Not just for us, but for the local races too. Everyone's just trying to survive."
Perhaps it was her mature aura that made him unconsciously see her as an adult he could confide in, and he had poured out his troubles. But he quickly realized that it was inappropriate to say such things to a student. He rubbed the back of his head apologetically. "Sorry. It's your happy first day of school, and here I am, a middle-aged uncle, complaining to you."
"I'm really getting old, seeking comfort from a student."
"Hey, does this mean I have a chance to be young again?!" He suddenly turned it into a joke. He was the principal, after all. He should bear the school's hardships himself. He couldn't burden the students with them. So he tried to distract her.
"No, there's no way you can be young again..." And she, as he wished, retorted helplessly.
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