Work Text:
Nase Fumino wishes Musaka a safe drive home and turns back to the party. Her gaze passes over the dark oak-paneled wall behind her—which is not a wall. That side of the ballroom is floor-to-ceiling glass, showing not sunset, not even early dusk, but full, dark night.
It doesn’t feel like night.
The day has raced past at a frenzied pace. She winces, slightly, at the unintended pun. Something Rudolf would say. She should-
She should recover her bearings, not spin herself into frantic, disorganized urgency by inventing tasks for herself.
Fumino lets the sounds of conversation and clinking glasses blend into a warm murmur like the distant roar of the grandstands, shifting her focus to take in the whole scene before her.
The partygoers are mainly clustered around Creek, with a few smaller clusters orbiting the main pack. Natural enough—she’s the star of tonight’s show and all eyes are on her, even more than usual. Creek is positively sparkling.
Creek looks as energetic as Fumino feels, despite the long day they’ve had. Of course she does. Fumino’s star trainee would never exhaust herself too early. She doesn’t quit until the race is won and the show is over. Which, of course, is the entire reason for this party.
In just a few hours, Super Creek, the Speedy Stayer, second of the “Eternal” Heisei Three, will officially retire. Her career in racing and public life will be over.
Fumino should be proud, as her fellow partygoers have repeatedly reminded her. As if she needs to be told. Her first trainee has won her greater acclaim than most of her colleagues will see over all their trainees’ careers put together. Creek’s career has been one for the history books. Was. Will have been. She’s still Cinderella until the clock strikes midnight.
She’s the winner of today’s race, too. Her final race.
Fumino watched every moment in rapt, white-knuckled attention from her spot by the sidelines. The race went exactly as they’d planned. By the end, Creek hadn’t even needed to sprint—she’d just maintained pace, while her competition lost steam and gradually fell behind.
It was almost anticlimactic.
That might be why the heated, held-breath feeling of anticipation still hasn’t left Fumino, why her thoughts are still full of racing terminology and imagery, hours later.
Well, if any of Creek’s audience found the race anticlimactic, they were surely mollified by the concert afterward. Fumino has never much cared for the concerts, but even she could see the delight in the crowd’s reaction. It featured original music commissioned specially for the occasion, and three separate costumes—with two mid-dance costume changes—designed to evoke the major stages of Creek’s career: her humble beginnings overcoming early health issues, her reign as the “supervillain of the turf,” and finally the reliable, nurturing stayer her fans have adored and admired for years.
A good showing, by all accounts.
Of course, for all the reasons Fumino has to feel proud, she might just as reasonably be sad tonight. This is the end of an era. But pride and grief both feel distant, faraway right now.
She is proud of the work she’s done with Creek. The work they’ve done together. But that work is in the past.
Maybe she shouldn’t expect to feel the way most trainers feel when their trainees retire. She and Creek have never had a conventional relationship. From the start, Creek credited her wins to Fumino, sometimes even claiming she was racing “for trainer-san.” Quite possibly no other racer has ever deflected pre-race anxiety in exactly that way. Eventually, though, they both learned to stop forcing their desire for victory onto Creek, and instead focus on “becoming strong” together. Creek had started to win, and for a moment, their dynamic had seemed to settle. But then, once Creek’s supervillain persona stopped persuading audiences, she’d embraced a public persona closer to her old habits, announcing her long-held desire to dote on Fumino to all the world.
Fumino can’t entirely fault the choice. It worked, even if it was (and still is) unconventional. Press and public alike delighted in the “odd couple” of a motherly trainee doting on her ambitious, tough-as-nails trainer—a fresh subversion of the public’s typical expectations for trainers and trainees.
The contrast with Creek’s motherly persona also helped to cement Fumino’s no-nonsense, hyper-professional reputation, which she’d acquired during Creek’s “supervillain” era. It’s an easy part to play. Fumino’s perpetual scowl and natural impatience for almost everything but training and expensive sushi have been reliable assets, these past few years.
Creek’s “doting” persona has stuck. Most racers define their public persona in contrast to some more-experienced rival—which means they have to rework their public persona when that rival inevitably retires. Creek hasn’t needed to. Even so, Creek’s doting persona has been unusually long-lived. For whatever reason, neither she nor the public ever tired of the formula. If anything, Creek has only escalated it over time, inventing new gambits and stratagems in her endless campaign to dote on Fumino.
