That evening, Shuta An entered the Dream World with practiced ease.
When his vision cleared, he was not seated atop Cutting Edge's back. Instead, he found himself in the jockeys' lounge at Kyoto Racecourse. Today, he held eight riding commissions, and the moment he opened his eyes, the familiar atmosphere of the paddock had already wrapped around him.
"It's not my turn until the second race," Shuta An muttered softly.
For him, the most important race of the day was naturally the Queen Elizabeth Cup. Still, ordinary allowance races were not something he could afford to treat lightly. To ride carelessly would be a betrayal of the owners' trust—and the fans' expectations.
As a result, he had no time to dwell further on how to approach the Queen Elizabeth Cup, the race that would later erupt in a shocking upset. He instead forced his thoughts into focus, calmly reviewing the strategy for his first mount of the day.
—
Today, Yutaka Take was brimming with confidence.
Having secured the ride on the top favorite for the Queen Elizabeth Cup, his heart burned with anticipation. This was the stage. This was the race.
"I absolutely must show him what Shadai Kagura and I are capable of!" Yutaka Take clenched his fist tightly.
The veterinarian at the Ritto Training Center had mentioned some discomfort in Shadai Kagura's leg, but after a second examination, the conclusion had been reassuring: racing posed no problem. With that reassurance in hand, Yutaka Take dismissed the lingering concern from his mind.
"If we win, Shadai Kagura will be a Two Crowns Mare!" He struck his thigh with his fist. "She's ready. I absolutely cannot relax!"
His attention was completely locked onto the Queen Elizabeth Cup. And because of that, cracks quietly appeared elsewhere.
In the second race of the day, Shuta An—mounted on a horse listed as the tenth favorite—launched a breathtaking late charge from the outside in the final straight, surging past rival after rival to claim second place.
Meanwhile, Yutaka Take's mount, the third favorite Sunrise Hit, finished third, precisely where the odds suggested.
On paper, it was an acceptable result. But to Yutaka Take, it felt like cold water being poured over his head.
This isn't the time to get carried away, he realized grimly.
"I can't lose focus." He raised his hands and patted his cheeks, then stood up. "I need to take every race seriously."
He headed toward the restroom, intending to splash some cold water on his face and reset his mindset.
—
By 3:20 p.m., as the Queen Elizabeth Cup parade began, both Shuta An and Yutaka Take had already claimed three victories apiece.
However, Shuta An held two additional second-place finishes, giving him a clear edge in overall performance. Considering that his mounts today were, on average, inferior to Yutaka Take's, the difference between them was unmistakable.
Yutaka Take himself knew it. Sitting in Shadai Kagura's saddle, he drew in a slow, steady breath.
"But it doesn't matter," he told himself. "As long as I win the Queen Elizabeth Cup, I'll still be the biggest winner today."
—
At the same time, Shuta An sat astride Cutting Edge, his posture relaxed as he lifted a hand and waved casually toward the stands.
"Even though she's only the third favorite," he murmured, "a large part of that popularity might comes from me."
People believed in Cutting Edge because he was riding her. His fingers tightened around the reins, his lips pressing together slightly.
"If Sand Peeres could pull off an upset in the real world," he thought, eyes narrowing, "then why can't I be the upset here in the Dream World?"
With that resolve, Shuta An guided Cutting Edge forward into gate twelve.
This year's Queen Elizabeth Cup featured two horses from the Shadai Race Horse Club. One was Cutting Edge, ridden by Shuta An. The other was Lady Gossip in gate three, partnered with Matoba Hitoshi.
Two days earlier, Cutting Edge's Trainer, Takahashi Hideo, had asked whether Shuta An wanted to coordinate tactics with Matoba Hitoshi.
Shuta An had refused. It wasn't that he rejected team tactics outright. Rather, he saw no realistic way to coordinate under these conditions.
First, the two horses were positioned far apart in the gates—coordination would be difficult from the start. Second, Lady Gossip herself was a popular contender. She had her own chance at victory—why should she sacrifice it? And finally…Matoba Hitoshi's form this year had been poor. His riding lacked sharpness, and relying on such coordination felt unreliable at best.
For all these reasons, Shuta An chose to go it alone.
