The 4 years I loved you most.

It began with rivalry, all sharp edges and childish banter. It twisted into glances too long, touches too fleeting, words too heavy to speak. One chased glory abroad, the other stayed behind, and between them stretched an ocean of pride, silence, and years they could never reclaim. She became a champion, then a patient, then a memory. And still, even in distance, in illness, in death itself.

Yet Scarlet never stopped waiting, and Vodka never stopped reaching.

Because some bonds are louder than love, messier than rivalry, and longer than life.

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The dorm room smelled of sweat, damp turf, and the sharp citrus of Scarlet’s expensive shampoo—a scent Vodka pretended to hate but secretly associated with late nights and stolen glances. Rain lashed against the windowpane, blurring the view of the deserted training track below. Scarlet sat stiffly on the edge of her impeccably made bed, meticulously polishing her racing shoes. Vodka flopped onto her own perpetually rumpled bed, picking at a loose thread on her duvet cover, glaring at the back of Scarlet’s perfectly poised head.

“You’re blocking the light,” Vodka grumbled, tossing a stray sock vaguely in Scarlet’s direction. It landed harmlessly on the floor between them.

Scarlet didn’t turn. “Then sit elsewhere, or go clean your side of the room! It looks like a tornado’s mess!” Her voice was charged yet clipped, the familiar blade of their rivalry honed to a fine edge.

“My side is functional. Yours looks like a museum exhibit. ‘The Haughty Princess Sits Alone.’ Ya look like a dunce!” Vodka rolled onto her stomach, resting her chin on her hands, staring intently at the curve of Scarlet’s shoulder, the way a stray crimson strand escaped her usually perfect twintails.

Scarlet finally turned, her eyes locking onto Vodka’s with intensity. “Functional? Your ‘function’ seems to involve tripping over your own idiocy! Remember the qualifier? That stumble looked far from functional.”

Heat bloomed instantly on Vodka’s cheeks. “Shut up! That was… loose gravel! Everyone saw it!” She pushed herself up, leaning forward, her own eyes flashing. “Unlike you, who only wins because you psych everyone out with that ridiculous form!”

“It’s called focus,” Scarlet countered, “Something you might cultivate if you spent less time sulking and more time training.” Her gaze, sharp enough to cut glass, flickered down. Just for a fraction of a second. Down to Vodka’s lips, still slightly parted in indignation.

Vodka saw it. Felt it like a physical touch. Her breath hitched. The familiar surge of annoyance twisted, tangled with something else—a confusing jolt that made her stomach clench. She looked away first, scrambling backwards onto her pillow fortress. “Whatever. Just… polish your stupid shoes elsewhere. Your perfectionism is suffocating.”

Scarlet turned back to her polishing, her movements suddenly too precise, her knuckles white around the cloth. The silence stretched, thick with everything unsaid. Vodka watched the rhythmic motion, the tension in Scarlet’s shoulders. She remembered…

...The scent of earth and crushed grass. A brutal training session ended in frustration for both. Vodka, her hair hopelessly tangled with mud and burrs, had been furiously picking at knots near her scalp, wincing. Scarlet, immaculate despite the mud, had silently walked over. Without a word, she’d produced a wide-toothed comb.

“Hold still!” she’d commanded, her voice devoid of its sharper venom. “You’re making it worse.”

Vodka had frozen, stunned into silence as Scarlet’s surprisingly gentle fingers carefully worked through the snarls. The touch was clinical, efficient… yet Vodka felt every stroke like a brand. Scarlet’s face had been a mask of perfection, but Vodka saw the faint flush creeping up her neck, the slight tremor in her hands that vanished the moment Vodka dared to look directly at her.

“Don’t get used to it,” Scarlet had muttered as she finished, tossing the comb aside as if it burned. “I just couldn’t stand the mess.” But her eyes, before she looked away, had held a softness Vodka had never seen before, a look that sent her heart hammering against her ribs long after Scarlet had stalked off.

…At a library. Supposedly for studying.

Scarlet sat with perfect posture, her pen gliding neatly across her notes, her focus steady on the thick textbook open in front of her. She looked every bit the model student: calm, composed, elegant in the soft lamplight.

Beside her, Vodka was a different story. Her notebook was a battlefield of half-hearted formulas and scribbled motorcycles, lines looping and crashing in reckless chaos. Her eyes kept drifting—against her better judgment—to Scarlet. The way her hair fell just right, the soft curve of her jawline, the single eyelash that rested stubbornly against her cheekbone.

A taller boy walked up, leaning too casually on Scarlet’s desk, asking her about a problem. Scarlet smiled politely, patient as always, and explained the solution with her usual warmth. Her voice was gentle, but certain, every word measured.

Vodka almost tore through her page with the pencil.

Then she noticed it—the tiniest flicker. The subtle way Scarlet shifted her shoulders, the graceful tilt of her head as if creating just a fraction more distance from the boy’s lingering presence. Her smile stayed kind, but her eyes softened into dismissal.

“Was that clear enough?” Scarlet asked, her tone still pleasant but touched with finality.

The boy stammered something, nodded, and retreated. Scarlet turned another page, perfectly serene.

Vodka felt a ridiculous rush of vindication bloom in her chest. Warmth spreading, wild and stupid, like she’d just won something. She scowled immediately, stabbing dark lines over her doodle to smother it.

“Distracting everyone as usual, number 2?” she’d sneered, desperate to drown out the confusing thrum of possessiveness. Scarlet’s eyes snapped to hers, that familiar fire returning.

Scarlet’s eyes lifted from the page. Not with fire, but with a soft, knowing amusement that made Vodka’s stomach flip.

“Jealous, Vodka?”

The question hung in the air, light and teasing.

Vodka’s cheeks went hot. “Of what? Your ability to bore people to tears?”

But Scarlet’s gaze held hers, piercing, searching. And for a terrifying moment, Vodka thought Scarlet saw everything—the tangled mess of admiration, resentment, and that terrifying, insistent flutter beneath her ribs whenever Scarlet was near. Scarlet looked away first, a muscle jumping in her jaw.

“Childish,” she breathed, turning a page with unnecessary force. The moment shattered, scattering the fragile tension like dropped glass.

Scarlet let it go with grace, turning back to her notes. “You really are a total idiot,” she said gently, shaking her head as if amused by a child.

…Back in the dorm room, the rain drummed a steady rhythm. Scarlet stood, placing her gleaming shoes neatly by her desk. She walked towards the door, presumably heading to the showers. As she passed Vodka’s bed, her hand brushed lightly against the tangle of Vodka’s hair spread across the pillow. An accidental graze, fleeting as a moth’s wing.

Vodka froze. Her scalp tingled where Scarlet’s fingers had touched. Her heart performed a frantic, traitorous drum solo against her sternum. She held her breath, staring rigidly at the wall.

Scarlet paused at the door handle. She didn’t turn back, but her voice, softer than Vodka had ever heard it, cut through the humid air. “Your comb. Top drawer. Don’t let it get that bad again.”

Then she was gone, the door clicked shut, a final, hollow sound that seemed to echo in the sudden vacuum Scarlet left behind.

The drumming rain outside intensified, a grey curtain obscuring the world beyond their shared, cluttered sanctuary. Vodka lay frozen, her face pressed into the pillowcase that smelled overwhelmingly, intimately, of her.

Citrus, clean sweat, and something indefinably Scarlet. The spot on her scalp where Scarlet’s fingers had brushed—a touch so fleeting it could have been dismissed as nothing, a mere accident in the cramped space—burned like a brand.

Her heart hadn’t calmed. It hammered against her ribs, a frantic, trapped thing, echoing the frantic drumming on the windowpane. Roommates. Rivals. The words formed in her mind, brittle and unconvincing.

Fierce rivals didn’t… do that. They didn’t notice tangled hair with a hawk’s eye, didn’t offer solutions in a voice stripped of its usual cutting edge, leaving behind only a softness that felt like a physical ache. They didn’t make your breath catch and your skin prickle with awareness at the barest graze.

Vodka squeezed her eyes shut, trying to drown out the phantom sensation, the lingering scent. It was useless. The memory flooded back, sharp and vivid, summoned by Scarlet’s parting words about the comb.

…The combing. After the mudslide disaster of a training session. Vodka remembered the frustration, the sting of burrs pulling at her scalp, the utter humiliation of looking like a drowned, muddy rat while Scarlet emerged looking like she’d merely stepped through a light dew. She’d been yanking at a particularly vicious knot, cursing under her breath, when Scarlet had appeared beside her. No preamble. No mocking remark. Just the silent production of that wide-toothed comb.

“Hold still!” Scarlet’s command had lacked its usual venom, replaced by a strange, focused intensity. “You’re making it worse.”

Vodka had obeyed, stunned into immobility. Scarlet’s fingers, usually so precise and controlled in everything, had been unexpectedly gentle. Not hesitant, but careful. Efficient strokes working through the snarls, the comb gliding smoothly once the worst was conquered.

Vodka had felt every touch like an electric current—the slight pressure against her skull, the warmth radiating from Scarlet’s hand so close to her neck. She’d dared a glance upwards, catching the faintest flush creeping up Scarlet’s throat, the almost imperceptible tremor in her fingers that vanished the instant Scarlet felt Vodka’s gaze.

Scarlet’s face had been a masterpiece of cheeky perfection, but her eyes… in that fleeting moment before she looked away, Vodka had seen it. A softness. A vulnerability that stole her breath and sent her own pulse thundering in her ears long after Scarlet had tossed the comb aside like contaminated evidence.

“Don’t get used to it. I just couldn’t stand the mess.” The words had been hastily erected. But her eyes…. It was a story Vodka hadn’t known how to read then, and still struggled to decipher now.

Back at the library… “Childish.” The word had shattered the fragile tension, leaving Vodka feeling exposed and foolish.

Childish. The accusation echoed in the quiet room now. Was that all it was? This frantic heartbeat, this desperate need to provoke just to elicit a reaction, this acute awareness of Scarlet’s every movement, every shift in expression?

Slowly, mechanically, Vodka pushed herself up. The rain streaked the window, distorting the world into blurred watercolors. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, her gaze landing on Scarlet’s impeccably organized desk. Top drawer. Right side.

Her feet carried her across the small space before her mind fully registered the action. She pulled open the drawer. Neat stacks of notebooks, perfectly aligned pens, a small tin of polish for those gleaming shoes. And there, tucked neatly beside a spare hair ribbon, lay the wide-toothed comb.

Vodka picked it up. The plastic was cool, smooth. Unremarkable. Yet holding it felt like holding a secret, a tangible piece of evidence from a moment Scarlet had tried so hard to dismiss.

She ran her thumb over the teeth, remembering the careful pressure against her scalp, the surprising gentleness, the blush she wasn't supposed to see.

Rivals. The words tasted like ash. Lips boasted and hawked. Eyes flickered with inconvenient truths. Hearts betrayed with every frantic beat. And Vodka stood alone in the rain-grey room, clutching a cheap plastic comb.

Rivals. Feeling the jagged edges of something far more complicated, far more terrifying than mere rivalry cut deep into the half of her heart Scarlet hadn't taken with her.

Rivals…

They never have those kinds of stolen moments.

To love is to part with half of your heart. The phrase echoed in the hollow space Scarlet vacated. Vodka scoffed, a harsh sound that scraped her throat childishly. Love? No way! This wasn’t love. This was… entanglement. A messy knot of rivalry and reluctant admiration, and this infuriating, constant awareness.

