The Swindler, the Vanishing Man, and the Pretty Boys

13. Let the Games Begin

She could say what she wanted, but I was a gloomy girl whose sole nighttime activity up till now had been stargazing─and I didn’t have the faintest idea how I should act now that I’d been tossed into a casino.

The boys, however, were another story.

“Well, no point in standing around watching. I say we play some games and collect intel from the people around the tables. Everyone good with that?”

“Right. Play some games, that sounds good.”

“Please make sure you actually gather some information, Hyota. Don’t forget our real mission here.”

“Ha ha ha! Let your wagers showcase the beauty of your aesthetic, lads! We revel in beauty that we may revel beautifully! The games are afoot!”

With that, they split up and swung into action─although the child genius was already in line at the purchase booth.

He hadn’t broken into an impromptu celebratory dance number, but I suspect that as an artist, he may have been even more interested in the organization that produced those counterfeit bills than the rest of us.

The chips started at one hundred yen.

That may sound like small change in this era when a hundred yen can hardly buy a can of soda, but it was a pretty hefty minimum bet.

If you think of a hundred yen as roughly one dollar, that comes to around the same price as the cheapest chips in Las Vegas─in other words, the rates were as authentic as the setting, which was enough to sweep away any lingering sense that I was attending an event in a middle school gym.

The same was obvious from observing the skill of the dealers─not a dropped card or poorly tossed roulette ball was to be seen.

Not that I know anything about professional card dealers, but these people definitely seemed like pros─and like the bunny girl who had welcomed us at the door, all the staff appeared to be both good at their jobs and very enthusiastic. Whoever was running this place had clearly poured money into more than just the hardware.

It truly was true to life.

Anyhow, the maskless pretty boys headed off to exchange a thousand yen each, for starters─which gave them each ten chips.

“Uh…”

I guess they could write it off as an operating expense, but seeing real money in play gave me pause.

I’d picked up that counterfeit money Mr. Businessman had dropped, and now five thousand yen was circulating in the world.

If this was a scam, it was an insanely elaborate one, and the scammers clearly didn’t care about the cost-performance ratio. But nevertheless, we’d just lost five thousand yen─that is, five thousand yen that we might or might not win back had just vanished into thin air.

I felt vaguely like I’d fallen for a hustle, but I wasn’t at all sure the hustler was profiting off this─or if there even was a “hustler.”

Since we had no choice but to investigate this place if we wanted to find out, though, I suppose my fellow members were acting appropriately─and I figured I’d better follow suit by getting my own thousand yen’s worth of chips. But…

“No, young Dojima,” the leader notified me. “Tonight, you’ll be observing.”

Huh? Observing?

Was he honestly going to give me a moralistic lecture about gambling while I was still in middle school? Wasn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?

“Oh no, I very much want you to enjoy yourself. But being Mayumi the Seer, I’m afraid that whatever game you might play, your eyesight would amount to a violation of the rules. Considering you can see right through the spin of the slot machines and roulette wheels, the roll of the dice, even the backs of cards, betting money at a casino is going to be a bit problematic.”

“Oh…”

He was so right that I didn’t have anything to say.

Playing for fun would be bad enough, but playing for money was clearly out of the question─an excuse like “I can’t use my superhuman vision with my glasses on” probably wouldn’t hold much water beyond my own circle of friends.

Guess this elementary school Kogoro Akechi does occasionally say sensible things, as if they just popped into his head.

But then, why even bring me?

I’d rather be holding down the fort.

Well, I suppose I did come along voluntarily so I could keep an eye on the activities of the Pretty Boy Detective Club, so it didn’t make much sense to complain. And I’d gotten swept up by the atmosphere and accidentally shown a little enthusiasm, but once I cleared my head, I remembered that I don’t even like this sort of game in the first place.

I don’t play games on my smartphone (I don’t even have a smartphone), but that doesn’t mean I have some special fondness for low-tech games. The truth is, I didn’t even know the rules to most─which is to say basically any─of the games lined up in that casino.

So maybe observer was the perfect role for me.

As guardian of the Pretty Boy Detective Club (ah, what an illustrious title), I must devote myself to watching over them. I tucked the thousand-yen bill back into my wallet.