In recent years, the routine has sometimes even bled into their off-camera interactions.
In retrospect, maybe she should have said something. Drawn a line. Kept things properly professional—
She’s cut off from her pointless worrying when Creek turns from one partygoer to another, and their eyes meet for the briefest moment.
There’s no twinkle of mischief, no flicker of private understanding in Creek’s gaze. It doesn’t linger. It gives no sign she’s anything less than fully attentive to the crowd around her.
Of course not. Fumino’s star trainee is far too professional, far too skilled an entertainer to lose focus until the work is done. Fumino might have nothing better to do than stand on the sidelines navel-gazing, but Creek still has a role to play tonight.
Not that she needs acknowledgment of their connection. They are as close as any two colleagues could be after nearly a decade of full-time collaboration: countless post-training study sessions reviewing competitors’ race tapes, nights of silent stargazing on the Tracen Academy lawn too exhausted to speak, too wired to sleep, years of finding obviously handmade Valentine’s chocolates on her desk, always unmarked, always accompanied by nothing but a lingering glance from Creek. If anything, their closeness has long hovered at the very edge of Fumino’s professional comfort zone.
Her hand twinges. She looks down and finds she has a white-knuckled grip on her champagne flute. She’s been squeezing the stem like the pen she brings to every race and never uses—as if she’s still watching Creek round the final corner, waiting for her move, scanning for blind spots in her strategy, for anything she might have missed.
How strange. Her work as Creek’s trainer is over. It ended hours ago, before this party began. Even if Creek weren’t retiring, a celebration like this wouldn’t be the time or place to revise training plans.
Her grip remains painfully tight. Her shoulders are still locked, still tense, still coiled in anticipation. The looming urgent need to make a plan persists.
It might be nothing. She could go home now. Take a bath and try to forget about the tension in her shoulders. The idea makes her gorge rise.
Fumino is a reliably thorough planner—not the type to overlook important details. But she owes part of that reliability to diligence: whenever she suspects she’s missed something, she double- and triple-checks her own schemes until the doubt subsides.
Maybe she’s forgotten a work task? She has no real work tonight, beyond the socializing she’s already done. By now, her colleagues know better than to expect small talk from her. Her reputation as the “steely-eyed genius” behind the supervillain of the turf (as one particularly flattering exposé put it) has its perks.
Creek’s retirement forms are completed, submitted, and approved—any unexpected issues will fall to the Director or Tazuna, not Fumino.
She’ll need to select a new ace eventually, but not urgently. The New Year deadline gives her months to decide.
And she’s already handled all the logistics for her vacation next week: paperwork submitted, approvals secured. Her team will train with Kitahara’s while she and Creek are away. Kitahara has everything he might need—notes on each trainee’s current needs, copies of her full training notes, even her personal number for emergencies.
None of it eases the nagging sense that she’s overlooked something crucial.
If not a work task, then perhaps it’s something in her personal life?
Her vacation with Creek starts tomorrow—but it shouldn’t be a problem. Fumino has confirmed the itinerary, cross-checked it with Creek, reserved their train tickets, printed every necessary document, and packed her suitcase. The logistics won’t be an issue.
The vacation itself… well, a week at a remote mountain onsen doesn’t exactly sound exciting. But it’ll be novel, and at least she’ll have her laptop and Wi-Fi. Left to her own devices, Fumino prefers sushi, good wine, and unfamiliar music played through the best headphones money can buy. Spending time naked, around other naked women, is not her idea of a good time. Well. Except under the right circumstances, obviously. Which a hot spring is decidedly not. A hot spring with her recently-ex-trainee and soon-to-be colleague even less so. If she can’t avoid the baths entirely, she’ll just have to find some piece of ceiling or wall to stare at. Avoiding eye-contact might be awkward, but at least she won’t risk inadvertently glancing.
She probably shouldn’t have agreed to let Creek take her on this vacation. Creek asked the question while they were live on national television, and Fumino, scrambling to put together a professional response that wouldn’t mar Creek’s public image, had agreed on the condition that Creek do her best to prepare for her final race. It was probably the least inadvisable thing she could have said, under the circumstances. In any case, it will only be a week.
