The next morning, I passed through the ticket gate on the Musashino Line and entered through the Hōten Gate. Looking out at the crowd, I saw not only young men and women who were unmistakably racing fans, but also quite a few faces from overseas.
You occasionally saw them at the racecourse on race days, but there seemed to be more than usual today.
What would it feel like to watch a race alongside people whose languages and customs were different from your own?
Then again, Kanto and Kansai could be said to have different languages and customs too. If people kept traveling between them as often as they did now, perhaps it would all start to feel more natural. "Excuse me, President." My first thought on hearing that voice was, His Japanese is even better than his English? It was only when the voice sounded again nearby that I realized he was speaking to me.
I turned around and saw a tall blond man about Zepp's age.
He was wearing the white-and-gold supporter outfit that members supposedly called "hopelessly old-fashioned."
"I never thought I'd run into you here, President... By the way, if I won a place in the winner's photo, do we gather here after the race?"
As he spoke, the blond man pointed to a spot on the racecourse map on his phone.
"Ah... Yes, that's right."
Of all the overseas racing fans I could have met at the Hōten Gate, where the most people entered, he was not only a fan of Dawn—or rather, "MEJIRO"—but had also won a place in the winner's photo, something only about one in fifty shareholders managed. That was an awful lot of coincidence.
Besides, starting with the overseas fan I had just met, all the shareholders seemed to have forgotten