The next day.
Inside the villa.
Kuroha was already up and feeling refreshed, sitting at the dining table and eating breakfast.
"Slurp—"
He picked up a bite of noodles with his chopsticks and sucked them into his mouth. The tingling, numbing soup washed away the last bit of morning chill in an instant.
As he ate, Kuroha raised his left hand and slowly clenched it into a fist.
A sense of power far beyond any ordinary person gathered in his palm.
"Feels like I'm about to become invincible at this point…" he thought to himself.
Back when he'd crashed into Ines Fujin on the training ground and sent her flying without budging an inch himself, he'd already had a rough premonition.
But then last night, when they were playing Pokémon together…
His Mega Steelix, acting as the raid boss in a Dynamax battle, had gone Dragon Tera and used Devastating Drake head-on to beat four Mega "Eternal Lilligant" in a row, and even then it still felt like it hadn't really gotten serious…
He'd only slept for two or three hours after that, yet he was wide awake and full of energy.
That was when Kuroha started to feel that something about this wasn't right.
If this kept up, he really might be on his way to becoming a saint on flesh alone.
Yep.
He'd "only" beaten four of them.
Because last night's fighters didn't include himself, Ardan, or Fujimasa March.
They were still active race girls, after all. When there are no races, they still need to keep up their condition through regular training.
And just now, those two had left the house and headed for the training ground for their morning workout.
Kuroha had been thinking about something and ended up eating more slowly.
Only that bunch of retirees had nothing better to do with their genius free time every day.
As for why Steelix could Dynamax and Tera and Mega and even use a Z-Move, and somehow even use Dragonium Z to punch through Fairy-types…
Kuroha's opinion was: "I hacked it a bit, what are you going to do about it?"
After a moment of thought, he decided that when he went to the training ground later, he might as well test his own stats while he was there.
See just how far he'd actually gone.
"Click."
At that moment, the door to one of the rooms eased open.
A petite Uma Musume walked out, rubbing her eyes and shuffling along in a daze.
She was wearing a cardigan-style pajama top, the top button carelessly left undone, exposing a broad patch of smooth, pale skin.
"Oh, morning, Trainer~"
Spotting Kuroha, the girl tossed him a casual greeting.
Kuroha swallowed the noodles in his mouth and smiled as he looked up.
"Morning, Inari. Go wash up first, then come eat."
"Got it~"
Inari One answered lazily, shuffling into the bathroom in her fluffy slippers.
A moment later, the sound of running water pattered steadily from inside.
Kuroha drew his gaze back and picked up his phone from the table, opening the news feed.
He scrolled through everything once.
To his surprise, there weren't any real bombshells in Central lately.
The top stories were either all about McQueen's overwhelming strength, how she was "several tiers above" the entire new generation, calling it a "cross-dimensional gap."
Or they were about how, just last month, Mejiro Ardan had taken the G1 Osaka Hai by an absolute margin, her momentum completely unstoppable.
The rest of the headlines…
Things like Oguri Cap possibly preparing to face off against Fujimasa March in the Yasuda Kinen.
Or speculation that Super Creek hadn't raced for nearly four months and might have some kind of health issue.
Most of it was just baseless guessing and noisy clickbait.
However…
Kuroha's swiping finger suddenly paused, hovering near the headline about Super Creek.
Health issues?
He picked up a slice of lean meat with his chopsticks, put it into his mouth, and chewed slowly.
In the original timeline, Super Creek's body didn't start having problems until the second half of the year.
He hadn't seen Nara Fumino or Super Creek in a long time, but with only a few months gone since New Year's, the odds of her having health issues already were pretty low.
This "news" was almost certainly fabricated.
If anything, it was Oguri Cap whose peak was really drawing to a close in terms of timing.
Speaking of which, among the original "Eternal Big Three," Inari was actually the one who held out the longest.
She kept running at the top level into her fifth year, which would be around April this year, before finally stepping off that golden peak.
