Where is the Helm and the Hauberk?
Takashi Kenji quite enjoyed his job as an elementary school physical education teacher, despite how tiring it could be with how energetic children were, especially young umamusume.
They required a release for much of their energy, but not too much that they would fall asleep in class afterwards, so while his job was not as academic as most of his colleagues, it still required plenty of thought and an unfortunate amount of paperwork.
That said, it was probably more fun than teaching mathematics or history to small children, and Kenji could proudly say that many of his students declared him their favorite teacher, which probably had more to do with the subject he taught than himself, but he would take the victories he could get.
Today was the start of a new school year, and with it came a new class of students. Since umamusume physically grew quite a bit faster than normal humans, any school large enough to do so usually put them into separate classes, at least until after they'd undergone more socialization, otherwise the risks of the young umas accidentally hurting their human classmates was a bit too high to stomach.
As such, the first few PE classes mostly consisted of desensitization training disguised as games, such as dodgeball, some version of tag, or any game that would help the young umamusume get used to being around many other people and unexpected stimuli.
"Eep!"
With the expected incidents where more skittish fillies spooked.
Kenji strode over to where the startled young umamusume had fallen to the ground after being hit by a dodgeball. He let the others keep playing, ignoring how some of them paused to see what he was going to do. It was better not to draw explicit attention to the kids that had a strong reaction, both not to make it worse for them, and to give the kids the understanding that it was not that big of a deal.
"Are you hurt, Yujo-chan?" he asked in a gentle voice, crouching down next to the roan child, who looked close to tears, looking up at him with watery eyes.
"Ummm…" her ears flicked nervously as her face pursed in thought, before relaxing slightly. "N-No?"
"Then are you ok?" The balls they were using were soft and light, so shouldn't do much damage even if thrown by young umamusume, and Swift Yujo-chan looked fine, but the important thing was for her to figure that out herself.
The girl's ears drooped and she pouted. "No." Though she didn't look like she was going to cry anymore.
"And why not?"
She looked up at him in confusion. "'Cause I'm out, right?"
Kenji laughed. "Unfortunately, that's right, Yujo-chan. Better luck next time."
"Un!" Her ears perked back up, the thought of another game already pushing out the embarrassment of falling over.
With just a little encouragement, the roan filly ran off to stand with the others on her team who were out, and the game continued.
Kenji had to step in to check on a few other fillies who had similar episodes, but only a few. He had observed over the years that if the young umamusume understood that the game would result in them being suddenly pelted with a soft ball, it was much less startling, making the desensitization easier, though there were of course, still those at the extremes of the spectrum.
Fortunately, it seemed like this class didn't have anyone who would have to go to the nurse with a panicking episode, but as Kenji watched the game wind down to the final few still in, he found his gaze sticking to one in particular, a pale gray filly with a stern expression that looked very out of place on someone that young.
Ah, that was Suzuki Shirogane, a rather unusual umamusume in that she had two human parents compared to the more common case of having an uma mother. Kenji had only seen a few of them in his years as a teacher, but the ones he remembered were about the same as any other umamusume, if usually a bit more conscious of other people and less expressive, particularly in ear and tail movements, probably because of not having an immediate family member to mimic gestures from.
Shirogane-chan seemed to follow that trend, but to an extent that Kenji had not seen before. The pale gray filly's ears were upright in focus, occasionally moving slightly one way or another to keep track of her opponents in sync with her eyes, which scanned the gym with a detached intensity. Her tail did not move.
Then she suddenly flicked her arm and launched a ball into an opponent with impressive accuracy for someone that young. There was no sign of excitement or accomplishment, just a slight twist of her ear and a shift in her tail for balance as she dodged a retaliatory throw.
Kenji frowned. He was quite sure that she was having fun, despite her lack of expression, otherwise she wouldn't be focusing so hard. There wasn't any real incentive to win, as they weren't exactly grading them based on how well they did in the game–there would be time enough for that when they grew up–so it had to be of her own will.
Still, as he watched Shirogane-chan methodically eliminate the rest of the opposing team, he had to admit her almost mechanical precision unnerved him a bit. Not because it scared him, exactly, but usually when a child was like that it was because of how their parents had raised them, oftentimes to their detriment. That was something he could not do much about.
