I Didn't Mean to Scare You

It Wasn't My Intention to Scare You

Kitasan Black's change had actually been very subtle, difficult to pinpoint accurately with the naked eye alone.

But before Agnes Tachyon's detailed data records, there was nowhere for it to hide.

According to her calculations, whether at the start gate, at the initial burst, in the final straight, or around corners, Kitasan Black's average reaction time was roughly 150 milliseconds slower than her data from the Japan Cup and before.

0.15 seconds meant a distance of more than 2.25 to 2.7 meters on the track—a gap of one horse length.

On a G1 track, where victories were decided by fractions of a second, that was a chasm wide enough to determine the winner.

If she entered the Arima Kinen in this condition, she might still have a chance of placing, but her hopes of winning were so slim that they did not even amount to one in ten thousand.

What was more troubling was that apart from these occasional, fleeting reaction delays, her physical strength, endurance, explosive power, and other statistics remained at an extremely high level—perhaps even better than before the Japan Cup.

This "selective" malfunction was precisely why Agnes Tachyon had described it as "too bad."

It was also the reason why, even after Anjing Zhen Shen had ruled out every conventional possibility, he was still at a complete loss.

He had a vague guess—or rather, an idea that should have been acted upon long ago.

At the moment of victory in the Japan Cup, watching that figure on the track giving everything she had, he had thought that he needed to find time for a deeper conversation with this rapidly growing Horse Girl, to better understand what was on her mind beyond racing.

But the pressure of preparing for the