Chapter Text
Somewhere in New Zealand.
As the sky kisses farewell to the sun, as it finally descends into the ocean, the horizon welcomes its starless night. The screen throws its blue across the carpet, across her knees, across the tips of her ears, which are angled toward the sound with the concentrated stillness of something trying very hard not to move.
While on cleaning duty in the attic today, she found a mysterious-looking leather album, titled "Hong Kong Archive". They're covered in layers of dust, one that can only accumulate over almost two decades of our lives. A gentle blow is enough to send them flying into the atmosphere, triggering an uncomfortable allergy in the girl's nose, "Achoo-!" She surely feels the sting in her sensitive eyes as well, and should've faced the album away from her face.
She was fourteen, gonna be fifteen soon by the time September comes. Most of the time, kids this age would still be goofing around as they are entering their prime teenage years. This is not the case for Mr Express; she will be a racer, a legendary one, to be up there among the great, that's what she holds dear to her heart. For now, she's still under her parents' roof, but once she gets her trial, the embrace of the limelight on some of the world's biggest stages will come flocking to her like Icarus to the sun.
As she unzipped the album, a picture fell out of it. Lying there on the floor, it's a picture of her whole father's side of the family in Sha Tin Racecourse; her mother, a foreign-looking New Zealand Umamusume, doesn't really look out of place next to her father, who was a trainer in the HKJC then. To see how youthful they once were, put a light smile on Mr Express' face, her eyes are a full photocopy of her mother, a deep cherry iris that turns bright rose when stimulated.
Flipping it over, she noticed a familiar handwriting, rough strokes with chaotic alignment; this can only be from her father. It was in Cantonese, and Express is proficient enough to figure out the meaning of it. She muttered it quietly, fingers following the letters.
"Peace and love, peace and love from Sha Tin Racecourse with the love of my life, my mother. And my wife."
-14th of December, 2003-
"Old-fashioned Asian humour, never change, 爸爸, never change." A bubble of thought forms within her mind.
Quickly enough, she started searching within the album for that specific date. Nakayama R11 2005, Tokyo R11 2005…, and of course, the only one with the specific date, 14/12/2003, Sha Tin,
HONG KONG SPRINT 2003, "精英大師"
The thrifted disc reader spins rapidly, like an engine being kick-started. In 480p pixelated fashion, the scene of Sha Tin introduced itself to the young Express.
The track looks different in old footage. Greener, somehow. Unnaturally green, the way colours behave when a camera from twenty years ago tries to render afternoon sun, it's a total eyesore. The grandstand is full, she can tell even through the compression, the way the crowd blurs into a single mass of colour and motion at the edges of the frame. Somewhere in there, Express's Grandma could be suffocating; she never liked crowded places, but her love for her own son had outgrown all of those inconveniences.
Eight runners behind the gates, eight of the world's elite sprinters of the 2000s. Express is already looking for her.
"Standby and away they go, Silent Witness has jumped well …"
Gate 1, dark ears, straight back, launching herself in style right out of the gate. That stance, that is the Umamusume from the clipping in her father's magazines. There she is, Silent Witness, wasting no time gaining her ground, positioning right in the middle of the field, comfortably tucked into the pack; the chase has begun.
"Silent Witness in the middle, National Currency just leading her up at this point …"
The mesmerised girl's ears tilted forward, twitched slightly in motion.
The field stretches out through the first four hundred metres. National Currency at the front, a length clear, and Silent Witness behind her and the gap holds and holds. Mr Express's hands, which have been loose in her lap, tighten, fingers rubbing compulsively against the palms of her hands.
"They're in a line, the favourite deep there but off the bridle …"
Something is wrong. She can see it. Silent Witness is rushed; the flow of time doesn't play into her favour this time, her stride pressing increasingly against her usual rhythm. Immortality is on the line.
She leans forward. Just slightly. Her tail, which has been still against the carpet, flicks once.
"It's National Currency in front. Silent Witness has got to find her heart and come after the South African sprinting sensation…"
Find her heart.
In that moment, the track became a madly revolving roulette wheel, the ball of victory spinning out of control, ready to land in anyone's hand. They poured their souls out, all the training, all the records, blood, sweat, and tears condensed right into the final stretch. With 400 meters left to go, the racer's thunderous march awakened the crowd of Sha Tin, sending them into a frenzy as the ball bounced frantically against the wall.
"Silent Witness digs in."
She digs in.
National Currency keeps pushing; her lungs are on fire, but she refuses to yield this lead, not now, never. The ball is launched into the air, and at that moment, it sheds itself, revealing a golden coin within. Silent Witness, National Currency, this was the race of their lives, racing for history, heads or tails, it's all unfolding now.
"Firebolt comes on — Cape of Good Hope staying hard — South Africa, here they roar…!"
The crowd noise swells on the recording, breath-taking, an overwhelming roar of 42,000 spectators, all eyes on the South African.
"But the best in the world runs to her. Goes by her…"
When you aim for the throne, you'd better not miss. Blink, and the gap closes down to almost nothing. The golden coin suspends motionlessly in the air, its shine illuminating the starving beasts below, all willing to shred themselves up for glory. Throughout the majority of this competition, Hong Kong thought they were witnessing a chaotic race of eight, then it was down to three, and finally a duo.
