It was just past noon in the second week of May.
After that morning's work ended, everyone on the staff was visibly exhausted.
Even Ravide, who rarely complained on ordinary days, could not help saying, "I'm so tired."
The reason was that today was the day Dawn would leave Nishiken Farm for Honshu, preparing to enter training.
Ordinarily, with Dawn's early-maturing tendencies, she should have entered a stable before the local and central aptitude tests and gate trials gradually got underway, or even before the two-year-old maiden races at Monbetsu began.
However, this year, with the earthquake's impact, even though there was only one horse in the two-year-old generation, everyone on staff, Dawn included, had given it their all to finish her breaking-in before the summer maiden races.
Even so, they had still failed to get her into a stable by the originally scheduled time.
It was not as though he could not comfort himself by saying, "Other farms are probably in much the same situation," but the world was vast. If he wanted to become a first-class breeder, he could not keep his sights limited to Hokkaido, or even just Hidaka.
On the other hand, horse racing was not an industry where effort brought quick results.
No matter how anxious he felt, he had tried his best to maintain their original pace in the actual breaking-in and training.
Then came today, when the breaking-in work in Hokkaido had finally ended and he had thought he could finally relax.
Perhaps it was the restlessness they had tried to suppress throughout the breaking-in process but had never entirely eliminated. Or perhaps it was simply Dawn's aversion to transport—
In any case, the horse van that had originally been scheduled to leave at six in the morning did not depart the farm