The Silver Standard​

---

The roar of the crowd reached her a half-second late, as though sound itself had needed time to catch up. Merry Soon barely heard it.

Her own breathing drowned out nearly everything else, sharp and hot in her ears as she drove herself through the final meters of the straight. Hoofbeats thundered behind and around her, close enough to threaten, not close enough to matter. Her stride had begun to fray at the edges, form threatening to loosen, shoulders to rise, knees to shorten. She forced everything back into place through sheer willpower, jaw clenched so tightly it ached.

The post rushed toward her.

Then past.

She took a few more steps at full speed before instinct finally surrendered to reality. Her body protested the sudden easing all at once; lungs aflame, legs trembling, every pulse in her veins striking like a hammer. She slowed unevenly, chest heaving, hands braced against her thighs.

For several seconds, the world narrowed to the track beneath her shoes. Then it came flooding back.

Announcer's voice, bright with practiced excitement. The stamp of feet in the stands. Applause washing over the course in rolling waves. Numbers flashing onto the board overhead.

First.

Her gaze locked there.

First.

It was almost embarrassingly plain when displayed like that. A single number, yes, yet it seemed to swallow every doubt she had carried into the starting gates.

She straightened slowly as she cast her gaze over her shoulder. The other runners were pulling up further behind, some disappointed, some merely tired. One caught her eye and offered a sportsmanlike nod. Merry returned it automatically, hardly aware she had done so. A race official gestured her toward the winner's path and she followed, her legs feeling oddly light, as if the strain of the run belonged to someone else.

At the edge of the track, her trainer was waiting.

He was trying to hold it together for the cameras, but his composure cracked the moment she reached him.

"You did it," he said, voice breaking despite himself. "You actually did it."

Merry blinked, then laughed once in disbelief. "Of course I did."

The answer came out lighter than she felt. Beneath it, something tighter had only just begun to unwind.

He handed her a towel, still shaking his head. "Strong break from the gate, held your pace until the final corner. You ran exactly as we planned."

"It got pretty close though." She said as she dabbed absently at the sweat on her brow, eyes straying once more to the results board, as though it might vanish if left unattended.

Around them, staff moved briskly, spectators chattered, cameras turned toward the enclosure. Somewhere nearby, someone said her name with the bright surprise reserved for newcomers who had done something noteworthy.

Despite the close call, Merry felt the corners of her mouth lift.

Victory. This was what it was meant to feel like.

All the mornings, all the drills, all the praise that had followed her since childhood hadn't been misplaced. She belonged here, at the highest level, and she had proved it in the only way that mattered.

Winning.

For a few precious seconds, she felt complete.

Her trainer was speaking beside her, already talking about recovery, next steps, what races to run next.

His words slid over her.

She was still watching the results board, still letting the word first settle properly inside her, when movement on a television mounted high in the concourse caught the edge of her eye. It was displaying another race from earlier in the day.

Silver hair streamed behind an umamusume alone on the final bend, stride clean and mercilessly efficient. The conclusion was so obvious that the commentator's voice rose before she had even entered the homestretch.

"—and Shirogane Orzeru will claim her second graded victory!"

Merry's smile held, though something in it had changed.

On the screen, Shirogane crossed the line alone.

---

The screen in her trainer's office was still playing the replay.

Merry had stopped pretending she was only glancing at it after the second loop. Her notebook lay forgotten on the desk in front of her.

The race footage showed the course from an angle slightly too far above to feel real, the track laid out almost like the diagrams on the whiteboard. Runners bunched early, then stretched thin as the pace split them apart. Only one figure resisted the pattern: a pale blur that continued to lengthen an already absurd gap.

Merry leaned forward without meaning to.

Shirogane didn't look like she was running fast.

There was no visible strain or dramatic shift in form, no final push even as she turned the last corner. Her stride remained even, almost casual, as though an entire race at that pace was the most natural thing in the world.

Merry blinked once.

"…She is a frontrunner, right?" she asked quietly.

Her trainer, standing beside her with a clipboard tucked under one arm, nodded. "Like you, yes. Just that she starts accelerating extremely early for a frontrunner."

Accelerate.

Merry replayed the word in her head as the footage reached the final straight. It just didn't fit with what she was seeing.

Shirogane didn't accelerate, to Merry it seemed like she didn't need to. The gap was already far too wide to close.

The runners behind her posed no threat at all, each attempt to close the distance collapsing as they panicked and rushed, all thrown off by her blistering pace and exhausted in their failed attempts to keep up. Shirogane herself remained unfazed, seeming to grow more energetic as she neared the finishing post. It didn't make any sense, at least not in any way that could be put into words.

The replay looped again before a tap on the shoulder broke her focus.

"You've gone quiet again," her trainer observed carefully.

"I'm thinking."

"Okay." He took the remote from her, skipping back to the final stretch again. "I'm guessing it's about her final spurt."

Shirogane's face appeared in a close-up cut: calm, eyes forward, breathing controlled enough that it almost looked optional.

"Or lack of one, I suppose."

"Yeah," she nodded. "Does she always run like that?"

"Mostly," her trainer said. "It's her style. Runaway frontrunning."