Vodka slowly closed the drawer, leaving the comb clutched tightly in her fist, the image of Scarlet's unguarded gaze branding themselves red hot in her retinas.

She was holding the jagged edge of Scarlet's exposed heart.

And she had absolutely no idea what to do with it.

“Idiot,” Vodka muttered, the word lacking its usual venom, sounding lost instead. She wasn’t sure if she meant Scarlet or herself. Probably both.

There was always another moment. Scarlet brushing crumbs off Vodka’s jacket with grumbles. Vodka walking Scarlet back from late practice, kicking stones down the sidewalk, pretending it wasn’t just to make sure she got home safe. Scarlet holding an umbrella over them both, leaning just slightly closer than necessary when the wind tilted the rain sideways. Vodka pretending she hated coffee, only to sip from Scarlet’s mug when she wasn’t looking. Scarlet tying Vodka’s shoelaces before a mock race, her fingers steady while Vodka’s hands shook too much to manage the knots.

One moment melted into the next, seamless and endless. A pattern of quiet rituals only they shared. Scarlet’s laughter caught in the pages of Vodka’s memory. Vodka’s stubborn grin etched against the edges of Scarlet’s heart. Scarlet adjusting Vodka’s tie before an event. Vodka saving the last piece of bread and pretending it was accidental when Scarlet got it. Scarlet humming under her breath while Vodka dozed on the couch, pretending not to notice she was being watched over.

Lips are liars. Eyes are honest. Hearts more so.

Scarlet’s eyes would fall to Vodka’s mouth when she thought no one noticed. Vodka’s heart would race in her throat every time Scarlet’s hand brushed hers in passing. The lies—they lived in the bickering, the sharp words thrown like cheap armor. The truth lived in the silence after, where their eyes lingered too long. Sometimes yearning wore the mask of laughter. Sometimes it disguised itself as rivalry. Sometimes it crouched in the corner of the room like a shadow, waiting for one of them to finally say what they both wanted to be said.

Little infinities. Endlessly repeating.

“I’m leaving,” Vodka said. Her voice was steady enough to leave no room for doubt.

“I’ll go overseas.”

—

Vodka was an idiot. A spectacular one. The kind of idiot who could turn a spark into a wildfire and then stand there, baffled, when the flames consumed her. Four years of tripping over her own heart, and still she couldn’t admit what everyone else probably already saw.

She called it rivalry. Called it competition. Called it anything but what it was. Because admitting the truth would have been harder than any sprint, more brutal than any finish line collapse. It would’ve meant standing still, staring Scarlet in the eye, and saying out loud what had been rattling her chest to pieces every day since that first, stupid glance lasted too long.

Four years of brushing against Scarlet’s hand and jerking away as though burned. Four years of pretending her nosebleeds were accidents, her stammers just fatigue, her flushed face the result of overtraining. Four years of hiding behind loud laughter and empty insults because silence might have betrayed her.

And still, every second of it hurt in ways she could never outrun.

Because Scarlet’s smile stayed with her. Scarlet’s voice lingered. Scarlet’s presence filled every space Vodka tried to carve out for herself. She could leave the room, leave the track, leave the country—and Scarlet would still be there, clinging to her ribs, woven into the seams of her lungs.

It was ridiculous. It was unbearable. It was everything.

She had planned this departure for months. Overseas, away from Scarlet, away from the battlefield that was her own chest. But planning didn’t mean freedom. Planning only meant cowardice dressed up as strategy. A retreat, disguised as ambition.

Because what kind of fool spends four years circling the same sun, only to run when the light gets too close? What kind of coward bleeds herself dry, tripping over her own pulse, and still refuses to face what it’s been screaming all along?

Vodka, that’s who.

An idiot.

A coward.

A very, very big coward.

And the cruelest part? Even with her bags packed, even with her path marked out across the sea—she was still thinking about Scarlet. Always, always Scarlet.

—

The night before the Derby, the dorm was too quiet. Too still. It felt wrong.

Vodka sat at the edge of her bed, shoes unlaced, staring at the floor like the answer to all her problems was hidden in the cracks between the tiles. Tomorrow was supposed to be their day. Hers and Scarlet’s. Rivals, shoulder to shoulder, tearing the track apart until one of them proved who was stronger. That was how it had always been. That was how it was supposed to be.

But Scarlet wasn’t there.

She was in the hospital, fevered and pale, stripped of the fire Vodka had spent years chasing. It made no sense. Scarlet wasn’t supposed to falter. Scarlet was always there, always immaculate, always outpacing Vodka in ways that burned her with equal parts rage and admiration. Without her, the race felt hollow. Like running on a track carved out of air.

Vodka clenched her fists, digging her nails into her palms. “Damn it, Scarlet… what’s the point if you’re not there? Who am I even supposed to beat?!”

The words sounded petulant, childish, but they cracked something in her chest. She wanted Scarlet at her side, glaring, pushing, making her burn until she found that last ounce of strength. That was the only way victory meant anything…

The smell of antiseptic clung to the room, sharp and unfriendly. Machines hummed softly, their rhythm too slow, too fragile. Vodka stood at Scarlet’s bedside, her hands shoved into her pockets, her weight bouncing from heel to heel. She didn’t know what to do with herself—Scarlet wasn’t supposed to look this way. Pale. Fever-struck. Tucked under blankets instead of standing tall at the starting gates.

“You look like crap,” Vodka muttered. Her voice came out rougher than she meant. “Like, worse than when you trip over your own perfect legs during warm-ups.”

Scarlet shot her a glare, weak but still sharp enough to cut. “Better than you look after training. You’re always a mess.”

Vodka snorted, relief seeping into her chest at the sound of Scarlet’s usual bite. “Yeah? Well, at least I show up. Bet you planned this. Chickened out ‘cause you knew I’d smoke you tomorrow.”

Scarlet’s brow furrowed, cheeks puffing faintly. Even ill, she bristled like a cornered cat. “Idiot. You think I’d ever chicken out of a race with you?” Her voice cracked, but her eyes shone with that stubborn, unyielding fire. “I’ll prove I’m better than you every chance I get. Even if it kills me.”

Vodka leaned in, her grin crooked and wild, trying to mask how much her chest ached at seeing Scarlet fight to hold herself up. “Then prove it tomorrow. Oh wait. You can’t. Guess it’s just me, then.”

Scarlet opened her mouth, ready to spit back something scathing—but the words faltered. She sagged against the pillow, breath shallow, her eyes briefly slipping shut before fluttering open again. “...Then don’t run for me,” she whispered, softer now.

Vodka blinked. “Huh?”

Scarlet turned her face away, embarrassed by the way the words had tumbled out. Her gaze trembled. “Don’t… waste your time thinking about me. Run for yourself. Prove you can do it without me there to… push you.”

There it was—that maddening faith Scarlet always had in her. Even when it came in the form of a challenge, Scarlet was handing her a piece of her heart. Vodka’s throat tightened. She shifted closer, standing right against the bed now.

Their hands brushed, an accidental graze as Scarlet shifted weakly beneath the blanket. Both froze. Scarlet’s eyes widened a fraction, and color crept into her fevered cheeks. She jerked her hand away instinctively—

—but Vodka caught it.

Her grip was warm, firm, not giving Scarlet the chance to retreat. For once, Vodka didn’t make a joke. She just held on. Her thumb brushed lightly against Scarlet’s knuckles, grounding her.

“...Don’t look at me like that,” Scarlet mumbled, staring hard at the far wall. “It’s embarrassing.”

Vodka smirked, but it was gentler than usual. “Tough. You’re stuck with me.”

Scarlet gave a faint scoff, trying to cover the way her pulse betrayed her. But she didn’t pull away again.

Vodka’s grin sharpened, fierce and determined, the fire in her chest finally finding its spark. She squeezed Scarlet’s hand tighter, leaning in close enough that Scarlet had no choice but to meet her eyes.

“C’mon n’ see how it’s done!” Vodka said, her voice loud enough to rattle the machines. “Watch me on TV!”

—

The crowd’s roar crashed through the speakers, distant, as if from another world. The sterile scent of antiseptic warred with the phantom smell of turf and adrenaline filtering through the television speakers.

Scarlet’s head throbbed, each beat echoing the rhythmic pounding of her own fevered pulse against her temples. Sweat beaded on her brow despite the cool hospital air. Every muscle screamed protest, but her eyes, unnaturally bright with fever and fierce concentration, were locked on the flickering screen beside her bed.

The roar of the Tokyo Racecourse crowd was a distant ocean swell, muffled by the limitations of the speaker and the cottony haze filling her head. But she didn’t need clear sound to understand the magnitude.

On screen, the starting gate was a tense tableau. And there, amidst powerful colts known for dominance, stood Vodka. Muscles gleaming under the bright track lights like sculpted copper, ears pricked forward with fierce intent, her tail a banner of defiance held high.

Every line of her body thrummed with coiled energy, poised on the precipice of explosion. Scarlet’s breath hitched, shallow and painful. Go.

Then the bell rang. Gates swung open.

"And they’re off! A clean break for most! Tokyo Yūshun is underway!"

"Look at Vodka! Breaking smoothly from gate seven! She’s holding position mid-pack, conserving energy beautifully! She’s showing incredible poise against this formidable field of competition!"

Scarlet’s fingers clenched the thin hospital sheet. Conserving? Yes. Smart. But Scarlet knew the fire in Vodka’s eyes even through the grainy broadcast. That wasn’t just patience; it was simmering intensity, waiting for the furnace door to swing open. The track blurred slightly as Scarlet blinked against the pressure building behind her eyes. Don’t rush it, idiot. Wait for the bend.

The field streamed down the backstretch, a river of pounding shoes and straining muscle. An Uma held the lead confidently, stalking just off her flank.

Vodka remained tucked in, a streak of vibrant energy amidst the darker silks, her stride long and fluid, seemingly effortless compared to the driving force of the others around her.

"She’s setting strong fractions! She’s dictating the pace, trying to soften up these challengers early. While Vodka is still sitting pretty in fifth, maybe sixth… riding the rail beautifully!"

"The question is stamina! Can this Umamusume sustain this against the others in the final stages? Look at that action! So economical! She’s moving like a dream!"

Scarlet’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic counterpoint to the rhythmic beats on screen. Strong fractions… too strong?

She knew the competition’s power, their relentless drive. Would the lead burn them all out, including herself? Or would she have enough left?

Her gaze never left Vodka’s form. Your turn is coming. Make it count. A wave of dizziness washed over her; she pressed a trembling hand to her forehead, forcing her focus back to the screen.

They approached the final bend. The crowd noise surged, a tidal wave of sound that seemed to vibrate through Scarlet’s bed. This was the crucible. Umamusume began to shift, positions tightening like a closing fist.

"Rounding the final turn! She still leads! The others challenging on the outside! But wait—! Look to the inside! VODKA! VODKA IS UNLEASHING!"

"OH! SHE’S FLYING! LIKE A ROCKET FROM THE RAIL! WHERE DID SHE FIND THAT ACCELERATION?! SHE’S GOING THROUGH THE GAP! PAST EVERYONE! HEADING STRAIGHT FOR THE LEAD!"

Scarlet surged upright, ignoring the searing protest from her muscles. The world tilted, but her eyes were wide, burning. On screen, Vodka was a revelation. The conversation was over. Unleashed was too tame a word—she erupted.

