Have you ever found yourself looking for something that doesn't exist in this world?

I'm not just talking about something that's difficult to find.

I'm talking about something that can't be found.

It's difficult to disprove the existence of something. More so than it is to prove it. Proving that something exists is as simple as finding it, but it doesn't work the opposite way. You can't disprove the existence of something by not finding it. That should be obvious. That also makes it harder to give up.

I'm not naive enough to believe that chasing after fantasies is any single person's exclusive right, there's probably plenty of kids out there that have tried going down rabbit holes looking for adventure or such, so I think that the answer to my question would be at the very least an even split between yes and no.

So, I'll ask another to filter things out a bit more.

Have you ever found yourself able to remember something that doesn't exist?

I'm not talking about something you saw, read or heard about. What I'm referring to are your own memories, the same as any other.

Something that you can recall, but the world tells you doesn't exist.

Even though it's there in your mind.

It wouldn't make any sense, would it?
Wouldn't that just drive you crazy?

Hey there, it's Nice Nature. It's been a little while since last time. Or maybe it's been no time at all for you?

Either way, I guess we need to catch up a little bit before things can properly begin. I could start this on the line of "Right now I'm going around Tokyo inquiring about things", but I think that would be skipping too many steps.

Well, maybe it's pretty easy to guess, but I still feel the need to clarify.

So, going back to last time. Of course I accepted the president's request. How could I not?

Two weeks of my exciting and very totally dramatic life at Tracen Academy passed by before I got another day to myself.

I could've started on this last week, but on that sunday we went to the zoo. I couldn't shake the fear that if left unattended Turbo would jump into the zebra exhibit to see whether or not she could outrun them, so I had no choice but to go.
She didn't try it, but she could've.

Oh, one other thing. I decided not to tell anyone.

I mean, of course I mentioned the whole requests thing, it'd be strange if I just disappeared to go do something. But I didn't say a thing about Canopus not having enough members and all that.

I mean, what I'm doing isn't exactly anything important. At worst, bringing it up would just be making them worry unnecessarily.

I mean, even if they didn't, wouldn't it be a bit odd? Explaining to them that I'm taking on a request from the student council specifically for the team's sake. It'd be like fishing for compliments. More accurately, it'd be like I'm making a story up to fish for compliments. I doubt they'd believe me. I certainly wouldn't.

After running things over in my head, I decided it would be for the best to leave that part out.

And so, with no further ado, right now I'm going around Tokyo inquiring about things.
Oh, but it'd make sense to establish what I'm asking about first, now that I think about it.

The day after accepting her request, I was given a list of the three I was looking for. Their names, photographs, descriptions and their race records.

I wondered why I needed their race records, but it might've just been that I was getting every piece of information that might be relevant thrown at me, just in case.

Still, the names stuck out to me. Not because I knew any of them. It was something far pettier.

While two of them struck me as somewhat odd, I at least had a vague idea of how to pronounce them. I'm not arrogant enough to act like there's no chance of me getting them wrong, there could very well be something that I'm completely missing about how to say them, but at least I had a vague idea. Even if it wasn't necessarily the right one, the feeling that you were on some kind of track was significantly better than the feeling of not being one at all.

That was the feeling given to me by reading the final name. I didn't even know where to begin with it.

I realised at that moment that I should've just asked the president about how it's intended to be read, but by that point it was too late. Asking her now, two weeks after she'd asked me to look into it, would be the same as admitting that I'd been completely ignoring it until now. To make things worse, it was exactly the truth.

Simply put, I was too afraid to go asking her now.

But, I still did have a chance of being saved. In the information I was given there were photos of each, as well as general descriptions for each. It might have seemed rather redundant to have descriptions when there were already photographs of each of them, but I just took it as a sign of how the president was giving me anything that might even be remotely helpful.

So even while unable to pronounce one of their names, my search for the three girls was unimpeded. If anything, it probably made more sense to do things this way.
Going around showing photos of someone while looking for them is a classic, isn't it? It certainly feels different doing it while looking for a person, compared to while looking for a cat.