After that, they’ll both be returning to Tokyo. Creek will be living out of Fumino’s guest bedroom for a while, at least until passing the national trainer qualifying exams and finding and furnishing a place of her own. When Creek first broached the idea of retirement, she’d emphasized her desire to remain close. She’d even asked if Fumino would be willing to live with her. Fumino had pointed out that, once Creek began work as a junior trainer at Tracen, they would be colleagues again. But she’d also had to concede that Creek was welcome in her home at any time.
Having Creek as a temporary roommate will be fine. Creek has always been a fine houseguest when she’s stayed over, aside from a few incidents early on, when Fumino had to ask her not to walk around in nothing but a towel. That was not a helpful or appropriate mental image. It still isn’t.
Anyway, a roommate might make Fumino’s absurdly oversized apartment—paid for by race winnings, too well-located to sell—feel less wasteful.
Beyond shifting from seeing each other during work to before and after, their relationship won’t change much. And Fumino won’t even need to help move Creek’s things—Oguri and a few others have volunteered to handle the few boxes while they’re at the onsen. Nothing to worry about.
Nothing at all.
The tension in her hand really isn’t getting better. If anything, it’s gotten worse. The sense of having overlooked something crucial, of being unprepared for a choice she hasn’t even named, has only deepened. She itches to grab a pen, a whiteboard marker, anything, and start planning.
Fumino downs the rest of her lukewarm champagne with a grimace, sets the flute on a passing waiter’s tray, and slips out through the glass doors onto the long, narrow balcony to clear her head.
The air outside is cool, a soft breeze carrying the scent of autumn leaves. She can hear crickets over the chatter of the party behind her, now muffled by the glass.
The balcony is empty, but for a waist-high metal railing at its edge. She places both hands on the round metal and pushes forward, forcing the cramped tension out of her hands. The metal is cold, damp with condensation. It focuses all her scattered thoughts into those two points of contact, the press of her palms against the rail. For a moment, she just breathes. Then, still bracing herself against the railing, she takes a small step back, and leans forward on her heels until she can feel a satisfying stretch in her calves.
It’s not quite as dark as it had seemed inside, with the brightly lit chandeliers reflecting off glass. Dusky, rather than pitch black. The moon is nearly full and a few high clouds reflect the city’s glow.
She might be taking this party too seriously. If there’s a choice to make, a problem to solve or plan to refine, she can handle it on her own time. Soon, of course. But the end of this party isn’t a deadline unless she makes it one.
This party isn’t even for her, really. Or for Creek. It’s for their colleagues, their friends and rivals. She and Creek don’t need a party to know what they’ve done together or what it’s worth.
And they’ve done a lot together. Especially in the lead-up to today.
They’ve been preparing for today’s events for months. They spent most of one month just selecting Creek’s final race—something she could win, but still challenging enough to make for a worthy finale. They spent even more time fine-tuning her race strategy and training. By the time today’s race finally arrived, Creek could have won it in her sleep.
The commentators praised the uncanny precision of her positioning, the way she was always exactly where she needed to be, never giving her opponents a chance to cut her off or force her off pace. At every turn, they found themselves blocked from their preferred positions or goaded into reckless early bursts by Creek’s steady, implacable rhythm—as if she could read the race’s future in the flutter of the grass.
Of course, she had read the future of the race, but it had been on Fumino’s white board and index cards. Nothing so unreliable as track conditions.
They planned Creek’s retirement announcement just as carefully. Fumino worked her press connections to the utmost, while Creek put her skills as a performer to work cushioning the blow to her fans, most of whom had forgotten that Creek would ever retire. Playing on her ever-reliable motherly persona, Creek had asked her rivals and fans to accept her retirement from public life as the heartfelt request of an aging racer stepping aside to make room for a younger generation.
Creek had only needed to drop a few hints that her true feelings about retiring were more complicated than she let on, and she’d had the tabloids eating out of the palm of her hand. They’d reveled in the hidden depths they discovered, enchanted by the image of an aging racer still secretly in love with the sport, but unable to bear the thought of disappointing her fans or tarnishing the image of the Speedy Stayer that had inspired so many.
It was a magnificent performance. All the more so because Fumino, uniquely, knew the sincere emotion behind the fabrications.
She’s been so very lucky.
The tension in her shoulders and back has eased into something warm, almost pleasant in the cool night air.