Her powerful legs drove her forward with astonishing power, her stride lengthening impossibly, devouring the turf. She slipped through a narrowing gap along the rail like water finding its path, bursting past the competition with breathtaking speed. Her expression wasn't arrogant now; it was pure, focused fury, eyes blazing with the singular desire for the front.

“INCREDIBLE TURN OF FOOT! VODKA HAS CLEARED THE-NOW-3RD PLACE AND IS CHARGING AT THE LEAD! SHES TIRING! AND VODKA IS GAINING WITH EVERY POWERFUL STRIDE!"

“1ST PLACE IS FIGHTING BUT VODKA… VODKA IS RELENTLESS! SHE’S DRAWING LEVEL! SHE’S PAST HER! SHE’S PAST HER BY A LENGTH! TWO LENGTHS!"

Vodka surged past if the competition were standing still. Everyone fought bravely, but their earlier efforts had taken their toll. Vodka’s reserve of power was terrifying. She opened up daylight between them with every earth-pounding stride down the home straight. Her ears were flat back now, not in fear, but in pure, driven focus. The roar of the crowd became a physical force, shaking the hospital room speakers.

"VODKA CLEAR! SHE’S PULLING AWAY! THREE LENGTHS! THE UMA IS STORMING HOME! UNSTOPPABLE!"

"OH THE POWER! THE BEAUTY! VODKA WRITES HERSELF INTO LEGEND! TOKYO YŪSHUN BELONGS TO THE GIRL WITH THE HEART OF A LION!"

Scarlet couldn't breathe. She watched Vodka thunder towards the finish line, a lone figure of impossible speed and determination against the green expanse and the screaming multitude. Three lengths clear. Untouchable. The raw power on display was humbling. It was Vodka distilled: headstrong, defiant, burning with an inner fire that refused to be quenched.

The clock flashed: 2:24.5.

As Vodka crossed the line, her head came up, ears pricking forward again, not with arrogance this time, but with a dawning realization of what she’d just done. Exhaustion warred with exultation on her face as she began to slow.

Scarlet slumped back against the pillows, the fever crashing back over her in a wave that made her vision swim. Her heart still pounded like thunder, echoing the frantic rhythm of the race that had just unfolded on screen.

Sweat slicked her skin, indistinguishable now from tears of… what? Pride? Awe? The bitter sting of not being there? The sheer, overwhelming force of witnessing Vodka transcend everything?

She watched the replay—Vodka’s explosive move on the bend, the devastating acceleration that left seasoned umamusume floundering. The commentators raved about strength, strategy, history made.

But Scarlet, alone in her sterile room with the ghost of everything haunting her fever dreams, saw something else. She saw the culmination of every grueling training session Vodka had endured, fueled by that burning hatred of losing and a desire Scarlet knew intimately—the desperate need to be seen, to be the best. She saw the reckless courage channeled into perfect timing.

She saw Vodka, utterly magnificent.

The roar of the crowd still hadn’t died when Vodka, chest heaving, slowed to a canter. Foam flecked her lips, sweat streaked her face, but her eyes—oh, her eyes—still burned like firebrands. She tilted her head, glanced upward at the massive screens above the grandstand, and for the briefest heartbeat her wild gaze softened.

Her arm rose, fingers curled tight until only one remained: her index finger, stabbing skyward in a cocky “number one.”

But it wasn’t arrogance. Not this time. Her grin curved sharp, reckless, but threaded with something gentler, something only one person would understand. She mimicked it perfectly—the victory pose Scarlet always struck in the winner’s circle, polished, graceful, claiming the moment as hers. Only Vodka’s version was brash, messy, unrefined.

It was a challenge and a love letter in one motion.

Scarlet gasped aloud, the sound swallowed by the hospital’s sterile hum. Her chest constricted, as if someone had squeezed all the air from the room. Fever made the walls blur, but that gesture cut through everything with diamond clarity.

You’re not here, so I’ll do it for you. Watch me. I meant it.

Scarlet’s lips trembled. She clutched the blanket to her chest, fingers twisting into the thin fabric. Vodka had said it with that stupid, cheeky grin before leaving: “C’mon n’ see how it’s done! Watch me on TV!” Scarlet had brushed it off then, rolling her eyes, muttering about idiots and theatrics.

But now? Now it gutted her.

Vodka—drenched in sweat, grinning like a devil who’d stolen the sun itself—had outdone herself. She’d made history. She’d carved her name into legend. And in that single raised finger, Scarlet saw the truth: Vodka hadn’t just run for herself. She had run for both of them.

Scarlet pressed her trembling hand against the screen, against the blurred outline of that cocky silhouette. Her rival. Her idiot. Her Vodka.

The stadium thundered. The world roared. And yet, for Scarlet, all of it narrowed to that grin, that raised finger, that undeniable proof.

Vodka had meant every single word.

Scarlet closed her eyes. The image of Vodka charging down the straight, unstoppable, burned behind her eyelids. The fever pulled her down into its depths, but the thunder of hoofbeats and the sight of fiery determination lingered, a bittersweet victory echoing in the silent room where half a heart lay beating a frantic, complicated rhythm.

—

The sterile scent of victory had long faded from Vodka’s memory, replaced now by the familiar, cloying mix of their dorm room, thick as the unsaid words choking the air between them. Outside, twilight painted the sky bruised purple and orange, a stark contrast to the grey storm inside.

Vodka stood rigidly by her perpetually unmade bed, a duffel bag half-packed on the rumpled duvet—a declaration Scarlet had stumbled upon. Her racing silks lay folded with uncharacteristic neatness atop a pile of motorcycle magazines.

“I’m leaving,” Vodka said. Her voice was steady enough to leave no room for doubt, honed by years of masking vulnerability behind bravado. It cut through the silence like a blade. “I’ll go overseas.”

The words landed like a physical blow. Scarlet, who had been frozen in the doorway holding a freshly laundered towel, flinched as if struck. The towel slipped from her fingers, pooling silently on the floor.

“Overseas?” Scarlet’s voice was a threadbare whisper, strained thin by disbelief. It frayed instantly, unraveling into something raw and jagged. “When? Where? Why… why wasn’t I…?” The questions tumbled out, sharp fragments shattering the fragile calm Vodka had imposed.

Vodka kept her gaze fixed on the half-packed bag, refusing to meet Scarlet’s eyes. She picked up a worn leather riding glove, turning it over in her hands. “France. Longchamp. The Prix de l'Arc. The contracts are signed. Departure’s in a few days.”

Each sentence was clipped, delivered with the precision of navigating a tight turn. A rehearsed script. “It’s… the logical next step. The best competition. The biggest stage.”

“Logical?” Scarlet choked on the word. The carefully maintained facade of the perfect student, the cool strategist, crumbled. Anger, hot and desperate, surged in its place. She crossed the small space in two strides, her hand snapping out to grab Vodka’s shoulder, fingers digging into the muscle beneath the thin fabric of her t-shirt.

“Look at me!”

Vodka finally jerked her head up, startled by the physical contact, the force of it. Scarlet’s grip was bruising, shaking her slightly—not with violence, but with a frantic need to make her see, to shake loose some hesitation, some crack in the armor.

“Logical?” Scarlet repeated, her voice cracking, rising. “After that? After Tokyo Yūshun? After you made history here? After…”

Her voice hitched, the memory of the hospital bed, the feverish ache in her own bones as she watched Vodka’s impossible triumph on screen, flooding back. The pride that had warred with the sting of absence. “After you watched me watch you do it! You climb that mountain, you plant your flag… and then you just leave?”

Tears were welling in Vodka’s eyes now, hot and insistent, blurring the fierce intensity on Scarlet’s face. She blinked furiously, refusing to let them fall. This was part of the plan. The only plan she’d ever truly had beyond beating Scarlet across a finish line.

“I’ve always been planning this!” Vodka snapped back, her own voice thick with unshed tears, laced with defiance. She tried to shrug off Scarlet’s grip, but Scarlet held fast.

“Since before I even knew you! Since I first saw those races on my dad’s old tapes! Europe! The Arc! It’s the pinnacle! Winning here… it was incredible. But it was a step. Just a step towards that!” Her knuckles were white. “I have to go where the ultimate challenge is! I have to prove myself against the absolute best!”

“Prove what?” Scarlet’s cry was raw, stripped bare of its usual cheeky edge. “You proved everything here! You beat Takarazuka Kinen! You beat the Shuka Sho, Japan Cup, and Arima Kinen! You beat 7 G1 races! You beat everyone!” Her grip tightened unconsciously, her own body trembling now. “You… Beat me.”

“What more do you need? Or is it… is it just about running away?”

The accusation hung in the air, sharp and poisonous. Vodka’s breath caught. For a fleeting second, something like panic flashed in her eyes—fear not of the challenge ahead, but of the truth scraping too close to bone. The tangled mess of feelings Scarlet represented—rival, motivation, confidante in unguarded moments, the source of that confusing ache beneath her ribs.

“It’s about my career!” Vodka insisted, her voice cracking despite her efforts. “My future! It’s not… it’s not about running! It’s about chasing the highest peak!”

She finally managed to wrench her shoulder free from Scarlet’s grasp, stumbling back a step. The tears were dangerously close to spilling over. She swiped angrily at her eyes with the back of her hand.

“You don’t understand!” Vodka spat, the words tasting like ash. “You never did! You have your path here, your perfect control! Mine… mine has always pointed out there!”

It was then that Vodka truly looked at Scarlet. Really looked.

Scarlet hadn’t moved. She stood where Vodka had pulled away, one hand still slightly raised as if clutching empty air where Vodka’s shoulder had been. Her expression was utterly still. Not angry. Not hurt. Blank. Shock frozen solid.

But her eyes… Her wide, usually sharp, bright eyes were brimming. Silent tears overflowed without warning, tracing glistening paths down her pale cheeks. They fell unchecked, dripping onto the collar of her pristine white shirt. No sob shook her frame. No sound escaped her lips. It was the stillness of profound shock, of a dam breaking silently under immense pressure.

Vodka froze. The defiant words died in her throat. She had seen Scarlet frustrated, furious, focused, even faintly flushed in rare moments of vulnerability. But she had never seen Scarlet cry. Not like this. This was an unmooring. A terrifying collapse of the invincible front Scarlet always presented to the world.

The sight struck Vodka harder than any physical blow. It stole her breath, punched through the carefully constructed wall of her resolve. Her own unshed tears blurred Scarlet’s silent weeping into a watery smear of pain.

The dorm room felt cavernous suddenly, filled only by the ragged sound of Vodka’s breathing and the terrifying silence of Scarlet’s tears. The meticulously planned departure, all her challenges looming in her mind, the carefully recited justifications… they all crumbled under the weight of that silent grief etched onto Scarlet’s usually cheeky face.

Vodka opened her mouth. To say… what? An apology? An explanation that suddenly felt hollow? A plea? The words wouldn’t come. They dissolved before they reached her tongue.

Scarlet didn’t wait for them. Without a word, without even wiping her face, she turned stiffly. Her movements were jerky, robotic. She walked past Vodka, past the half-packed bag that screamed betrayal, past the ghosts of late-night bickering and stolen moments by lamplight. She opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.

The soft click of the door closing was the loudest sound Vodka had ever heard.

She stood alone in the twilight-drenched room. The scent of citrus hung faintly in the air where Scarlet had stood, mingling with the salt tang of her own finally spilled tears tracking paths through the dust on her cheeks. France felt impossibly far away. Longchamp felt meaningless.