At least I’d avoided wasting money.

Also, I was curious to see what sort of elegant behavior the five pretty boys would display in this kind of place─each had his own special skill, from aesthetic judgement and oration to beautiful legs, gourmet cooking, and artistic talent, but whether any of those skills were useful for gambling was an open question─ultimately, they were supposed to be collecting information, but how would they join in the fun here?

I realized I’d probably stick out if I just stood there not at least pretending to enjoy myself, so I started strolling around the hall─with a (wine) glass of orange juice I’d gotten from a bunny girl in hand.

“Oh geez!” I blurted out.

While I was wandering around enjoying for just a moment the feeling of being at a resort, our leader had sat down at a blackjack table─blackjack of all things!

He liked the tough stuff, apparently.

I’m not one to talk, but did he even know the rules?

Sometimes I almost forget because of his grandiose attitude, but the leader is still very much a fifth grader, so when he sits in a chair like that his feet aren’t anywhere near the ground. He looked a little ridiculous, but at the same time he didn’t seem out of place.

His behavior was very grown-up, or rather, gentlemanly.

He seemed to be not so much playing the game as relishing it.

In that sense, blackjack did seem to suit him─though to me, Black Jack would always be the name of a doctor.

At the next table over, Vice President Sakiguchi was playing poker.

Poker I do know a little bit about. That is, I know some of the hands, but not all the rules… And I’d heard the Japanese rules were different from the rules everywhere else anyway.

The notion that the rules we know basically only amount to house rules was vaguely depressing, but that aside, it seemed like a fitting game for Sakiguchi.

Whatever rules they were playing by, the literal poker face of the student council president, who had used his eloquent bluffing skills to combat a criminal organization during our last case, was definitely suited to poker─plus, an erudite fellow like him probably knew all the international rules anyway.

The person I was really worried about was Mr. Bare-Legs, who seemed liable to get so caught up in enjoying himself that he’d forget all about the mission… And there he was, glued to the roulette wheel.

Roulette just might be the simplest game to understand at a casino─all you have to do is place your bets. Even I could handle that. Still, there must be some trick or method to it, and I suspected Mr. Bare-Legs had even less of a grasp of the game than I did; honestly, it looked like he was just throwing his chips down pretty much at random.

I guess that’s one way to play, and it’s kind of cute, even─but just as I was feeling charmed by young Hyota’s artless innocence, I looked a little closer and realized his actions weren’t so cute after all.

He wasn’t placing bets randomly, he was betting against the crowd─every single time, he placed his chips on the opposite of the color or numbers the other players chose.

Oh man…

I’d hate it if someone did that to me…

Apparently he wasn’t so much betting to win as amusing himself by sowing chaos around the wheel and upsetting the other players─yes, that angelic face of his just might be hiding the most devilish personality of all the Pretty Boys.

But one thing that watching him─and Sotoin and Sakiguchi as well─made abundantly clear was that casinos aren’t just about the interaction between dealer and player, or house and guest, if you will─the other strangers at the table are also an indispensable element of the game.

The air was thick with the desire to win big in front of everyone, or to bet more than anyone else─to me, everyone seemed at least as concerned with how other people saw them as they were with winning.

They were playing.

I suppose not that many people genuinely dream of winning big at gambling─which meant Mr. Bare-Legs’ style of play wouldn’t be so unusual, if only he didn’t take it so far.

As for the ill-tempered delinquent, I was certain he must be having a ball in this sort of venue, but when I finally spotted him, he was backing away from the baccarat table.

Baccarat… Um, what kind of game was that again?

Blackjack and poker were bad enough, but baccarat? All that name meant to me was a fancy brand of crystal.

Did it have something to do with betting on whether the number would be big or small?

The game seemed to have just ended, so I started walking toward Fukuroi to ask about it, but then made an abrupt U-turn.

His expression was brutally fierce.

Michiru Fukuroi was striding toward the purchase booth looking every inch the bossman, his mouth a tight line and an obvious chip on his shoulder about what I could only guess was a recent loss of chips.

He looked like a wild beast.

