The morning chill still clung to the track, and the air above Tracen Academy shimmered faintly with mist.
Trainers huddled over clipboards near the benches. Students stretched along the fence lines. Infield assistants checked heart monitors and telemetry bands.
And Kagura Seiran stood alone.
She hadn't warmed up. Hadn't jogged. Just stood in the shadows of the eastern bleachers, gazing out toward the oval. She wore her assigned training gear: dark red jersey, name stitched across the chest, sleeves rolled up just enough to show slender, unbent wrists.
She didn't fidget.
Didn't blink.
Didn't even shift her weight.
"Group B: Gate Three. Kagura Seiran, Lane 3," called an assistant.
Kagura stepped forward.
No reply. No nod.
She walked across the field as if the path had been drawn for her long before she arrived.
"Seriously? They put her in our lane?" Jungle Pocket said, watching her approach.
She sat on the turf, stretching lazily, rolling her shoulders like a cat. Her face twisted in amusement. "Hope she knows what 'pacing' means."
Beside him, Dantsu Flame squinted toward the track. "Didn't she come from some mountain dojo or something?"
"She came from nowhere," Pocket muttered. "And acts like she's headed there again."
On the far end of the group, Erimo Excel adjusted her leg sleeves. She glanced at Kagura not her face, but her feet. How they settled on the ground. How they stayed there.
No shifting. No tension.
Just placement.
Like someone who didn't need warmup because she never cooled down.
"All right, Group B," called the coach from midfield. "Today's set is a 1600m pacing lap. Hold to 17.5 meters per second. Do not exceed max variance. Maintain lane discipline through all curves."
Kagura moved to Lane 3 without looking at the others. She stepped up to the mark and stood not crouched, not poised. Just vertical. One breath. Two.
Pocket eyed her sideways.
"Better not throw off my rhythm," she muttered.
"Start in five," the coach called.
Whistle.
They launched.
The first hundred meters passed cleanly.
Flame took point in Lane 2. Pocket slid to her inside, stride-for-stride. Excel paced on the outside shoulder.
Kagura right in the middle ran with no visible effort. Her strides were even. Measured. Long.
Her telemetry tracker would later show a stride length of 7.2 meters, at exactly 2.4 strides per second putting her pace at a consistent 17.28 m/s.
She was, quite literally, within one-tenth of a second of target.
And yet…
At 300 meters, something shifted.
Flame flinched slightly, pulling too close to the line.
"Stay in lane!" the coach barked.
Pocket growled. "You're dragging us!"
"I'm not !"
But she was.
Excel's posture tightened. Her internal sensors would later show a spike in oxygen uptake her body reacting as if facing headwind.
But the weather report was clear. 0.6 m/s breeze from the east barely enough to rustle a flag.
Yet everyone in Kagura's radius began to feel resistance.
Pocket's feet thudded a fraction too late. Her knee angle widened. She corrected but now his balance was tilted.
"Cut the draft!" she snapped.
"I'm not drafting!" Flame replied.
Kagura said nothing.
She ran like a pendulum, unchanging, her every step placing down before gravity caught up to her.
At 800 meters, their formation broke.
Pocket fell back a half-step.
Excel's foot scraped turf.
Flame's breathing came ragged.
Kagura remained untouched.
Her pace: 17.28 m/s. No acceleration. No slowdown.
The air around her, however, bent in odd ways later confirmed by training cams. Leaves beside Lane 3 twisted backward, counter to wind flow. Static sensors logged a localized low-pressure wave just behind her.
It lasted only 0.3 seconds, and yet…
Each of the other three runners dipped 0.2–0.3 m/s in that time frame.
None could explain it.
By the end of the lap, Kagura finished shoulder-to-shoulder with Excel but breathing lighter. Not flushed. Not winded.
Pocket collapsed onto one knee.
Flame hunched over, muttering curses.
Kagura?
She simply walked off the track.
Near the benches, a few students gathered.
"You see that?" someone whispered.
"She didn't even try to surge."
"She didn't need to."
"Is that legal?"
Pocket heard them.
She scowled; towel draped over his neck. "She wasn't running faster," she growled. "She just made the rest of us run worse."
Flame looked over. "She was at 17.2. Maybe 17.3 tops."
"And yet I felt like I was sprinting uphill."
Excel didn't speak.
She was still thinking about the moment the leaves near Kagura's shoulder twisted into spirals.
And then fell flat.
In the observation tower, Agnes Tachyon rewound the footage for the fifth time.
She marked the moment of distortion: 14:37:12.043
Exactly when Kagura's lead foot hit the curve without adjusting stride.
Frame-by-frame review showed three anomalies:
[Pressure Drop – localized air shift logged by static cam 6]
[Visual Ripple – field grass behind her foot lifted, not forward]
[Sensor Delay – Jungle Pocket's rhythm stalled for 0.18 seconds]
Kagura's data remained steady throughout.
Her speed never exceeded 17.28 m/s
And yet
Agnes whispered aloud:
"She didn't accelerate. She made them slow."
She tapped her pen against the monitor and underlined the phrase:
[Turbulence-Class Field: Probable Activation (Unconscious)]
Outside, the wind finally changed direction.
But Kagura was already gone.