All that remained was the echo of a slammed door and the devastating image of perfect stillness shattered by silent, falling tears—the only sound left in the wreckage of what she was leaving behind.

A coward in every way that mattered.

—

The morning of Vodka’s departure dawned brittle and bright, sunlight slicing through the dorm window with cruel cheerfulness.

The silence left by Scarlet’s departure the night before hadn’t lifted; it had solidified, coating every surface like frost. Vodka moved through the room like a ghost in her own life, finishing her packing with mechanical efficiency. The folded silks, the riding gloves, the passport—each item placed felt like sealing a tomb.

Scarlet sat at her desk, back impossibly straight, pretending to review training data on her laptop. The screen’s glow reflected in her dry, red-rimmed eyes. She hadn’t looked at Vodka since walking back in hours later, face carefully wiped clean, movements precise and remote. The shared space hummed with the unspeakable.

Vodka zipped the duffel bag shut. The sound was final. She hefted it onto her shoulder, the weight anchoring her to the moment she’d both craved and dreaded. She took a breath that felt like shards of glass in her lungs, plastering on a grin that didn’t reach her eyes.

“Welp,” she announced, her voice pitched unnaturally high, laced with a sweetness that scraped raw against the tension. “I’m off, Scarlet!” She forced herself to turn towards the rigid figure at the desk. Scarlet didn’t flinch, didn’t turn. Her fingers hovered frozen over the keyboard.

Vodka pushed on, the cheerful facade cracking at the edges. “Make sure you’re stronger by the time I’m back, yeah? Can’t have my best rival gettin’ soft!” The word ‘rival’ tasted like ashes. “I’m off to check things out abroad… and amaze the world!”

She injected a forced chuckle. “See ya!”

The silence that followed was absolute. Scarlet remained a statue, her profile sharp against the morning light, utterly still. Not a flicker of acknowledgment. No farewell. No dismissal. Just… absence.

Vodka’s grin faltered. The casual act felt grotesque in the face of Scarlet’s silent devastation. The ache in her chest flared, sharp and desperate. She couldn’t stay another second in this suffocating silence, couldn’t bear to see if Scarlet would ever turn around.

She pivoted sharply and yanked the door open. Stepping into the hallway felt like escaping a vacuum chamber. Air rushed into her lungs, but it offered no relief. She started walking, her boots clicking too loudly on the polished floor. Just walk. Just get to the bus.

But with every step away from the dorm room, the image of Scarlet’s frozen back, the memory of those silent tears, pressed harder. It was a physical weight on her shoulders, heavier than the duffel bag. She needed distance, space, anything to outrun the crushing guilt and the terrifying void Scarlet’s withdrawal carved inside her.

Her pace quickened. Walking wasn't enough. The corridor stretched endlessly. She needed to move. She broke into a jog, the duffel bag bumping awkwardly against her hip.

Faster.

She hit the main entrance doors, shoving through into the blinding campus courtyard. The morning air was cool, but it did nothing to cool the frantic heat building under her skin. Students milled about, oblivious. Their chatter was distant static.

Faster still.

She was running now. Not a sprint, not yet, but a determined, almost panicked lope towards the bus stop visible at the far end of the path. Her breath came in short gasps that had nothing to do with exertion. Each footfall echoed the frantic rhythm of her thoughts: Get away. Get away. Get away.

But what was she really running from? The silent room? The accusing tears? Or the terrifying truth that Scarlet had finally named—that beneath the ambition, beneath the chase for the "highest peak," was something darker? A need to run from the complication Scarlet represented? From the feelings that tied her down, tangled her up, made her feel weak and exposed? From the terrifying vulnerability of loving someone who was her mirror and her opposite?

The bus came into clearer view, idling at the curb. Its doors hissed open. The finality of it spurred her into a full sprint. Her duffel bounced wildly, her boots pounded the pavement. She wasn't just running for the bus now; she was running from the wreckage she’d left behind in that dorm room, from the shattered stillness of the girl she’d broken.

Catch up. The thought flashed, unbidden and bitter. Always catching up.

Catching up to Scarlet on the track, chasing her shadow, fueled by that impossible mix of resentment and desperate admiration. Now she was running to catch a plane taking her across the world, hoping distance would outpace the pain… hoping that somewhere, somehow, she could finally outrun the need for her. Hoping she could become someone worthy of that silent, devastating grief… someone Scarlet might actually want to chase in return.

She skidded to a halt just as the bus driver began to close the doors. “Wait!” she gasped, flinging herself inside. The doors hissed shut behind her, sealing her into the diesel-scented interior. She stumbled down the aisle, collapsing into an empty seat near the back, chest heaving. As the bus pulled away from the curb, she pressed her forehead against the cool glass.

The familiar campus buildings began to blur past. And all she could see was Scarlet’s back, perfectly straight and utterly alone in a room that no longer held half her heart…

because Vodka had stolen it away, clutched it tight in her traitorous hands, and was now fleeing towards a horizon that suddenly felt impossibly cold and empty.

The only sound louder than the engine’s rumble was the deafening silence she carried with her—Scarlet’s final, heartbreaking gift.

…The slammed door echoed in the silent room long after Vodka’s footsteps faded. The forced brightness of her farewell, the grotesque cheerfulness plastered over devastation—it scraped against Scarlet’s nerves like sandpaper.

She sat frozen at her desk, the training data on her laptop screen a meaningless blur of numbers and graphs. Her back was ramrod straight, a monument to control, but inside? Inside was a collapsing star.

Love. The word detonated in Scarlet’s mind.

Clear and terrifying as a starter pistol. Not rivalry. Not complicated entanglement. Love. The real, terrifying, soul-annihilating kind. She’d seen it for what it was years ago. While Vodka thrashed in a sea of a confused puppy crush, Scarlet had already mapped the ocean floor.

She knew its depths, its crushing pressure, its breathtaking, dangerous beauty.

She loved Vodka’s ridiculous, showy energy, the way she charged into life like a runaway motorcycle, all noise and bravado. She loved the hidden softness beneath the delinquent act, the way her eyes could go wide and startled as a fawn’s.

She loved the messy hair, the chaotic side of the room, the sound of her breathing, even when it was annoying soup-slurping. She loved the fire in her when they raced, the only one who ever truly pushed Scarlet, who made her feel the desperate, exhilarating burn of needing to be more.

She wanted to string their souls together. Not loosely, like acquaintances. Not competitively, like rivals. But tightly, irrevocably. Synchronized strides down life’s track, two hearts pounding the same rhythm. She imagined quiet moments not filled with bickering, but with shared silence that didn't need words.

But wanting wasn’t having. Wanting required vulnerability. And vulnerability was a flaw. Little Miss Perfect just couldn’t afford that.

Arrogance. It coated her thoughts like lacquer. Why would Vodka, brilliant, chaotic, alive Vodka, want someone so rigid? So controlled? Someone whose love felt less like an open flame and more like a contained furnace, capable of consuming everything if the door was opened? Scarlet was the highest peak, yes. But peaks were lonely. Exposed. Was that what she could offer? Solitude at the summit?

Stubbornness. Her shield. Her prison. To admit this love felt like admitting defeat in some unspoken battle where the rules kept changing. It meant relinquishing control over the one thing she’d always mastered: herself.

It meant risking the perfect structure of her life, her ambitions, for the glorious, terrifying chaos that was Vodka. And what if Vodka didn’t feel the same? What if her puppy crush was just that—a fleeting infatuation with the idea of her rival? The humiliation would be unbearable. A defeat far worse than any race.

Fear. Cold and absolute. Fear of rejection. Fear of losing the sharp edge of their rivalry that honed her own brilliance. Fear of the sheer, overwhelming size of what she felt. It was easier to polish shoes to a blinding shine, to bury herself in data, to maintain the boasting facade of the honor student who needed no one. Safer.

The silence in the room wasn’t empty; it was thick with the words she hadn’t said, choked back by arrogance, stubbornness, and fear. The memory of Vodka’s forced grin, the tremor in her falsely bright voice—“See ya!”—lanced through Scarlet’s carefully constructed numbness. That grin wasn’t indifference; it was a mask over a wound she had helped inflict with her silence, her withdrawal, her refusal to bridge the gap she herself had named.

A jolt of pure panic, sharp and sudden, ripped through her icy control. Gone. Vodka was leaving. Not just for a race, but away. Across an ocean. Putting distance, Scarlet suddenly knew she couldn’t bear.

"No."

The word was a ragged whisper, torn from a place deeper than pride or strategy. It wasn't loud enough to disturb the oppressive silence of the room.

Action followed thought with a speed born of desperation. The chair screeched violently as she shoved it back. Training, precision, perfect posture—all abandoned. She was just movement. A blur of crimson streaking across the room, fumbling with the door handle, stumbling into the hallway.

She ran.

Not the measured, powerful stride of Daiwa Scarlet on the track, hunting victory. This was frantic. Ungainly. Shoes slipping slightly on the polished floor. Heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. Too late too late too late! The mantra pounded with every footfall.

She burst through. the bright morning sunlight momentarily blinding after the dim dorm. Her eyes scanned frantically, locking onto the bus stop at the far end of the path.

And saw it.

The bus. Large, impersonal, diesel fumes shimmering in the cool air. Its doors hissed shut with awful finality.

"No! WAIT!"

Her scream ripped through the morning calm, raw and desperate enough to make nearby students jump and stare. She poured on speed she didn't know she had left, legs pumping, arms driving, crimson twintails streaming behind her like battle standards of panic. Every molecule of her being focused on that closing door.

"VODKA!"

She skidded to a halt at the curb just as the bus’s engine growled and it began to pull away. Her hand flew out, grasping nothing but exhaust-choked air. She pressed forward, nearly stumbling into the street, eyes fixed on the tinted back window.

There, A flash of bright hair pressed against the glass. A pale shape that could only be Vodka’s face, turned away.

"VODKA!" Scarlet screamed again, voice cracking.

The bus accelerated smoothly, relentlessly, putting distance between them with insulting ease. It rounded the corner at the end of the block, the back window vanishing from sight.

Gone.

Scarlet stood frozen on the curb, chest heaving, not from exertion but from a sudden, violent lack of air. The world tilted slightly. The cheerful sunlight felt mocking. The sounds of the campus—laughter, chatter, birdsong—distorted into a meaningless roar.

The pang hit then. Not a metaphorical ache. A genuine, physical hurt, deep in her chest cavity, sharp and cold as if her ribs had suddenly caved in on her heart. It stole her breath entirely.

Regret wasn't a slow burn; it was a cleaver blow. It cut deep, severing the last threads of her arrogance, exposing the raw, trembling mess beneath.

She hadn't just missed the bus.

She'd missed her chance. She'd let fear and pride silence her when courage was needed. She'd let the girl who held the other half of her soul—no, who was half her soul—drive away believing she didn't matter. Believing Scarlet's silence was indifference, not a terrified confession stuck in a throat too proud to speak.

The weight of it crushed down on her. The perfect posture finally broke. Her shoulders slumped. She stared down the empty street where the bus had vanished, the echo of her own desperate scream hanging in the air around her, the only evidence of her shattered composure.

The highest peak had never felt so desolate, so utterly, irrevocably alone. She had won nothing. And lost everything that mattered.

—

Europe had been everything Vodka told herself it would be.