She stands a little straighter, takes her hands from the cold metal railing, and holds them together just above her solar plexus, as if cradling a baby bird. She can feel the fatigue start to settle in her arms. In an hour, she knows, she’ll be feeling the full weight of it.
For now, she lets her gaze drift aimlessly over the dark silhouettes of trees before her, just taking in the scenery.
Eight years.
Eight years of working together, training together, planning races together. A long time by any measure, but especially for a URA athlete. Most racers’ careers end in stagnation, injury, or loss of public interest in just over three years. A few lucky racers reach five years. Eight years, without any meaningful decline in track performance or fan support, is almost unheard of.
What an absurd blessing. Not only to train a once-in-a-generation talent like Creek, but to do so for so long. Of course, Creek’s longevity is partly the result of her genius. Fumino teaches all her trainees to run carefully, to develop the stamina and positioning to win against raw power and speed. No one has ever internalized those lessons like Creek. Few ever will. Almost none of those will match her showmanship, her sincerity, her shrewd understanding of the sport’s need for spectacle, her beauty.
And she had asked Fumino to be her trainer.
It still feels utterly unbelievable.
They’d both been so young, then. So unsure.
It feels like a lifetime ago. Fumino had finally convinced herself to give up on becoming a trainer, after years of misery. A wiser woman would have given up long before, would have seen that, in the insular and conservative world of the URA, still dominated by the old boy’s club of her father’s generation, it would take a miracle for Fumino to ever step beyond his shadow.
But Fumino had been stubborn. Angry. Desperate enough to gamble years of her life trying to prove herself equal or better to a man with decades more experience and infinitely more support.
If she’d been any less lucky, she’d have learned a hard lesson about overextending herself, built a quiet, unremarkable life as an accountant, a physical therapist, an orthopedic surgeon—anything but a trainer—and steadfastly avoided her father’s name for the rest of her life.
Instead, Creek had reached out, tugged on her sleeve, looked up with her wide, sweet eyes and asked Fumino to watch her run. She listened attentively, took Fumino’s advice, and used it to win. She still took Fumino by complete surprise when she asked her to be her trainer.
Even after the Kikuka-Shō, her first major victory, it took years before people stopped calling Fumino “the daughter of Nase.” But Creek gave her the first glimpse of her current life, that day. More importantly, she’d given Fumino the chance to fall in love with training.
The thought of that day, as always, makes her chest ache and her eyes burn. She draws a sharp breath of cold air through her nose, and the pressure behind her eyes subsides slightly.
Fumino still hasn’t ever told Creek that she’d been about to quit, the day they met.
She should.
She will.
Something in her chest settles at the resolution.
She’s just turning to go back inside when the party’s murmur swells behind her—and a familiar presence settles beside her. She doesn’t need to look to know who it is.
“I caught your eye earlier.” Creek’s voice is soft, careful not to break the stillness. “It looked like you might be a little unhappy. Is there anything I can do, please?”
Fumino huffs a quiet laugh, in appreciation and surprise at the question. Her earlier worry feels very distant. She’s not sure she could explain it if she tried, in her current state. “Thank you, Creek. I’m alright. A little tired. Needed some fresh air.”
“It’s nice out here.”
“It is.”
It takes a moment before she remembers the party, and adds, “Don’t you have a party to headline? Won’t your adoring fans miss their idol?”
She hears the words as she says them, but Creek must hear that they’re more playful than jealous, because she lets out a small laugh of her own.
“People were getting tired.”
Technically not a lie—or, at least, not one Fumino can chide her for, after having just made the same excuse. She turns, and Creek’s face is the perfect picture of innocence. Fumino doesn’t even bother to roll her eyes.
“Besides,” Creek adds with a playful lilt in her voice, “didn’t you know I’m retired, trainer-san? They’re not my fans anymore, and I’m not anyone’s idol.”
Fumino laughs. “Then I’m not your trainer either, Creek!”
Creek’s face goes blank—the way it always does when she’s caught off guard. Cute.
She steals one more glance at the dusky landscape, the moon high overhead. If she were a different woman, she might make some oblique comment about its beauty tonight, and rely on Creek not to take the half-reference as more than half-true.
Or she could just wait, trust Creek to ask the obvious question when she feels ready.
Instead, she meets Creek’s eyes, smiles, and says:
“Call me Fumino.”