[Uma Musume: Pretty Derby fan fiction]
All grown up, just as Mejiro McQueen thought things would settle into something stable, Tokai Teio brought up changes neither of them expected, with long-reaching consequences.
Now that she was finally here, Nice Nature only now just realized that if there was one habit she couldn't shake off, it was her tendency to twirl her hair when she was anxious.
She didn't really remember when it even began. The habit kind of dissipated when she got to middle school because she decided to style her hair in what was supposed to be low twintails, but she ended up just grouping all her hair to the sides and making them frame her face again after all. There was warmth in all that fluff, and her cheeks felt lonely without it.
During this time, the twirling changed to just petting the bush of her own hair because twirling became a lot harder to do. She would grab entire clumps of her hair and push them to her face, like trying to cover her head entirely with her fluffy hair so that no one could see her eyes if they tried. She would then stroke her own hair, and maybe comb them after, because she realized the soft tugging on her hair did help her relax, if just a bit.
She decided on an image change after she graduated high school to major in business—she wanted to look more serious, more professional, like someone befitting her course, so she let most of her hair down and drastically reduced the amount of hair she tied to her sidetails. She also started wearing accessory glasses for when she felt like it. Later, after she received her degree, she would go on to change her image once more to this friendly, relaxed onee-san by fully letting her hair down. Apparently, even without tying them up to the sides, her hair was as fluffy as ever, so without her twintails to frame her face, her open smile looked so much friendlier.
That very friendly visage was of help with her work, what with the market survey and sales help and all, and she noticed this within a week of working, courtesy of her best friends Matikanetannhäuser and Twin Turbo.
"People talk to you different," said Turbo with a serious expression. "When they talk to Turbo, it's, like, baaaang! And when they talk to Machitan it's all fwoosh, like that. But when they talk to Nature, umm...."
"They relaxed a lot," Machitan supplied. "It's like they don't worry about a thing when you're around."
"Aw, thanks," Nature said. "Wait, that is a compliment, right?"
"Of course!" Turbo said cheerily. Machitan smirked.
"You're everyone's Nice Nee-chan, after all."
"It's Nice Nature!"
The only other person to ever pull that joke on Nature, apart from her own Trainer back when she was in Team Canopus, was Tokai Teio, her very own shooting star. Nature admired a lot of horse girls; how they ran, how they carried themselves over the challenges they faced, Nature loved them all. However, of all the horse girls in her heart, Tokai Teio held a special seat. Seeing Teio run was exciting to say the least, and Nature always felt her heart beat the fastest when Teio was out there, where she was in her element—from the turf to the shining stage of the Winning Live.
She had no idea why, but seeing Teio gave her the confidence she needed. Could it be the sense of rivalry, maybe? Teio clinched championships with a blazing trail while Nature had her luck of ending up in the third place. A lot. However, she also knew the sheer effort Teio had spent to get to where she was, and that was the fuel that burned her frustration—not anger, not jealousy, not envy, but endless admiration. She wanted to be like her, shine like her, run like her. She wanted to win.
If it weren't for Teio, she knew she would probably still be stuck in the silent self-deprecating hell she made for herself. And if it weren't for her best friends, she knew she wouldn't have been able to pick herself up.
Nature twirled her hair one more time, took a deep breath, and finally stepped into the real estate agency. Here goes nothing.
*
When Nature got home at last, the rest of her soul left her body.
It took her everything for her to just prop herself up, put her bag in the right place, lock her apartment door, and prepare the bath. Today didn't run late or anything, but going to the real estate agency drained a lot of her energy.
She wasn't particularly drained by the talking or the travel. It was mainly the very same reason for her jitters back when she moved out to the very room she lived in now—it really just dawned to her that things are changing, and the change was really happening. Sooner or later, she would find the view before her turn into something new and unfamiliar. And it was real. It was happening.
She had actually spent a disproportionate amount of time worrying about this matter. She first moved into this room because it was the first rent she could afford on her own paycheck, and she did like the place, but she'd always felt that something there was wrong. The place was not by any means bad, neither were the people. It just simply felt like there was no place for Nice Nature there: no one she knew, no one she grew to know, and every day the room felt more and more like a stranger she was supposed to settle with. She considered moving into Machitan and Turbo's flat on the top floor of their mochi shop, but she didn't want to be a burden on her friends. She reasoned that it would be too far from work for her, too, so that arrangement was simply not going to work.
She'd asked Dictus for advice as well, but the bottom line of Dictus' long-winded lecture was that Nature was free to decide for herself what she wanted to do with her life and where she chose to stay. Nature knew Dictus had been living with McQueen since they graduated high school, and occasionally, Nature did feel the tiniest bit of envy towards them. Having someone to live with sounded nice.
Would be nice if I have someone, too, she thought.
The thought remained a fleeting idea above her head that refused to leave, so half of the apartment previewing she did today was actually spent checking out empty apartment rooms for two. She had no idea why, and she brushed it off as a mere 'just in case'.
Could it be it? Could it be that I was lonely? Was I lonely?
Nature groaned. It would make so much sense if this dread she felt was apparently just her own loneliness. She wanted to be around her friends, around her kind—the kind of noisiness she grew used to in Tracen Academy. Right here, in this apartment, there was no such thing. Sure, Nature could meet up with her friends occasionally, but everyone's got a life now—they'd need to settle their schedules first just to be able to talk. Nature didn't like that.
To talk. To talk....
The bath was ready, and as Nature dipped herself into her tub, she finally remembered that she just met Teio yesterday. She hadn't talked with her Tracen buddies apart from Team Canopus girls in forever.
Teio, huh....
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She made up her mind. After the bath was finished, she would go reach her phone and take that first step. She would talk to Teio again after four years.
