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?”
✦ ✦ ✦
The trick, once it dawned on me, was infuriatingly simple─and the scam infuriatingly transparent.
The unseen kuroko.
The invisibility suit.
Since it’d had such a big impact on me and been such an effective racket, I’d made the mistake of assuming that it was the only way the technology could be applied─but if this was really the latest, most cutting-edge scientific technology, then logically it should be adaptable to more than just clothing.
For instance, there ought to be zillions of military applications other than uniforms─from guns to knives to bullets to missiles to tanks to fighter jets.
This was the kind of stealth technology that could be used for anything.
According to the information Sakiguchi had gathered in advance, the secret business dealings going on at Kamikazari Middle definitely weren’t limited to clothes─and the technology could be applied just as easily to cards.
Trick cards that were invisible when face down, but visible when face up─that is, cards that only appeared when they were turned over on the table.
An entirely harmless item if you used it to perform magic tricks, and an entirely crooked one if you used it for gambling.
It worked exactly like a card tucked up your sleeve. You’d need some skill to mix the invisible cards in with your hand or trade them out while everyone was watching, but I’ve got to say, the fact that you could do so surreptitiously was exceedingly unfair.
Worst of all, Fudatsuki had brazenly used the trick knowing full well that I could see what he was doing. He’d made a fool of me, and I couldn’t hide my mortification─but the truth was, I had been a fool.
Such a fool I couldn’t even complain about being made a fool of.
It was unbelievable, I hadn’t noticed his foul play even though he’d been doing it since the very first round─I’d simply assumed there must be some rule stating that Fudatsuki, the dealer, always got to have one more card in his hand than his opponent, Sotoin, and moreover that he could decide whether to count it or not at the end of the round.
I’d been looking without seeing.
But once I did see, I no longer needed to hold back─I could hurl every bit of anger I felt straight at him.
Being made a fool of for being ignorant enough to tag along to a casino without knowing any of the rules may have been inevitable, but just because it was inevitable didn’t mean my anger would magically disappear.
I have a hot temper for someone so gloomy.
That’s another personality flaw I’ve got to deal with─but now wasn’t so much the time to deal with it as to bludgeon the dealer with it.
I aimed the hammer of my anger at Fudatsuki up on the stage.
Unforgivable!
My eyes glittered.