"More than thirty times already, Miss White Wolf."
Hoshino shook her head regretfully. "There's a Yan Kingdom saying: one burst of effort, then decline, then exhaustion. Once the same thing has failed three times, the odds of success become especially slim. You've already tried more than thirty times."
"..."
Lappland felt herself being released, but she did not immediately get to her feet. Instead, she calmly assessed the balance of power between them.
From the very beginning, she had been the one getting toyed with.
"Don't look so despairing. It doesn't suit the White Wolf I remember at all... Then again, Texas probably never played with you like this. Maybe only when someone pushes you away with a look of disgust do you find the motivation to keep playing?"
"Are you humiliating me?"
"That wasn't quite what I meant, but you looked like you were having a great time with Texas. Yet when it's me, you make that face. It's hard not to read into it."
Hoshino sat down, looking completely defenseless.
Lappland did not take the bait.
She sat down as well.
"What exactly do you want me to do... Get lost!"
Hoshino shook her head, suddenly putting on a disgusted expression. "Do you like this kind of play?"
"I'm hunting you down!"
Lappland really was hunting her down. The wolf head she had personally drawn in chalk still remained on the open ground outside the inn. This was a bloodstained grudge; every attempt on Hoshino's life had been made with all her strength. Yet under the shrine maiden's overwhelming martial prowess, the whole thing had somehow begun to resemble flirtatious banter.
What the hell was this?
"You cannot deny me, because between us, I am the stronger one. Isn't that your way of survival?"
Hoshino once again adopted