Chapter 307: Only One Year Left—I’ll Become a Legendary Uma Musume! 2 [251]

"I won’t be doing the Winning Live."

"Ah...?"

Gotham Song stared at Equinox in front of her, and for a moment, she genuinely couldn’t process what she’d just heard. Equinox blinked, then nodded again to confirm it.

"I said, I won’t be doing the Winning Live, Trainer-sama."

This was really... the best possible outcome. It meant her own negligence wouldn’t be exposed or anything like that. But why would Equinox0chan say something like that...?

Gotham Song couldn’t make sense of it. Sure, in terms of results, this answer from Equinox was the best possible one, but—

But why?

Why wouldn’t Equinox want to go on the Winning Live?

Under normal circumstances, Umamusume were supposed to love things like the Winning Live, weren’t they...?

Gotham Song couldn’t wrap her head around it. For one fleeting moment, she even wondered whether Equinox was some kind of oddball like herself, but—

But that didn’t feel right either.

Weird. Why would something like this happen?

Maybe the confusion on Gotham Song’s face was just too obvious. Or maybe Equinox simply understood her Trainer-sama far too well. In any case, after a brief silence, Equinox gave her answer ahead of time, as though she’d already seen straight through Gotham Song’s thoughts.

"Because Trainer-sama doesn’t go on the Winning Live either."

Huh...?

Gotham Song’s confusion swelled at full speed, but in the end—

She understood everything.

Ohhh. So because she herself didn’t go on the Winning Live, Equinox had decided to match her and skip it too.

That works too? You can dodge dancing like this too, Haki-ge, you absolute genius.

Faced with words like that from Equinox, what kind of reaction could Gotham Song possibly give?

In the end, all she could do was fall silent, sigh, and nod in acceptance.

This lets me escape the Winning Live too? Equinox, you really are a delight.

She’d never imagined this before the race. I mean, what sane person would assume that an Umamusume who’d taken first—and won by a landslide, no less—wouldn’t go on the Winning Live...?

But then again, this was Gotham Song’s charge.

A fair number of fans had already been speculating for quite a while about whether something like this would happen after the race, and had even—prepared their support according to Gotham Song’s own standard procedure.

Which meant, more or less, as always: wait around near the racecourse, do whatever needed doing, and see how things developed afterward.

This was also one of the mysterious little pieces unique to the ecosystem of Gotham Song’s fandom. Even though she’d declared long ago that she wouldn’t be doing the Winning Live, there were still plenty of fans who, after every race, stubbornly believed that their favorite Umamusume might recreate that astonishing miracle from Japan and walk onto the Winning Live after all, so they would voluntarily wait around the venue.

If no news came out, they’d casually wander around like they were on break, stroll through nearby shops, treat it like a normal day off, and keep doing that until the Winning Live start time drew near. If there was still no news by then, they’d decide whether to head home.

This phenomenon had been dubbed "the day off brought by Song-sama."

It was the sort of thing that left people torn between laughter and tears.

And since Equinox had shown such an overwhelming Gotham Song vibe on the track, the fans had naturally applied the exact same rules to her as well. Which meant another day of booming business for the shopping streets around Tokyo Racecourse.

Really, the fact that Gotham Song had absurdly good rapport with random shopkeepers and local businesses had its reasons.

At one point, Gotham Song had even started to wonder whether she might end up becoming some kind of patron saint of merchants.

Which was honestly way too weird and uncanny.

Still, once she knew Equinox had no intention of doing the Winning Live, Gotham Song let out a sigh of relief. It wasn’t just because it meant she hadn’t messed up at work.

It was also because it freed up a very substantial chunk of her time.

First, Gotham Song had Equinox use her own social media account—

Ever since URA had been completely taken over by Mejiro Manor and Symboli Rudolf, Japan’s Umamusume had finally managed to catch up with the times. The most obvious sign of that was that they could now register and verify official social media accounts.

