On a Pale Horse (Umamusume/Youjo Senki)

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Life had been kind to Suzuki Shigeru.

Years ago, when he was younger and his parents struggled to make a living in the difficult time after the war, he wouldn't have said that. Even now he would not claim that life had been easy. But if he had not had to work a part time job to help make ends meet, he wouldn't have become friends with their kindly and knowledgeable neighbor.

Sugihara-san and his family likewise had difficulty during that time, with the old man selling light bulbs door to door at one point, but he had always seemed calm and in good cheer, despite the circumstances. Eventually he had found a more steady job, but he and his wife would sometimes look after Shigeru when his parents were busy. He learned a bit of Russian and German from them, and they did not put him down for his dreams of seeing the world. It turned out that Sugihara-san had traveled quite a lot, and sometimes told him stories about the places he had been to, like the Soviet Union, which sounded like a dangerous but interesting country.

Shigeru wasn't the best at schoolwork, which wasn't helped by how much his parents needed him to help out with the family restaurant, but he did well enough to graduate high school.

After that, he started working at the restaurant pretty much full time, though usually he was doing deliveries, which meant that he got to go around a fair bit of Fujisawa, even if he never really had time to go much further. It had stung, at first, that he lacked the time and money to travel around, but it could have been worse. At least Enoshima was not too far away and was a nice place to visit, even if he was too busy to go very often.

Time passed, and Shigeru began taking over more and more of the restaurant work as his parents got older. Then they started pestering him about getting married, which was annoying. It wasn't like Shigeru hadn't tried dating, but it was a bit difficult to schedule a get together when you had to work at a restaurant, which had the busiest times at the times people liked to go on dates. Sure, there were some girls that liked the idea of dating a guy who was able to cook, but none of them had been very interested after realizing how little time his work left for other things.

But life was kind to Shigeru, and ironically enough, the cause of a change in this situation was a sad event. Old Sugihara-san became ill and passed away. Shigeru had become friends with most of the old man's family, and the Sugiharas sometimes ordered some food from their restaurant, so the Suzukis learned about his passing in short order and offered their condolences, sad to see their kind neighbor depart their lives. Shigeru's parents even decided they would close the restaurant for a day to attend his funeral.

Leading up to the funeral, the Suzukis and their neighbors found, to their confusion, groups of foreigners suddenly appearing in greater and greater numbers, filling up the local inns and hotels. Apparently one of them was quite important too, since there were also a few national news crews hanging around.

It took Shigeru an embarrassingly long time, in hindsight, to realize that the foreigners were here for Sugihara-san's funeral. In fairness, the old man had never talked about certain times, like the war, but Shigeru was not surprised that the old man had helped out a lot of people when he could.

But his slow wittedness aside, the influx of foreigners meant more interest in the Suzuki restaurant, but there was a bit of a hiccup in that they had no menus for foreigners, and Shigeru's parents did not speak more than Japanese, not that his own second hand Russian was much better.

It was, however, enough to get him into trouble, as he had heard a group of foreigners (including a very striking looking young woman) asking for directions in what he thought was Russian, so he had approached them and asked if they needed help.

He then spent the next few minutes being berated in a language that definitely wasn't Russian by a few angry foreigners, before the younger woman, the daughter, managed to calm her relatives down, and explained to him, in Russian, that they were Polish.

Shigeru promptly apologised for his mistake, and for not speaking Polish, which seemed to mollify the group, who happened to be looking for somewhere to eat but didn't have an interpreter. As it so happened, his family had a restaurant, and he spoke a bit of a language they understood, so the pretty girl, apparently a bit embarrassed by her parents' outburst, suggested they try it out.

And that was how he met Katarzyna.

Her parents had escaped the war because Sugihara-san had helped them, so when they heard of his death they had been determined to pay their respects. As had many others.

Very many others.

Old man Sugihara had been a lot cooler than Shigeru had realized, and in some ways the old man had even helped him find a woman.

Shigeru and Katarzyna hit it off well, first at the restaurant, and then after the funeral of a man both of them admired. Of course, she had to return overseas, but the two of them exchanged contact information, and after a lot of headaches and quite a lot of money, Katarzyna became Suzuki Katarzyna, or Katsumi, for those who could not pronounce her name.

About a year after they were married, they had a child, and to their surprise, their daughter was born with strands of unusual pale gray hair and the ears of an Umamusume. Shigeru had been proud, but surprised, not having any among his relatives, but Kat had been less surprised, as Umamusume had once been very common in the homeland of her parents. A good sign for their marriage, she had said.

They named her Shirogane, after her almost silver hair.

