The Swindler, the Vanishing Man, and the Pretty Boys

30. Invisible

Nearly thirty minutes had passed since the blackjack game between Fudatsuki (in formal dress) and Sotoin (in a dress) began─yet the kuroko still hadn’t appeared on stage.

The only two people on stage were the players─and no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t see a third party trying to interfere.

Wait, no, don’t panic, I told myself─because if I got upset, I wouldn’t be able to see what I needed to see.

But my eyesight isn’t like that. I can’t arbitrarily switch it from on to off or high to low─since my brain can’t control it, I even see things I’m not trying to see, and things I don’t want to see.

Which meant that if anyone else was on stage, I should have been able to see them whether I wanted to or not─so what was going on?

Was the kuroko still lurking in the wings?

Waiting for some kind of cue?

But…how could they be so blasé about this? For Fudatsuki, everything was at stake. This was hardly the time to keep an ace up his sleeve, to display his “playful spirit”─plus, with the whole audience watching, now seemed the perfect moment to test out the invisibility suit.

I mean, if he didn’t test it out now, you could almost accuse him of falling down on the job.

“…What’s the matter, Ms. Dojima?” Sakiguchi asked in a concerned tone, sauntering over to my side like one employee chatting idly to another.

It was rough to have the guy with the worrisome dating preferences worrying about me, but I managed to hiss back, “I-I think they might have caught on!”─referring, of course, to my eyesight, and not his dating preferences.

“Indeed, Fudatsuki may not be using the kuroko at present because he fears we will see through his scam…”

Did that mean he’d been wise to our disguises from the start? Here we thought we were being so sly, but maybe he’d merely been doling out rope for us to hang ourselves with.

In that case, Sotoin on stage in his dress, Mr. Bare-Legs in the long pants he hated so much, and most of all me in my bunny outfit, were all truly disgracing ourselves─we were already swinging from the gallows.

“Hmm… You know, this could actually be a positive development. If Fudatsuki doesn’t use his dirty tricks, then our leader will be able to take him on fair and square…”

That was one way of looking at it, I suppose (if you weren’t wearing a bunny outfit, that is).

If I used my eyesight to boot, the match wouldn’t just be fair, it would be tilted in Sotoin’s favor, but that would probably violate the leader’s aesthetic.

It sounds weird, but I felt like we could only play dirty if our opponent did us the favor of playing dirty too─as long as I didn’t see the kuroko, I couldn’t signal Sotoin about Fudatsuki’s cards.

Which meant the outcome of this game rested entirely on luck.

A fair fight.

“Wonder how this’ll play out. There’s a sort of flow to gambling, ya know…”

Was the weak player saying something?

Flow, huh? The only thing that flows is your money, out of your wallet.

Anyway, it was too soon to tell─Fudatsuki might still be getting the lay of the land, and the kuroko could appear at any moment.

I watched the game unfold, unable to squelch my anxiety─the audience was even more excited than when Sakiguchi had been on stage, but I felt even less able to share in the mood.

Wishing I could sooth my unease even a little, I watched the game more attentively than all the guests who’d staked their cash on it─although aggressively might be a better word than attentively. In any case, my emotions had no effect whatsoever on my eyesight.

I couldn’t see what couldn’t be seen.

But even though I didn’t know the rules, scrutinizing the game this seriously did give me a sense of how the match was playing out─and it was an exquisite back-and-forth.

Almost as if they were following a script.

A tug of war seemingly directed by an unseen hand.

As exciting as if it had been made to order for the audience─

“You really don’t see anything, Ms. Dojima?” Sakiguchi asked.

Repeating the question could not turn the invisible visible─and yet, the arc of the game seemed impossible without the involvement of the kuroko.

What was going on?

I could think of only one answer─the kuroko was on stage, but was somehow invisible even to me.

“…”

As my thoughts became more and more confused, I kept trying to think─to deduce.

Could the kuroko’s black clothes have been upgraded in the space of just a few hours? Or perhaps my eyes had just gotten tired? Up till now my eyes had felt like nothing more than an obstacle to my dreams, but now I feared more than anything in the world that they’d given out on me.

Just when I finally thought I’d be able to use my eyesight for a just cause─or if not just, at least beautiful─things had taken this terrible turn.

Calm down. Calm down.

If Fudatsuki was one step ahead of us and had figured out a way to somehow undermine our investigation, what could it possibly be?

“I don’t like the look of this… I’m certain Fudatsuki is biding his time, planning to snatch back all the chips at the last second,” muttered Sakiguchi, who had fallen into just such a trap himself. But he didn’t seem to have a plan to get around it─and it goes without saying that the delinquent didn’t either.

As for Mr. Bare-Legs, by this point he was completely useless.

Mr. Bare-Legs without his bare legs was as ineffective as me without my special eyesight.

What was Fudatsuki doing?

How had he managed to evade my eyes?

How…

“Ha ha ha!”

Just as I was about to hang my head in frustrated despair─that is, just as I was about to give up on looking, it happened.

As I went to turn my eyes from the stage like I’d turned them away from the sky, that loud laugh rang out─loud enough that it echoed across the hall, silencing the raucous crowd.

Needless to say, it came from Sotoin.

Given the hearty belly laugh coming from the seemingly delicate, elegant girl on the stage, it was no surprise that the audience fell silent as if they’d been doused with ice water, but Sotoin himself appeared not to care in the least.

To the contrary, he─or rather she─continued laughing loudly.

“…What do you find so amusing?”

Fudatsuki must have been upset that his opponent had turned the excited mood of the audience sour just like that, but apparently he still felt he had to play the attentive manager.