Wide tracks under slate-grey skies, foreign crowds roaring her name with accents she didn’t understand, banners of scarlet and gold snapping in the wind. She was fast there—faster than she’d ever been. Her name spilled across headlines, etched into trophies, whispered in the corridors of power. Vodka, the girl who had crossed seas and broken barriers, the one who carved her place in history where none had been left waiting.

Her victories came in crescendos: a sweeping surge down the straight in Longchamp, a perfectly timed kick in Ascot, a brutal, stubborn drive in Chantilly that had the papers calling her “the iron will of the East.” Every finish felt like Japan all over again—chest burning, legs screaming, a wild exhilaration that she thought nothing could sour.

Letters from Japan trailed her—Vodka kept them all. She tucked them in between programs and medals, let them spill across her desk in hotel rooms when she couldn’t sleep. She read Scarlet’s words until the ink blurred and her chest ached. And then she ran again. And again. And again.

It should have been perfect.

But then came the blood.

At first, she thought it was nothing. A trickle from her nose after a race in Rome, wiped away on the back of her glove. The next time, it was heavier, staining her collar as she stumbled through the winner’s circle in Berlin. By the third, her peers weren’t laughing anymore. Neither was she.

Still, Vodka ran. She ran with cotton stuffed in her nostrils, with towels pressed to her face, with the taste of iron sharp on her tongue. Every stride was defiance, every finish line another denial. But the bleeding worsened. And with it, a fatigue she couldn’t explain.

The doctors prodded, scanned, tested. The results took weeks, but the waiting felt like years.

When the white-coated man finally stepped into her room, expression heavy, she already knew.

“Miss Vodka,” he said carefully, each word weighted, “your body has been under immense strain. The bleeding is a symptom… but not the cause. The truth is… there’s a disease. It’s advanced. Incurable.”

The world tilted. The triumphs, the medals, the roar of foreign crowds—all of it shattered into silence.

“You don’t have much time left.”

—

The words hung in the antiseptic air of the Berlin hospital room, thick and suffocating. Incurable. Not much time left. They weren’t just words; they were wrecking balls, demolishing the fragile monument of her defiance. Vodka stared at the doctor, the roar of imagined crowds replaced by the relentless, mocking beep… beep… beep of the heart monitor beside her.

Europe. It had been everything she’d chased—the speed, the glory, the desperate attempt to outrun the gnawing emptiness Daiwa Scarlet had left behind. She’d told herself she didn’t care, that Scarlet’s absence was just another challenge to overcome. A lie, meticulously constructed, brick by painful brick.

Now, confined to this sterile bed, surrounded by machines whispering her body’s failing secrets, the lie crumbled. The trophies felt like cold, heavy metal on a shelf too far away. The headlines were just ink on paper. The foreign cheers were echoes fading into the drone of the ventilator assisting her ragged breaths.

Her hand, pale and threaded with IV lines, fumbled weakly for her phone on the bedside table. It was an old habit, a reflex born of a loneliness she refused to name. Her thumb, clumsy with fatigue, swiped open the screen.

Instagram. Scarlet’s profile. Private. Vodka’s breath hitched, a painful rasp. She knew every publicly visible post by heart anyway—training shots, pictures of food, maybe a race won. Nothing new. Nothing hinting at plans beyond Japan.

She switched apps. Twitter. Searched Scarle’s handle. Scrolled through retweets of race results, official team announcements. Nothing personal. Nothing mentioning Europe. Nothing mentioning her.

Pathetic, a voice hissed in her mind, sharp as the needle in her arm. Checking like some lovesick fool. She’s moved on. Forgotten you chasing ghosts on foreign tracks.

Vodka dropped the phone onto the thin hospital blanket, the screen darkening. She turned her head slowly, painfully, towards the ceiling. White tiles stared back, endless and impersonal. The beep… beep… beep was louder here, punctuating the hollow silence of the room. Alone. Utterly alone.

If she was going to die, why like this? Weak. Diminished. Drowning in her own fluids, betrayed by the very body she’d pushed to its limits. An infection. A stupid, mundane illness. It wasn’t glorious. It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t… cool.

Her mind drifted back to the accident. Weeks ago, maybe? Time blurred. Berlin streets slick with rain. The brand-new motorcycle humming beneath her, a beast begging to be unleashed. A red light glaring ahead. The reckless surge of adrenaline, pure and fierce, overriding caution. Go. 85 mph? 90? Who cared? The wind screaming past her helmet, the world narrowing to the blur of streetlights and the roaring engine. Freedom. Escape. Until the impact—a sickening crunch of metal, a terrifying flight through air, then blackness.

That was a way to go. A final, explosive statement. People would remember that. "Vodka? Yeah, crazy rider. Went out on her shield, pushing the limit." Not… this. Not wasting away hooked to machines, lungs filling with fluid doctors couldn't stop.

My fault, she acknowledged dully, staring at the sterile white tiles. Ran the red. Got cocky. But dying from the crash… that would have been acceptable. Honorable, even, in its reckless way. Dying from the pneumonia that seized her broken body afterward? A cosmic joke.

What did ‘cool’ even mean? The question echoed in the emptiness. Was it just the roar of the crowd? The flash of cameras? The envious glances? Was it all just… attention? A desperate need to be seen, remembered? To prove she was more than just the shadow chasing Scarlet’s brilliance?

And Scarlet… what would she think? Vodka pictured her face—cheeky, intelligent eyes, usually narrowed, glinting with bravado. Would she be sad? Shocked? Or would there be a flicker of that old exasperation? "Typical Vodka. Reckless to the end." Or worse… indifference? Would she even come? When the news finally broke… if it broke before it was too late?

Regret, cold and heavy, settled deep in Vodka’s chest, heavier than the tumors the scans revealed. Regret for running that red light. Regret for pushing her body past breaking. Regret for fleeing Japan, chasing glory instead of facing the girl who occupied her every waking thought and haunted her restless sleep.

Most of all, regret for the words never spoken. For the feelings locked away behind a wall of false bravado and gruff indifference. "Tough it out," she’d always told herself. "Keep pushing. Everything will be fine if you just keep moving." A coward’s mantra. Hiding from vulnerability, from rejection, from the terrifying simplicity of saying:

"I need you. I love you."

She hated herself for it. Hated the facade. Hated the loneliness that was now her only companion in this sterile, beeping tomb. She was no iron-willed champion here. Just a scared girl, drowning in silence and regret, watching the white ceiling tiles blur through unshed tears.

Scarlet… The name was a prayer and a curse on her chapped lips.

I’m sorry.

The monitors beeped their relentless rhythm. The room remained empty. The silence pressed in, thick with everything unsaid. Vodka closed her eyes, the image of Scarlet’s face the last clear thing in her failing mind. She hadn’t outrun anything. Not the loneliness. Not the illness. And certainly not the truth: she was dying alone, and the person she needed most was an ocean away, unaware her world was ending.

The beeping seemed louder in the darkness behind her eyelids. A metronome counting down the final, cowardly silence.

…

The door opened with a soft creak, breaking the sterile monotony. Vodka didn’t look at first; she assumed it was another nurse coming to poke and prod her again, or perhaps the doctor returning to explain what she already knew.

But then a voice—rough, steady, almost foreign after so many years—spoke her name. “Vodka.”

Her head turned sluggishly on the pillow. The man standing in the doorway was taller than she remembered, but older too. His hair had gone grey at the temples, and deep creases framed eyes that had once burned with the same fire she had inherited. He still wore his work jacket, oil-stained and smelling faintly of home.

Her throat tightened. “Pops…”

He didn’t rush to her. He walked slowly, deliberately, until he stood at her bedside. Up close, she could see the lines around his mouth, the calluses on his hands—hands that had once lifted her onto her first motorbike, hands that had clapped her shoulders after her first victory.

“You didn’t tell me.” His voice was quiet. Not angry. Just… heavy.

“I—” Vodka’s voice cracked. She hated how weak it sounded, like she was twelve again, caught sneaking out to practice at night. “I didn’t… want you to worry.”

Her father’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t speak. He reached out, hesitated for only a fraction of a second, then set a rough palm over her trembling hand, careful of the IV lines.

That was all it took. The dam broke.

Her breath hitched in ragged little gasps. She curled forward as much as her body would allow, pressing her forehead to his hand. The smell of earth, sweat, and the faint tang of oil filled her lungs like a memory of home.

“Papa…” Her voice was a whisper now, small and broken. “I don’t… I don’t wanna die.”

The words slipped out of her like a secret she had guarded too long. It was the first time she had said it aloud, the first time she let the fear have a voice. Her shoulders trembled, and the monitors picked up her faltering heartbeat with a frantic beep… beep… beep.

Her father didn’t tell her to be strong. He didn’t tell her to fight harder. He just sat on the edge of the bed and folded her into his arms as far as the tubes and wires would allow. His hand cradled the back of her head like he used to when she fell off her bicycle as a child.

“You’ve fought enough,” he murmured against her hair. His voice cracked just once. “You’ve done enough. You’ve run further than anyone ever thought you could. You don’t have to be brave for me anymore.”

Vodka clutched at the fabric of his jacket with weak fingers. Hot tears ran down her cheeks, soaking into the familiar smell of home. She hated herself for how small she felt. Hated the IV lines, the bruises, the fragility. Hated the cowardice she thought she had shed years ago.

“I was supposed to be strong,” she rasped. “I was supposed to be… cool.”

Her father pressed his forehead gently to hers. “You’re my daughter,” he said quietly. “You’ve always been strong. Even now.”

The room blurred through Vodka’s tears. The trophies, the cheers, the endless running—all of it seemed so far away. In their place was just this moment: her father’s rough hands, her own trembling fingers, and the terrifying, undeniable truth sitting in her chest like a weight.

For the first time in years, she let herself cry like a child.

—

The hospital was too quiet at night. The halls beyond her room echoed faintly with the squeak of rubber soles and the occasional rattle of a cart, but here, within these four walls, the world had shrunk to a single rhythm:

beep… beep… beep.

Vodka lay on her back, staring at the ceiling tiles she’d memorized days ago. Her body felt leaden, heavier than ever, as though even gravity had decided to press her down. Each breath was a fight, dragging air through lungs that betrayed her more and more with each hour.

She knew. She didn’t need a doctor to tell her anymore. The slope was too steep now, the finish line too close.

The ceiling blurred into white fog as her eyes watered. Not from pain—though that was there, constant and gnawing—but from the images flickering through her mind.

Scarlet. Scarlet’s laugh when Vodka had said something stupid. Scarlet’s sharp retorts. Scarlet’s perfect hair, always glinting in the sun no matter how grueling training had been. Scarlet’s stubborn dignity, her kindness tucked neatly beneath it.

Scarlet’s eyes. Always her eyes. They told the truth even when her lips said otherwise.

Vodka’s lips trembled. A sound, half-sob, half-laugh, escaped her throat. “Idiot…” she whispered, though it was impossible to tell if she meant Scarlet, or herself. Maybe both.

Her fingers twitched against the blanket. She remembered all the times they’d fought, jabbing fingers in each other’s faces like children. “I’m number one!” Scarlet would bark, pride blazing like a sun. And Vodka—grinning, defiant—would jab her own finger back. No, me. Always me.

The rivalry, the childishness, the bravado—it had been everything. And underneath it, something else. Something she had never been brave enough to say aloud.

Her arm felt impossibly heavy, but she forced it up. Muscles screamed, IV lines tugged, the monitor picked up the erratic thrum of her struggling heart. Slowly, so slowly, her hand rose into the air.