Again Shigeru often thought, life was kind to him.

---

Shirogane was a quiet baby, something that both worried and relieved the young couple, both glad that she wasn't a terror to handle and concerned that their child was ill. This was compounded further by the fact that while Katarzyna had Umamusume in her ancestry, none were that close, nor were any still alive for her to call for advice.

The doctor did not find anything physically wrong with her, just that she slept irregularly, often waking up at sudden noises, which wasn't good for her health. In the end, he theorized that since some Umamusume have more clear memories of their previous incarnation, little Shirogane might have had a more stressful past life, making her more sensitive to sudden changes in her environment.

Shigeru and Kataryzna did their best to accommodate their born stressed daughter, keeping sudden or loud stimuli to a minimum as best they can. This made working at the restaurant harder, but Shigeru's parents were willing to shoulder more of the burden that had been eased off of them to help their granddaughter, who seemed dutiful enough, with how determined the girl seemed to avoid crying.

It wasn't quite correct to say Shirogane was completely unresponsive, her red eyes always managed to focus on her parents or grandparents when they tried to get her attention, but unlike other babies they knew of, she did not fixate on anything in her environment a normal child might find interesting.

At least, that's what they thought at first. Then one day, Shigeru's parents were watching over Shirogane, and his father pulled up an uma race on the television. This time, he had forgotten to turn down the volume, and while he was hurriedly trying to quiet it, the call to post sounded.

Shirogane's ears perked up, and her eyes blinked open, more alert than she usually was. She went to sleep shortly afterwards, not interested in the race on screen, despite her grandfather's hopes, but it was the most interest they had seen from her.

When Shigeru and Kat learned of this, they became sure that one day, their daughter would want to run in a race, maybe even attend the famous Tracen Academy! But unfortunately that was an expensive institution, one that they couldn't easily afford. But still, Umamusume were born to run, and both of Shirogane's parents were determined to grant their daughter the opportunity, even if it cost them.

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AN. I had this idea rattling around in my brain for a while, and had put some of it to metaphorical paper. Then Haru Urara died (RIP) and that motivated me to post this.

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Living a third life was a bit less shocking than the second time around, in part because the Soldier's death had not been as sudden or violent as the Salaryman's. A bit of irony in the contrast, with one mostly peaceful life cut short by an act of violence, while the other life of constant violence ended in a relatively peaceful way. Not that dying of disease was pleasant.

There had also been a distinct lack of self aggrandizing entities this time.

Perhaps the Salaryman had been correct that the Thing had been no real god, or perhaps, as the Soldier suspected, they had simply been discarded after they were found to have no further use.

Either way, Suzuki Shirogane remembered who she had been before she was born, recalling two lives in clear detail, but there were impressions of at least one other life, which made her wonder if whatever that Thing had done to the Salaryman had removed how a soul normally was supposed to be washed clean when reborn.

But whatever the case may be, this body and brain, being not entirely human, seemed less inclined towards the zealous obsession the Soldier had developed, being much more attached to the tangible than the theoretical. Perhaps it was to be expected of a hybrid of horse and human, but as the animal in question did not seem to exist in this world, it did not seem a good idea for her to wonder out loud about. It could also have been due to the Soldier's common usage of computation orbs and the adaptation of her brain to using magic from a young age making her mind in her last life more agile than her current one.

Fortunately, it didn't appear that Suzuki Shirogane would have to worry about any of the dangers that the Soldier did. Not only was she born after the World Wars (this world somehow following a similar history despite the lack of horses) at a similar time to the Salaryman, she was not an orphan, and actually had parents.

Or more specifically, parents that actually took child rearing seriously.

Her parents were usually quite busy, as was expected for a small but moderately popular restaurant, locally well known for its dumplings. This body's mother was clearly a foreigner, being Polish, and had apparently introduced a style of making dumplings that was novel to most of the potential customers.

Despite the amount of time they spent working, Shirogane's parents made sure that at least one of them or her grandparents were keeping an eye on her at all times, keeping her entertained by reading to her, watching races on the television, or taking her out on walks. It helped that their place of residence was not far from their place of work, so rotating the person keeping watch over her was quite feasible.

This was helped by the fact that, despite her body's childish urges, Shirogane was likely a comparatively easy child to handle, as she could be occupied easily by something to help her relearn how to read Japanese or a short physical excursion to burn off the pent up energy that distracted her from her studies. On that note, she was quite sure she began walking much earlier than a typical human child, but it must not have been too unusual for an umamusume, since her mother did not express great surprise unlike her father.

