Hard asphalt.

  Metal railings.

  Darkness pushed back by streetlights.

  Western Woodland did not run the way she wanted to run. Every movement she made was tense, calculated. Unnatural. She came up the mountain once, taking notes of the layout. Then she ran down at a regular, legal pace, feeling the slope beneath her, the tilt of the road on every curve and bend. She climbed back up, and was running down, slowly, just fast enough to be slightly dangerous.

  The very idea of running this course was a contradiction to her instincts.

  It was obvious from the name. Running down a mountain meant running downhill. There were some flat sections, but gravity was on her side for everything else. It was easy to run. There was no need to hold back, no uphill stretch after the last corner to punish overly greedy runners. More than five times the length of any race she ran before, it didn’t leave her winded.

  Instead, taking any of the corners even slightly too fast threatened deadly consequences. If she gave in to the urge to go all out on any straight, she’d end up rolling down the side of the mountain. So here she was, doing a test run, holding back to a painful degree. The kind of raw speed seen on proper racetracks gave no advantage here. Stamina meant little when it was so easy to run. She identified control as the key. Maintaining a proper speed, rounding the corner from a proper position. Leaning into every sway of the road.

  At the bottom, she panted. Not from exhaustion, not the way she would after her old races, but from the stress.

  “Westy! You’re here early!”

  Standing up, she saw Bango Bongo and Atlas Spirit walking leisurely along the road, the former holding a grocery bag in one hand and an energy drink in the other. Western Woodland winced as she recognized it as the brand she advertised at the store.

  “I wanted to see what it was like.” She said as she approached the two of them.

  Bongo smiled, taking a long pull from her drink. “It’s fun, isn’t it?”

  Woodland nodded. “It’s different than running on a track.”

  “Bongo has a stopwatch.” Spirit said, and the taller horse girl tapped her hand - still holding her drink - against her chest, where the watch hung from a neck strap. “We’ll go to the top, and call her. Whoever is holding the phone tells her when the other of us starts, and can follow after a second. She’ll have the time when we reach the bottom. Not perfect but good enough for practice. Come on, let’s go.”

  The two jogged back to the top, did some stretches, called Bongo, and then ran down the mountain. Atlas Spirit allowed Western Woodland to start, making the call and telling her to begin. As she ran down the initial straight, she heard the sound of the other horse girl behind her, shoes slapping loudly against the asphalt in the silence of the night.

  Her last two runs gave her a decent idea of the right speeds, and she tried to put her theories into practice. Instead of gaining speed on the straight and then having to slow down, she tried to run at the speed she’d need to make the upcoming turn, avoiding the stress of deceleration. As she rounded the first corner, she heard Spirit click her tongue, just a few lengths behind her.

  Woodland shook her head, stepping up the pace for the next section, trying a different theory. She put her full power into her sprint coming out of the corner, flying across the road, only to relax halfway there, steadily and easily bleeding speed as she approached the second turn, only have to twist a little going into it, being slightly faster than she wanted.

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  This only got another negative sound from her partner.

  She tried a variety of techniques, searching for the best way to handle the hairpin turns of the mountain road while maintaining speed, but Atlas Spirit, right behind her the whole way, made noises of disapproval every time. Minutes later, they ended up at the bottom, Bango Bongo pressing the button on her stopwatch.

  “Don’t even tell me the time.” Altas Spirit said, shaking her head. “It was trash. This one doesn’t have a clue, but she has potential. Come on, back to the top. Follow me and try to learn.”

  Woodland frowned, jogging to catch up with Spirit as the other horse girl already started upwards. “Can you explain what I need to do?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t know how to explain it. I’m not that kind of horse girl. I can show you, but I can’t tell you.”

  “Alright.” Woodland nodded. She couldn’t let her old experiences set her expectations. No trainers, no association, not officials. This was a different world.

  “So, where did you run before this? Fukushima? Niigata? Urawa?”

  She hesitated. “Fukushima.” The truth was best, but she wouldn’t go any further into it than that.

  “City girl, then. How’d you end up here?”

  Stick to the truth. However little of it she could tell. “I was born here. Was only there for the racing. Didn’t work out.”

  “Must have been nice, being able to move there.”

  “It was.” She replied, holding back emotions. It was nice, before she ruined it.

  “Some of us aren’t that lucky. This is the closest I could get to real racing. No money to move. All that fancy teaching you got? Forget it. I don’t need your brains, just your body. First run, I’m going to take it slow, so you can watch. After that, I’m going to start speeding up. You need to learn how to run the downhill, so you can push me. I need competition to prepare for the upcoming race.”

  “What about Bongo?”

  “Bongo’s fast, but she isn’t motivated. It’s just fun for her. You’re different. The way you ran was stupid, but I can tell you’ve got a fire in you. You want more than to just be a sales associate.”

  They reached the top, and Woodland called Bongo, letting her know they were about to start. She counted down, watching Spirit launch herself down the hill. Putting her phone away, she sprinted after her.

  Atlas Spirit didn’t pace herself the way Woodland had. She tore down the initial straight, going all out. Woodland didn’t try to challenge her, taking her words to heart instead, running fast enough to keep an eye on her.

  She didn’t slow down as she neared the corner. Woodland did, worried.

  Spirit came to a nearly full stop, spinning around, and re-accelerating down the hill. Woodland skidded to a stop, taking a second before she ran off after her new partner.

  No conservation of momentum. No keeping speed. No calculating the curve, the corner. Just raw power. Full deceleration, full acceleration. Strength. That was the key here. The toll repeatedly doing such starts and stops would take on the body was more than running flat out on the longest races in Nakayama and Kyoto. As she chased Spirit down the second straight, Woodland smiled to herself.

  This would be challenging.

  It took her more than half the course before she was able to get a handle on the technique that Spirit was using, and finally stopped losing ground, only for her partner to increase the pace. She’d been holding back, making sure that Woodland could see what she was doing. The girl was right - she might not be able to explain it, but she could show it.

  They reached the bottom, and Atlas Spirit once again told Bango Bongo not to record the time.

  “You didn’t even need to be here today. This one needs time to figure it out. Luckily, I don’t need her brains, only her body, and she’s fast enough on her feet.” Bango giggled, and Spirit rolled her eyes before turning to Woodland. “We do this every night. Four runs. You up for that?”

  “I am.” She wanted to say she could do more, but she needed to practice that style of turning on her own. Doing that repeatedly, especially at higher speeds, was going to hurt. The turns were sharper than anything on a proper racecourse. The fastest way through was to stop entirely and start again. She didn’t want to over commit to a training schedule.

  “Good. We’re going again.”