She extended her index finger.

Just one finger, trembling in the cold fluorescent light. Scarlet’s pose. Scarlet’s victory sign. Number one.

Her chest seized, the air rattling through her in a broken gasp. Tears spilled down her cheeks, wetting her hair.

“…Scarlet…” The name slipped past her cracked lips, soft, reverent, desperate. Her voice cracked again, and with everything left in her, she whispered her final truth into the dark:

“…you win.”

The monitor wailed, a shrill, endless note that filled the room like a scream. Her raised hand faltered, fell limply to the bed.

Silence.

—

How many weeks has it been?

Scarlet tossed restlessly in her bed, glaring at the ceiling mirroring Vodka’s own gaze just days before. 3:47 AM glowed red.

The silence felt different now. Heavy. Offensive. Vodka hadn't called. Hadn't texted. Hadn't sent a single smug message bragging about European cafes or clandestine exploits.

Scarlet clenched her fists in the sheets. "Busy," she muttered into the dark, the word tasting sour. Vodka was probably drowning in new adventures, new rivals, forgetting... them. The thought sent a sharp pang through her chest, instantly reframed as anger. "Fine. Ignore me. See if I care."

But she stared at her silent phone until dawn painted the room grey, the ghost of Vodka’s laugh echoing in the stillness.

How many months has it been?

The silence had calcified into a constant, gnawing presence. Training felt flat. Winning felt pointless without Vodka there to witness it, to scoff, to immediately plot her counter-move. Scarlet found herself scanning crowded streets, airport terminals, even foreign news feeds on her tablet, searching for a flash of brown hair, a familiar smirk. Nothing. Radio silence. The anger flickered, replaced by a colder, sharper feeling—-confusion edged with a dread she refused to name. She pictured Vodka laughing in a Parisian bistro, or scaling an Alpine peak, carefree and unburdened by… by whatever this was between them.

Everything felt quiet. Where was she? Why wouldn’t she just… answer?

How many years has it been?

Scarlet stood atop their old lookout point, the wind colder now, biting at her cheeks. Below, the city glittered, indifferent to her hollow victories. She’d achieved everything. Recognition piled up like meaningless trophies. But the silence… the silence was louder than any applause. The rival who gave her victories meaning, the spark that ignited her fiercest fire… was gone. Vanished. Happy somewhere else.

Memories assaulted her: Vodka’s triumphant grin after stealing Scarlet’s meticulously planned objective; the fierce concentration in her eyes during a close match; the unexpected, fleeting softness Scarlet sometimes caught when she thought no one was looking—always masked instantly by a barb. A profound loneliness, deeper than any she’d known, settled in her bones. It wasn't just the competition she missed. It was her.

The only person who truly saw past Scarlet’s polished "number one" armor, who challenged her core, who made her feel… alive.

The silence wasn't empty; it was filled with Vodka’s phantom laughter, her imagined adventures, her deliberate, cruel abandonment. Scarlet was stranded on an island of unanswered questions while Vodka sailed on a sea of blissful oblivion.

The wind snatched her voice, raw and thick with unshed tears and years of bottled-up yearning: "...You win."

…

Scarlet sat on the porch, ankles crossed, arms wrapped around her knees. The summer rain came down like clockwork, tapping the wood in even rhythms. He was in the driveway, crouched over his motorcycle like it was something sacred, fingers smudged with grease. She used to find that hot.

Now, she just found it familiar.

He revved the engine once and grinned over his shoulder, the same kind of lopsided smirk Vodka used to throw at her after winning a race. That same cocky edge, that same electric swagger. He even had the damn gloves—black leather, frayed at the edges.

Scarlet smiled, but it was all muscle memory.

She fought with Vodka like fire fights with wind—never quite winning, but never letting up either. They were rivals, on the track and off. Scarlet always ran hot, her pride burning too loud for apologies, while Vodka always played it cool, letting her anger boil slow and dangerous. And yet… They always found each other, again and again. In the silence after. In the hallway lights flickering after curfew. In the sharp glances they shared when their hands brushed just a little too long.

They never said it. Not out loud.

So she picked someone like her. Someone who wouldn’t saddle her with such difficult feelings and leave, someone who'd stick around, someone safe. But every time he leaned over that motorcycle, every time he said “wanna ride?” with that crooked grin, all Scarlet could see was her.

Vodka.

She tried to love him the way she should. The way a girl like her is supposed to. Straight back, straight smile, straight life. She let him call her babe. Let him take her on night rides through the hills. She even laughed sometimes. But her heart never did.

You’ll have to live your life not knowing how to love like you loved her.

She thought she could bury it. Love Vodka in a man’s body. Feel that fire again without getting burned.

But it wasn’t fire anymore.

It was smoke.

He asked her once, “Why do you always look sad after we kiss?”

The question hung between them for years, unanswered, a ghost at every anniversary dinner, every shared sunrise.

Now, after the wedding cake crumbs were swept away and the rented finery returned, the ghost solidified. It lived in the quiet bedroom, in the hopeful tenderness of his touch.

He wanted a family. A future. A legacy built on them.

Scarlet played her part. She molded her body against his in the dark, a practiced curve learned through years of pretending. She breathed the sighs expected of her, low and encouraging. She focused on the ceiling—the textured plaster of their shared life—tracing patterns only she knew.

When his hands sought purchase, seeking connection, hers met them, guiding, performing. Her skin registered the warmth, the pressure, the mechanics of intimacy.

But inside? Inside was a vast, echoing chamber filled only with the phantom scent of engine oil and sweat, the imagined rasp of a voice whispering "Idiot..." with fond exasperation.

The yearning wasn't for him. It was a desperate, clawing ache for the impossible: for the sharp sting of competition, the electric crackle of unspoken understanding, the fierce, terrifying vulnerability she’d only ever felt beneath Vodka’s challenging gaze.

This act, this creation of life, felt like a betrayal of that ghostly fire. It felt like building sandcastles on the shore where her true heart had drowned.

Afterwards, wrapped in the fragile intimacy of shared sweat and spent effort, he’d stroke her hair, murmuring hopeful things about names and nurseries. Scarlet would nestle closer, burying her face against his shoulder, inhaling the scent of him—clean cotton, faint cologne, motorcycle grease—willing it to be enough. She’d murmur agreement, her voice thick with unshed tears disguised as sleepy contentment. "Yes," she’d breathe, the word tasting like ash. "Soon."

She’d lie perfectly still, listening to his breathing deepen into sleep. Only then, in the absolute stillness, would the mask fully crack. Silent tears would track hot paths down her temples, soaking into the pillow.

Her hand would creep up, not to touch him, but to press against her own sternum, right over the hollow space where Vodka’s laughter, Vodka’s defiance, Vodka’s finger pointing skyward, used to reside. The ache there was a physical thing, a constant companion sharper than any blade.

She’d done everything right. Married the safe choice. Built the stable life. Said "I do." Yet the victory felt like the ultimate defeat.

She’d traded wildfire for embers, and the cold certainty settled deep: she would spend the rest of her life tending a hearth built over the grave of her own heart, smiling brightly into the smoke.

How many years has it been?

The years folded into each other, marked not by Scarlet’s hollow victories, but by the undeniable, vibrant life of her daughter.

Scarlet held the tiny, squalling bundle, marveling at the fierce grip on her finger. The baby’s eyes, still unfocused blue, seemed to stare right through her.

Vodka had eyes like storm clouds, Scarlet thought, tracing the baby’s soft cheek.

Sharp, and brave.

Midnight feedings were hushed, intimate rituals. Scarlet would rock in the dim nursery, the rhythmic suckling the only sound. In the quiet, the phantom scent of her carried on a memory.

She’d stare out the window at the indifferent stars, whispering promises to this new life she’d created, promises she desperately hoped she could keep, while silently apologizing to the one who kept her heart.

I’m trying, she’d think towards the darkness where Vodka lived in her mind. See? I’m trying to live.

…

The little girl, all pigtails and scraped knees, barreled out of the classroom door, launching herself at Scarlet with a force that nearly knocked her over. "Mommy! I painted a dinosaur! A BIG one!"

Her grin was wide, gap-toothed, utterly infectious. Scarlet scooped her up, breathing in the scent of crayons and playground dust. That grin… it held a familiar, reckless confidence.

Just like hers, Scarlet mused, a familiar pang beneath her ribs. That same ‘look-at-me’ defiance. When her daughter proudly declared she was "the fastest runner EVER!" and jabbed a tiny finger towards the sky, Scarlet’s breath hitched.

The gesture was pure, unadulterated childhood triumph, yet it struck her like a physical blow. She forced a wider smile, burying the echo of another finger, another declaration, under the warmth of her daughter’s joy. "Of course you are, sweetheart," she murmured, hugging her tighter.

…

Scarlet sat stiffly on a hard plastic chair in the school auditorium, watching her daughter accept an award for excellence in mathematics. The girl stood tall, poised, a quiet intensity in her eyes as she shook the principal’s hand.

Pride swelled in Scarlet’s chest, fierce and genuine. She’s brilliant, she thought. So focused. The image superimposed itself: Vodka hunched over a complex schematic, brow furrowed in fierce concentration, tongue peeking out slightly.

The memory was so vivid… She blinked, focusing back on her daughter’s composed face. The applause felt distant. Her own applause was a mechanical motion. The pride was real, but it resonated in the hollow chamber where another fierce mind used to challenge her own.

…

Scarlet stood on the manicured quad, watching her daughter stride towards her, taller now, radiating a newfound independence. Gone was the little girl; here was a young woman, sharp-eyed and self-assured.

"Mom!" The embrace was strong, confident. "This place is amazing. The labs…" She launched into an excited description of her engineering program. Scarlet listened, nodding, a bittersweet ache blooming.

The passion, the drive… it mirrored Vodka’s relentless pursuit of the next thrill, the next challenge. She would have loved this, Scarlet thought, watching her daughter’s eyes spark with intellectual fire.

She would have argued with her professors just for the fun of it.

Later, meeting the earnest young fiancé—kind eyes, gentle smile, utterly safe—Scarlet felt a strange mix of relief and profound sorrow. He was everything Vodka wasn’t: predictable, stable, openly adoring. Scarlet smiled warmly, shook his hand, approved….

—

The facade, meticulously maintained for nearly two decades, finally cracked not long after the engagement announcement. It started small, a disagreement about holiday plans that spiraled into something deeper, darker, fueled by years of unspoken resentment and unmet needs.

"You're here, Scarlet," he said, his voice thick with a pain Scarlet had long ignored. "But you're never present. Not with me. Not for years." He paced the living room, the room suddenly feeling suffocatingly small.

"It's like… like you don’t even love me."

Scarlet remained still, perched on the edge of the sofa, her face a careful mask. "Don't be ridiculous. We have to be here. For her." Always for her.

"For her!" He stopped pacing, whirling to face her. "Yes! For her! Always for her! But what about us? What about me?" His voice broke. "Did you ever… did you ever really love me? Or was I just… convenient? A placeholder? Tell me!”

The word hung in the air, sharp and undeniable. Placeholder. The accusation she’d leveled at herself silently for twenty years, now voiced aloud.

She saw the raw hurt in his eyes, the years of trying, of hoping, finally collapsing. She saw the ghost of Vodka’s smirk superimposed over his anguished face.