After she had been self mobile for what her parents deemed a sufficient time, Shirogane had managed to convince them to let her mill about the restaurant, something she suggested so they would not have to split time watching her during working hours, and because she was rather curious about the food that they sold. Her parents and her father's parents were very good cooks.

With how well-behaved she was, her parents had agreed, taking the opportunity to slip her some snacks throughout the day to encourage good behavior. As much as the viewpoint of past lives provided Shirogane with more discipline than a normal child, the snacks were very tasty, and she was often hungry, as her faster development also seemed to come with a greater appetite.

It hadn't been something that she noticed at first, but her family must have spent a significant amount of money on milk when she was an infant, since while her mother was a healthy human, that still meant she did not produce enough milk for an umamusume. Now weaned, Shirogane found that a human appropriate amount of food left her still hungry, but she never complained about it, recognizing that money must be tight so there was no need to make a fuss.

Or so she thought.

While small, her parents' restaurant had a rather large number of customers, including a few umamusume, leading to Shirogane's first interactions with others of her race(?), who were mostly not too dissimilar from normal humans, albeit generally more excitable and expressive, especially when taking into account the additional emotional cues from flexible ears and a tail.

Apparently, she was very cute.

One of the customers that came around frequently was a very large umamusume named Umeki, perhaps a draft horse or something, and she worked odd hours at a warehouse so would often come by in the morning to grab some breakfast for herself and her children.

Being a mother of a few young umamusume, she caught on almost immediately that Shirogane was eating less than she thought necessary.

"You must eat more!" she had cried, looking almost ready to yell at Shirogane's parents before she remembered that neither of them were umamusume, or had much that much experience with younger umamusume.

"This is enough for me," Shirogane insisted, not liking how loud this woman was being.

"Does she need to eat more?" her father asked, looking confused. "She always eats everything we give her but doesn't ask for more."

Her mother stared at her searchingly, before meeting gazes with the large woman, whose ears and tail flicked around in agitation.

"Shiro, dear," her mother began, pursing her lips seriously. "Why don't you say anything if you are still hungry?"

Shirogane stared back at her in bemusement. "I eat about as much as you do. If I eat more then it will use up too much food."

The adults shared a look, before their expressions softened and father laughed.

"Shiro-chan, if you need to eat more we will buy more food."

"But that will cost money."

"Well, yes…but that's not so important," her father waved off. "We buy a lot of food to begin with, a little more won't make that much of a difference."

Shirogane frowned, quite sure that her parents weren't exactly eating until they were full either. "You are also still hungry after eating a lot of the time," she accused, slightly miffed at how petulant her voice sounded. The reality of being a child again.

Mother laughed. "We can't take too long eating when the shop is open, and we aren't a growing little girl like you." Her look turned serious and she reached down to poke Shirogane on the nose. "You don't want to be short, do you?"

Not particularly, but… "There are some good things about being short," Shirogane mumbled with a pout. Being small had provided some advantages to the Soldier, but then again, she had been able to mitigate many of the disadvantages by flying.

"I'm sure there are," mother chortled, patting her on the head between her ears. "But no child of mine will go hungry if I can help it." There was a sharp gleam in her eyes, so Shirogane felt that it was probably best to go along.

"Ok, Mother, I will tell you if I am still hungry from now on."

"So formal…" the large uma muttered, before squealing loudly. "Oh my, your child is so cute!"

How annoying.

"Yes she is, isn't she?" She felt herself being lifted as her mother hoisted her up into a hug. "So seriously adorable!"

Mother please.

---

After that incident, Shirogane's parents and grandparents began strongly insisting she eat more, even threatening to take away book reading time if she didn't, which was mortifying. She acquiesced, because in the end, she was often hungry, and well…having parents this invested in her well-being was a rather novel experience, with the Salaryman's parents being distant and perpetually away and the Soldier's parents having either left her at an orphanage or dead.

Had she been a normal child, Shirogane wouldn't have thought anything of it, but with two lives lacking this kind of attention, she couldn't help but feel touched by the lengths her new family was willing to go to.

It did seem to be true that buying more food wasn't as big of a deal as she had thought, since by running a restaurant, they bought a lot in bulk, but that was only for certain things. However, there were other signs that while the family wasn't in the hole financially, things were less than ideal.

Shirogane noticed that her father and grandfather started buying fewer and fewer cigarettes, and not in a way that suggested they were trying to quit. Her mother bought fewer things when she went shopping, and also took trips less frequently. Both her grandparents gradually stopped talking about retirement. Of course, none of them mentioned this to Shirogane, likely not expecting her to understand, but it was clear to her that the surprise added burden of having an umamusume child as opposed to a standard human child was not as easy to bear as her family presented it to be.

