The Trainer With Little Time Left Just Wants to Live [15]

In stark contrast to the situation over at Kitano’s dorm, on the student council’s side, Symboli Rudolf, who had been busy handling paperwork, received an unusual guest—someone she never would have imagined would come visit her of her own accord.

Especially after hearing the reason for her visit, Rudolf found it even more incomprehensible. She looked at the Mejiro family’s proudest unapproachable beauty before her and gave her answer to this baseless request.

“…Ramonu, you said you want to choose a new trainee Umamusume for Trainer Kitano. I have to ask, at the risk of being rude: what prompted this idea?”

“Did Nakayama Festa do something to upset you? To the point that you want to replace her outright? Besides, even as student council president, I can’t do something like that without reason. Especially since Trainer Kitano and Nakayama Festa already have an emotional foundation.”

“She has not upset me, Rudolf.” Mejiro Ramonu, who had come to the student council room, had already sent the two vice presidents, Air Groove and Narita Brian, away. Now she sat before Rudolf in a perfectly relaxed yet elegant posture, and her tone, rather than explaining, sounded more like an order. “But there are indeed things about her that leave me dissatisfied… I do not deny that child’s talent, but her temperament is somewhat unsatisfactory to me.”

“Oh? What is wrong with her?” Hearing Ramonu say that, Rudolf could not help becoming curious. Kitano and Nakayama Festa had only arrived at Tracen Academy one day ago, yet Ramonu already had enough basis to judge that Festa was unsuited for Kitano?

“That child lacks fighting spirit. Or rather, she lacks the sort of spirit that lets one face sheer cliffs and towering mountains and still charge ahead without hesitation.”

Ramonu summarized her impression of Festa in a way she thought would be easy to understand. Yet the moment she said this, what she received in response was, unexpectedly, Rudolf’s repeated wry smiles.

“Ramonu, I think you may have misjudged Nakayama Festa. Or rather, you have misjudged the Umamusume of the Gold Family. On the track, every one of them is as lawless as they come.”

“Leaving aside the others, even Nakayama Festa alone, though she has yet to debut, is someone whose training in the Gold Family I have already heard about. She treats the racecourse like a gambling table. She has the air of an outlaw, and she is a gambler through and through. She is extremely skilled at forcing herself into a dead end and gambling everything on one decisive round.”

“—Sirius told me all of this. She is very familiar with Nakayama Festa’s racing style. If you say Festa lacks fighting spirit and courage… I think that is somewhat biased.”

Rudolf’s answer could be called flawless, analyzing and refuting based on information more comprehensive than Ramonu’s. However, when Rudolf noticed that Ramonu’s expression gradually grew serious after hearing her rebuttal, she very consciously closed her mouth.

“…Rudolf, you do not seem to have noticed. Nakayama Festa is indeed a gambler, but she is not the sort of gambler who loses her head once she gets carried away and becomes completely irrational. That is her strength.”

“But she does not know how large her ‘stakes’ truly are. She has no idea that some of her capital is something she absolutely cannot afford to lose. If she knew that, she would never treat the races to come as gambling.”

Ramonu took a deep breath. She worked hard to convey her meaning to Rudolf. She did not truly want to replace Festa. She only wanted to insert another Umamusume into Kitano’s team, one who performed more steadily, whose results were more assured, and who would not lose all of the “stakes” in one go.

The reason she had such an idea all came from that notebook she had picked up. In it, she had glimpsed some of Kitano’s secrets. After reading those secrets over and over again that night, she was surprised to discover that, as long as one accepted Kitano’s miraculous nature, everything he had recorded in the notebook was logical.

More importantly, according to Kitano’s records in the notebook, he had very little time left. Combined with what Ramonu had heard—that one week later, Festa, who had only just enrolled, would be sent by Kitano to the track for her debut race—his frantic urgency only deepened Ramonu’s belief that those records were authentic.

Ramonu could not gamble. She did not dare gamble with a life and assume everything in that notebook was absurd. At the very least, she had to wait until after this debut race and see whether Kitano’s condition matched what he himself had recorded before she could judge whether all of it was true.

And… her own heart was unexpectedly anxious as well. But Ramonu did not think her anxiety was abnormal. After all, this was a matter of life and death. As an Umamusume born into a distinguished family and given an excellent education, and as someone who knew the truth, she naturally ought to shoulder part of the responsibility.

What Ramonu doubted was whether Nakayama Festa, in her current state, could truly win her debut race.

She could not be certain.

What Ramonu was certain of, however, was that every time Festa stepped onto the track, the danger was enormous. Especially since, from the clues in the notebook, Ramonu inferred that Festa very likely did not know that the life of the Trainer beside her was directly tied to her race performance.

“Motivation and pressure are separated by only a fine line, and right now, Nakayama Festa is facing only the pressure side of it.”

“She only feels that she is carrying a disabled man’s excessive expectations on her back, and that because of those expectations, she cannot run freely and cannot treat the track as a gambling table anymore. She has no idea how much that man trusts her, how large the stakes he has placed on her are, or that the consequences of failure are something she cannot bear.”

“That is why I say Trainer Kitano is unsuited to her. At least, before Nakayama Festa finds her own reason to run, and before she finds the ‘stakes’ she absolutely cannot lose, they truly are not all that suitable for each other.”

As she spoke, Ramonu truly did not want to keep explaining. She turned her gaze directly toward Rudolf before her. For the first time, a hint of pleading appeared on that perfect face that had always seemed fit only to be admired from afar and never touched. She said to Rudolf,

“So I want to ask you to place an Umamusume you think well of onto Trainer Kitano’s team. At the very least, it should be a child capable of responding to expectations and bringing out her own strength—someone like that child called Tokai Teio would be quite good. I think she is very suitable.”

