Cherish Your Pets Responsibly
"Hiihiiieeeeeng!!!"
The horse, having taken a sucker punch from Rai, screamed and heaved itself upright. Rai had a grip on its neck, so he rose with it. The animal lunged for his face with its jaws thrown wide — and caught an uppercut that snapped its head back around.
They were airborne, though, and a punch thrown on arm strength alone didn't seem to do much damage. The horse twisted around again and clamped down on Rai's left arm. Like some enormous monster shaking a man in its teeth, it thrashed its head wildly, and Rai pinwheeled through the empty air.
He looked, from the outside, like a helpless rag doll being flung about. Even so, he kept driving his fist into the horse's face. The blows, thrown from a posture that barely qualified as one, apparently lacked any real force — so when the horse shook its head even harder, Rai grabbed a fistful of mane and shoved his own face in.
Chomp!!
Rai bit down on the animal's muzzle as if to say, Your turn, and the horse shrieked.
"Is that a human or a beast…?"
"Kyaa! Raikkang never fails to deliver."
Sierra, who had been a heartbeat away from charging in, turned to stare at Aslan and Diana. Their conversation was so blithely unconcerned it was almost offensive. The rest of the students wore the same look — startled, maybe, but without a shred of actual alarm — as they watched a man and a horse try to murder each other. From the sidelines it looked like a powerless human being mauled by a horse, and the only two people in the entire yard who seemed even remotely agitated were the stablehand and Sierra.
The student named Cesset wasn't worried in the slightest. She had both hands on her stomach, laughing herself sick. The one named Abigail watched for a few seconds, then lost interest and went back to taming her own horse.
Am I the one who's wrong here?
Sierra, the sole normal person stranded in a sea of lunatics, could only blink, utterly unable to adjust to the atmosphere.
A human and a horse were biting each other. The pride contest over who would let go first stretched on and on, until at last the horse slammed Rai into the ground like a wrestler delivering a finishing throw. He twisted in midair, landed on both feet, dropped his stance, and coiled to charge.
The horse, equally furious, snorted a harsh blast of air, scraped a front hoof across the dirt, and thundered toward him. Like a bull lowering its horns, the massive animal led with its entire body — and the two of them rammed their skulls together.
Crack!!
Why is he headbutting?
The man had two perfectly functional arms. Sierra could not, for the life of her, understand why he insisted on using his forehead, and she watched in blank disbelief as Rai staggered backward, blood fountaining from his nose.
He wasn't the only one. However hard Rai's skull had been, the horse was tossing its own head back and spraying a matching stream of blood into the air. The two arcs traced overlapping semicircles — a composition that might have been magnificent, if everyone watching weren't wearing expressions of pure disgust.
The blood hadn't even hit the dirt before Rai was charging the horse again. Reeling from the impact, the animal spun and lashed out with a hind kick. Rai, who until now had eaten every blow head-on without so much as a sidestep, apparently decided a horse's rear hoof was where he drew the line. He slipped the kick, then drove a vicious punch straight into the animal's rump.
This was nothing like the flailing he'd done in midair. With both feet planted solidly on the ground, the punch landed with a completely different kind of force. The horse's hide rippled as if the flesh itself had been punched through, and the massive animal went flying four or five meters. It sailed so limply that one might have worried its legs had snapped, hit the ground, skidded, and then lurched back to its feet.
Rai's left arm dangled uselessly, but the fight hadn't gone out of him at all. He closed the distance at a slow walk. The horse shook its head violently and pawed at the earth. It held still until Rai was nearly on top of it, then glared at him through a fierce snort of breath.
"… …"
It looked like they were about to collide all over again. Instead, the horse lowered its head until it was level with Rai's. The muzzle pointed at the ground looked almost like a bow, and Rai stroked the animal's head, then smacked it with his open palm. He hit it hard enough that the mane fluttered in the air, but the horse kept its head meekly down. A moment later Rai grabbed the mane and swung himself into the saddle.
He came back having subdued a giant of a horse, but the picture he made — in tatters, casting healing magic on his left hand — looked less like a victorious general than a soldier crawling home from a rout. A cocky smile cut across a mouth plastered with blood from his own nosebleed as he looked down at the students.
"See that?"
"Yes, I saw it perfectly. So that's what a beast-versus-beast turf war looks like."
Rai ignored Cesset entirely, rolling his newly healed left arm in a slow circle as he went on.
"Taming a horse is simple. First: beat it into submission with raw strength. Second: don't go using mana or weapons like some pathetic coward. Body against body, head-on. That's it. Simple, right?"
He wore a rather dashing smile as he said it. The students, who felt not the faintest flicker of agreement, just stared at him.
Cesset looked at him for a moment, then turned to Sierra.