"Nice work, Shirogane-chan!" he called out, clapping his hands in praise. Her teammates followed suit, cheering excitedly for their champion.
The young filly in question turned to them with a bemused look, as if she hadn't just taken out three opponents in less than a minute to close the game out.
To Kenji's surprise, she didn't seem bothered by the sudden attention as several of her teammates swarmed her excitedly. She
did shift away to keep them from getting right up in her face, but she didn't flinch or shy away, just moved to make space, like she was used to being around a lot of people, probably mostly humans, if her tight control over her tail movements were anything to go by.
She also didn't seem nervous when she noticed his attention, so she probably wasn't just a bit shy.
"Now, now!" Kenji called out again, clapping his hands to get his class' attention, before deliberately glancing at the clock on the wall. "I think we have enough time for one more game, how does that sound?"
His kids cheered excitedly, moving to the baseline in anticipation as he set up the dodge balls on the middle line.
Shirogane-chan remained quiet, with hardly a flick of the ear or tail, red eyes tracking him without much excitement or feeling.
Perhaps he was worried for nothing, and she had just been very accustomed to the typical stimuli of being at school, but Kenji felt like he should keep an eye on her to make sure she fit in alright. Being mature for your age was a pretty good thing, overall, but it could alienate you from other people your age.
Going to elementary school in Japan was an…interesting experience. Though Shirogane didn't really remember much of what it was like from her first life, she was pretty sure there wasn't quite as much physical activity involved. This was likely an adaptation to the differing physiology of umamusume, as her class was separated from the normal humans.
She could see the reasoning for it, as the physical differences between umamusume and normal humans was significant enough, especially at a young age, that childish clumsiness or innocent malice could result in serious injury, whether from an umumusume getting spooked or being overly forceful. It was also interesting to note that most of the teachers who were assigned to the umamusume classes were male, and typically rather tall and large men as well, which was a rather notable departure from what the Salaryman's vague memories suggested.
After seeing Takashi-sensei physically separate two squabbling children, Shirogane suspected that this trend was probably because most female teachers, and spindlier male teachers, would have a lot more trouble establishing order. Most creatures had a tendency to defer to larger members of their own species, whether respectfully or fearfully, and that seemed to hold true for umamusume as well.
Not to mention that, even at their young age, Shirogane got the sense that most of them could outmuscle a small human woman.
Given what she observed from other umamusume children and her own twitchiness, it made sense for Physical Education to be one of the first periods for the horse children to at least burn off some of their excess energy. It helped her focus on her classes, but seemed not to be as effective for some of her classmates. But that was probably to be expected.
Shirogane did not remember much of school from either of her past lives, but it felt a bit too simple, even for their age, with lessons more coached in metaphor or simile than she felt was necessary. Was it because umamusume tended to have more difficulty engaging in abstraction? That was probably not an appropriate question to ask and would bring unneeded scrutiny.
It was largely irrelevant anyways. Most of the coursework was fairly easy, aside from handwriting, which was not difficult, per se, but was rather tedious. The amount of homework also seemed lighter, though this could be her memories skewing her expectations.
The greater number of breaks was definitely different than what she remembered though. It was pretty clear why it was necessary. Horses and children both disliked being confined, and combined the potential for disruption if not given an outlet became untenably high.
Overall, it was…rather boring.
Most of the material was already things she had relearned, and a lot of class time seemed dedicated to introducing them to various distractions rather than actually giving them any useful information to learn.
Shirogane had initially been perplexed by one of her teachers wearing a cape, which could have been dismissed as an oddity, but then another one tapped each present student with a pool noodle during roll call, and another had put several paper strands near the air conditioning unit which caused the paper the flap noisily.
It grated on her nerves a bit, but it wasn't too hard to ignore.
For her classmates it didn't seem so easy, one or the other thing causing some of them to startle like…well, spooked horses.
In hindsight that was probably why so much of the furniture was padded.
Shirogane herself had never had that kind of instinct. Was it because both her parents were human, so the horse instincts were less strong? Or was it because the memories carried over from her previous lives granted her some more experience and thus made her harder to unnerve? It was a bit harder to be startled when you were keeping track of your surroundings, after all.
