“Come on, red seven!” Kimihito called and set his chips on the table.
“Oho? Sure you wanna make a straight-up bet like that?” Lilith asked.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Kii said.
“Huh?” Kimihito didn’t really know the rules of roulette, but it seemed like his instinct was already guiding him wrong.
Before he could take it back, Lilith rang the bell. “No more bets! ☆ Here goes the wheel!” She spun the roulette wheel and rolled the white ball in the opposite direction. It gradually decelerated until it settled in one of the pockets with a clunk. “That’s rouge eighteen! Your chips’re mine, Mister! ☆”
“Ugh.” They’d just started and he’d immediately had a huge loss.
“I bet on red. I win,” said Kii, collecting her chips.
It was time Kimihito accepted that he was totally, utterly, completely unsuited for gambling. He had the worst luck. “So you don’t just…bet which spot it’s going to land on,” he said.
“There’s lots of ways to bet. Rouge or noir? Evens or odds? Maybe three specific numbers? You’ve gotta get with the rhythm of the table, though,” Lilith said. “Play again, Mister?”
He could tell this would be a miserably steep learning curve. “N-no, I think I’ll leave it there.”
“Aw, and here I was, about to hypnotize you and make you bet all your money. ☆” Lilith said with a chuckle.
As a demon, Lilith had hypnosis in her bag of liminal tricks. She had, in fact, hypnotized Kimihito in the past. He’d been told by Doppel afterwards that his actions hadn’t been quite right. It turned out Lilith had commanded him to “be true to himself,” and he’d become more serious as a result. If she hypnotized him to steal his money, though, that would be more of a problem. He’d probably leave the casino immediately in protest.
“Hey, no hypnotizing the customers,” Kii chided.
“C’mon! It was just a joke. Kimihito’s too much of a pushover to be worth hypnotizing anyway.”
“True.”
Gee, thanks. It was depressing that they thought he was so weak. Though he had lost all his chips to them, so at least for today, he couldn’t prove otherwise.
“I had fun here! ☆” Lilith said, “Did you have fun, Mister?”
“I learned a valuable lesson—I’m bad at gambling,” Kimihito said.
“And knowing is half the battle! Maybe it’s best if you stay away. Besides, if I run into you here, there’s not much I can do to you.” She grinned and showed her sharp, demonic teeth.
Kii sighed. “I suppose you’re done here?”
“Yeah, but, uh—where’s Polt gone?” Kimihito asked.
“I believe she went to deal with a shipment that just came in—a new outfit for Draco.”
Kimihito tilted his head. He’d tried a few games and used most of his chips; it felt like the right moment to leave. If he stayed much longer, Miia and the others would start to worry.
A desperate scream reverberated throughout the casino. “That’s ridiculous! Who would make something like this?”
“Draco, this is a brand-new style—it’s the on-trend, up-to-the-minute type of bunny girl costume!”
“I’m not sure it even qualifies as an outfit!” Draco shouted. “Gimme a freakin’ break!”
Kimihito turned toward the commotion, curious what Draco was shouting about.
“Seriously! Clothes are supposed to have fabric!”
“According to our research, casinos around the globe are moving toward this kind of minimal look!” Polt said.
“I don’t know who sold you this garbage, but they’re ripping you off!” Draco folded her arms over herself.
Unlike the swimsuit-style bunny girl costumes everyone else wore, this outfit was barely pasties and panties—it consisted of a heart on each breast and a larger one over the crotch. As if to make up for how much of the torso it exposed, the arms and legs were fully covered in opera-style gloves and opaque tights.
This was the advanced version of the bunny girl costume: the reverse bunny girl costume. And Draco was, begrudgingly, wearing it.
“Draco, where’d you get—” Kimihito started.
“Shut up! Don’t look at me! Polt asked me to try the new outfit—turns out, it’s not an outfit at all!”
Yet you put it on and walked out in it…
“Didn’t you think about that before trying it on?” Lilith saved him from speaking his mind.
“I put the arms and the legs on, and by the time I realized, it was too late!”
“Just go change, Draco,” Polt said.
The outfit was so sexy it made Kimihito light-headed. And Draco was too busy complaining to go back to the break room and change.
Polt was clearly having some buyer’s remorse now that she was being confronted about the purchase. “Ehh…”
Kimihito felt a drip from his nose.
“Hey. Human.” Kii pointed at a spot of blood on the ground. As she did, another fell beside it, dripping like a broken tap. “You’re bleeding.”
“Wh—oh no,” Kimihito said, leaning forward to look.
“Ooh! Who’s a naughty boy?” Lilith teased.
He was nervous about getting blood on his clothes, but he didn’t know what to do.
“Uh oh! Where’s the first aid kit?” Polt asked.
“Ugh, don’t get excited! As if I’d ever want a man to feel like that about me!” Draco snapped.
“Then why…haven’t…you taken…the outfit off?!” Even Polt was at the end of her rope. The floor was loud and busy as they all got upset at each other.
Unable to move, Kimihito wavered in place, forcing Polt to take the initiative. She hoisted him into her arms with surprising strength and, ignoring the other girls, carried him away.