Still, I did have one complaint to make here. Once again, that same girl on the list stuck out like a sore thumb.

How are you meant to identify someone by the fact that they wear a mask?

Her description stated that her most defining feature is that she always wears a face mask, no matter what. Indeed, in every photograph that I was given, she was wearing one.

But why, I ask, would a mask be considered someone's most defining trait? The mask preceded everything else on the list, as though it was more significant than all of them combined.

I couldn't bring myself to agree. Sure, horse girls are known for wearing accessories on their head or ears. Tracen Academy's dress code made an allowance for things that normal schools wouldn't, like crowns or tiaras or beanies, specifically to accommodate for that maxim. But a mask? A mask was different.

Was it really okay? Wouldn't that just make it more difficult to run? I can't shake the feeling that questioning at something like this is forbidden, but surely there must be some problem with wearing something that covers the nose and mouth while running.

Maybe it's like weighted clothing. Or a dramatic statement like "I don't even need unobstructed breathing to beat you."

I didn't know.
I couldn't stop part of my brain from wondering whether my instinct to place cover my head in objects was the same as that of a hermit crab.

Despite all my incessant complaining, there was an upside to this. Not many horse girls were known for wearing masks any more than necessary. This made the process of finding her that much easier.

I started with the area around Tracen, since I knew a fair few people around there.

The process that followed was far too tedious and slow to even be worth mentioning here, which should show that it was quite something. If you're absolutely dying to know, then picture being lost within a labyrinth where every wall has an arrow pointing in a different direction.

Now you might point out that there can't be that many walls if they all point in different directions. But that's only if you're thinking of four or eight directions. I'm thinking of every possible angle here.

Yup, that's right. That's how complex it was- actually, wait for a moment, is three hundred and sixty walls a lot or a little for a labyrinth?

I was going to finish this metaphor off with some cool line like "You just have to ignore the signs and wander around on instinct, hoping you'll find the exit eventually", but now that's taken me off guard enough to get me to stop and think for a second I've realised how little sense that makes.

Unless I were to suddenly awaken some kind of detective superpower at that moment, I only had what people were telling me to work with. Ignoring that would be very difficult, not to mention rude. So this doesn't make much sense anymore.

Oh, just forget it. If you have to know anything, it was very painful and slow. That's all there was to it. To make it worse, it was a very painful and slow process that led to little to no results.

Of the three, people only seemed to have seen one recently. As you may be able to guess by the logic of "Of course it would work out like this", it was the one girl whose name and face had stuck out to me like a sore thumb.

But even so, I seemed unable to find her.

My job wasn't to find these three, it was to find out why they were missing. That was what the president told me. So why did finding them have to be so difficult?

The preliminary work taking this long was probably a sign that things were hopeless. This clearly wasn't a detective story. If I had to call it something, it'd probably be a story about finding needles in a haystack.

What other option was there but to make a sound of exasperation? An exaggerated "Kaaa-" was the answer that I chose.

The most important part to remember when vocalising frustration in a manner like this is that it absolutely must not, under any circumstances, resemble any words.

No, maybe instead the most important part was to be clear? While it might not be any kind of word, the point is still to express feeling. I didn't want to give any kind of impression that was wildly different to how I felt.

I hardly had this down to a science. Acting like I knew what I put that much consideration in was quite facetious when I just went with the first sound I subconsciously made.

Before questioning how to do it I should really question why I even feel the need. I, always living within my own head, am aware of my own thoughts. The place where I had stopped to rest was empty as far as I could tell. So with no one here to listen to me, who was that sound for?

Maybe it was for some silent, completely unknown, onlooker? I couldn't come up with much else. Other than it being only for myself.

"Oh, that's it." Is what I thought to myself after contemplating that.

Maybe my problem was going at this alone. I couldn't complain when it was my own decision, but maybe it would help

Asking someone else to join me would probably be too much. But just asking for something to be explained was fine, wasn't it?

So with that in mind, I reached around in my pockets for my cell phone. To call someone who probably knew everything.

