The members of the Pretty Boy Detective Club may have shone brightly in their somewhat formal dress, but I’d hardly say they blended into the shadows in the staff uniforms the child genius threw together so skillfully at the last minute.
Sakiguchi and the child genius were dealers, Mr. Bare-Legs was a security guard, and the delinquent was a bartender.
As for me, well, I was a bunny girl.
Seriously?
I was astounded that in the space of a month my gloomy old self had become stylish enough to pull off a bunny outfit, but the situation was unavoidable in at least two ways.
First, I’d already made one trip to the casino dressed as a boy─which meant that taking off my disguise paradoxically amounted to putting one on. Second, while the Reasonable Doubt did have some female dealers, I could hardly pretend to be one without knowing the rules─which left me with bunny girl (since security guard was clearly out of the question).
I’d joined the Pretty Boy Detective Club by dressing as a boy, and now I was disguising myself as a bunny girl, which was all topsy-turvy and left me with a confusing feeling, but the second reason was possibly even more important than the first.
If the leader was going on stage dressed as a girl, then as his subordinate, I couldn’t very well complain about having to dress as one, too─yes.
Just as he’d done the last time we tangled with the Twenties, Sotoin was for a second time preparing to transform from a pretty boy into a pretty girl for the sake of his detective work.
Actually, the costume artist was so efficient at enabling his transformation that I couldn’t help thinking this wasn’t just the second time─in fact, he seemed to have a much harder time turning me into a bunny girl (sorry!).
Meanwhile, Mr. Bare-Legs was engaged in his own internal struggle─because naturally, the casino staff all wore long pants. Of course, he could expose his vaunted legs if he dressed as a bunny girl and skipped the stockings, which meant he was stuck with a choice: dress as a girl or wear long pants.
“D-Damn it… Give me the l-l-long pants…”
Is it really that big a deal?
From what I could tell, he hated the idea of dressing as a girl so much that he was willing to give up his identity─though I bet he’d look better than me in a bunny outfit.
“They call me ‘he of the beautiful legs,’ for chrissakes, I can’t believe I’m covering them up… That’d be like Nagahiro, he of the underage beauties, silencing the voice he uses to manipulate young girls…”
“Who are you calling ‘he of the underage beauties’? I will have it known that I do not use my voice for any such dubious purpose,” Sakiguchi shot back in his beautiful voice.
Mr. Bare-Legs was so caught up with his own bare legs that he overlooked the competition from mine, exposed as they were by my bunny suit─a gross oversight, to be sure, but the fact that he didn’t refuse to participate altogether suggested that even the guileless Mr. Bare-Legs (Mr. Long-Pants?) was conscious of his duties as a member of the Pretty Boy Detective Club.
Anyway, his vaunted legs did turn out to be indispensable for sneaking into the casino through the rear entrance to the gym, so I’m grateful he came along─a couple of guards were stationed by the back door, and it fell to Mr. Bare-Legs to lure them away.
Basically, he made a show of racing past the guards like some kind of suspicious character, and when they followed him, we slipped into the gym in our disguises─at which point he deftly dodged the doormen and joined us inside before they could make it back to their posts.
“I’m so much slower in these damn pants…” he complained dejectedly, but in any case, we made it in─meanwhile, Sotoin had come in through the front door and was already seated at the blackjack table.
In that brilliantly lit room, the raving beauty’s raving beauty was almost overwhelming─it was as if it wasn’t the lights overhead that were shining, but Sotoin himself.
This time, he wasn’t just dressed up, he was wearing an actual dress.
“Hah. Our leader does indeed possess a special quality,” Sakiguchi announced proudly.
Having pride in one’s leader is a wonderful thing, but if what had struck him was in fact the sight of a fifth grader dressed up as a girl, then I couldn’t help but conclude that his condition had reached a level requiring serious professional intervention.
If we managed to clear up the problem with Fudatsuki, perhaps it was time for us to deal head-on with Sakiguchi’s even more severe problem─anyway, it looked unnatural for so many staff members to be standing around together, so we spread out through the casino to attend to our various jobs.
I walked over to Sotoin.
…Come on, you weren’t supposed to start gambling until I could get here to appropriately (inappropriately?) assist you with my super eyesight!
Okay, I know you’re not the delinquent, so you probably haven’t burned through all your cash quite yet, but…
Silently, I counted the chips next to him, and was surprised to find he’d already amassed quite a pile.
Even though I’m pretty sure he started out with as little seed money as possible to create the impression of an even bigger win, he’d racked up that much in half an hour…?
Earlier, when he’d come as a pretty boy, he’d played beautifully, but I couldn’t imagine turning into a pretty girl had done much to improve his game. More likely, he was simply winning because he had a goal this time─that is, a reason to win.
In the time it took me to think those thoughts, his pile grew even larger.
At this rate, he wouldn’t even need my help until he got on stage… But I was just one of five infiltrating the casino in disguise.
If any of us were discovered, the rest would fall like dominoes─which meant I couldn’t just hang around doing nothing.
Plus, in my case, being exposed meant not only having the world know I was a spy but also that I’d dressed up as a bunny girl, which gave me extra reason to play my role to the hilt. I couldn’t really overdo it─although in a sense I already was.
So I started sending Sotoin signals as we’d agreed in advance─looking right through the cards the dealer was handing out.
I’d had my glasses off from the start.
…Now that I was actually doing it, the degree to which I was breaking the rules was glaringly clear. If everyone could peek at cards like this, casinos couldn’t exist─which made me even more conscious of how unforgivable the secret actions of the kuroko on stage were.
An eye for an eye.
I couldn’t imagine a more fitting situation for that saying─but all the same, I was keeping the signs I sent Sotoin to the bare minimum.
It’s not that I’d lost my nerve or was feeling guilty or anything, but I was afraid that since I didn’t know the rules, I’d make a mistake if things got too complicated.
My real job would start with the special program, when the kuroko showed up─and going too crazy now would be putting the cart before the horse.
Watching so closely made me uneasy about Sotoin’s betting strategy─he went all in every time. Yet somehow he still didn’t get wiped out. It was weird.
Maybe he just knew how to come through in the clutch?
Even so, I couldn’t help feeling uneasy─his way of winning had a certain je ne sais quoi, and, as a girl, Sotoin was so gorgeous that he was attracting quite an audience.
I felt like everyone was looking at my bunny outfit, which made me wildly embarrassed, but actually, no one was paying me any mind─which was fairly humiliating in itself, but anyway, I was worried that the more people looked at us, the higher the chance we’d be discovered.
On the other side of the hall, meanwhile, a hubbub was developing around the incredibly delicious free drinks─apparently the bartender was going a little overboard.
And the child genius was taking to his role as dealer at the poker table by displaying a mysterious degree of sociability─which I could only hope he would one day direct my way.
Sakiguchi wasn’t making the same effort, but he nevertheless seemed quite popular with the ladies─I’d been worried he was at the greatest risk of exposure since he’d already been up on stage, but maybe because he was so used to hiding the age of his fiancée, he appeared to be the most fastidious of us all. I still felt nervous, though.
For his part, Mr. Bare-Legs was just standing around like a wet rag.
The pants must have sucked up all his energy─that’s how gloomy he looked. He’d fit in better at a funeral parlor than an amusement parlor.
Which was why, when I finally heard someone say “Congratulations!” to Sotoin, sitting there with his overflowing pile of chips, I breathed a sigh of relief.
“You’ve won the right to participate in the special program!”
“I have?”
The pretty girl was beaming.