"Is he even allowed to do that?"
"No. It's dangerous, so please don't."
Sierra shook her head, firmly opposed, her concern for the students' safety written plainly on her face.
"If anyone violates academy regulations, I will intervene immediately."
The hot-blooded students who had been about to copy Rai's method — Aslan among them — shut their mouths and started watching the room.
"Alright, get going. Stop picking on the kids and try being a little friendlier, you bastard."
Rai swung down from the saddle and booted the horse in the rump to shoo it off. It was the kind of thing nobody ever did, for fear of catching a hind kick to the chest — but the horse just let itself be shoved a step back, then immediately sidled up again.
"Don't come over here. Go play, you idiot. Git—"
Rai flicked his hand at it, thoroughly annoyed. The horse hesitated, reading his mood, then trotted off a ways and watched him from among the other horses.
"Raikkang, I think that horse is in love with you. Look at it — those are totally lovesick eyes."
Diana's voice was all mischief. Rai's face twisted.
"That thing's a stallion, so what's its problem? It was acting all high and mighty until a minute ago."
"Would you have taken it if it was a mare? You pervert—"
Rai's eyes, suddenly very ugly, swung toward her. Diana giggled and fled on the horse she'd picked for herself.
They had all just watched Rai's brutish idea of taming, but thanks to Sierra's warning the students went about choosing their horses the normal way. Some picked ordinary mounts, some picked unusual ones; each of them found a horse that suited them, and from there they would begin the work of bonding, matching rhythm, and starting their mounted drills.
The next morning.
Rai stepped out into the garden, rolling a stiff neck — and found a black horse leisurely cropping the grass. It looked so natural standing there, as if this had always been its place instead of the stables, that he could only stare. The moment the horse spotted him, it came trotting over in delight.
"Yaaawn — I stayed up way too late last nigh— agh, shit, you scared me!"
Aslan, trailing out of the house a beat later, took one look at the enormous horse and his eyes went huge. The animal didn't so much as glance at him. It just kept circling Rai, radiating pure joy.
"Why is this thing here? Did you steal it?"
"Is 'did you steal it' really the first thing that comes out of your mouth when you look at me?"
"I'm looking at you properly, that's why it came out first. More importantly — if you didn't steal it, did it follow you here?"
"Seems like it. Do horses have a good nose? How did it even find its way?"
The horse dragged its tongue across Rai, and his head rose toward the sky. He looked up at it with an expression of profound annoyance, then swung into the saddle.
"I'll take it back."
"What a waste. Nasty temper, but it's a good horse."
Aslan looked genuinely reluctant. The problem was that this horse was academy property. Rai couldn't just keep it, and more to the point, he had no use for a horse anymore. He wasn't riding to war, and he couldn't leave Legandia without permission. For him, a horse was a thing he no longer needed.
Whether the horse understood any of that or not, it clearly loved having a rider on its back. It let out a bright hiiing and took off at a powerful gallop.
Even in an academy as vast as this one, the stables sat in a far corner. Rai rode all the way there and found the stablehand repairing a smashed fence. He didn't need to ask who had smashed it. The horse, even under Rai's stare, looked shamelessly unbothered.
"Aagh, shit, you scared me! Ah — Instructor… wait. Kertashian!"
The horse was so enormous that anyone standing behind it was guaranteed a heart attack. The stablehand, who had just produced the exact same reaction as Aslan, recognized the black horse at once and called it by name.
Kertashian. The name of a famous general of the old Empire. Bestowing the name of a historical figure on a horse was a way of saying the animal was exceptional enough to deserve it. None of which meant a thing to Rai.
"This one was in my garden. Looks like it ran off, so I came to bring it back."
"Ah… it seems Kertashian has taken quite a liking to you, Instructor."
The stablehand stroked the horse's head as he spoke. The animal had always refused every rider who tried to claim it, and watching it follow Rai filled him with a quiet pride — but this horse was academy property, prepared for the students' training. He managed the stables; he did not have the authority to give the animals away. Sorry as he was for Kertashian, who had finally found someone it wanted as a master, it had to go back where it belonged.
The horse was happily taking the treats being tossed its way, but it had apparently figured out that Rai meant to leave it in the stall. Anxious eyes found him. Just yesterday those same eyes had been showing off, toying with students and flaunting their strength. Now they were simple and deep, and they held both loyalty and the fear of being abandoned. Rai had seen eyes like that more times than he could count.