The ring reverberated throughout that relatively empty area. Saying that it was completely deserted couldn't have possibly been true, by the same reasoning that no one had ever been inside an empty room. But it was certainly close enough, bar my presence. That was why all that I could hear piercing through the silence was my phone ringing repeatedly.

Finally, it stopped, giving way to a collected voice.

"Ah, hello? Ms Nature?"

"Are you free to talk right now, Ikuno?"

"Shouldn't you ask something like that before calling?"

"I guess I should've, but I thought it'd be fine. Your tone of voice makes it sounds like I'm interrupting something."

She paused for a second before responding.

"That's exactly the case. It's rather discomforting to be so easily seen through."

"So what are you doing, if you don't mind telling me?"

"Practising Jenga."

"Jenga?"

"Yes, Jenga. Are you not familiar? It's a game about a tower made up of rectangular blocks, three for each row. Players take turns removing one block from the tower and placing it on top, with whoever makes it fall being considered the loser. It was inven-"

"No, no, I think I know it. But you're practising it?"

"...You know what practice is, don't you?"

"I don't need you to explain that, I know that. Don't make it sound like I'm so lazy that the word practice isn't even in my dictionary, and that's why I can't win any G1s."

"I didn't say anything of the sort."

"Right, I guess you didn't. Got a little carried away there, I'll try to refocus. The Jenga that I have in mind is just a party game, so I can't imagine someone practising it."

"I'll have you know that there are World Jenga Championships."

"I see. Out of curiosity, how exactly do you get better or worse at that game?"

"Precision and a solid understanding of architectural theory."

"Sure. So anyway-"

"Arghhh!"

"Ikuno?"

Through the phone's speaker I heard what only could have been described as a pandemonium of crashes, with Ikuno's distressed yells mixed in, before the call suddenly out

"Ikuno!?"

I felt as though I was caught in an endless bog of dread. Just what could have happened? Did the roof collapse? Was there a gas leak? Maybe a meteor suddenly hit Tracen! Just as I was thinking about the quickest route back to make sure that everyone was still alive, my panic was cut off by my phone ringing again. It was Ikuno's number.

"Ikuno! Are you alive?"

"Exactly how would I be calling you if I wasn't?"

"It sounded like you died just now, though."

"...The tower I was building fell on top of me."

"...Oh."

"It seems like my experiment was a failure."

"What were you experimenting with?"

"A new technique. A way to remove all three blocks from a row without the tower collapsing."

"Is that possible?"

"If it is, then I'll become undefeatable. So all I have to do is find out how."

"Well, good luck with that. You probably shouldn't try to unlock secret game techniques while on the phone with someone, though."

"You're the one who called me. I still haven't gotten to ask, what do you need? I assume this call wasn't solely for the purpose of distracting me from my Jenga practice."

"Right, all the Jenga talk did make me forget. I wanted to ask you about how to pronounce a name. I'm really stuck on it, see?"

"Hm. So what is it?"

"It's-"

I paused. How was I going to ask her how to say it when I couldn't say the name myself? Somehow I had failed to even once consider even with all the time that detour conversation about Jenga had given me.

"I'll call you back in a second."

Before Ikuno could respond, I hung up.

I fumbled around in my pockets for one of the pieces of paper the president had given me, while using my other hand to send a message using my phone.

About ten seconds after sending it, I decided to call again. She wasted no time in picking up.

"You could have just read it letter by letter over the phone." Was the first thing she told me.

"I guess I could've. It just seemed easier this way."

"So she's one of the girls that you're looking into?"

"Of course you'd know her."

"She's a triple crown horse girl. Shouldn't that alone make her common knowledge?"

"You say that, but I'm not even sure who all the triple crowns and triple tiaras are. The only one I know is the president."

"I see."

"You sound kind of disappointed, so I'll just move on. So what's up with that name?"

"It's French."

"You know French?"

"Only a bit."

By her standards, that probably meant she was more fluent than a native speaker.

"You really know everything, don't you Ikuno?"

"I don't know everything, I just know what I know."

That sounded like a very well rehearsed line, as though she'd been waiting years to use that response. I decided that I couldn't waste any more time questioning things like that.