"I wonder if Matoba Hitoshi received the same suggestion from his Trainer," Shuta An thought, glancing to his right once he was settled in the gate.
Matoba Hitoshi was fully focused, absorbed in his own pre-race preparations.
—
Yutaka Take, who had drawn the extreme outside gate—number twenty—was the last to load in. He adjusted his breathing rhythm, then turned his head slightly, his gaze drifting left until it caught Shuta An's figure, blurred by distance and angle.
"This time, I'll run a front-running strategy," Yutaka Take thought calmly. "I don't have time to mark Shuta-kun."
With twenty horses in the field, he doubted Shuta An would be able to keep an eye on him anyway.
Click.
The starting gates flew open. From the very first moment, Shuta An made his intentions clear.
He planned to run a end-closer strategy in this race.
Fillies were sensitive—emotionally fragile in ways that colts were not. A single bump, a single unpleasant clash in the early stages, could sour their mood and drain their willingness to fight.
Shuta An refused to let that happen.
He deliberately refrained from urging Cutting Edge at the start, allowing her to break smoothly but without force. Her departure from the gate looked almost leisurely—unhurried, restrained, deliberate.
And within that calm beginning, the seeds of an impending storm quietly took root.
Cutting Edge was, by nature, a filly who preferred to run among the leading pack. The moment she realized her break from the gate had been deliberately restrained, a trace of restlessness rippled through her body. Her stride tightened, her muscles coiled, instinct urging her to surge forward and seize position.
Shuta An sensed it immediately.
Without haste, he guided her slightly inward, tucking in behind Sand Peeres. The horse ahead became a moving barrier, its presence neatly blocking Cutting Edge's line of acceleration. With her path closed, the filly had no choice but to abandon the impulse to rush forward and instead conserve her strength.
The effect was immediate.
Once settled along the inner lane, Cutting Edge's agitation faded, her breathing smoothing out as her rhythm returned. The tension in her frame eased, replaced by a calm, restrained power waiting to be released. Shuta An, feeling the reins soften beneath his fingers, let out a quiet breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
"Good…it would've been troublesome if she were the type to grow more irritable in this situation."
So Trainer Takahashi's assessment had been accurate after all.
The thought drew a flicker of gratitude from him. This was his first time working with that trainer, yet the preparation and understanding of the horse had been thorough—reassuring, even.
After passing the grandstand and clearing the long straight that followed the start, the field flowed toward the first turn. At that point, Shuta An and Cutting Edge had dropped all the way to second-last.
Behind them trailed the outsider Silvia One, ridden by Katsumi Minai. To their right pressed the rail; to their left ran Mikino Louvre, under Mikio Matsunaga. The three formed a narrow pocket, a small box that left little room to maneuver.
Yet Shuta An remained composed.
This, too, was part of the plan.
"First," he thought calmly, eyes fixed ahead, "there's no need to do anything unnecessary here."
Rounding the first turn, Shuta An and Cutting Edge emerged onto the super-long straight opposite the grandstand. At the far end of this straight loomed Kyoto Racecourse's famed obstacle—the Yodo Slope.
"It's impossible to force an acceleration uphill. Even though Cutting Edge has proven her climbing ability on Nakayama's Slope Road before, this is a 2200-meter race. Stamina can't be spent recklessly. Every ounce of her strength has to be used in the right place."
This was common knowledge among the jockeys in the chase group, including the one aboard Sand Peeres.
Thus, upon entering the super-long straight, Sand Peeres immediately began to edge forward, gradually closing the distance to the leading pack. As she advanced, the space she vacated naturally fell to Shuta An and Cutting Edge.
Yet Shuta An had no intention of asking Cutting Edge to accelerate here.
"After the Yodo Slope comes a series of downhill turns. Store strength here. Accelerate on the descent. Then launch everything in the final straight."
That was his design. Of course, this did not mean he would allow himself to be shaken off by the rest of the chase group. He simply let Cutting Edge follow the flow of the race, maintaining a steady, unhurried rhythm—
—
In the grandstand, a group of spectators watched with visibly strained expressions. It wasn't that they had wagered everything they owned. Rather, among the horses thundering across the turf, there were some they had invested in.
For instance—Cutting Edge. They were members of the Shadai Race Horse Club, part-owners of the filly.