“Oh, nothing. It’s just that I find myself in a tight spot! And since a fellow like me shines most beautifully in just such moments, I couldn’t help but be stunned by my own radiance!”

“…”

Fudatsuki’s expression tensed at this mystifying speech, topped off by the beautiful girl across the table referring to herself as a “fellow”─but he was still the president of the student council, and a businessman, and a con artist to boot.

“You seem to have quite the passion for beauty,” he countered─putting on a supremely relaxed front.

Although he was probably the one who felt stunned.

I ground my teeth in frustration at being able to see his face so clearly, but nothing more.

“But, young lady, if you let superficial beauty distract you completely, you’re sure to lose your footing. Saint-Exupéry wrote, ‘What is essential is invisible to the eye’─and the same holds for beauty, I am sure.”

Real beauty is as invisible as air, he pronounced shamelessly.

But at his words, the audience erupted once again─Sotoin, who had enjoyed the audience’s favor as a beautiful girl, had managed to turn even them against him.

But she, which is to say he, seemed completely undaunted by that fact.

“I will never lose my footing. To the contrary, it is feet, or rather legs, that are so often my salvation. I’m familiar with Saint-Exupéry myself, you see, and I could see that beautiful passage perfectly well. ‘What is essential is invisible to the eye’ was written there in black and white. And seeing those words, I was most impressed by them.”

“…”

“Nothing truly beautiful is invisible─be it on the outside or the inside, the written word or the air itself, I am sure to see it. No matter how blinding, I never turn my eyes away from that which glitters!”

And he wasn’t done.

“My dear Fudatsuki, if even your lies are beautiful, then I will do you the service of bearing witness to them in all their glory!”

It was quite a declaration─of war.

Naturally, the audience did not erupt as before─though the sound of four pairs of hands clapping brazenly did echo through the gymnasium.

I knew who they belonged to without needing to look.

It was like we were being shown a beauty that did not collapse under the pressure of the atmosphere, the air, in the hall─but that only served to make the situation more dangerous than it had been a few moments earlier.

Worst-case scenario, if Sotoin had ended up losing, we could have returned the following week to try some other strategy, but now that option was totally kaput─Sotoin and the four boys who had clapped for him would definitely be banned from the casino.

We had to finish this thing here and now.

In the face of such a challenging challenger, Fudatsuki abandoned his polite front and simply glared silently at the pretty girl as they played─apparently, he was done with fun and games, and was just as intent on settling the matter as we were.

Dammit.

Think. Think. Thinkthinkthinkthinkthink!

Fudatsuki’s words left no question in my mind that he was somehow using the invisibility suit─using it to control the flow of the match.

But why couldn’t I see anything?

What was I overlooking?

What could I see─and what could I not see?

A moment ago, when I could no longer stand the pressure and had started to turn my eyes away from the stage, they’d been pulled back by Sotoin’s voice─by his aesthetic… Come to think of it, I’m the kind of person who turns her eyes away from a lot of things.

What did I need to face?

I knew the answer already: myself.

The thing I needed to look at was myself. That’s why I’d joined the Pretty Boy Detective Club, because I wanted to work alongside a leader who’d said my eyes were beautiful.

Mayumi the Seer, she of the beautiful eyes. He’d called me that. Was that who I was?

Yes, in part─that might be my strength, maybe even my beauty, but it was also my weakness, my fault, the source of my feelings of inferiority.

Then what were my other weaknesses and faults? What else did I feel inferior about?

The self I didn’t want to see…

The self I ignored like empty air.

“…”

I faced myself in my bunny suit. What the hell was I doing? But that didn’t matter right now─if I took a step back, it wasn’t that weird to be wearing a bunny suit in a casino. It was like wearing a swimsuit at the pool. That didn’t change even if I looked at the situation with my too-good eyes─so what was weird about this situation?

It was obvious.

The fact that here I was in a casino even though I knew essentially nothing about the rules of the games. Not poker, not roulette, not baccarat, not the slot machines─and not even blackjack. I didn’t know any of the rules.

Now that was extremely weird.

From an objective perspective, I was so out of place that I had to ask myself what the hell I was doing there. But I hadn’t─I hadn’t faced up to that part of myself.

I hadn’t even made an attempt to learn the rules.

Even if Sotoin hadn’t banned me from playing, I’m sure I would have messed around for a few minutes and then given up, telling myself it was boring.

But it was only boring because I was illiterate when it came to gambling─just like you can’t watch some movies without a certain level of education, and you can’t enjoy some novels without knowing the context, and you can’t understand some works of modern art unless you see them with your own eyes.

Certain scenes can’t be seen without the right knowledge.

Certain things can’t be seen even if they’re in plain sight.

Just like you wouldn’t realize you were surrounded by air unless you knew air existed─yes, it was that simple.

What if the problem wasn’t that I wasn’t seeing it?

What if I was seeing it, but not realizing I was─

“Sakiguchi, this might be a stupid question, but…”

If someone had informed Fudatsuki about the bunny girl who had been helping Sotoin at the blackjack table earlier─if he had found out about my eyesight at that point, found out who I really was, then naturally he would’ve also found out how faltering my attempts at assistance had been, and how little I knew about the game.

And if he knew who I was, well then, I guess our little game of Othello in the lounge had shown him just how little I knew about games in general.

So to get around the too-good eyesight of an ignorant girl, all he had to do was use a strategy so obvious that anyone else in the place would have seen it immediately─

“Is there a rule in blackjack that says the dealer gets to trade in cards in the middle of the game, but the other players don’t?”