A few more days passed after Kitahara and Oguri Cap settled into their training routine.
While wandering around the academy and thinking up new ways to lose money, Sakuraba was suddenly stopped by someone.
"You the trainer for that Dust Bunny?"
The ones who stopped Sakuraba were the same three rather distinctive Umamusume he had noticed by the training grounds on his first day at Kasamatsu Training Center Academy.
"A gal, a delinquent, and an evil bowl cut??"
Sakuraba's baffling remark left the trio staring at him in stunned silence.
"Who're you calling a delinquent, huh?!"
"What the hell is an evil bowl cut...?"
"Gal..."
Seeing the three react in three completely different ways, Sakuraba blinked, wondering whether they seriously had no self-awareness at all.
He cleared his throat.
"If you're looking for a trainer, you've got the wrong person. I'm just a normal investor, and I don't know any Umamusume called Dust Bunny."
"Mini! Didn't you say this guy was Dust Bunny's trainer?"
The blonde delinquent-looking girl snapped at the evil bowl cut beside her.
"But I really did see Dust Bunny meeting with this guy over the last couple days..." Mini the Lady looked a little aggrieved. She really had seen this man taking Oguri Cap around to all kinds of restaurants near the academy.
"Hey, if you're not her trainer, then why are you hanging around with Oguri Cap?"
The side-ponytailed gal, who had been fiddling with her phone the whole time, raised a brow.
"Well, obviously because she's an Umamusume I invested in."
Now Sakuraba finally understood. So the "Dust Bunny" these girls kept talking about was Oguri Cap.
Dust Bunny, huh...
Did Oguri Cap like rolling around in the dust or something?
For a second, an image popped into his head of Oguri Cap rolling around happily in the dirt with a blissfully vacant look on her face.
...Yeah, that felt kind of filthy.
But what Sakuraba hadn't expected was that after hearing his answer, the girls burst out laughing.
"With eyesight like that, and you call yourself an investor?!"
"You picked that idiot Dust Bunny as your investment target? You've really got it rough!"
"?"
A question mark slowly rose over Sakuraba's head.
"So who exactly are you three? And what did you want with me or Oguri Cap?"
"I'm Rudy Lemono, the short one next to me is Mini the Lady, and the one playing with her phone is Norn Ace. As for why we came to find you..."
The Umamusume Sakuraba had mentally filed under delinquent grinned mischievously.
"We were just curious what kind of trainer that Dust Bunny managed to find for herself~ But who knew we'd run into a weirdo like you instead~"
"Seriously, if I were investing, I'd definitely pick March," Norn Ace said with a laugh. "Fujimasa March is the best runner in this academy. You passed on her and picked Dust Bunny instead. Your eye for talent is seriously awful!"
"Yeah, your taste is terrible!" Mini the Lady chimed in.
Awful eye for talent?
That was perfect!
Listening to Norn Ace trash his judgment, Sakuraba had to fight with everything he had to keep the corners of his mouth from turning up.
Man, how did these girls get so good at complimenting people?
"Well, I invested in Oguri Cap because I saw value in her as an investment~"
In Norn Ace and the others' eyes, Sakuraba was giving them an incredibly awkward smile while solemnly spouting that nonsense.
The three exchanged looks.
This guy's a freak, isn't he?
That's bad...
VERY bad.
Norn Ace spent enough time online to know a few strange bits of terminology... and people who could laugh after getting insulted like this usually had a specific word for them...
M-maso... what was it again...?
Whatever it was, it definitely wasn't a compliment.
"W-well, whatever, just remember this—investing in Dust Bunny won't end well! Just sit tight and wait for your money to go down the drain!"
After throwing out that parting shot, the three of them bolted as if fleeing the plague.
"As expected of Umamusume. Even running away, they're this fast."
Watching the trio's retreating backs, Sakuraba couldn't help but sigh in admiration.
"But seriously, what were those three even here for...?"
"Huh, wait. If it's those three..."
All of a sudden, as he stared after them, a bold new plan surfaced in Sakuraba's mind.
Lately, he had been thinking about a new way to lose money.
Oguri Cap's appetite had helped him clear a good chunk of his money-losing KPI lately, sure, but there was no way her appetite would stay that monstrous forever.
Everyone had off days.
If Oguri Cap kept eating at full power, Sakuraba could lose around three million yen.
But if she had a bad day, or something unexpected happened, then her food expenses might only come to a little over two million...
Sakuraba quickly realized that relying on Oguri Cap alone to hit his monthly five-million-yen loss target just wasn't realistic.
Even adding Kitahara's salary, that only brought him to two and a half million lost.
So what was he supposed to do about the other two and a half million...?
As a seasoned investor, Sakuraba soon came up with an idea.
A foot-massage parlor!
Holy shit, opening a foot-massage parlor next to Tracen Academy? I'm a genius!
Just think about it—those Umamusume train all day long at the academy. Their feet definitely need proper relaxation.
If he opened a foot-massage parlor next to Tracen Academy, wouldn't that make it ridiculously easy to draw in that special customer base?
That way, the business would still be tied to the Umamusume field, and he wouldn't have to worry about the money invested in it not counting toward his loss total.
And how was he supposed to lose money running a foot-massage parlor?
That was even simpler.
He wouldn't even need to open the shop next to the academy—he could just invest in opening one right inside the academy.
Sakuraba had already looked into it. Renting an eighty-square-meter shop inside Kasamatsu Training Center Academy would cost around three hundred thousand yen a month, and if he rented something bigger, that number would only go up.
Add renovation costs and employee wages on top of that...
The budget would hit seven figures in no time!
To lose money, he could even open the place and then offer students ridiculously cheap discount prices!
Damn, this thing was guaranteed to lose money!
And as for the foot-massage attendants...
Sakuraba looked at the backs of Norn Ace and the other two as they ran off, and the corners of his mouth curled up.
Weren't there already three ready-made candidates right there?
In an academy this big, there was no way he couldn't find a few people willing to come work as foot-massage attendants!
"As long as the pay's high enough, I refuse to believe nobody'll apply!"
"Hahahaha—!"
The man's strange laughter rang out along a path at Kasamatsu Training Center Academy, making every Umamusume passing nearby instinctively give him a wide berth.
---
T/N: .... masochist... anywayyyy Dust Bunny heh anyway uhhhh fuck you
she actyakky kinda badddddddd norn ace