Noritoshi Kamo stood in the center of the battlefield, looking down at the bow in his hands, already broken in two.
"Its power is underwhelming, it takes forever to wind up, and you need both hands to draw it. You have to take arrows out of a quiver, it's slow to reload, and drawing it even drains your stamina. Other than showing off, I can't think of any reason you'd use this thing." Akutagawa Shang counted on his fingers, endlessly listing the drawbacks of bows and arrows.
"Why don't you use a gun? Getting one should be easy for a young master of the Kamo Clan, right? Besides, it's not like nobody on your side uses guns."
Mai, who had inexplicably been singled out below the stage, felt the gazes turning toward her and spoke with a speechless look.
"What are you looking at me for? What does this have to do with me?"
Yet when Noritoshi Kamo heard this onstage, he seemed to have been provoked. He immediately shouted back at Akutagawa Shang, his expression highly agitated.
"Enough..."
Everything he insisted on-fighting with an old-fashioned bow and arrows, wearing the traditional kariginu of the Three Great Families, and keeping his hair long in the traditional style-was all for those old fossils back home to see, solely to make himself look more like the heir who would become the next head of one of the Three Great Families.
Noritoshi Kamo had been born into the Kamo Clan, one of the Three Great Families, but many people did not know that, despite being the clan's heir, he had not originally been a son of the principal wife.
His mother had been nothing more than a concubine in the clan. Harboring resentment toward the Kamo Clan, she had deliberately named him Noritoshi