Vodka's body trembled slightly as she muttered to herself, but in the next moment she turned that nervousness into a tightly clenched fist.
"Then I'll beat you first, and after that I'll beat Daiwa Scarlet!"
In this extraordinary debut race, the much-anticipated future empress had run into the challenge of a mysterious horse girl!
Not only that, but that mysterious, powerful, dashing horse girl drew her in. It felt as though there were some hidden bond and fate between them, making Vodka's heart sway.
Even though this was clearly their first time meeting!
"Phew… stop thinking about it. I'll worry about it after the race."
Vodka planned to win, then, as the victor, go and properly meet that cool, aloof, breathtaking girl after the race.
Once she calmed down, Vodka shifted her gaze forward and listened to the countdown.
[3!]
[2!]
Vodka waited intently, fully prepared, and in the next instant…
[1!]
The very moment the gates sprang open, most of the horse girls shot out like arrows loosed from a bowstring.
But what drew the spectators' eyes was that, in the outermost gate, Van Gogh… was late out of the blocks?!
Van Gogh had only descended into this world today. She had never gone through any training, it was even her first time stepping onto turf, so she didn't react immediately.
By the time Van Gogh moved her legs, she was already a beat behind, visibly trailing at the back.
"In an instant, the horse girls have all left the gates and begun their dash."
"Number 6, Vodka, quickly seizes a spot among the leaders and sits in the top three."
Up in the booth, the race caller reported the positions of the runners.
When he reached the end…
"Number 10, Van Gogh, has broken slowly! She's fallen all the way to last place!"
This was a debut race; only the winner would become an officially registered racehorse girl. It was of utmost importance.
Even in a debut race, a start this poor was rare. In the eyes of the caller, this awe-inspiring girl was clearly lacking in experience.
Had she just not done enough practice races?
No one would dare imagine there could be an airheaded horse girl who had never even been to the training track, and, with a "well, since I'm here anyway" attitude, had gone straight out onto the racecourse.
"With the hardest-to-take inside rail starting from the widest outside gate, and on top of that a slow start… this is only 1,600 meters, a mile race, not a middle-distance event!"
"The situation really doesn't look good for her…"
The caller was, as always, neutral and tactful. Just as the female announcer was about to voice her pessimistic view of Van Gogh's chances…
In the next second, her pitch suddenly jumped, and the words she'd been about to say were instantly overturned.
"Van Gogh… has rejected everyone's expectations."
"Out in the widest lane and having broken slowly, she's still chosen to open up with acceleration without a moment's hesitation?"
"In a debut race, with absolutely no hesitation! What astounding nerve!"
…
Far outside.
(A slow start?)
(If I remember right, in the anime Gray Cinderella, Oguri Cap also broke slowly once and still managed to win.)
Then… could she try it too?
Van Gogh was astonishingly calm in the face of the current situation.
With a trainer's knowledge in hand, she understood exactly what she was up against.
A slow break meant one misstep would lead to being late at every step thereafter; you would fail to seize position, could only sit in the middle or back, then accelerate at the very end.
From the far outside, you either sat in the middle group behind, or accelerated immediately to grab the lead pack, but that would burn your stamina and make it easy to fade.
Far outside plus a slow start usually meant any chance of being among the leaders was gone, and you would drain your stamina far too quickly. It was a dire situation.
Yet for some reason, Van Gogh had no intention of lying low at the back to save stamina. She had no desire to wait until the end.
When Van Gogh realized she was trailing behind every other runner, an irritation rose up in her chest.
It was as if, on an instinctive level, she rejected being at the rear, as if she could not bear to see so many people running ahead of her.
Could this… be the heart of a horse girl who genuinely loved to run and to fight for the win?
A passionate heart that refused to be extinguished!
The situation is critical. Hurry up and accelerate, pass Vodka!
Van Gogh's eyes sharpened, an edge of steel entering her gaze.
In fact, the rookie girl named Van Gogh wanted Vodka to remember that the one who first defeated her was not Daiwa Scarlet, but her!
It was as though she were carving her own signature into a piece of peerless artwork, declaring her extraordinariness to the world.
That solitary yet blazing fighting spirit was stoking Van Gogh's will to win. She could clearly feel the rhythm of her heartbeat speeding up.
With every step she took, her pace quickened. A nameless exhilaration pushed her to gallop wildly toward the front where Vodka was running.
From this moment on, the solitary, domineering king finally opened her eyes in this world.
That cold, stern, wine-red-haired girl turned her amber eyes, within which blue stars gleamed, flashing with the stately composure of a monarch.
The future empress of the grand stage was indeed worthy of a fight!
And that tall, imposing, wine-red figure began to accelerate in an overbearing, unrivaled fashion!!
…
In a corner of the stands.
Daiwa Scarlet's lips parted slightly as she stared at Van Gogh, who was accelerating out in the widest lane, her expression filled with shock.