She had hoped rationing her own meals would help ease the strain, but with their insistence on keeping her well fed, that was no longer an option.

No matter, there were other ways to be useful.

After a couple weeks of observing how her family went about their business, Shirogane began doing what she could to assist, starting with helping push chairs back into place and organizing utensils, masking her true aim by coaching it in terms of idle childish activity.

Her family was amused by this, and began sneaking her more snacks when she did things like that to incentivize this behavior, not unlike training a horse, or really anything that was sentient enough to understand. Of course, her family still shooed her away from trying to do things like collect used dishes, reasonably concerned about the coordination ability of a young child, especially one who was much stronger than her small size would suggest.

This meant that helping them cook was right out, but they did not mind showing her how the food was made, or explaining why they prepared things a certain way as opposed to another. Commercial food preparation, from what Shirogane observed, was to some degree formulaic, but also not entirely so, which made it a bit confusing. Each of her family members had a slightly different way of going about things, and for regular customers they would sometimes tweak things in some way to better suit their taste, such as adding more carrot pieces to anything that Umeki-san ordered.

Speaking of which, carrots were quite satisfying to eat.

Shirogane tried to learn as much as she could about the ways her parents prepared the food. It was simply good sense, as there was a rather strong likelihood she would be a part of the family business (only fair after the amount of investment they had put into her) and even aside from that, it would be a useful skill to be able to cook well regardless. The Salaryman and the Soldier had not been unable to cook, per se, but neither thought very much about it, nor were they particularly good at it.

If this world was really as similar to the Salaryman's as it seemed, despite the lack of horses in lieu of umamusume, it could be possible to gain quite a fortune with the right investment, but with what she remembered from the lives of the Salaryman and the Soldier, the former had never made much time to enjoy the rather significant money he made, and the latter had not adapted well to retirement, though that may have been more due to the terrible post war situation.

Perhaps a life working at a restaurant would be a nice change of pace. It should be less stressful than a lifetime of war.

---

A few more weeks of observation forced Shirogane to increase the expected level of stress running a restaurant would require, but it was still far less stressful than the Soldier's life, even if it looked to be quite busy.

It was busy enough that once she demonstrated her ability to carry even fairly delicate things, her parents had started allowing her to assist in cleaning the tables. They still were cautious enough to still stop her from moving anything too delicate, but they felt she could be trusted with wiping down the tables afterwards.

This also meant that she interacted with more customers, including some more of the regulars, such as a number of office workers who worked in a building down the street, some schoolchildren who passed by on their way home, and variety of umamusume like Umeki-san who seemed to work in logistical transport, making good use of an umamusume's unusually high power to size ratio.

Unfortunately for Shirogane, small children seemed to drastically decrease the intelligence of some of the people who came into the restaurant, as many of the women spent too much time gushing over how cute she was and getting in her way as she tried to clean. Some of them even got a bit touchy but they weren't too difficult to swat away. They were annoying, but manageable.

It was the children that were harder to deal with.

"Shiro-chan! Come play with us!"

"Aren't you here to eat? If you don't eat you will be hungry."

"Waah! Why is Shiro-chan so mean?!"

Umeki-san's child was also an umamusume, or perhaps umakodomo, and as such could eat a lot more than a human child, even more so because she and her mother seemed to be from a breed of draft horses, if there was such a concept, so despite only being a couple years older than Shirogane, Taro-san looked more like a teenager in appearance.

"I am not being mean. I am telling you this is a place for eating, not playing."

"But I never see you except here!"

"This is my family's restaurant, where would you expect me to be?"

"You don't live here, right?!"

"Of course not, we live nearby. Now sit down and eat, you're getting in the way of other customers."

"Shiro-chan is being mean!"

Eventually, Shirogane was able to get the oversized child to behave, but it took some doing and a delicate balance, as a young umamusume could cause significant damage if they were spooked.

It also led to her parents sending her to the park with grandmother and Umeki-san, because apparently she needed to blow off steam, and was maybe too stressed by the number of people showing up for lunch. Loathe as she was to admit it, her parents might have been onto something, but what bothered Shirogane the most was not the people, nor the noise, but rather the obstruction in her path to her designated task. In this case that obstruction had been Taro-san.

Now at a nearby park, without much of a clear objective, the larger horse child (filly?) was no longer an obstruction and thus much less irritating.

"Ne ne, Shiro-chan! I'll race you!"