Runaway.

Merry repeated it internally, turning the word over in her mind until it no longer felt unfamiliar next to her own style of choice.

"I could do that," she decided at last.

Her trainer paused for just a second before answering, giving her a discerning eye. "You could..."

"...But?"

"You run differently."

"That's not an answer." She pouted.

"It is," he said gently. "You're a natural frontrunner, Merry. You like to take an early lead and build on it down the stretch. Shirogane‐san pushes the front from the beginning, there's a difference."

Merry's eyes stayed on the screen. On Shirogane, still unmoving in victory footage that felt too calm to be real.

"I can push the front," she insisted.

"I know you can."

There was a pause before she spoke again, quieter this time.

"If she can do it at that speed… then I should be able to do it better. I'm faster than her."

Her trainer exhaled through his nose, not quite a sigh, but close. "Be careful with comparisons like that. You're only looking at one side of her style. She's built her entire approach around—"

But Merry wasn't really listening anymore, something had already shifted its weight inside her mind. She watched Shirogane cross the line one more time, silver hair settling as she stood a little ways past the post, the nearest runner barely crossing the two hundred meter mark nearly a distance behind her.

Her fingers tightened around the edge of the desk.

Her trainer noticed.

"You're doing it again," he said.

"Doing what?"

"Watching someone else and trying to run their race."

He picked up the remote and froze the screen mid-stride.

Shirogane's form remained maddeningly unchanged even stationary.

"I'll be frank with you, Merry, I don't entirely like what I'm seeing."

She blinked. "You don't?"

"I respect it," he corrected. "I'm even a little scared of it, but that's beside the point."

He gestured at the screen.

"No late-race fatigue. Hardly any wasted motion. No panic response when challenged. She runs at a runaway pace and somehow finishes composed. That is not normal."

Merry glanced back at the image.

"It looks effective."

"It looks expensive," he said dryly, ticking off points on his fingers. "In training, in conditioning, in strain. And we have no idea what kind of workload supports it."

He set the remote down on the desk between them and sat down opposite her.

"For all we know, she's built years of stamina around that style. Maybe she's gambling soundness for results. Or perhaps she's simply exceptional."

He met her eyes directly.

"But copying results without understanding the process behind them is how runners break themselves."

Merry said nothing.

Her gaze drifted back to the paused image of Shirogane.

"…So you're saying I shouldn't try."

"I'm saying you shouldn't imitate something you don't understand."

He let that sit for a moment.

"Besides, you already have strengths she doesn't. Better top speed and acceleration, for one. Do you think you could accelerate like you did in your most recent race if you ran the whole thing like her?"

She shook her head.

"Exactly," His tone softened slightly. "So don't lose what already works for you. Just run your race."

A long silence followed before Merry exhaled through her nose and nodded once.

"...Alright. I'll run my race."

Some of the tension left his shoulders.

"Good," he said, reaching for the registration papers beside him and sliding one free. "There's one more thing."

He set the paper down between them.

"She's entered the same race we were planning for."

"What?"

---

The gates sprang open and Merry broke cleanly.

Relief flashed through her in the same instant as motion, she hadn't stumbled or hesitated, and she settled into her opening routine almost immediately, driving forward for a few strong steps before easing into the position she had been trained to hold. The pack gathered around her in a familiar storm of hoofbeats and breath, everything was unfolding exactly as it should.

The rail slid past in smooth white segments. Turf flicked lightly against her calves from runners behind. She stayed with the lead group without forcing anything, shoulders low, cadence even, conserving what she could while keeping herself where she needed to be.

For the first hundred metres, the race made sense.

Pressure at her flank. Another runner half a length outside. Someone tucked behind her shoulder, waiting for an opening. The familiar dance of positioning and patience she'd experienced countless times in practice.

Then she saw it. Shirogane had moved ahead, clear of the lead group.

Not abruptly, like with a breakaway born of effort or risk, but gradually; she hadn't stopped accelerating even as the other runners had settled into their natural positions.

Merry had studied this. She knew the explanation. She had accepted it as a viable strategy.

And yet seeing it now, without meaning to, she found herself thinking: something about this is wrong!

No frontrunner should be doing that unless she was prepared to pay for it later, or believed she wouldn't. That was common sense.

Shirogane looked as though she hadn't spent a thing.

Her stride remained even, as if the idea of fatigue had not yet occurred to her. She continued to hold the same rhythm as the gap behind her widened again, then again, until what had begun as an aggressive move simply became the new structure of the race.

Merry forced her attention back to her own running.

Do not chase. Run your race.

Her trainer's voice was clear in her mind now, sharper than the crowd, sharper than instinct.

Run your race.

So she did. She kept position within the lead group, resisting the urge to respond as others around her began to lose their composure under the pressure of Shirogane's pace. One by one they stretched, then slipped backward, the field thinning as the front resolved itself into something far simpler:

Distance.

By the time they reached the far turn, Shirogane was still extending away.

Merry could feel the strain building now, not from panic but from awareness. The race was continuing forward without her permission, and yet she remained exactly where she had been instructed to stay. Every instinct that urged her to respond was met with something steadier, more deliberate.