In other words, they could finally do the thing many overseas Umamusume had been doing effortlessly for ages: add that little lightning-bolt verification mark to their personal accounts.

That said, even though Equinox had done exactly that, Gotham Song herself had no intention whatsoever of adding the little lightning badge to her own account.

Even without it, her alt already seemed to be universally known. Every single day, endless messages came flooding in from every angle, along with an avalanche of comments piling up like snowflakes.

Not getting her alt officially verified as her own was practically just force of habit by now.

After all, her fans had already been fanatical enough back when there was no official verification system. If everyone found out that account really was hers, wouldn’t they go completely insane?

They’d already managed to deduce that much without her even showing her face on it!!!

...Wait. Didn’t that mean that if she did show her face, those people wouldn’t have anything left to speculate about?

For one brief instant, Gotham Song was genuinely stunned by her own genius idea.

But in the very next second, she gave up on that line of thought and returned to the familiar comfort of ordinary habits.

In any case, once Equinox’s verification sailed through with lightning speed, Gotham Song had her post an official statement in her own name announcing that she would not be doing the Winning Live.

The sooner something like this was made public, the better. Back then, Gotham Song herself had had to announce it at a press conference—

Because in that era, damn URA couldn’t get verified accounts set up at all!

So now that Equinox had that convenience in this day and age, of course the right move was to let her fans know as early as possible.

That said, Gotham Song hadn’t looked at the exact wording. She’d only told Equinox to make a post like that, and then...

Then, through the notification link on her own phone, she saw what Equinox had actually posted.

Put simply, it was almost exactly the same as Gotham Song’s own anti-Winning Live declaration from that old press conference. The only changes were the name and the date.

Gotham Song’s mouth twitched. She turned to look at Equinox—and met those pure, immaculate eyes.

"Equinox-chan, if I remember right, what I said at that press conference back then was spoken live, wasn’t it? And those news writeups didn’t reproduce the original wording either, did they?"

"That’s right."

That’s right, my ass!!!

If there wasn’t any transcript, then did you type all of this out from memory?!

Gotham Song fell into profound confusion. She looked at Equinox, only to find her charge holding up a document.

The date on it was from last year, around the time the two of them had first met.

And the contents were... word-for-word identical to the text of her anti-Winning Live declaration back then.

Right...

In simple terms, that meant Equinox had written all this down back when they first met, around the time their relationship had more or less been established?

Her own charge had been preparing in advance not to do the Winning Live?!

Gotham Song could not imagine what kind of mental state Equinox had been in to prepare something like that so early.

...Wait. Was there perhaps another possibility here? Maybe it wasn’t that Equinox truly didn’t want to do the Winning Live at all, but simply because—

I don’t go, so Equinox-chan won’t go either?

Gotham Song felt like she understood everything.

And yet she didn’t want to understand everything.

In the end, she kept her mouth shut. Rare for her, she turned into an ostrich on this issue and said nothing at all.

Because the moment she said anything, wouldn’t she end up in a situation where she’d have to do the Winning Live too?

No way. Absolutely not. Dancing was one hundred percent unacceptable!!

So in the face of something so alarming and outrageous from Equinox, Gotham Song ultimately found herself unable to respond at all.

There was nothing she could say. In the end, she tacitly allowed this terrifying, absurd development from Equinox, then let out a deep, helpless sigh.

...

Man, the seats in this car really are soft, huh?

Yes. Very soft indeed.

So then—was the car the two of them were riding in headed for Mejiro Manor?

Nope. Not even close.

It was headed for Tokyo International Airport.

To make a long story short, Gotham Song felt she was doing something very new—something unprecedented, the kind of thing no one had done before and no one would do again.

Put simply, the moment Equinox’s race ended, she was going to fly from Tokyo straight to New York.

That was why she’d been so relieved when she found out Equinox had no intention of doing the Winning Live and there would be plenty of time to spare.

So then, was there some grave and urgent reason she had to go to New York?

Not really. If anything, what was happening over there was something she could have chosen not to attend at all.