That wasn't to say she didn't feel agitated herself. It wasn't because of any of the random distractions, but the simplicity of the lessons meant that it was getting more difficult for her to pay attention. Oh, she made sure to keep notes, but much of the time she could write out notes before the teacher finished explaining things, in part because the rest of the children were comparatively slow to catch on.
Without much to do, Shirogane couldn't help but feel her time was being wasted, and that did not sit right with her, and yet it wasn't as if she could bring out more reading material as her seat was too close to the front for the teacher not to notice, and she doubted they would appreciate that. They already seemed to notice that she was losing interest, and kept asking her questions to check if she was paying attention.
At some point she began reciting recipes in her head to pass the time, going over the steps of preparing food, then visualizing what she would have to do to make it happen. Her parents still didn't let her cook very much, especially without supervision, worried about her accidentally hurting herself, which was probably a reasonable concern for a normal child, even if it made the feeling of indebtedness grow larger, and now in school she had barely anything to do.
It felt wrong.
Lunchtime was predictably noisy, the lunch room filled with excited young children yammering with their friends about this or that.
As had become her habit, Shirogane sat at a table near a corner, away from most of her schoolmates, and much of the noise. A few more timid children also sat at the table, but they gave her a wide berth, some even shifting away nervously. They were too timid to ask her to leave, and too timid to talk to her.
Shirogane wasn't sure why, she wasn't a particularly large child, and neither of her parents were particularly large adults, so she was likely to be about average size when she grew up. She had also managed not to snap at any of her more nosy schoolmates yet, even talked a bit with the more curious ones, so she didn't think she'd have a reputation for being scary.
It didn't really matter.
She unpacked the lunchbox her mother had made for her and got to eating. It was good, as usual. Her mother couldn't really help at a fairly popular restaurant without being able to cook, and she had packed a neatly ordered lunchbox with a fairly well balanced diet, though she added a few pierogis.
"Hey, Shiro-chan!" a chipper voice called out as a brunette girl plopped down on the seat next to her. "What're you eating? It smells good!"
"Food, Yujo-san." What did she want?
"I know that, Shiro-chan!" Yujo Swift retorted with a chipmunk pout. "Is that gyoza?"
"Basically, yes," Shirogane replied between bites. "But different bread, and different filling than typical gyoza."
"Is it good?" Yujo-san's ears wiggled curiously as she leaned in.
"Yes." Shirogane continued eating, slightly annoyed that she was being interrupted.
"...Can I try one?"
"My parents run a restaurant, you can try some there." Shirogane ate another one.
"Oh cool! What's it called?"
"Suzukiya." Not a very creative name, but easy to remember.
"Oh…." Yujo-san frowned, watching as Shirogane reached for the last pierogi with her chopsticks. "...I'll trade you some pocky for one?"
Shirogane paused. "Pocky?"
"Yeah!" The brunette umamusume pulled out a familiar looking box. It was the chocolate kind.
Her mother had said she shouldn't eat too much sugar, and that fruits were better. That was probably true…but chocolate tasted good.
"...Deal."
"Yay!"
The two girls traded food, the pocky disappearing rapidly into Shirogane's mouth.
"Hmmm!" Yujo-san let out a happy sound, tail swishing excitedly. "This is so good!"
The chocolate tasted good, and it looked like she may have created a new customer for her family restaurant, so all in all this seemed like a fair trade.
"Heya Miss Kat! How's li'l Shiro-chan doing?"
"Welcome back, Steady," Katarzyna Suzuki smiled at the dark haired umamusume as she flounced into her preferred seat. "It's been quite some time since I last saw you."
"Well, ya know, I've been busy with school, and stuff!" Steady Distance had been a regular at their restaurant for a few years, but she had gotten to the age where she was preparing for entrance exams, so was far more busy than usual. "And you didn't answer my question!"
"Good to see you're studying hard," Kataryzna chuckled, remembering how much trouble the girl's parents had trying to get her to take school seriously. In the end they had settled on hinting that the best looking trainers would be the racing academies with high academic standards. "Speaking of which, Shirogane started school recently."
"So that's why she isn't around? I bet she loves all that bookwork, doesn't she?"