Discipline.

Not yet. Final leg. Follow the plan.

The straight approached, and Merry shifted. She gathered everything she had been preserving, every reserve carefully held back for this moment. Her breathing tightened, her stride lengthened, and the world narrowed into a single line of pursuit.

She detonated.

The turf practically broke beneath her, each step carrying more power than the last and sending clods of turf flying in her wake. The gap to Shirogane began to shrink, slowly at first, then all at once as Merry committed fully to the run she had prepared for.

Five lengths.

Three.

A length and a half.

For a brief moment, it felt as though the calculation had been correct, as though the plan was finally resolving itself into reality.

Then something changed.

Not in Shirogane, but in Merry.

It felt like a switch had flipped and all of a sudden, her legs burned and breathing felt impossible. Each breath came shallower than the last, each stride costing more than it should have, not because anything ahead had changed, but because she had reached the boundary of what she could sustain.

The gap stopped closing.

Then it held.

Then it began to widen.

Merry pushed harder, searching for something beyond the limit she was already standing inside, but there was nothing left to take. The race did not slow. The distance did not yield. It simply slipped out of her control.

One length.

One and a half.

Two.

The final straight blurred around her as willpower melted into desperation and raw animal instinct. She kept running because there was nothing else to do, because stopping was not part of her nature, because the line still existed even if the outcome had already been decided.

Shirogane crossed first.

Seven lengths later, Merry Soon crossed second.

---

Seven.

Merry kept thinking of it even after she had left the track. Her trainer spoke, doors opened and closed, people moved around her, but the number stayed where it was.

Seven lengths.

It sounded harmless, almost innocent when spoken aloud, like a measurement from someone else's life. But on the television screen in the office, it looked like a guilty verdict.

The race footage froze at the finish line.

First.

Seven lengths.

Second.

Merry stood in front of the television, towel still draped over her shoulders, hair damp against her neck. She watched herself cross the line again. Not first, not even close enough for comfort. Behind her, the field resolved into shapes that no longer mattered. Ahead, only one figure remained clear.

"—and Shirogane Oruzeru extends her lead decisively in the final stretch! A commanding finish!"

The announcer's voice cut through the replay loop, unchanged from the moment it had been recorded.

Merry frowned slightly at that. Commanding felt too small a word for what it had been.

Her trainer stood a few steps behind her, arms crossed. "You ran well," he said.

Merry didn't answer immediately. On screen, she saw herself again: straining now, shoulders rising, stride shortening in the final meters. Not collapsing, but no longer gaining.

Just… staying.

"I didn't win," she said at last, deflated. "I couldn't."

"No," he agreed carefully, turning the television off. "You didn't, but you ran it right."

Merry replayed the finish in her head without the screen now. The moment she had tried to close the gap and found that the gap did not respond.

Silence followed before Merry finally turned her head slightly.

"She didn't even—" She stopped, searching for the right word. "She wasn't even tired."

Her trainer folded his arms. "No… She wasn't."

That sentence made something ugly tighten in her chest.

"I waited," Merry said slowly, almost to herself. "I ran my race. I trained hard. I did what we planned."

"You did."

Her brow furrowed. "Then why did it feel like it was over before the final straight?"

He didn't answer immediately, but Merry could see the gears turning in his head. It didn't matter what he had to say, the plan had been right. It had to have been right, she'd gotten too close for it to be wrong.

If it hadn't worked then something in her hadn't been enough, and she wouldn't let him soften the blow.

Her gaze dropped briefly to her hands. "I can do better than that," she said. "I know I can."

His expression shifted into something softer. "You ran your personal best out there."

"I know."

"That matters."

She looked back up at the empty screen.

Seven lengths.

"It doesn't feel like it," Merry said quietly. "She ran like I wasn't even there."

Her trainer exhaled through his nose. "That's one way of looking at it."

Merry turned the monitor on again, watching the final straight for the third time. Her own figure entered the frame later than she remembered, smaller than she remembered, working harder than she remembered.

"I was closing."

He nodded.

"But it wasn't enough."

Silence settled again. Her trainer didn't speak, and Merry didn't ask him to.

Seven lengths wasn't close. Not at all.

Merry turned away from the screen. For a moment, she didn't speak, the replay clicking softly behind her as it reset once more.

"I'll catch her."

Her trainer's eyes sharpened. "Merry—"

"I will," she said, pulling the towel from her shoulders, twisting it once in her hands as though something in her might come loose with the water. "Next time I'll catch her."

---

AN: I haven't written anything in a while, so forgive the herky-jerky pacing. While I was inspired enough by all the discussion on the possible different rival dynamics to write something, I was too lazy to write any connecting scenes or to add in a training montage. Also, if you haven't guessed already, the name Merry Soon is supposed to be as close to Mary Sue as possible while still sounding somewhat like a racehorse name, but she's eh... missing her usual religious zeal cause I couldn't figure out how to work it in, so I just made it an obsession with facing Shirogane in every race, which kinda mirrors how Mary Sue acted in Youjo Senki if you squint and do some mental acrobatics.