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Her lungs burned. He vision had narrowed until only the cardboard cutout of her senpai serving as the finish line remained in her sights. One hundred meters. Each gulp of air gave her just enough energy to push off the turf for another stride. Her pulse pounded in her ears. Fifty meters. Just a little more. She could push just a little more.
The finish line whizzed by her. Relief flooded her veins, flushing out all the adrenaline as she slowed down from her all-out sprint.
“Great job, Curren! That was a new personal best!”
Pride welled up in Curren’s chest, but she pushed down the urge to pump her fist in celebration. Instead, she put on her “training smile” and turned towards her trainer—and the camera she held.
Clenching her fists in front of her chest and tilting her head at just the right angle, she said, “Thanks, onee-chan! Even though this is just training, I wanted to give it my all for you and my fans!” She waved at the camera. This wasn’t a live stream, but that extra little personal touch would go a long way.
“Why don’t we call it quits for today,” her trainer said. “You’ve done a great job and earned a rest.”
Curren fake pouted. “Aww, we’re done already? I feel like I could keep running forever with your support! But onee-chan knows best. Thank you for all your hard work!” Looking back at the camera, she added, “And thank all of you for watching and continuing to cheer me on! Be on the lookout for my next race announcement soon, okay? Bye bye!” She waved and flashed her cutest smile.
Her trainer tapped her phone and lowered it. Curren allowed herself a single sharp exhale now that the camera was off her.
“I hope the footage turns out okay,” her trainer said, handing Curren’s phone back to her. “I’m still getting the hang of filming and training you at the same time.”
“I’m sure it’ll look great,” Curren said, giving her a much more genuine smile. Her trainer returned it. “Unless you need me for anything else, I’m gonna go get dinner and edit this footage.”
“Nope, go eat and rest up. Like I said, you earned it, so please actually rest a little, okay? Please?”
Curren pouted. “No fair, onee-chan. You know I can’t say no when you ask so nicely.” She sighed. “Fiiiiiine, I can hold off editing this till tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” her trainer said.
They parted ways after that. Curren went to the cafeteria for some early dinner. Once she sat down, she eyed her food, judging the appearance and composition. After a few little tweaks, she snapped a photo for Umasta, added some generic caption and hashtags, and posted it. If she couldn’t edit that video and upload it tonight, she needed to at least make a few extra posts on her various social medias to compensate.
Actually, on that note, maybe if she couldn’t post a new edited video, she could offer a different kind of video. The rest of her meal passed as she brainstormed something for after she got back to her dorm room.
That brainstorming continued throughout her bath afterwards. Some lingering stress washed away with the dirt and grass stains she had accumulated during training. She loved racing, but she loved being clean (and by extension, cute) just as much. Plus, she couldn’t exactly put her evening plan into action if she looked all sweaty and gross.
When she did get back to her room later, she found it surprisingly occupied.
“Oh! Ayabe-san! I’m surprised to see you back so early.”
Admire Vega, her roommate and girlfriend, sat propped up in bed with a book open in her lap. She glanced up for a moment at the sound of Curren’s voice before turning her attention back to said book.
“My trainer all but forced me to end practice early and relax for the rest of the day,” she said. Curren made a mental note to thank him for that later. Glancing up again, Ayabe’s ears twitched as she added, “Welcome home,” before raising the book to cover her face.
A huge smile split Curren’s face, and her heart soared. “I’m back! I love you, too, Ayabe-san.”
Ayabe’s ears twitched again—joined by the tip of her tail this time—and she muttered something too quiet for Curren to hear. That didn’t matter, though; she had a pretty good idea of what she’d said. Curren pranced into the room and changed into her pajamas, totally on cloud nine.
