Private Sale

That afternoon, just as Kitano was planning to close early, he received a call from Kimura.

"If possible, would you be willing to visit our ranch this Sunday?"

After a pause, Kimura lowered his voice deliberately. "Our ranch has several foals with very interesting pedigrees. 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 ago.

What Kimura had mentioned on the phone was probably a case of a "private sale."

There were two different kinds of private sales.

The first was a proactive transaction.

When a horse owner believed a certain foal had the potential to become a famous racehorse as it matured, they might negotiate privately with the ranch rather than wait for an auction, purchasing the racehorse at a comparatively high price.

The second was a more negative kind of transaction.

If a ranch lacked confidence in the pedigree of its homebred foals, or was not optimistic about a foal's physical condition and expected development, it would contact familiar horse owners and try to sell early to reduce its losses.

Of course, it might also be concerned that an unsold horse at auction would damage the ranch's reputation.

From Kimura's wording, it was not difficult to tell that this would most likely be the second, more negative type of transaction.

Still, Kitano planned to go and have a look.

Before Hokkaido's Select Sale, 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 taking the cash he currently had on hand to the Select Sale was out of the question.

This amount was not even enough to buy another Mejiro Tenma.

It was time to trade in some more Mamoru for cash.

For now, of course, only Green Omamori.

The Mamoru he had accumulated over four months by completing daily missions instantly dwindled by more than half.

Then he bought three [Detectors] from the shop.

After making the preparations, he had fewer than fifty Green Omamori left.

During the one remaining weekday, the frequency of house calls suddenly increased.

Besides common seasonal illnesses, cases of animals accidentally eating poisonous plants increased as expected.

Every year, livestock workers in Hokkaido spent tremendous effort clearing all kinds of poisonous plants that could threaten their animals' safety.

Manual removal, chemical spraying, deep plowing, digging drainage channels—

Even with every method available, these hardy plants still quietly grew in corners beyond the ranch owners' notice.

Inducing vomiting, stomach pumping, IV drips... By the time Kitano came back to his senses, Sunday had arrived without his noticing.

His phone alarm rang on time.

A hand stretched out from beneath the blanket to swipe the alarm away. Nearly half a minute later, Kitano slowly sat up in bed.

It was 7:31 in the morning.

Even on his day off, he had no intention of sleeping in.

Compared with occasionally gaining a few extra hours of rest, Kitano believed that a regular routine was better for the body.

Besides, he already had plans for the afternoon.

After washing up, he watched a show on his phone while eating breakfast.

Breakfast was fried egg toast and hot milk, not leftovers from last night for once.

After breakfast, Kitano silently noted the progress bar's position.

An episode of All Creatures Great and Small ran for more than forty minutes, so it often took him two or three mornings to finish one.

Still, rather than fast-forwarding through it as quickly as a pelican swallowing fish, he preferred to enjoy the whole drama slowly at its original pace.

After spending several more minutes washing the dishes, Kitano finally sat down on the sofa with a veterinary journal.

Before he knew it, two hours vanished as though stolen by a monster.

[Ability Training: 116/30 minutes (Completed)]

While stretching, he claimed the mission reward.

He changed into casual clothes and chose to walk out instead of driving.

He crossed the empty streets and reached the convenience store more than ten minutes later.

Besides his regular shopping, he needed to check his bankbook balance again.

After carefully counting the long string of zeroes at the end of the deposit entry 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 worked with all sorts of medicines, he was not actually very good at organizing things.

After lunch, he changed into formal clothes again.

Driving along Yushun Romantic Road, he had the deep blue 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 signboards, New Life Ranch's marker was a huge stone carved with the ranch's name.

In addition, an entire row of decorative stones had been piled along the section of the ranch's perimeter near the water channel.

"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 and quickly released them.

"Look at that, it's really hot today. Why don't we head inside first?"

Kimura led Kitano through the ranch, proudly explaining his management methods as they went.

Though such things would have been dull to most people, Kitano listened with great interest and occasionally took the initiative to ask a few questions.

"Everything you've said has benefited me greatly, Mr. Kimura,"

Kitano said honestly.

As one of the few remaining owner-breeders in Japan—both an owner and a breeder—Kimura Keisei was more familiar with every link of the racing industry than Kitano, whose knowledge was unevenly specialized.

He might understand horses themselves as animals extremely well, but when the scope expanded to the sport of racing as a whole, he still had much to learn.

"Haha, it's nothing, it's nothing! If you're interested, Mr. Kitano, feel free to ask me anytime."

Kimura laughed heartily, putting an arm around Kitano's shoulders with great familiarity. "Come on, let me show you the pride of our ranch."

With that, he led Kitano to the pasture.

"That's Lady Myochi. She's Mr. Yoshida Katsutoshi's beloved horse. Of course—she's also beloved by our ranch."

Kimura pointed at a chestnut mare in the pasture with a huge white blaze.

Then, quite naturally, he pointed to another chestnut horse in a different pasture.

"This is Lady Myochi's first foal. The blaze is almost exactly the same, isn't it?"