Taro-san dashed forwards without bothering to confirm Shirogane was following her, heading for the loop around the park marked out for umamusume. Despite her enthusiasm, she wasn't actually going that fast.

"Go on, Shirogane-chan," grandmother urged gently, patting her on the head with an amused smile on her wrinkled face.

Shirogane looked up at her skeptically, one ear turned towards the park to remain aware of the activities of the people milling about there.

"Shiro-chan is a slowpoke!"

She would not be riled up by this basic provocation.

"If you beat her, I'll make you more carrot gyoza."

She would not be bribed with food.

"Shiro-chan! Come on!"

"I'll let you try making gyoza if you go and play."

She was not immune to bribery.

As Shirogane begrudgingly made her way over to the track, Taro-san took off again at a plodding pace, not bothering to wait to start a proper race.

Tch.

Shirogane accelerated, reaching a comfortable jogging speed quickly and gaining on the cheater.

"Shiro-chan is too slow!"

Then she would go faster.

"Shiro-chan, Slowpok–wha!"

Taro-san flinched as Shirogane rushed past her, small feet pounding the track as she overtook the much more ponderous draft breed, but she paid her little mind.

Running was quite strange.

On one hand, it felt entirely normal, the two-legged motion being something both the Salaryman and Soldier were familiar with, even if the former had not run nearly as much as the latter. On another hand, there was something altogether different about it.

For the Salaryman, running had been a basic activity to keep in shape, or to chase a scheduled activity if he was delayed.

For the Soldier, running had been a sometimes grueling part of training, even though she had mostly been a mage and thus not groundbound. There had still been times when she had had to run, and those times were times of terror and madness.

To some degree, those impressions remained, and as Shirogane ran around the track, noise seemed to ring in her head, blocking out everything except the path in front of her. In the moment, she forgot why she had been coaxed into running, just that it was important, so she ran.

Her feet struck the track, her breathing coming in sharply, but evenly, as she slid into a practiced form at a faster pace than she had before, a dark and giddy feeling boiling up from her heart as she saw an obstruction in her path.

Unlike before, this did not annoy her, and she was filled by a sudden, nagging urge to run the obstruction down, removing the problem…

But that didn't seem right…removing obstructions was not the goal here, so she went around and continued running.

The wind pulled at her face and ears, her blood pulsed through her veins, and she felt her muscles strain as she put them to greater use than she had before in this life, reaching a speed she was quite sure she had never been able to manage on foot in her past lives, but still felt sluggishly slow from the lingering instincts of the Soldier.

That was ridiculous. Shirogane could not fly, but that did not change her sense of inadequacy.

A flicker of memory, and she parted the air before her, the wind lowering just slightly, not enough for her to gain much speed, but enough that her passage was easier.

Another obstruction.

Avoid it.

"Waaah!"

Keep running–

Wait.

Was that Taro-san?

Oh, she beat her, so she didn't need to keep running so much.

Shirogane decelerated, flicking her ears as the rest of the world came into focus, slowing to a jog as she cooled down from her sprint.

"Good job, Shirogane-chan!" grandmother cheered, her scratchy voice sounding more lively than Shirogane remembered ever having heard before, the old woman waving at her enthusiastically.

Remembering her promise, Shirogane jogged over to her grandmother, enduring the requisite pat on the head. "Look how fast you could run!" How exactly was she supposed to do that? It wasn't as if she had an internal velocimeter.

"I knew she had a lot of pent up energy, but that was something else." What was Umeki-san talking about?

"Haah! Shiro-chan…haaah… So fast!" Oh, there was Taro-san.

"Grandmother, will you let me try to make gyoza now?" Shirogane asked, starting to get impatient as the older woman continued to stroke her hair.

"Hmm? Are you not tired, Shirogane-chan?" Why would she be? That was not that strenuous of a run.

"No," she denied, actually feeling quite refreshed, and quite a bit less twitchy. "I am quite hungry now though." As if on cue, her stomach growled noisily.

"Well we can't have that," grandmother tsked. "Shiro-chan is already too skinny."

"Being fat is not healthy."

"Being too skinny is unhealthy too!"

"I am not too skinny."

"Do you want to learn how to cook, Shiro-chan?"

"...Yes." That was the whole point of this activity.

"Then you will need to eat more!"

Why did she keep adding more stipulations?! When learning to cook you inevitably ended up eating your own cooking, unless it was really that bad.

"Fine."

"You will also need to run more. It isn't healthy for a young girl to stay cooped up so much."

"...But then I would need to eat more…" Which would cost money.

"Of course you will, now come along, Oba-san is getting too old for this!"

…This entire endeavor was your idea, old woman!

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