"Oh, no!" Kataryzna huffed, shaking her head fondly. "She finds it much too boring, and the other children too noisy. What will you be having, dear? The usual?"
"...Yeah that sounds like her," Steady snorted. "And yeah, the usual's good. Maybe some extra carrots?"
"Did you do well on your last test?"
"Um…yeah!" Her ears flicked nervously, betraying the lie.
Kataryzna narrowed her eyes at the uma, letting her disbelief known.
"....Ok fine, I did ok," Steady admitted, her ears drooping. "I did good at physical education, not so good at math and history, but I did pass!" Her tail swished side to side as she put on her best hopeful expression.
"Hmm…perhaps you can use some more carrot."
"Whoo!"
Steady Distance was a decent runner, from what Kataryzna had heard, and could probably perform ok at smaller races. Her parents seemed sure she had the potential to be competitive on the national scale, but Steady herself wasn't that motivated to push herself as hard as needed to get there. Umamusume liked to run, as a general rule, but that wasn't necessarily the same thing as wanting to race professionally. Steady Distance seemed more interested in the attention it got her from boys, for one.
"So, what did you do to convince your parents to let you out of the study room?" Kataryzna asked as she put the pierogis she prepared into the boiling pot. "I remember you getting grounded because you were spending too much time with some boy."
"Ehehe…well…" the umamusume rubbed the back of her head bashfully. "I won a regional race. Kinda thought you knew already?"
"Oh, did you? Congratulations!" Kataryzna had not, in fact, known about that. "I must have missed it on the TV," she replied, taking the pierogis that began to float out of the pot and placing them on the skillet. "And to be honest, I do not keep up with racing news as much as my husband does." She did watch some of the bigger G1 races, but the betting pamphlets were a bit beyond her. They were almost like phonebooks.
"It wasn't that impressive," Steady Distance muttered, her ears flopping in embarrassment. "Just a Mile run against like six hopefuls."
"Smaller race or not, it's a win. Good enough that your parents are happy." From what Kataryzna had heard, they had largely given up on the idea that Steady could be a national victor, but were still hopeful that she could at least get into one or two big races and place.
"Yeah…I guess it's a start…"
There seemed to be more going on, but the pierogis were done, and Steady Distance seemed pretty hungry, which led the conversation to a close there as more customers came in, diverting Katarzyna's attention.
Some time later, Shirogane arrived, having come to the restaurant straight from school.
"Good evening, mother."
"Welcome back, Shiro-chan! Are you hungry?"
The school was only a few kilometers away, and Shirogane had made it back in less than ten minutes.
"I am alright, mother," Shiro-chan replied, moving towards the back of the restaurant to put down her backpack. "I have some homework I need to do."
"
Shiro-chan, what did I say?" Katarzyna called warningly. "You will eat
before you do your homework."
"...Yes mother."
Shiro took a seat near where Katarzyna was working, looking affronted that she couldn't start on her homework right away. She still dug into the food placed in front of her with what would be frightening speed for a human.
"So how was your day, Shiro-chan? Did you learn anything new?"
Shirogane paused in thought, shoveling food into her mouth at the same time. Her ears didn't move, nor did her tail. Katarzyna didn't know it was possible for someone to be so still and yet seemingly always ready to move, but her daughter somehow managed it.
There was a beat as Shirogane swallowed. "I learned that my classmates had never heard of a pierogi before."
"Oh? That's not too surprising, is it? There aren't that many places in Japan that make pierogis." If there were they wouldn't have as many customers.
"No, it is not surprising," her daughter agreed, scarfing down more food while looking utterly unhurried. "But now they have."
"Did you share your lunch with some new friends?" Kataryzna paused, leaning in closer. While Shirogane tolerated other children to an extent, they had been quite worried about how she didn't really have anyone that she called a friend.
She did hang around Umeki's kids, but they had somehow turned into more like her minions.
"We are not close enough to be called friends," Shiro-chan denied solemnly. "But we did trade food, so we are at least friendly acquaintances."
"Maah, you shouldn't be so serious, Shiro-chan!" Steady Distance sighed, her ear flicking in amusement as she looked over at the younger umamusume. "Elementary school is a great time to make friends!"
