Agnes Tachyon was a little annoyed by the sudden appearance of Heir of the Sanctuary.
Heir of the Sanctuary absolutely loved the meals Seiun Ryoka made, and would come mooch off her whenever she got the chance. Tachyon thought she had excellent taste. She had a very high opinion of this horse girl, whose palate and nose were both remarkably sharp, and had even felt that the two of them might become very good friends.
After all, Agnes Tachyon also adored Seiun Ryoka's cooking. In fact, it was precisely because of that that she had come to the conclusion that Seiun would definitely make a wonderful wife.
But this girl also kept drifting toward Seiun Ryoka whenever she could. Tachyon's inner horse-girl radar immediately started blaring at full volume. This would not do. A certain horse girl needed to keep her distance from Seiun Ryoka.
Heir of the Sanctuary was also running in the St Leger, and had even given up her chance to compete in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe for it. In other words, she was Seiun Ryoka's rival—quite possibly her greatest rival in this race. And a rival, obviously, could not be wife material.
So Agnes Tachyon felt even more strongly that Heir of the Sanctuary needed to stay away from Seiun Ryoka.
That was what she thought, anyway. In practice, she did nothing.
First, because the relationship between her and Seiun Ryoka was still far too ambiguous—vague, blurry, undefined. Tachyon understood perfectly well that she had no standing whatsoever to demand that the two of them keep apart.
Second, because this Heir of the Sanctuary reminded her of Oguri Cap, who was currently dazzling Central. The two horse girls were equally huge eaters, equally airheaded, and equally prone to hovering around Seiun Ryoka. For all Tachyon knew, this girl didn't even understand why she kept gravitating toward Seiun. Maybe she simply wanted more delicious food. In any case, as long as the girl never clearly expressed any other intention, Tachyon could afford to stay still and watch.
So Agnes Tachyon sat quietly in the stands, observing the interaction between the two girls—and their training.
To be honest, there was a part of it she didn't understand.
Of course, what she didn't understand wasn't the training method itself. The sets the two girls were doing today were for improving stamina, endurance, and explosiveness. The volume was far above what ordinary horse girls would do, and the gains should, by all logic, have been fairly modest. That much was obvious at a glance.
Agnes Tachyon was a researcher. Of course she could read the structure and load of a training session. As for why she could say the gains should only have been modest, the answer was simple: Seiun Ryoka was already an incredibly powerful horse girl. At her level, ordinary daily training should only produce incremental improvements, slowly nudging up her ceiling. The actual gains ought to be hard to see.
And yet, when comparing yesterday and today, Tachyon noticed something astonishing.
Seiun Ryoka's improvement wasn't enormous—but it was visible with the naked eye.
That meant her potential, in every category, had not yet been fully developed. She still hadn't truly reached her own limit.
The moment that realization hit her, Agnes Tachyon's tail began wagging like a dog that had just realized its owner was home. What news could possibly be more exhilarating than this?
She couldn't think of anything. She only wanted to study Seiun Ryoka even more deeply.
Daiwa Scarlet held a sports drink, while the noblewoman held a towel, both of them calling for Seiun Ryoka to take a short break.
"That was incredible, Lady Seiun! Your training time just now was only a tiny bit short of the St Leger historical record!"
Neither girl wanted to say something like Seiun Ryoka has arrived in her loyal Greater London, but the facts were what they were. Without even using a Domain, Seiun Ryoka had nearly matched the historical record. If she did use a Domain, she'd probably set a terrifying mark that would leave future generations staring in cold sweat.
How could the two of them not be excited? They were practically fanatics.
"Ah, thanks. Though I don't really think it's that big a deal."
Seiun Ryoka offered a modest reply and let the noblewoman wipe her face.
At first, Ryoka had thought this sort of thing was just some ridiculous old-money fussiness and had told the noblewoman not to bother. But after a few repetitions, her thinking had quietly changed.
There was no helping it. The noblewoman was, after all, a gentle and graceful beauty with an absurdly good figure. Most people wouldn't be able to refuse that, right?
As for things like whether she could crack walnuts between her thighs or not, Seiun Ryoka knew nothing about that. She only knew that the noblewoman had a wonderful body, treated her very kindly, and felt soft all over whenever they came into contact. She rather liked that kind of noblewoman.
Maybe—just maybe—out of all the girls she fell for at first sight, this one would turn out to be the one she liked the most?
Watching the interaction between the three horse girls, Chihaya Yui smiled and sighed, her pretty brows practically drooping.
In the end, she could only think:
Well, they're all horse girls, and they all adore Little Song so much. Isn't that fine?
Seiun Ryoka chatted with the girls for a bit, then turned toward Heir of the Sanctuary, who was still hunched over and gasping for breath, and handed her a bottle of sports drink.
"There's no need to push yourself that hard, you know."
To spare the girl's feelings, she left unsaid the line that might have wounded her:
I'm going to win anyway.
That was because Seiun Ryoka had always been an exceptionally kind-hearted horse girl. She was always gentle with those she defeated. Really, none of her former opponents had ever had a bad word to say about her.
"Thanks, Seiun."
Heir of the Sanctuary didn't hesitate for even a moment. She took the drink and chugged it down in great gulps. Soon the bottle was empty.
Seiun Ryoka thoughtfully handed her a white towel, and Heir of the Sanctuary, again without a second thought, accepted it.
That casual exchange made the two Japanese horse girls intensely uneasy.
In their eyes, Seiun Ryoka's attitude toward Heir of the Sanctuary was far too good. It was starting to border on indulgent. Was that really okay?
Was it because Heir of the Sanctuary was such an airhead that Seiun Ryoka naturally treated her more gently?
Daiwa Scarlet and the noblewoman had both come from Central, and neither found that explanation convincing. Because in Heir of the Sanctuary, they saw the shadow of another horse girl:
Oguri Cap, the horse-girl idol who had shaken Central to its core.
To be fair, they didn't look alike. But both were enormous eaters, both were natural airheads, and both liked to drift toward Seiun Ryoka. It was genuinely hard not to make the comparison.
And then, of course, there was the fact that both Oguri Cap and Seiun Ryoka had come from Kasamatsu, and had once been fierce rivals there.
Maybe they had already felt a kind of mutual recognition back then.
So if Seiun Ryoka suddenly met a horse girl overseas who resembled Oguri Cap just a little…
Wouldn't it make sense for her to start treating Heir of the Sanctuary as a stand-in for Oguri Cap?
The two girls' thoughts became almost perfectly synchronized:
A substitute.
And from there, they immediately spiraled into a completely baseless chain of speculation.
Could the song Seiun Ryoka had sung in Australia—White Album—have actually been meant for Oguri Cap?
Think about it: the two of them were separated by thousands of miles, each fighting for her own dream. Didn't that line up perfectly with the lyrics?
And if you kept following that line of thought…
Wouldn't Seiun Ryoka casually using a substitute suddenly make perfect sense?
join here to read ahead.
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