That afternoon, as Kitano was preparing to close early, he received a call from Mr. Kimura.
"If possible, would you be willing to visit our ranch this Sunday?"
After a pause, Mr. Kimura lowered his voice as if deliberately. "Our ranch has several foals with very interesting bloodlines. I wonder if you might be interested?"
"Interesting foals... I'll come take a look."
After hanging up, Kitano recalled Ogawa Masaru's suggestion from a few days earlier.
What Kimura had mentioned on the phone was probably a private sale.
There were two different kinds of private sales.
The first was an active transaction.
When a foal was deemed likely to develop into a famous racehorse, an owner might negotiate privately with the ranch rather than wait for an auction, purchasing the Racehorse at a relatively high price.
The second was a more passive transaction.
If a ranch lacked confidence in the pedigree of one of its homebred foals, or was not optimistic about the foal's conformation and expected development, it would contact familiar owners in an attempt to sell early and reduce its losses.
Of course, the ranch might also be concerned that the horse would fail to sell at auction and damage its reputation.
From Kimura's words, it was not hard to judge that this was most likely the second, more passive kind of transaction.
Still, Kitano intended to go and see for himself.
Before Hokkaido's Select Sale, which would be held from the twenty-second to the twenty-fourth of this month, this counted as an opportunity to build up experience in evaluating conformation.
He would treat it as a warm-up for the Select Sale.
Then he opened the [Assets] section of the system panel.
[Horses Owned: 1] [Ranches Owned: 0] [Clubs Owned: 0] [Total Assets: 1.09 million yen]
It was certainly gratifying to finally be back in positive territory, but the cash he currently had on hand was nowhere near enough to attend the Select Sale.
It was not even enough to buy another Mejiro Tenma.
It was time to take out some Amulets and exchange them for cash.
For now, of course, he would limit himself to Green Amulets.
The Amulets he had accumulated over four months of completing daily tasks immediately dwindled by more than half.
Then he bought three [Detectors] from the shop.
After finishing his preparations, fewer than fifty Green Amulets remained.
During the remaining weekday, the frequency of house calls suddenly increased.
Besides common seasonal illnesses, cases of animals accidentally eating poisonous plants also rose, as expected.
Every year, livestock workers in Hokkaido spent enormous effort removing all kinds of poisonous plants that could threaten their animals' safety.
Hand-pulling, chemical spraying, deep plowing, digging drainage ditches—
Even with every possible measure in use, these tenacious plants still quietly grew in corners beyond the ranchers' notice.
Inducing vomiting, gastric lavage, IV fluids... By the time Kitano came back to himself, Sunday had arrived without him realizing it.
His phone alarm rang right on time.
A hand emerged from beneath the blanket and swiped the alarm away. Nearly half a minute later, Kitano slowly sat up in bed.
It was 7:31 in the morning.
Even on a day off, he had no intention of sleeping in.
Compared with gaining a few extra hours of rest now and then, Kitano believed a regular routine was better for his health.
Besides, he already had plans for the afternoon.
After washing up, he watched a drama on his phone while eating breakfast.
Breakfast was fried eggs on toast and hot milk, rather than leftovers from the previous night for once.
After finishing, Kitano silently noted the progress bar's position.
An episode of All Creatures Great and Small, each over forty minutes long, usually took him two or three mornings to finish.
Still, rather than fast-forwarding through it as quickly as a pelican swallowing fish, he preferred to savor the entire drama at its original pace.
After spending a few more minutes washing the dishes, Kitano finally sat on the sofa and picked up a veterinary journal.
Before he knew it, two hours vanished as if stolen by a monster.
[Conduct ability training: 116/30 minutes (Completed)]
While stretching, he claimed the mission reward.
He changed into casual clothes and, instead of driving, chose to head out on foot.
He crossed the empty streets and reached the convenience store more than ten minutes later.
Besides his regular shopping, he also needed to check his bankbook once more.
After carefully counting the long string of zeros at the end of his balance and confirming there was no mistake, Kitano carried two bulging plastic bags home.
He sorted the purchases and put them into the refrigerator, only barely finishing by lunchtime.
Though he often dealt with all kinds of medicines, he was not actually very good at organizing things.
After lunch, he changed into formal clothes again.
Driving along Yushun Romance Street, he had the azure sea on one side and vast stretches of neat green land on the other.
Forty minutes later, he arrived at New Life Ranch.
Unlike the vast majority of ranches in Flowing Sand Prefecture, which identified themselves with signs, New Life Ranch's marker was a huge stone engraved with the ranch's name.
In addition, a whole row of decorative stones had been piled along the section of the ranch's perimeter near the waterway.
"Welcome, Mr. Kitano!"
As he got out of the car, Mr. Kimura approached with several employees and warmly greeted him.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Kimura."
The two shook hands, then quickly let go.
"Look at that, it really is hot today. Why don't we head inside first?"
Kimura led Kitano on a tour of the ranch while proudly introducing his management methods.
What might have seemed dull to ordinary people fascinated Kitano instead, and he occasionally took the initiative to ask a few questions.
"Everything you've said has benefited me greatly, Mr. Kimura," Kitano said sincerely.
As one of Japan's few remaining owner-breeders—both owner and producer—Kimura Keisei was more familiar with every aspect of the Racehorse industry than Kitano, whose knowledge was somewhat one-sided.
He might know horses themselves extremely well as animals, but once the scope expanded to the entire sport of Racehorse, he still had much to learn.
"Haha, it's nothing, it's nothing! If you're interested, Mr. Kitano, just come ask me anytime."
Kimura laughed heartily, draped an arm around Kitano's shoulders with great familiarity, and said, "Come, let me show you the pride of our ranch."
With that, he brought Kitano to the pasture.
"This is Ms. Miaochi. She is Mr. Yoshida Shori's beloved favorite. Of course—she is ours as well."
Kimura pointed toward a chestnut mare in the pasture with a huge white blaze.
Then, quite naturally, he pointed toward another chestnut horse in a different pasture.
"This is Ms. Miaochi's first foal. The blaze is almost in exactly the same place, isn't it?"