Once she was nice and cute and comfy, she flopped onto her own bed and got on her phone to check up on her socials. The dinner pic was doing about as well as she thought it would—it wasn’t a cute cafe pic by any stretch of the imagination, but some fans did genuinely like seeing some more “mundane” aspects of her day every now and then. She liked the first few dozen top comments and even replied to a few of them before moving over to UmaTok. Her numbers there weren’t as good, but it was also her least used account. At least she could get a new video for it from the training footage she’d taken today. A few posts, replies, and reposts on Umatter kept her numbers maintained there.
Finally came UmaTube. While she didn’t have a super rigid upload schedule like some UmaTubers, she liked to post a video every other day or so. Her goal this morning was obviously to post a new video today, but she’d promised her trainer not to go crazy editing it tonight. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t make any new video content at all….
“Hey Ayabe-san,” she said, looking up from her phone. Ayabe lowered her book just enough to glance over the top of it.
“What?”
“Would you mind if I streamed in here for a little bit? If not, that’s fine, I can go out into the—”
“It’s fine.”
Curren’s eyes widened a little. “Really? It won’t bother you while you’re trying to read?”
“It’s fine,” she repeated. She raised the book back up, but once again, her ears gave her away. “It’s… kind of relaxing sometimes listening to you prattle on about nothing.”
Okay that really wasn’t fair. How could Ayabe make something like that sound romantic and make Curren’s chest all warm and fuzzy? If anyone else said that to her, she’d probably be a little offended. Maybe she was a little too down bad…. Whatever, she could worry about that later.
“Thanks, Ayabe-san! I’ll still try not to bother you that much.”
She sat up and opened her camera to figure out the framing before actually going live. She streamed in her room often enough, but she still had to make sure the background looked good. Unfortunately, no matter how hard she tried, she could never find a good framing that didn’t have a little bit of her wall mirror showing; her viewers would be able to see just a little bit of Ayabe’s desk in the reflection…. It was unavoidable, though, and at least Ayabe didn’t have anything weird on it.
With that sorted out, she scheduled a stream to start in five minutes to give her fans a little time to gather before she went live. She titled it “Guerrilla Hangout Stream” and purposefully didn’t post about it on her socials. Her most die hard fans would find it on their own, and they’d share it around on their own. It’d make the stream feel extra special for those who showed up.
Over the next few minutes, the waiting room steadily filled up until there were almost two thousand people. The chat whizzed by, everyone chatting excitedly about catching a surprise Curren stream. Perfect.
She went live.
“Curren-banwa, everyone!” she said in her cutest voice and with her cutest smile. “Thank you all for joining me for this surprise stream!”
The chat exploded. Lots of people repeated her “Curren-banwa” back to her, while many others just “screamed” her name.
“I’m not sure how long this will go for, and I’ve gotta keep it down so I don’t bother my roommate too much, but I just felt like hanging out with you all for a while!”
uma_hero: The Girl!
Macchiato_Guil: The Girl!
Vypervance: The Girl!
kuzaduz: show us The Girl!!!!
MissAvry: The Girl is here!!
Purple_Panda: show us The Girl!!!!
Curren fake pouted. (Okay, maybe there was a teeny bit of a real pout in there, too. She never understood her fans’ obsession with catching glimpses of Ayabe during her streams. She also didn’t understand why they insisted on calling her “The Girl” when they knew her name. But whatever. Engagement was engagement, so she never questioned it too much.)
“Hey, I thought you were all here to look at Curren Chan!” she said, injecting just the right amount of cutesy charm so people would understand she wasn’t being serious.
kuzaduz: we are!
SunnyStudios: i am #Looking
The pout disappeared, replaced by another blinding smile. “Okay, good!”
A half hour passed as Curren (to borrow Ayabe’s phrasing) prattled on about nothing. She talked a a little about her practice that day—promising a full video on it tomorrow—talked about a cute new cafe she’d found, gave her opinions on a few races she’d watched the other week, and just generally interacted with chat. Oh, and thanked all the superchats that came in, of course.
At some point, she heard Ayabe close her book and watched in her periphery as she got up to leave the room. On her stream, Ayabe’s reflection appeared briefly in the mirror when she passed by.