That was when her physical condition really started to decline.
And in this timeline, his Inari was the same.
Once April began, Inari's physical stats had already started to trend downward. It had only been a bit over ten days, and they'd dropped by at least 2%.
Oguri Cap, on the other hand, had only held out until April of her fourth year, and Super Creek had barely made it to around October of the second half of her fourth year.
Both of them had at least half a year less in their peak window compared to Inari.
That alone showed just how short their true prime really was.
Thinking about that, Kuroha couldn't help but shake his head with a sigh.
"How does an Uma Musume even end up with a 'peak period' in the first place, anyway? Even the 'Goddess' could stand to tweak that a little…"
"Clack."
The bathroom door opened, and Inari One slowly emerged.
After washing up, she did look a bit more awake, but her little ears still drooped, giving her the air of someone who hadn't quite escaped sleep yet.
She wandered into the kitchen, grabbed herself a bowl of noodles like she'd done it a thousand times, then sat down naturally beside Kuroha and started copying him.
"Slurp, slurp."
"Why are you up this early today?" Kuroha turned his head toward her.
He remembered clearly that the girls had been going crazy until almost four in the morning last night. Now she'd slept less than three hours and was up already?
Inari lifted her bowl and took a sip of the hot broth, her eyes narrowing contentedly before she finally responded in a lazy tone.
"I slept too long yesterday morning. I basically slept straight through to the afternoon…"
"…and then my alarm dragged me out of bed to watch McQueen's Satsuki Sho."
As a retired top-class race girl, one with multiple G1 titles no less, Inari lacked for neither money nor time.
After a few sessions hanging out with Mr. C.B., she'd started "attending school" in the loosest possible sense.
Class?
She had no idea what that even meant anymore.
Her daily life was either going out to play and roaming all over the country, or staying home with video games. When she got bored, she'd head to the training grounds to run laps with Teio and the others.
You could say her days were pretty full in their own way.
"Smack!"
"Eeh—!"
Inari clutched her head, putting on a show of being in terrible pain.
Kuroha pulled his chopsticks back and sighed.
"You've only been retired for half a year, and you're already slacking this much. Did you pick up bad habits from Mr. C.B. or something?"
"Heehee."
Inari hunched her shoulders and giggled.
"I did go to classes at first, but the lectures were so boring."
"Just teaching me how to do jobs and office work, draw diagrams, write reports and stuff. Ugh."
"I'll never need any of that."
She spread her hands, then happily slurped another mouthful of noodles, talking with her cheeks puffed out.
"After I graduate, I'm not going to be doing that kind of work anyway."
"C.B.-senpai said that even if you get one of those jobs after graduating, you work your butt off all month and you're only making like two hundred-something thousand yen. If you're really good maybe three hundred thousand a month."
"But me, right now… mm, I should be worth a couple billion at least, right? I haven't really counted…"
Inari tilted her head and thought for a second, then let out a smug little hum.
"Anyway, I've already got more money than they could earn in their whole lives!"
"…"
Kuroha had no idea what to say to that.
Crude as the phrasing was, it wasn't exactly wrong.
With Inari's current savings sitting in the bank, she could blow hundreds of thousands every month without even thinking and still be fine for life.
And from here on out, she'd be living with him.
Money would never be an issue.
"…Fine. As long as you're happy."
Kuroha gave a helpless little shrug, then reached over and gave her cheek a gentle pinch.
"I'm heading to the training ground later. Want to come?"
"Mm…"
With her cheek squished in his hand and noodles in her mouth, Inari chewed as she pondered.
"In the afternoon, maybe. I promised Obey we'd go mess around at Oi for a while and let her do some dirt runs."
"Yeah? All right then."
Kuroha nodded and tipped the last of his noodles and soup into his mouth, draining the bowl before finally getting to his feet.
"Make sure you wash your dishes when you're done. I don't want to come home at noon to sticky plates."
"Got it~"
(End of Chapter)
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