Shirogane turned, her head tilting quizzically. "There is no real bad time to make friends, though there are many people who you cannot trust to be your friend."
"Moeee, such granny talk is very uncute, Shiro-chan!" the older umamusume pouted, puffing her cheeks out. "Children shouldn't be uncute."
"That does tend to result in them being discarded, yes."
Katarzyna almost flinched. Where had she gotten that idea?! She wasn't entirely wrong, unfortunately, but…that was disturbing to hear from her own child.
"Huh?! That's totally not what I was talking about, Shiro-chan!" Steady sputtered, waving her hands in denial.
"I see…" Shirogane turned back to her food and continued eating like a vacuum cleaner, before she paused again. "I suspect we may see some of my classmates and their families coming by the restaurant in the near future."
"Doing some advertising?" Katarzyna asked teasingly, hoping to move things to a lighter topic.
"Not intentionally," her daughter admitted, tilting her head thoughtfully. "But it seems many umamusume are very interested in food."
"No lie there, little sister!" Steady laughed, before taking a sip of her soda through her straw.
Shirogane blinked. "Did you get disowned and adopted while I was at school?"
"Pfft-gackh!" the soda seemed to have gone down the wrong pipe, and if Katarzyna had been drinking something she probably would have choked as well.
"Shiro-chan…" she chided resignedly. "What did we say about saying things like that?"
"...Not to say it out loud."
"That was mean!" Steady coughed, shaking her head furiously. "How can someone so cute be so cruel?!"
Shirogane's eyes creased slightly, as if she had thought of another glib response.
"
Shiro-chan."
She paused, choosing not to say anything, instead turning and eating the last of the food in front of her.
"Thank you for the food." She clapped her hands together respectfully. "May I do my homework now?"
"...Yes, go ahead, Shiro-chan."
Shirogane grabbed her plates and brought them into the kitchen to clean.
Katarzyna sighed. What was she going to do with her little girl?
"Does…Does Shiro-chan
like homework?!" Steady sputtered, looking aghast. "How is that possible?!"
"I don't know." And wasn't that a damning feeling for a mother? "She always insists on doing something, like she owes us something for feeding her."
"It can't be that bad, can it?"
"The best way we could find to get her to eat more was to threaten to take away her homework."
"...Wat."
"I worry about her," Katarzyna sighed, shaking her head. "She knows that we aren't exactly rich, but we aren't going to ask her to cut costs when things aren't so good. But she seems set on trying to pay us back for just what we're supposed to do as parents."
"Pay you back, huh?"
"Yes! Like we are being inconvenienced by taking care of her! What self respecting mother would ever think that about their child?!" Her grandparents had died to give her parents a chance to escape the war, her parents had given up a lot so she could marry the man she fell in love with, so Katarzyna would be damned if she couldn't bite through a bit of belt tightening to make sure they could afford to give her daughter a good education.
"...She just decided to do that one day?"
"Not…exactly." Her daughter was very smart. Maybe too smart.
"...What do you mean?"
"Shigeru and I didn't exactly expect to have an umamusume child, since well…" Katarzyna waved a hand at herself. "And at the time the economy was no good, so money was a bit tight." Fortunately they hadn't had to go too far into debt at the time, but it had been some lean years, albeit some of the happiest years of her life.
"...Oh…did she notice?"
"Shiro-chan is very smart."
Steady Distance was silent for a long time, staring down at her soda.
"...Maybe I was being a bit unkind calling her a granny."
The older umamusume paid and then left, looking deep in thought. Katarzyna didn't quite know what was on her mind, but it was probably a good thing for Steady Distance to think about her future a bit more thoroughly now she was approaching graduation.
"Mother, I am done with my homework," Shirogane announced, reemerging from the back of the restaurant. "I can help clean up."
"...You should go for a run at the park first, dear. Then you can help me, ok?"
"...Yes, mother."
What a strange child she had.
AN. It's kind of funny to write Shirogane doing her best to start repaying her family's care for her while they get increasing concerned that they're doing something wrong.
Shirogane: "You are best parents I remember having! I'm going to do my best to make sure your investment pays off for you! Wait...why are you stopping me?"
Her family: "Are you okay?!"