Once again, her chat exploded with comments of “The Girl!” and “show us The Girl!” and “I can’t believe I got to see The Girl.” Curren tried her best to calm them down and direct their focus away from Ayabe, but they were being strangely persistent tonight. After a few minutes (and more than one superchat demanding it), she gave in.
“Okay, why don’t we go on an adventure and see where Ayabe-san went to?”
The chat cheered.
At least Curren had a pretty good idea of where her girlfriend had gone; Ayabe liked getting a late night snack from the vending machine in the common room. And low and behold, there she sat on the couch, munching on a carrot granola bar.
“Alright, chat, I see her, so we’re almost there,” Curren said, hoping her words would provide Ayabe enough warning for what was about to happen. Moments later, she plopped onto the couch next to her girlfriend. She held her phone out a little farther to get them both in frame. Ayabe froze with her snack half way to her mouth.
“Ayabe-san! Could you say hi to chat for me? They wouldn’t stop pestering me until they got to see you. It’s almost like they forgot who the cutest umamusume in the whole world is!”
“…Hi.”
MissAvery: The Girl! she spoke!!!
Macchiato_Guil: omg The Girl said hi to us
Purple_Panda: hi, The Girl!
uma_hero: The Girl has graced us with her words
“There we go, chat, are you happy now?”
Vypervance: very
Purple_Panda: super happy
uma_hero: cant believe I was here to see The Girl
“I’m glad you all had fun seeing ‘The Girl,’ but don’t you forget, she’s my girl!” Curren nuzzled her cheek against Ayabe’s shoulder then got up to return to her room. That, of course, got chat speculating once again if they were dating or not. Obviously Curren never gave a straight answer—an entire subset of her fandom loved shipping her with a wide range of girls, and she didn’t want to ruin their fun (or lose their engagement).
She ended the stream not much later, thanking everyone for coming spending time with her. After triple checking that she had, in fact, ended the stream, Curren sighed and let her mask drop for all of three seconds. Going to see Ayabe had been way off script, and she hoped it hadn’t upset her too much. She’d have to play damage control once Ayabe got back.
Until then, she got back on Umatter checked her hashtag. It was, of course, filled with posts about her stream, and she found dozens of screenshots from when she’d nuzzled Ayabe’s cheek accompanied by #CurrenAya or #AyaCurren. She couldn’t like any of them, of course, but it did kind of make her happy to see them. The two of them looked really cute. Obviously Curren looked cute, and Ayabe’s eyes had widened in this super adorable way.
The door opened, and Curren looked up. “Welcome back, Ayabe-san. I’m done streaming, by the way.”
“Oh. Okay,” Ayabe said, sitting on her bed. “Was it a good stream?”
“It was! At least, for being so impromptu it was. I hope it didn’t bother you too much.”
Ayabe shook her head. “It didn’t. I appreciated you being a little quieter.”
“And… when I came out and put you on camera in the common room?” Curren asked.
“That….” She glanced away. Her ears flattened, and her tail swished a few times. “It surprised me, but it didn’t upset me or anything. I won the Derby; it’s not like I’m not used to being on camera. And….” Her cheeks turned red. “It made me a little happy when you called me ‘your girl.’”
Okay, that was not fair. How could Curren call herself the cutest girl in the whole world when Ayabe was over there looking like that? And completely unintentionally, too! Every instinct screamed at Curren to pounce across the distance between their beds and cuddle her girlfriend to death, but she held back for Ayabe’s sake.
“Well it’s true!” she said, instead. “I won’t let anyone forget that!”
Her words hung in the air between them until Ayabe stood up, took a few steps to Curren’s side of the room, and sat on the bed next to her. After a moment’s hesitation, she rested her head on Curren’s shoulder and wrapped her tail around Curren’s waist. Curren froze, taken back by the sudden physical affection, before relaxing and smiling.
She really did have the cutest girlfriend in the world.