“…Who Teio chooses as her Trainer depends on her own wishes. Forcing one on her will only make her dissatisfied.” After a long silence, however, Rudolf did not remain on that topic. Instead, she stared sharply at Ramonu and asked, word by word, “On the contrary, Ramonu, why are you so concerned about Trainer Kitano’s affairs? He should have had no contact with the Mejiro family before this. Why would you go to such lengths and come ask me for his sake? This is unlike you.”

“And what exactly do you mean by ‘stakes that cannot be lost’? Ramonu, I hope you can tell me the answer in the simplest words possible.”

Rudolf’s mood abruptly became much more serious because of the irritation rising in her heart at that moment. From the instant Ramonu came to ask her for help regarding Kitano and even acted as if she understood Kitano’s situation better than Rudolf did, Rudolf had already been rather displeased.

During this period, Rudolf had actually been secretly investigating Kitano’s information and his medical history as well. For some reason, when Rudolf saw Kitano sitting in his wheelchair, incomparably weak yet still smiling gently, she felt deeply uncomfortable… uneasy, somewhat afraid to look directly at him, and even more than that, a sense of guilt.

It felt as though she had done something in a past life that left her indebted to him. Rudolf classified all of this as guilt from how, before meeting Kitano, she had once thought of using authority to pressure him. But she herself understood that such an excuse could not stand.

Yet Ramonu’s behavior now made Rudolf, who had been investigating Kitano all this time, very unhappy. That way she acted, as if she knew more secrets than Rudolf did but simply refused to tell her, was truly unpleasant to look at.

“Earlier, I heard from Air Groove that C.B. volunteered to take care of Trainer Kitano. This morning, I saw people discussing on the forums that photos had been taken of C.B. and Trainer Kitano seeming quite close.”

“Could it be, Ramonu, that you also have the same thoughts about Trainer Kitano as C.B. does? Are your aesthetics and tastes perhaps rather similar?”

“…”

However, Rudolf belatedly realized that her tone seemed to have been too harsh. Normally, she was always extremely polite and proper toward Ramonu. Why was she attacking her like this now? This was not in line with her usual conduct at all.

What surprised Rudolf even more was that after hearing her words, Ramonu did not respond with sarcasm. Instead, she rarely showed a momentary expression of blankness and silence, failing to counterattack immediately.

And it was that brief daze that made Rudolf feel something was off… Had she perhaps accidentally hit the mark?

“Ramonu, you…”

“—I never expected our dear President to say something so bitter and cutting.” However, before Rudolf could apologize, Ramonu seemed to recover from her brief shock. She narrowed her eyes slightly as she looked at Rudolf, her tone gaining a hint of teasing as she struck back. “That is very unlike our perfect President. Why are you in such a hurry? Or could it be… that you are actually the one with such thoughts? The moment you see others showing signs of approaching your beloved, you become jealous like some petty woman?”

BANG!

However, the moment Ramonu said this, the student council desk suddenly let out a loud crash. Before Ramonu’s eyes, Rudolf’s body abruptly rose from her seat. In the eyes of the “Emperor,” a dignity and aggression from her active racing days surfaced for the first time in a long while. That pressure, like the stare of a tyrant, almost instantly covered the entire student council room.

Ramonu also slightly restrained her smile and answered with an icy aura no weaker than Rudolf’s. For a moment, Japan’s first undefeated Triple Crown winner and seven-crown champion, and the first Triple Tiara winner, clashed with unprecedented intensity inside the small student council room…

TAP, TAP, TAP!

“Rudolf? Are you in there? I have something important. Open the door.”

“…”

A moment later, a familiar voice sounded from outside the door, finally breaking the deadlocked atmosphere inside the student council room. Rudolf immediately withdrew her presence, turned her gaze toward the door, and said with forced calm,

“Come in, Sirius.”

CLICK.

As soon as the words fell, Sirius Symboli, her expression grave, pushed open the door to the student council room. Yet the moment Sirius entered, she keenly sensed the lingering, drawn-sword tension in the air. Looking at the slightly messy desktop, as well as Ramonu and Rudolf, whose expressions were still somewhat serious, she could not help frowning as she asked,

“…Did you two have a fight? That’s rare.”

“It was merely a small disagreement with a certain Umamusume as ferocious as a lion.” Ramonu lightly brushed aside the conflict just now and picked up the cup of water beside her, taking a small sip. Rudolf also did not want to say much. After sitting back down, she picked up her pen and continued asking,

“For you to come to the student council on your own, Sirius, that is what I would call rare. Has something troublesome happened?”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I came to tell you.” Sirius’s expression straightened as well, and with an extremely serious attitude, she relayed the news she had received. “That Ryuichi Kitano who just started yesterday collapsed this morning. He’s in emergency treatment at the hospital right now. Do you think we should go see for ourselves?”

SNAP!

CLATTER!

The moment Sirius finished speaking, the sound of a cup dropping to the floor and the sound of a pen nib snapping overlapped. Immediately, Ramonu and Rudolf’s unfocused gazes both turned toward Sirius. For a long while, neither of them reacted.

Had all of this… truly happened so quickly? At that moment, the same thought flashed through Ramonu’s and Rudolf’s minds at once, and at the same time, both thought of… what the worst possible outcome might be.

T/N: ALREADY BRO :sob: ANYWAY so what she saw was probably how if the trainee under him won races his life would be extended but not the loop information i see i see, lemme know if im wrong

This is a fan translation of 时日无多的训练员只想活下去 by 许氏子谦 Rights to the original work belong to the creator. Please support them by exploring their original work or sharing it with others if you can. Thank you for reading and supporting my efforts to bring this story to a wider audience!