In a life spent mostly on battlefields, the horses that had run with him numbered far more than one or two. Plenty had died stupid, pointless deaths in the thick of a fight. Sometimes he had been right there beside them at the end. It was a sorry thing to say, but the horses at Rai's side had always died. In the kind of battle where you called it a blessing just to come back alive yourself, expecting the horse to make it too was a fool's hope. As warriors grew stronger, a horse's odds of surviving plummeted. There had been days he'd gone through three mounts before nightfall, and all three had died. A horse was a knight's friend and companion — but for Rai, it was something he could not afford to grow attached to.
He put a hand on the animal's head, looking into those pitiful eyes.
"I'm sorry. You can't come with me."
Whether it understood the words or not, the horse snorted and shook its head.
"I'm not supposed to go running anymore, you see."
The horse went still and looked at him straight on. Rai huffed a quiet laugh at the seriousness in those eyes, shook his head, gave the animal a couple of light pats, and turned away.
"I'll come by sometimes. So stay put."
Even after Rai left, the horse stood in that same spot and did not move.
"The bond between horse and master…"
The stablehand in the corner wore a look of deep emotion, as if he had just witnessed something beautiful. Neither of them particularly cared.
The following day.
Rai woke, wandered into the kitchen for a drink of water, and silently looked at the window.
"… …"
A horse had shoved its entire head through the open window and was industriously chewing on the kitchen ingredients. Yesterday's moving farewell might as well never have happened. The moment it spotted Rai, the horse excitedly lifted its head — and smashed it into the cupboard.
Crashhh!
"What's going on?! Augh, shit, you scared me!"
Dishes came pouring out of the cupboard. Aslan, drawn by the enormous noise, burst into the kitchen, saw the horse, and yelled.
"It came back again? What a beast. It's got guts."
Aslan nodded as if he were genuinely impressed. Rai just had a headache.
"At this point, can't you just call yourself its owner?"
"A horse isn't some coin you pick up off the street."
Horses were expensive. Warhorses — breeds developed for nothing but combat — were especially expensive. You did not get to declare one yours just because it decided to follow you around. That was not the kind of property you claimed on a whim.
"I'll take it back."
Rai smacked the horse's head, drove it out of the kitchen, and headed for the stables. On the way, students out for morning drills spotted the horse and started saying it was Raikkang's. Rai ignored them and returned it anyway.
"Mana Overheat isn't something you create just by cranking up your mana output. To raise the efficiency, you have to collide mana of different attributes against each other, and…"
The next day, Rai was in the middle of explaining Mana Overheat to the four students gathered in the garden when he noticed all their eyes sliding in one direction. He turned around.
"Hiiiiiing~"
The horse, having broken out of the stables yet again, came prancing toward Rai with a positively cheerful gait.
"That's not a horse. That's a puppy."
"It really does give off that impression."
Aslan and Zeroa, who had no idea what was going through Rai's head, offered this observation with complete calm. Rai looked at the animal that kept coming back no matter how many times he threw it out, let out a long breath, and stared up at the horse currently licking his hair with a perfectly innocent expression.
"It may have looked a bit… unorthodox, but Instructor Rai's taming method is quite impressive."
Philia was engaged in a serious reconsideration of his methods, marveling at how a horse that arrogant had ended up this devoted, when Sierra arrived at the house.
"The Headmistress has granted permission."
"For what?"
Rai asked it with a look of total disinterest. Sierra answered in a voice of considerable pride.
"She has authorized Instructor Rai to take ownership of Kertashian. It seems the stablehand put considerable effort into persuading her. You've acquired an excellent horse. Congratulations."
Sierra offered her congratulations. Rai did not look pleased. He had simply been saddled with a nuisance. He couldn't even ride the thing — what was the point of owning a horse?
The horse trotted around him in bright, bouncing circles.
"Ohh, nice. So it ended up being yours after all."
"Congratulations, Instructor Rai. It already has the name Kertashian, but now that it has a new owner, how about giving it a name of your own?"
Rai, who had been wearing an expression of profound irritation, looked up at the horse and considered Philia's suggestion.
"Shit Horse."
Whether it understood the words or not, the newly christened Shit Horse shook its head with great violence, making its objections known.
"Um, even so, isn't that a bit much?"
"You can't actually name it that just because you're annoyed."
"Are you serious?"
Faced with a wall of student opposition, Rai made a low groaning sound and tried again.
"Dark Horse."
"If you name it after the breed, it'll get confusing."
"Aagh, you people really have a lot of nitpicks."
He spat the complaint, thought about it a moment longer, and tried once more.
"Black Horse."
"Because it's a black horse, you keep giving it names with that same vibe… wait. Does 'Black' mean… dung?"
Something in the repeating pattern of names had clicked for Philia. Rai did not answer.
The meaning buried in the name was unfortunate, but on the surface it was a perfectly fine one, and Black Horse seemed to like it. The animal let out a booming cry, making no secret of how pleased it was.