But after thinking it through from every angle, she still decisively hailed a cab.

And what exactly was happening in New York?

It was Flightline’s debut race—scheduled only twelve hours after Equinox’s own debut race.

Sure, Gotham Song could absolutely have told Flightline that she’d be watching the livestream from the other side of the world.

But this was the debut race of an Umamusume on her team.

And a debut race was something that would never happen a second time.

If she didn’t go see it with her own eyes, even Gotham Song herself would feel she couldn’t live with it, as Flightline’s Trainer.

Wasn’t it just an overnight flight from Tokyo to New York?

She’d done things way crazier than this before. So what was this, really...?

After getting out of the car, Gotham Song led Equinox through the boarding procedures with practiced ease.

She actually hadn’t told Flightline about any of this, either.

You could call it a surprise.

In any case, Gotham Song intended to appear in front of Flightline before the race began, then tell her:

I’m watching you, Flightline. So go on—do your best, and take the victory that belongs to you.

That would be a huge surprise, wouldn’t it?

What kind of reaction would Flightline have...?

Gotham Song couldn’t guess. She thought about it for a long time and got nowhere. In the end, all she could do was wait in silence with Equinox until nighttime, and only then board their flight.

Business class. It looked fairly full, but luckily, Gotham Song and Equinox’s seats weren’t far apart at all.

In fact, they were right next to each other.

Originally, Gotham Song had planned to book first class. It was more spacious, after all, and this was a flight crossing the entire Pacific, so it would be a long one.

A roomy first-class cabin probably would have been more comfortable.

But for some reason, when they were buying tickets, Equinox had insisted quite strongly on business class.

Business class it was, then. Gotham Song didn’t really mind.

Once they were on the plane, after all that continuous rushing around, Gotham Song let out a huge yawn and turned to look at Equinox beside her.

Only to find that her charge was staring intently at her face.

Curious, Gotham Song leaned in and met Equinox’s gaze directly.

"Equinox-chan doesn’t look tired at all... pretty impressive."

"Maybe it’s because Trainer-sama is beside me...?"

What does me being here have to do with it? This is just Equinox being way beyond normal when it comes to endurance.

Gotham Song remembered how she herself had once gone straight from the plane to the racecourse with barely any rest, and couldn’t help marveling again at the astonishing stamina of young Umamusume.

Though, to be fair, right now she was only sleepy. It wasn’t like she was completely exhausted.

Anyway, once they were finally in a steady, comfortable environment, Gotham Song abandoned all thought—including the question of why Equinox had insisted so strongly on business class—tilted her head, and decided to get a little sleep.

Half-awake and half-dreaming, she felt, at the moment the plane lifted off and the weightlessness hit, a pair of hands come around her shoulders.

Then those hands gently guided her until she was resting against a firm, sturdy shoulder, using it as support.

Who else could possibly do something like that...?

No matter how you thought about it, it had to be Equinox beside her. She was the only one who could possibly do such a thing right now.

Drowsy and muddle-headed, Gotham Song couldn’t figure out why Equinox had done it.

But then, in the instant a certain flash of inspiration cut across her mind, she suddenly landed on a thought that felt extremely reliable—even though she was already too far gone to think it through properly.

First class was too spacious. There’d definitely be too much distance between them to do something like this, right?

Only in business class were the conditions just right. Close enough that, the moment she noticed Gotham Song getting sleepy, she could lean in a little and naturally slip them into this kind of intimate posture.

Economy would be too cramped, and there’d be too many other people all around them.

So wasn’t business class the only option—roomy enough not to be oppressive, but still close enough for Equinox to do this...?

Equinox-chan, the reason you were so dead set against first class...

it couldn’t have been for this, could it? 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

As her consciousness finally blurred completely and sleep overtook her, Gotham Song’s last thought was a disbelieving question at the sheer audacity of it.

You... weren’t seriously thinking exactly that, were you, Equinox?!

My precious angel?!?!