“…”

Even though he’d been playing for less than ten minutes, he already seemed to have run through his thousand yen─which meant he’d suffered the picture-perfect loss of a hundred yen per minute.

From behind, he was somehow both totally unapproachable and the veritable embodiment of defeat─and he looked ready to spend the rest of his cash on more chips so he could wreak his revenge.

From my perspective, his indomitable spirit was admirable, but from the casino’s, he probably just looked like an easy mark.

As a friend, I wanted to warn him to quit, to say that if he knew the rules of baccarat then he should also learn the one about cutting one’s losses, but sorry, I was way too scared.

To tell the truth, just the sight of him walking away like that was enough to make me want to give up on being his friend entirely.

Actually, we might be members of the same club, but we weren’t really friends yet─and with that thought in mind, I hurried away from the dangerous individual.

Plotting unscrupulously to gain the upper hand in our relationship by comforting him once he’d run through all his money and ended up penniless, I looked around for the last member of the club: the child genius. That guy’s good at disappearing, and once you lose sight of him, it can be tough to find him again.

Just when I’d started to consider taking off my glasses to search for him, I spotted him sitting in front of a slot machine─slots, huh?

Unlike the table games, with slots you don’t have to compete with a dealer, let alone interact with the other guests.

It’s a completely solitary pursuit, the machine itself your only opponent.

Kind of like a video game─except that these days, even video games connect you to other players online.

What can I say?

Basically, this kid likes to be by himself, I guess─he’s the acting director of a massive foundation for crying out loud, but no matter how bursting with talent he might be, the role is definitely a bad fit on a personal level.

Throwing pottery, drawing pictures, hell, turning gloomy girls into pretty boys─those are much more to his liking… When you think about it, having a gift can really be a burden.

Same goes for my eyes.

Maybe that’s part of the reason a guy with such an outstanding résumé belongs to an obscure organization like the Pretty Boy Detective Club─in which case, presumptuous as it may sound, maybe Yubiwa and I are actually two of a kind, despite seeming to have nothing whatsoever in common on the surface.

Boy, that really does sound presumptuous, doesn’t it.

…But the genius of the child genius didn’t seem very well suited to gambling, and as I watched him at the slots, he didn’t achieve anything worth mentioning: some wins, some losses, just about breaking even, by the looks of it.

I hear that kind of game is designed to be balanced, so basically no one wins big or loses big─apparently, the ideal for the casino is that everyone ends up losing a little bit of money.

Even the guests who lose should go home happy.

As far as I could tell, the Reasonable Doubt had achieved that ideal to some extent─although of course there’s the occasional delinquent bossman who ends up throwing away everything he has.

Yeah.

How do I put this? From what I could tell, it all seemed above board─I didn’t sense any villainous intent to swindle middle school kids out of every last penny of their allowance.

The guests and staff alike all seemed happy─to the point that the collective satisfaction was rather blinding.

The place felt like one big party.

Since this whole escapade had started with a wad of counterfeit cash, I’d felt scared before we got there, like I was about to enter the underbelly of society. In that sense, the reality was a letdown.

To me, coming to a flashy night spot like this felt like getting lost in a foreign land. I was so uncomfortable that part of me wanted to run away, but another part felt like if everyone else was having fun, what was the problem?

“...............................................................................................................................................”

But of course, this was all illegal, right?

The crime of gambling.

The crime of illegally operating a gaming house.

Those were serious violations of the law.

It was all so brazen that it was easy to forget, but if law enforcement showed up here, every last person would get busted.

Dealers and guests alike.

The bunny girls, too.

Management did take some precautions, like banning photography and handing out masks, but that felt perfunctory.

Another thing I’d noticed as I made the rounds was the presence of kids acting as plainclothes security (I say “plainclothes,” but of course they were very elegant), though I assume their job was to settle disputes between guests, not to keep out the authorities.

Hmm… It wasn’t really my business, but concern (or lack thereof) for the law aside, I couldn’t help being a little anxious about their lack of precautionary measures.

Or maybe it was my business, since after all, I was part of an undercover investigative team….

“Pardon me, but is everything alright?”

The sudden voice made me jump.