A Trainer is a very closed-off kind of group.
The races of Uma Musume are sports, but they also serve as entertainment. Beautiful looks, races that make something rise up in the viewer’s chest, and the Winning Live given to the winners.
Being both an entertainer and an athlete is no different from saying the entertainment world and the sports world are both closed-off industries.
The Trainers who manage and coach those Uma Musume are the same. How to become a Trainer, what a Trainer does—those things are easy enough to find.
But what you do after becoming a Trainer is treated like personal know-how, secret techniques passed down through a family, things you don’t casually share with others.
Of course, even to someone like me, who had thrown himself into the world of Trainers with nothing at all, it was an understandable kind of closed-off world. Among the countless Uma Musume, only a few win in the graded-race leagues. And among those, the number who can win G1 races—the crown jewel of the graded races, the ultimate goal—is vanishingly small.
For the Uma Musume, who are still girls in their teens, it may look beautiful under the names of friendship and rivalry.
But for Trainers, the goal is for their assigned Uma Musume to win, and that is also the road to their own career. So watching out for, and excluding, other Uma Musume and other Trainers was, in a way, only natural.
In other words, Trainers who came in thinking they had fallen in love with Uma Musume races, who thought they were here to help Uma Musume achieve their dreams in some flower-filled paradise, were basically the same as people who had walked out of Tracen on their own two feet.
“New Trainer” meant less “junior” and more “future competitor.”
If you didn’t have a mentor to guide you, or someone willing to share their know-how, you had to start from the very bottom and build your own training methods for Uma Musume, improving and refining them as you went...
It was a cruel world, one that fit the phrase “headbutting a wall from the ground up.”
And for an idiot who had fallen for the sight of Uma Musume running on the track without even knowing what kind of world this was, only a brutal reality was waiting.
During the new Trainer training period, I had approached many senior Trainers in hopes of getting a sub-Trainer position, but in the end, every single one had rejected me.
To private Trainers who handled only one Uma Musume, I was a parasite trying to get a free ride. To team Trainers who were said to collapse from overwork, I was just an inexperienced burden who knew nothing and would only increase their workload.
Unless you belonged to a prestigious family of Trainers, or had grown up on scholarships from certain families, you had to start from the bottom.
It meant grabbing hold of young Uma Musume hungry for victory, saying things like, “I can do it. We can do it,” while having no know-how and only theory in your head, and signing contracts with girls in the preliminary races.
The students of Tracen weren’t fools, either, so they understood exactly what a Trainer with no sub-Trainer experience meant. Of course, if the new Trainer happened to come from a family famous for training, that was another story.
From that standpoint, after my new Trainer OJT ended, it meant I had to find an Uma Musume to sign a contract with. A girl who needed a hollow Trainer full of knowledge.
And then, for such a girl to approach me after the preliminary race, a girl whose overwhelming performance could only be described as domination, and greet me—that was extremely strange.
“Trainer... I finally found you.”
A gray Uma Musume. Eyes that gave nothing away. Ears and tail that revealed no emotion.
“Huh? Are you talking to me?”
“Yes, Trainer.”
Her name had already been etched into my memory because of her overwhelming skill in the preliminary race, but she was also the unusual girl I had seen in the materials the academy had handed out a few days earlier, telling us to find an assigned Uma Musume.
“You’re... Oguri Cap, right? The one from Kasamatsu...”
I had been thinking that if I couldn’t find an assigned Uma Musume in Central, if I couldn’t adapt, I might start in Kasamatsu instead, so she had caught my eye for some reason.
“That’s right. I came straight to Tracen, not Kasamatsu, to find a Trainer.”
“I see, Oguri Cap. I hope you find a wonderful Trainer.”
Oguri Cap’s eyes widened.
“Trainer?”
“Hm? Is there something you wanted to ask?”
“I owe a debt to a Trainer. A debt I could never repay even in a lifetime. I think that is why I returned here. It is also why I am starting again here, not in Kasamatsu.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but... do we know each other?”
I only asked back because Oguri Cap was saying things I couldn’t understand, but she shook her tail left and right as if annoyed.
“You don’t remember?”
“Sorry, but... are we supposed to know each other? Did we meet when we were little or something? If it were a cute Uma Musume like you, there’s no way I’d forget—ha ha ha...!”
Oguri Cap said nothing. She just kept staring at me with a blank face.
“Ah... I see. So I’m the only one who came back.”
That was how I felt about Oguri Cap: a strange girl. When she shook off the Trainers crowding around her and came to me, I had wondered what was going on, but once I decided she was just a slightly unusual girl, I could understand it.
“Are you a Trainer?”
“Uh, well... I’m a new Trainer, but yes, I am a Trainer.”
“New? You...?”
“Ah, I see. I hadn’t considered this possibility. Maybe I came too early.”
She was still a girl in a sensitive stage. Given how emotional and impulsive Uma Musume tended to be, I could chalk it up to a kind of chuunibyou.
“Trainer, make a contract with me. This time, I’ll make you the best Trainer there is.”
Oguri Cap held out her hand. The girl in front of me was clearly much younger, but for some reason she felt like a comrade, like a friend. I shook my head.
“I think Oguri Cap is going to become an incredible Uma Musume. I’m very grateful that you’d make me such an offer, but I believe it’s right for you to meet a capable Trainer and write your legend with them.”
“What are you talking about, Trainer?”
“For a strong, capable Uma Musume like you to single me out is an honor. But I don’t want to ruin a talented girl like you for the sake of my own personal success. If I had just a little more experience, if I had even one person—no, even one proper experience—then I’d accept your offer. But this isn’t right.”
“What do you mean, Trainer?”
Oguri frowned for the first time, or rather, she looked like she might cry.
“I’m saying I don’t want to ruin your life, Oguri Cap, because I know nothing.”
“That’s not true. Trainer is the world’s best Trainer!”
“I’m happy to hear you say that. I’ll be looking forward to your growth, Oguri Cap. Someday I’ll work hard so I can truly become the world’s best Trainer, so please keep watching me. I’ll be watching you too.”
“So you can’t be my Trainer?”
“Yeah. Sorry, and thank you so much.”
Oguri Cap moved her lips as if she wanted to say something, then shut her mouth tightly. It looked like she had a lot she wanted to say, but didn’t know how to say it. She seemed like she wanted to persuade me, but she didn’t seem to have the gift for words.
It was an offer I was deeply grateful for, but for me, who had resolved to help Uma Musume chase their dreams, getting in the way of a gifted Uma Musume’s path was something I had no choice but to rule out.
If I had to cling to someone else, rely on someone else’s help, stand only by leaning on someone else’s kindness—if I couldn’t stand on my own, then I’d rather collapse.
“Oguri, you’re a wonderful and kind Uma Musume. I’ll be cheering for you. As your number one fan, okay?”
“Trainer really is stubborn, even now.”
Talented, but unfortunate. That was my assessment of Oguri Cap.
“Your sweat’s cooling down. You’ll catch a cold. Go inside and rest. Hurry. Come on, hurry.”
“If that is what Trainer wants, I will come again tomorrow.”
“I get it, but you might catch a cold. Go inside quickly.”
“Tomorrow, I will come find Trainer again.”
I thought it wouldn’t be easy to persuade an unreadable girl like Oguri Cap, but surprisingly, she nodded obediently and turned away.
She looked terribly lonely as she left, but I didn’t stop her.
“Even if everything starts over from the beginning... that’s fine.”
She walked farther and farther away, still speaking in those impossible-to-understand words.
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