Scarlet didn't deny it. She couldn't. The silence stretched, heavy with the truth. She looked at him, this man who had tried so hard, who resembled the ghost but could never exorcise it.

"I tried," she whispered, the words scraping her throat. "I tried so hard to be what you needed."

"But you couldn't," he finished, the calmness draining out of him, replaced by fight. "Because you don’t fucking love me! Are you stuck up on some ex or somethin’!? Why don’t you love me!? Just why— …Why?”

Why.

There was no more pretending. The carefully constructed life, the hearth built over the grave of her heart, crumbled.

The divorce was swift, clinical. He deserved a chance at real happiness, she reasoned. She signed the papers with a steady hand, her expression unreadable.

At her daughter’s engagement party a month later, Scarlet was radiant. She laughed with the fiancé’s parents, toasted the happy couple with genuine warmth sparkling in her eyes, hugged her daughter fiercely.

“I’m so happy for you, my brilliant girl," she whispered, pressing a kiss to her daughter’s hair. "So incredibly happy."

She smiled brightly, perfectly. She chatted, she mingled, she performed the role of the supportive, joyful mother flawlessly. No one saw the tremor in her hand as she set down her champagne flute.

No one saw the way her gaze occasionally drifted towards the door, half-expecting, half-dreading a familiar, impossible silhouette to swagger in, late and unapologetic.

No one saw the vast, silent emptiness that had finally been acknowledged, stretching out behind her practiced smile.

She smiled for her daughter, into the smoke of her own extinguished life. The victory of motherhood remained, profound and real, but the battlefield of her heart was now openly, irrevocably, a wasteland haunted by her single, triumphant, first love.

—

Scarlet’s retirement made headlines. “The Eternal Rival,” the press called her, bowing out with grace after decades of shaping the track. She smiled for the cameras, bowed, waved. Dignified to the end.

But when the microphones were gone and the crowds dispersed, she stood in the quiet of her empty home, staring at her packed suitcase.

Europe. She hadn’t said it aloud to anyone—not even her daughter. Not the real reason. She framed it as travel, as finally taking time for herself. A late indulgence in a life spent on discipline and perfection.

But the truth was simple, almost childish: she wanted to see her again.

Vodka.

Even after all these years, the name still burned on her tongue. Scarlet had convinced herself she’d buried it, entombed it beneath marriage, motherhood, duties, accolades. But ghosts had their own kind of endurance. They lingered. They waited.

And now, Scarlet was going to find her.

The plane ride was long, but Scarlet’s nerves hummed as if she were preparing for a final race. She imagined the reunion—maybe Vodka would laugh at her for being so late. Maybe they would fight, or maybe, finally, they would talk. There was fear, yes, but beneath it an ember of hope, trembling and stubborn.

She stepped through the sliding glass doors of the Berlin airport, suitcase trailing behind her. The air outside was cold, sharp with autumn. She inhaled deeply, steadying herself.

And then she froze.

Above the taxi stand, stretched across the face of a building opposite the terminal, was a massive digital billboard. Bright, celebratory colors. A montage of grainy photos—race tracks, motorcycles, trophies, snapshots of a girl with a grin so sharp it could cut steel.

Scarlet’s breath caught.

The text flashed, bold and merciless:

"Celebrating 30 years of Vodka’s legacy."

"Gone, but never forgotten."

Scarlet’s suitcase slipped from her hand, crashing against the pavement.

For a heartbeat, she didn’t move. The world around her carried on as normal—taxis honking, luggage wheels rolling, chatter in languages she barely understood. But inside her, everything froze.

The words didn’t make sense. They couldn’t. Vodka wasn’t gone. She was here. She had to be here. Scarlet had come all this way for her.

The world tilted. Her suitcase slipped from her hand, thudding to the concrete. The air thinned, sharp as knives in her lungs.

Passing. Thirty years.

She hadn’t known. She hadn’t known. All this time—while she was building her careful little life, while she was pretending, smiling, marrying, mothering—Vodka had been gone.

Dead.

Scarlet’s knees threatened to give. She stared up at the billboard, unable to tear her eyes away from that devilish grin, preserved in pixels, frozen in time. The same grin that had haunted her, warmed her, and infuriated her. The grin that had been her compass, her rival, her anchor.

Gone.

Scarlet’s hand flew to her mouth, muffling the broken sound that tore out of her. Her eyes blurred, and the billboard fractured into streaks of color through the tears. People bustled around her, strangers rushing to taxis, to trains, to homes. No one stopped. No one noticed the woman unraveling on the sidewalk.

She had come all this way, carrying hope like a fragile glass, and it shattered in an instant.

Vodka had died alone. Scarlet hadn’t even known. She hadn’t been there. She hadn’t said goodbye. She hadn’t even whispered you idiot, come back to me.

Her shoulders shook, and for the first time in decades, Scarlet allowed herself to weep openly, fiercely, the way she had never allowed in front of anyone. The perfect mask was gone, burned away by grief too vast to contain.

Above her, the billboard shifted to replay an old victory clip. Vodka’s arm shot into the air, finger raised. Number one.

“…No…” The word left her lips, fragile, breaking. She shook her head, hair falling into her face as tears welled unbidden in her eyes. “No. That’s… that’s wrong. That’s wrong.”

She stumbled forward, gaze still locked on the billboard as if sheer denial could change its meaning. Her pulse roared in her ears. Thirty years? No. Impossible. She would have known. She should have known.

Vodka’s grin beamed down at her, unchanging, immortalized in pixels. A grin Scarlet had once sworn she would wipe off in victory. A grin she had secretly loved more than anything.

Scarlet’s knees buckled. She sank onto the cold stone of the plaza, her hands clutching at nothing, her chest heaving with ragged, uneven breaths.

“…You idiot…” Her voice cracked, raw with grief. “You idiot… You didn’t wait for me.”

Her tears blurred the world into smears of color. She reached out weakly, as if she could touch the billboard, as if her fingers could close the impossible distance of thirty years.

“You couldn’t wait for me.”

The Berlin autumn air turned to ash in Scarlet’s lungs. She knelt on the cold plaza stone, the impact barely registering through the numbness spreading from her core. The billboard’s relentless celebration continued – Vodka’s victorious grin, the flash of her iconic finger raised, the scrolling text proclaiming a legacy built on thirty years of absence.

Gone. Dead.

The words hammered against the fragile glass cage of her denial, shattering it completely. A low, wounded sound escaped her, muffled by the hand pressed against her mouth. Tears streamed freely now, tracing icy paths down her cheeks, dripping onto her coat. People flowed around her like a river around a rock, oblivious to the earthquake within.

For decades, Scarlet had nurtured a secret narrative: Vodka’s departure had been pure ambition, perhaps tinged with disdain for their rivalry. Scarlet had interpreted every barb, every challenge, every ounce of that intense friction as proof of Vodka’s resentment. She’d convinced herself her own tangled feelings – the admiration beneath the envy, the warmth beneath the irritation, the desperate, confusing ache that lingered long after Vodka left—were a pathetic, one-sided delusion. Wishful thinking.

"She hated me," Scarlet had whispered to herself in countless quiet moments over thirty years. "She couldn't wait to be rid of me. To be free." It had been her shield, her justification for building her life without looking back.

But now, kneeling beneath that mocking monument to Vodka's absence, a terrifying truth began to crystallize, cold and sharp as broken glass.

Her legs refused to hold her. She sank fully onto the stone, the cold seeping through her tailored trousers. She needed… something. Answers? Absolution? A ghost? Gathering a shred of the discipline that had defined her life, Scarlet fumbled for her phone. Her fingers, slick with tears, trembled violently as she searched online—not for Vodka’s racing legacy, but for her end. Obituaries. Hospital records accessed through old contacts. Anything.

But she just couldn’t. She couldn’t stand seeing her… seeing every piece of text in the past tense.

—

Vodka had died regretting.

Regretting the unsaid words. Regretting the cowardice that mirrored Scarlet’s own. Regretting the distance she herself had created with her impulsive departure. Regretting that Scarlet wasn't there, not just in Berlin, but in Japan, back when it mattered, back when they could have shattered the fragile rivalry and grasped something real.

All those years Scarlet spent telling herself Vodka hated her? A monstrous lie she'd fed her own heart to survive the loss.

The truth was agonizingly worse.

Vodka had carried that same impossible tangle of feelings—the fierce admiration twisted with frustration, the magnetic pull warring with fear—until her very last breath. She had looked at their shared photo in her final days, gripped by the crushing weight of what they'd never dared to say, and wished desperately for Scarlet’s presence.

Vodka hadn't hated her. She had died loving her in that fierce, complicated way only they could – and dying utterly convinced Scarlet felt nothing but contempt in return.

—

Berlin, autumn. The leaves turned gold and scattered like fragile trophies across the cobblestone streets, crunching beneath careful steps. Scarlet’s hair, once a rich auburn, had softened into silver that caught the late afternoon light. Her posture remained dignified—Miss Perfect to the end—but time had curved her shoulders slightly, softened her stride.

At eighty, Scarlet had lived a full life.

Her children had grown, her grandchildren now ran laughing through the garden of the old house she’d chosen in Berlin, chasing one another with the same reckless energy Scarlet had once spent on racetracks. She had traveled, taught, advised the next generation of racers. Her name remained golden in the record books, whispered with respect and reverence by young trainers and starry-eyed fans.

By all measures, Scarlet had won.

And yet.

Sometimes, when the laughter of her grandchildren echoed down the hall, she caught herself turning her head, expecting a familiar cackle. Sometimes, when her daughter tilted her chin at just the right angle, Scarlet’s chest tightened with the memory of someone who used to do the same—mocking, teasing, daring her.

Vodka.

The years had dulled many things—her speed, her eyesight, even the sharpness of her wit. But they had never dulled Vodka’s presence. She was stitched into Scarlet’s days like a thread that refused to fade. In every bicker Scarlet imagined, in every time she muttered “idiot” under her breath to no one in particular, Vodka was there.

She still remembered the billboard, that brutal first day in Europe. The way her knees had given out, the way she had realized she was decades too late. That wound had never closed, not really. It had scarred, yes—time forced that much—but the ache remained.

I should have been there. I should have said it sooner.

The regret had softened with age, but the longing never had.

On quiet nights, after the house had gone still and the grandchildren’s giggles had faded into dreams, Scarlet sat by the window, staring out at Berlin’s streets. She would imagine a younger self standing beside her. And always, next to that younger self, Vodka—grinning, cocky, nudging her with an elbow, calling her “Miss Perfect” just to see her bristle.

Scarlet smiled at the thought, the wrinkles at her eyes deepening. She had grown old, but in those memories they never aged. They remained forever seventeen, forever rivals, forever circling one another like twin stars caught in the same impossible orbit.

She whispered it sometimes, the truth she had never said enough: I miss you. Every damn day.

Her family thought Scarlet’s quiet moments were signs of wisdom, of a long life lived well. They didn’t know that half her heart had been buried decades earlier, in the memory of a girl who had once copied her signature move, pointed to the sky with a cocky grin and declared herself number one.

And Scarlet—no matter how many years, how many races, how many generations passed—never stopped waiting for the sound of her laugh to come bounding back to her.

—

The Berlin autumn deepened, painting the city in fiery hues Scarlet could no longer fully appreciate. Her vision had dimmed, the vibrant reds and golds now muted watercolors. Her bones ached with a constant, low thrum, a counterpoint to the deeper, older ache that never left her chest. The grandchildren’s laughter, once a balm, now sometimes felt distant, echoing down a long corridor she was slowly closing the door on.