"So what's up with the name?"

"It's the word for goldsmith."

"Oh, okay. Now for the moment that everyone's been waiting for. The thing that everything's been building to. The only reason that I called you. How am I meant to pronounce it?"

"Our-feh-ver."

I tried sounding it for myself.

"Ouruhfevreh?"

"No, no. Our. Feh. Ver."

"Ourufever?"

"That's pretty close."

"Ourfever?"

"What do you want?"

That voice didn't come from the phone, but from somewhere close to me. I glanced upwards, seeing the one speaking to me.

Chestnut hair. Purple eyes. A ribbon of the same colour on her right ear.

And of course, she was wearing a face mask.

I recognised her.

She was one of the girls that I was tasked with finding out more about.
She was one of Japan's triple crown horse girls.
She was called the golden tyrant.

It was Orfevre.

"Hey, answer me. Wouldn't you be weirded out if someone was standing around in a random place repeatedly saying your name? It's just baffling. Hurry up and spit it out."

"What's going on? Ms. Nature?"

"Sorry, I'll have to call you back."

This is the end of the chapter. The author's note starts here.

Hey. Surprised to see me back so soon? Maybe it's been too long from your perspective if you're not familiar with how slowly I write. Or maybe it's been no time at all for those of you reading it all at once.

I wouldn't know whether or not anyone is reading this anyway, since views have been broken on here since before I uploaded the first chapter.

"Didn't you say that you'd post in batches from now on?"
You may ask, seeing that I only uploaded one chapter this time. To answer that let's talk about the stages of grief that I've been going through lately. Not in response to any kind of death, but something far more important.

Horse girls.

Shortly after publishing the first chapter of this the first ep of season 3 aired and people reacted to Duramente showing up like it was a character being revealed for Smash Bros. I thought that was cool. I really like her now even if she still has yet to say a single line as of the time of writing. But the gate being opened for Sunday Racing horses provided a bit of a problem for me, who wanted to write a story starring at least one character that disappeared because CyGames either lost or couldn't get the rights to Sunday Racing horses.

The solution that I settled on was "There's no way they're going to reveal Orfevre that soon after Duramente, right? It'll be at 3rd anni at least. She gets the most fanart of all of the horses that got sent to the shadow realm, so it'd be a big enough deal to save it for that."

Well, we don't know if I'm wrong yet. But while I rationalised that in my head, I thought it'd be a good idea to throw the first chapter of this arc out there ahead of the rest as a sort of way of staking my claim just in case they did reveal her during season 3.
Oh, and just to be clear I'd had the idea of ending the first chapter on her showing up, I didn't change my plan on what is going in which chapter just to fit around that.

I almost always write things in the order they're read and this was no exception, so I hope that you understand how painful it was to have gotten up to the part where Nature decides to call Ikuno by the day that episode 3 aired.

So anyway, we've probably got a while until the real Orfevre gets shown off, right? At least I hope so.

Since I feel like saying that will lead to me being proven wrong before I can finish this arc off, I'm just going to add some more future proofing. The Orfevre presented in this story is entirely derived from the Orfevre shown for a few seconds of the original 2016 trailer for this game. I tried to go a bit off course on purpose with this depiction, so I have no doubt that in-game Orfevre will be an entirely different character.

She might not even have a mask. Could you imagine that? I can't.

As a tangent, it's kind of nice to have a problem that no one else has ever experienced and no one will experience after you. It also confirmed my long-held suspicion that the world revolves solely around its spite for me, which is pretty nice to know.

I'm also really enjoying how Nature has seemingly stolen the role that I thought either Teio or Bakushin would be taking in season 3.

I saw someone compare Teio in season 3 to Amuro in Zeta, so doesn't that make Nature the Char of this comparison? I'm not going to worry about the details and say that this means that Teio and Nature need a scene that's at least half or a third as homoerotic as that one scene where Char and Amuro share drinks.

They were drinking fake draft beers all throughout ep 3, so it's possible.
All signs point to this. I need this. The world needs this.
If they don't do it then I will.