Then, the coin disintegrates into golden dust, letting the wind carry it wherever it pleases. The illusion of a gamble vanishes, leaving the hungry field bewildered. The dust transforms into a single, unyielding golden line that leads to a figure standing above the chaos, not with aggression and might, but with calm suppression.
Fate is superior to all, but her.
Hereby declared the Golden Path of the Elite Master. Her name is Silent Witness.
With a single push, Silent Witness draws level with National Currency. With a second push, the lead is now demolished, the final member of the audience is now seated, and what is left of it is the finale. Standing there at the centre of the stage, in front of an audience of 42007 people, they watch as she walks on air, crosses the line a clear length.
"Silent Witness! What a champion! Wins at the length…"
Some rise, some fall, but all eyes stay on Silent Witness.
Mr Express fell to the floor, instinctively pulling herself closer to the motion. Her ears are straight up, eyes wide, mouth gasping in disbelief, trying to take in the air that’s evaporated the moment Silent Witness crosses the finish line. Almost 20 years have gone by, yet this moment still leaves the young Umamusume in awe, overwhelmed by such raw talent.
The commentator keeps going. The camera follows Silent Witness through her deceleration, the crowd still deafening, and the commentator's vocal cords stiffen; you can feel his facial muscles tensing up across the screen:
"Eight for eight. If you don't think she's the best, bring something to beat her. Nobody has. Stand up and applaud the best sprinter there is today."
She didn't stand up.
She just stayed on the floor with her knees pulled to her chest, the blue glare of the menu screen washing over the dark room now that the tape was over. The air smelled like the attic: settled dust and old paper. It was the smell of things kept shut for too long. Her father's love for Hong Kong. Two decades of it sat in a leather album on the shelf behind a broken fan, an archive he had never shown her or offered up. Just something he kept.
"精英大師"
She said the Cantonese syllables quietly to the empty room. They sat heavily in her mouth, completely different from the English translation. The name carried the specific gravity of a place, a massive crowd, and a December afternoon twenty years ago that apparently never really ended for her dad.
She thought about last spring at the inter-district secondary schools championship. The 100 meters. It was a Tuesday afternoon in Palmerston North, which wasn't a glamorous venue for anything, but the track was booked, so everyone showed up. Twelve Umamusume between fifteen and eighteen stood in their school colours, ears back and tails twitching, waiting for the starter gun.
Express had been in lane six. She was the youngest in the final by a year and a half. Her coach had mentioned that fact twice that morning in that annoying way coaches do when they want you to care about something without saying it outright. The girl in lane four was a senior who had held the district title for two consecutive seasons and had a physical reach Express still needed a year of growth to match. The girl in lane eight was faster off the blocks than anyone Express had ever lined up against. Those were the facts.
Express had just listened, nodded, and remained entirely unbothered.
It wasn't arrogance. It was simpler than that. She had been running fence lines since she was old enough to unlatch a gate, and she had never once lost to anyone her own age. She had a working theory that she wasn't going to lose today either. It wasn't bravado, just the result of a lifetime of evidence. Certain truths just assemble themselves quietly until they are simply there.
The gun went off.
Lane four got out clean. Lane eight was half a stride ahead at ten meters, which Express noted and immediately discarded. She found her stride at fifteen meters, exactly where it always came, and then she was just running. It was the type of running where the race stops being a competition and becomes entirely private. The ground passed beneath her feet with an inevitable rhythm. Her tail acted as a perfect counterweight, her ears pinned flat against the wind.
She crossed the line.
She didn't look at the clock immediately. She never did. Out of habit, she turned around first, the same instinct that made her check the farm fence lines at dawn to see if anything had moved overnight. She looked back at the field.
Lane four and lane eight were still running. The two-time district champion finished three-tenths of a second behind her. In a 100-meter dash, that is an eternity. The senior stood at the line with a specific look that Express recognised. It wasn't a total defeat; it was the expression of someone rewriting a map they thought they knew by heart.
The officials called the time. Her coach said something she didn't absorb. The other girls slowed down around her, catching their breath, while the small crowd in the bleachers made that specific, scattered noise small crowds make.
She knew she would win. That was never the question.
What she couldn't locate while standing under that flat Palmerston North sky was what she had actually felt while running. Not the mechanics or the time, but something interior. She had outrun everyone on the track, but did she actually mean it? She hadn't known then, and sitting on the carpet in the dark now, she still didn't know.
She thought back to that specific forty-second stretch on the tape.
Not the winning part. She had seen winning before. She watched Black Caviar win at Flemington when she was little, sitting high on her father's shoulders just to see the final turn. She understood what dominance looked like from the outside: the gap opening, the field becoming irrelevant, the crowd turning into a wall of sound.
But she didn't know what Black Caviar felt.
And she didn't understand what Silent Witness felt in the space where the lead was real, the crowd was roaring for the other runner, and the outcome was still totally up in the air. In those forty-odd seconds, nothing was certain except that he had to keep going anyway.
She recognised something in that moment. It wasn't a feeling she had experienced herself. She was fourteen, and she hadn't stood in that kind of fire yet. Standing in lane six in Palmerston North was a completely different thing. But it felt like an old memory, a specific quality of forward motion that looked less like raw speed and more like a hard decision about who you were going to be.
She ran with all her hope and dreams.