She knew. With the quiet certainty that comes when the body whispers its final secrets, Scarlet knew her time was nearing its end. The doctors spoke gently of "managing comfort," but she heard the unspoken truth. The highest peak was finally conquered, not by victory, but by time’s relentless erosion.

One crisp morning, when the frost painted intricate patterns on her windowpane, Scarlet made a decision. It wasn't born of despair, but of a profound, weary longing. A final pilgrimage. She called her eldest daughter, her voice surprisingly firm despite its frailty.

“Let’s go to the UK.”

Concern flickered in her daughter’s eyes, but the steel in Scarlet’s gaze, the echo of the champion she once was, brooked no argument.

Once she was there. Scarlet insisted on going directly, bypassing hotels, old haunts, anything that might delay her purpose. The car navigated roads grown strange with time, finally pulling up to the wrought-iron gates of a quiet, hillside cemetery.

With immense effort, fueled by a reserve of willpower that astonished even herself, she pushed herself up from the wheelchair. Leaning heavily on her cane, a fragile figure swallowed by a dark wool coat, she began the slow, arduous climb up the winding path.

Each step was agony, a protest from joints ground down by decades. Rain plastered strands of silver hair to her temples. Her breath came in shallow, ragged gasps that misted in the cold air. Yet, her eyes, clouded though they were, scanned the rows with fierce concentration. She knew where she was going.

And then, she saw it. A simple granite stone, weathered by years of salt air and rain, yet standing proudly amidst the sakura trees. The inscription, though blurred to her eyes, was etched perfectly in her memory:

Vodka. Forever Racing Free.

A sob, dry and broken, escaped Scarlet’s lips. She stumbled the last few feet, her cane clattering forgotten onto the wet grass. Her strength finally gave out. She didn't collapse so much as settle, like a leaf finding its resting place. With trembling hands, she traced the carved characters she could barely see, feeling the cold, rough stone beneath her fingertips.

"Idiot," she whispered, the old endearment thick with tears she hadn’t known she still possessed. "Always leaving first." She managed a small, watery smile.

"Always making me chase you."

She shifted her weight, groaning softly with the effort, until her back rested against the cool granite. She tilted her head back, letting the fine rain kiss her face.

The wind carried the distant roar of the sea, a sound Vodka had loved. Exhaustion, profound and absolute, washed over her. The pain in her limbs receded, replaced by a deep, enveloping cold. But the ache in her chest… that eased. For the first time in decades, it truly eased.

She closed her eyes. Not to sleep, but to finally rest. Her hand slipped down from the stone to rest limply on the rain-soaked grass beside Vodka’s name. Her expression, weathered by eighty years of striving and regret, softened remarkably.

The harsh lines of stubbornness, the tightness of perpetual control, the deep grooves carved by unspoken grief… they all melted away. In their place was a profound peace, a gentle contentment that smoothed her brow and relaxed the set of her jaw. She looked… serene. Younger, almost. At peace.

Hours passed. The drizzle turned to a steady rain. A young couple, visiting a nearby grave under a large black umbrella, paused as they passed. The woman nudged her partner, nodding towards Scarlet.

"Oh, look," she murmured softly, her voice filled with sympathetic warmth. "Poor dear. Must be her child. She looks so peaceful sleeping there beside them. Like she finally found some comfort."

They moved on respectfully, leaving the old woman to her vigil. Others passed throughout the afternoon—an elderly man tending flowers, a groundskeeper trimming hedges.

Each saw the frail figure curled against the tombstone, her crimson hair damp, her face turned slightly towards the inscription with an expression of such profound, quiet solace. They saw the peace, the utter stillness of deep, exhausted sleep. They saw a grieving mother, finally finding rest beside her lost child. They saw life, albeit weary life, clinging to its final moments of connection.

No one disturbed her. No one saw the stillness as anything but sleep.

Because Scarlet, for the first time since Vodka had slammed that dorm room door and boarded the bus, looked truly, completely alive in her repose. The mask of Daiwa Scarlet, the champion, the stoic, the perfect, had finally fallen away. What remained was simply a woman reunited, at last, with the other half of her soul.

It was only when the grey afternoon light began to fade into twilight, and the groundskeeper made his final rounds, that concern arose. The old woman hadn’t stirred. Not with the rain, not with the cooling air. He approached cautiously, calling out a gentle greeting.

No response.

He knelt beside her, his hand reaching out instinctively to touch her shoulder. The coldness that met his touch wasn't the chill of rain. It was the profound, absolute cold of absence. He recoiled slightly, then looked closer at her face. The peace was still there, breathtaking in its completeness, but the stillness was… eternal.

It was then they realized. The grieving mother wasn’t sleeping. She hadn’t been sleeping for hours.

The most alive Scarlet had looked in decades was in the moment she had finally, peacefully, stopped living.

She had gone to find Vodka, not in dreams, but in the only way left to her. And in that final act, curled against the stone bearing her rival’s, her love’s name, Scarlet had finally, truly won her rest.

—

The transition wasn't a fall, nor a flight. It was a sigh. A release so profound, Scarlet felt it in the marrow of what she once knew as bones. The cold granite, the insistent rain, the ache—all dissolved into a warmth like sunlight soaking into chilled earth. She opened eyes she hadn't realized were closed onto a landscape bathed in impossible light.

Golden mist swirled around her ankles, parting to reveal a path of shimmering, dew-kissed turf stretching towards a horizon where dawn seemed eternally poised to break. The air hummed, not with noise, but with a pure, resonant energy that vibrated in her very essence. And the scent… crushed grass, ozone after a storm, and beneath it all, faint but unmistakable, the sharp tang of leather.

A figure materialized from the luminous haze, leaning casually against a gatepost that hadn't been there a moment before. Tall, impossibly vibrant, clad not in silks but in worn denim and a leather jacket that seemed to glow with its own inner fire.

Her hair, a wild cascade of sun-streaked brown and the cream crest on her bangs, was as untamed as ever. A familiar, lopsided grin split her face.

"Well, well," Vodka drawled, pushing off the post with effortless grace. Her voice was a clarion bell in the stillness, echoing with the boundless energy Scarlet remembered—no, felt— down to her core. "Took ya long enough, slowpoke. Had me waitin' ages!"

Scarlet stared. The decades of weariness, the frailty, the dimmed vision—all gone. She felt… light. Unburdened. Yet, the sight of Vodka, so vividly herself, sparked an automatic response forged in countless dorm-room squabbles and heated track-side debates.

"Slowpoke?" Scarlet retorted, the old sharpness instinctively finding its edge, though it lacked its former bite. It felt… playful. "Says the girl who needed a map and a compass just to find the starting gate on time! Some things never change, do they? Still as much of a loud, messy delinquent as ever!"

Vodka threw her head back and laughed. It was a sound Scarlet hadn't truly heard in decades—full-throated, unguarded, echoing through the golden air like joyful thunder.

She strode forward, closing the distance between them with that familiar, ground-eating stride. Her eyes, impossibly bright and clear, scanned Scarlet's form.

The silver hair replaced by the vibrant crimson cascade of her youth, the lines smoothed, the posture instinctively straightening into that of the champion poised for the off.

Vodka’s grin softened, a flicker of something tender beneath the bravado. She reached out, not to grab, but to gently brush a stray strand of Scarlet’s now-perfect crimson hair from her forehead. The touch was electric, alive with shared history. "Ya know what?"

Vodka murmured, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that sent shivers down Scarlet’s spine – shivers of pure, unadulterated recognition.

"You're still as cute as the day we started bickering like a buncha idiots!"

Scarlet felt it then. A warmth blooming deep within her, spreading outwards like liquid sunlight. It wasn't just Vodka's words, or her touch. It was the sheer, overwhelming relief of seeing her, whole and vibrant and here. The decades of silence, the ocean between them, the cold stone…

it all dissolved in the radiance of Vodka’s presence. A laugh bubbled up from Scarlet’s chest.

A sound she thought she’d forgotten how to make. It started as a surprised chuckle, then grew, fueled by the absurdity, the joy, the sheer, unadulterated rightness of it.

She laughed, truly laughed, throwing her head back just as Vodka had done moments before. And as she laughed, a remarkable thing happened. The world shimmered. The subtle signs of the mature woman she’d become.

The faint wisdom lines, the slightly fuller figure borne of time away from the track—seemed to soften, then melt away like mist under the sun. Her posture became impossibly lithe, the fierce focus in her eyes sharpened to its most potent intensity, the vibrant crimson of her hair seeming to blaze with its own inner fire. She thinned, streamlined, shedding the years like a heavy coat.

When the laughter subsided, catching in her throat as she looked at Vodka’s wide, delighted eyes, Scarlet stood before her not as the weary octogenarian, nor even the champion in her prime, but as the fierce, driven, achingly young woman she had been precisely during those four intense, impossible years at the academy.

The years defined by relentless training, explosive rivalry, stolen moments under lamplight, and a love so profound and terrifying it could only be expressed through challenge and clipped words.

She was still wearing the hospital gown, the thin fabric fluttering faintly in a breeze that wasn’t there. Her hair was tousled, her eyes rimmed red, as though the weight of her final days hadn’t yet been brushed away. But her grin—crooked, stubborn—was the same. Except now, her tears betrayed her.

Vodka didn’t answer at first. She just fumbled at her side, then pulled out something small, almost shyly. A camera. An old one—cheap, scratched along the edges, the kind you picked up for memories no one else thought to keep.

“I—I kept thinking…” Vodka’s voice cracked, shaking with the same fragility Scarlet had seen in the hospital’s white walls. “You always looked good in the spotlight. Always number one, right? But… I never got to—” She swallowed hard, knuckles tight around the camera. “I never got to keep you. Not properly. Not in a way that… that lasted.”

She held it out, awkwardly. Pathetically. Like a child trying to offer flowers with dirt still clinging to the stems. “So, here. Take it. Take one of me. Just one. Before… before anything else.”

Scarlet’s hands shook as she took it. The weight was nothing, yet everything. Her heart lurched. “You idiot,” she said softly, tears blurring her own eyes now. “You absolute idiot. You’re the one I wanted to keep.”

Vodka laughed weakly, the sound breaking halfway into a sob. “Then—then keep me. Just this once.”

Scarlet raised the camera. Through the lens, Vodka looked exactly as she had always been—defiant, fragile, dazzling, a contradiction wrapped in scraped knees and burning heart. Scarlet’s breath hitched. She pressed the shutter.

The click echoed like a heartbeat.

Vodka’s grin softened into something impossibly tender. She didn’t comment on the transformation. She simply understood. Her hand, still resting gently near Scarlet’s temple, slid down to cradle her cheek. Her thumb brushed away a single, luminous tear Scarlet hadn't realized had fallen—a tear not of sorrow, but of overwhelming homecoming.

Scarlet leaned into the touch, the familiar scent of leather and ozone and Vodka enveloping her.

She looked into those bright, knowing eyes, seeing the reflection of her own youthful, unburdened self. The starting gate of eternity shimmered ahead on the endless, perfect turf.

But here, now, holding Vodka’s gaze, feeling the echo of every heartbeat, every argument, every unspoken longing condensed into this single, perfect moment of reunion, Scarlet knew the true finish line.

She went back to the old days,

The four years Scarlet loved Vodka most.

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