"Is it really okay to stay that far back?" As the footage played on the giant screen, the same unspoken unease flickered through their minds. "Doesn't Cutting Edge usually race near the front?"
In truth, Trainer Hideo Takahashi, seated among them, shared the same concern. This was his fourth attempt at a G1 as a trainer. In the past, he had claimed only one G1 victory—and that had been six years ago.
For him, Cutting Edge, the third favorite in this Queen Elizabeth Cup, represented his best chance at a second crown.
He wanted no surprises.
When the Yoshida family informed him that Shuta An would ride Cutting Edge in this race, Hideo Takahashi had nearly leapt from his seat in joy. In his eyes, it was the best possible draw. And yet—
Watching Cutting Edge lingering near the back of the field, his throat tightened, his heart pounding uneasily in his chest.
By contrast, Yoshida Zenya, seated calmly in the VIP section and observing the race through binoculars, was in an excellent mood. Since returning from America, he held an unshakable belief: the genius jockey on Cutting Edge's back was omnipotent. If not for the considerable age gap between him and his younger relatives, he might have even entertained a few mischievous thoughts.
—
Shuta An, of course, knew nothing of the emotions rippling through the grandstand. At this moment, his entire focus was on Cutting Edge—and on conquering the Yodo Slope.
This uphill section was a trial for every horse that passed through it. With a height difference of 4.3 meters, anyone foolish enough to accelerate here would be mocked as a textbook example of poor race sense.
Yet Shuta An had always believed the slope was not truly impossible to accelerate on. Rather, it was simply that the current level of racehorses could not support such a gamble.
Still—now was not the time to dwell on that thought.
Maintaining a pushing ride to reduce the burden on Cutting Edge's gallop, Shuta An carefully observed the movements of the horses ahead.
"If I want to cause an upset… I'll have to gamble."
He noticed that the jockeys in the chase group were gradually drifting outward, preparing to unleash their runs once they hit the final straight.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
—
After cresting the Yodo Slope, the twenty horses plunged into the downhill turn.
Here, no jockey dared to accelerate recklessly. Downhill combined with a curve was dangerous—lose balance here, and a fall would be catastrophic.
But balance was Shuta An's absolute strength.
As the chase group ahead continued inching outward, positioning themselves for a wide, explosive run, Shuta An quietly increased the pressure of his pushing ride.
The response was immediate.
Feeling the signal from her back, Cutting Edge's instincts and mechanics aligned perfectly—her speed surged. In just a few seconds, hugging the innermost rail, Cutting Edge sliced cleanly through the chase group that had been hemming her in, her momentum like a heated blade carving through butter.
"Woah—!"
The grandstand erupted.
"A sudden acceleration! Shuta An and Cutting Edge have surged into ninth place! But they're still on the inside—will they be boxed in?!"
From the commentator's perspective, the move only seemed to tighten the net around them.
But in Shuta An's eyes—
He was only one step away from victory.
—
Yutaka Take, riding Shadai Kagura, was in an ideal forward position.
"My connection with Shadai Kagura is perfect. This victory will belong to no one else."
The thought burned confidently in his mind.
"The final straight is coming—I need to move outward and secure space to accelerate!"
Yet at that very moment—
An irregular rhythm intruded upon the thunder of hooves behind him.
Cutting Edge and Shuta An, having accelerated on the downhill, had accumulated a terrifying amount of kinetic energy as they entered the final straight. Shuta An tightened the reins with both hands, clamped his legs around Cutting Edge's body, every muscle in his frame working in harmony to stabilize his seat.
Then—
Man and horse, pressed tight against the rail, burst into the final straight, crashing headlong into the leading group. At the same time, Sand Peeres launched her charge from the outside. With most jockeys drifting diagonally outward, the field suddenly loosened.
Shuta An saw it.
A gap.
Without hesitation, he began whipping in a windmill motion, urging Cutting Edge forward.
Snap—snap—snap.
The crisp rhythm of the whip reached Yutaka Take's ears. Half a length ahead, he turned his head instinctively. And then—
His eyes widened. In his vision, Shuta An—whip in one hand, pushing with the other—looked less like a jockey—more like a demon or a hero.