"Huh? She's going to run as a front-runner?"
In a race, horse girls had four basic running styles: front-runner, pace-runner, mid-pack, and closer.
Front-runners were the ones who dashed out to seize the lead, running at the very front and shining the brightest.
Pace-runners followed close behind the front-runner in the first tier, staying in the leading group and then seizing their chance to move out.
Mid-pack runners stayed in the middle group, relying on strong finishing speed. They needed to hold back enough stamina, then unleash a powerful late kick in the final stages to pass all the runners ahead in a very short span of time.
These three were the most common running styles. The vast majority of horse girls chose one of them.
The last style, the closer, was the rarest. A closer's position was even further back than a mid-pack runner's, essentially dead last!
Which meant that usually only those who botched the break or were stuck out in the widest lanes by bad luck would end up running as closers.
Van Gogh, at this very moment, met both of those conditions. Everyone in the stands took it for granted that she could only run as a closer.
Yet now, Van Gogh was practically announcing that she intended to shatter common sense itself!?
"This rate of acceleration… it's not a closer's, and not a mid-pack runner's. It might not even be a pace-runner's."
"Could it be… she plans to front-run all the way?!!"
Daiwa Scarlet couldn't make sense of it. Her breathing quickened, and her ample chest rose and fell visibly.
More and more spectators around her were shifting their attention away from Vodka and onto Van Gogh instead!
There wasn't a soul in the stands who didn't love this kind of wild, shocking running style!
…
Before the first turn.
Under the stunned gazes of the mid-pack girls, Van Gogh, who kept accelerating, drew up alongside them.
Too fast! So fast they didn't even have time to react!
That wine-red-haired girl, who looked both elegant and faintly mad, had in the blink of an eye blown past the mid-pack group.
Her figure shone so brightly it seemed it could pierce everything, blazing on the track under the name of Van Gogh!
And she kept surging forward, running without restraint, feet pounding as she charged toward the group in front.
The caller's voice echoed throughout the venue in the next instant.
[Number 10, Van Gogh, refuses to stay behind!]
[With almost casual ease, she's swept past the mid-pack horse girls. Her efficiency is still climbing. Is she not worried about burning out at all?]
[Her charge continues!!]
That dashing figure that blew past them carved itself deep into the hearts of the several mid-pack girls she had overtaken.
"Did her trainer never teach her about breaking from the gates or about race pace?"
"Urgh… starting from the far outside and then breaking slowly, with that kind of bad luck, even fighting for the top three should be hard, right?"
"Is this girl insane? This race has a monster like Vodka in it and she still dares to accelerate this early?"
"Van Gogh, she's definitely going to run out of stamina and fade. We can't let her throw off our rhythm."
The faces of those horse girls were all different, but without exception they were deeply shaken.
Even though they were all rookies who had yet to make their official debut, in all the races they'd watched in the past, they had never seen a horse girl like this!
…
After the first turn.
"My body… is in even better shape than I expected."
The beautiful, dashing girl had already overtaken all the mid-pack runners, and was now only a short distance from the pace-running group.
She herself was slightly surprised. Van Gogh was experiencing for the first time the fun of passing one horse girl after another.
Even more incredible was that, despite all this unrestrained acceleration, she didn't feel like she was going all out. There was no stabbing pain in her lungs, no heaviness in her legs!
This body held this much strength and stamina inside it??
Not bad at all.
Ahead of her was the group of pace-runners at the front, and the gap between them was shrinking constantly!
Could it be that this transformed "Van Gogh," even though she had never appeared in the horse girl anime, was not much inferior to those Japanese superstars?
Van Gogh's fighting spirit burned even hotter in the face of this unexpected revelation.
The blue stars in her eyes shone brilliantly in time with her sprinting form. With almost casual ease she drew level with the pace-running group.
But… it still wasn't enough! It was nowhere near enough to satisfy her!
Incredible as it was, this unknown, elegant girl in Japan was now unleashing a terrifying aura.
It was as if a monster forged entirely out of sheer presence had taken human form and was rampaging across the track!
A king that towered over all was now displaying a charisma that seemed to stand at the very pinnacle of horse-girl kind. Even though the pace-runners were fully aware of the figure attacking from their flank, even as they gritted their teeth and tried not to let her draw closer, it was pointless!
"No… this isn't a closer. It's clearly a front-runner! Is she taking back the lead position that belongs to her?"
"Don't panic. She should burn out. We just have to wait and pass her at the end."
"Damn it… why would a monster like this show up in a debut race?"
Vodka
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N/T: Hi everyone, I'm Zuru, an inexperienced translator and non-native English speaker, so if you notice any mistakes in the text, please let me know in the comments so I can fix them. By the way, I have a Patreon. There isn't much there yet, but it would really help me if you could consider joining.
[email protected]/ZuruZ