Adek’s face twisted with the widest grin he’d shown yet.
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! I’ll be taking that! That card is mine!” His loud, delighted laughter ricocheted around the pitch-black space. “A wise decision, Miss Alicia. Congratulations! From now on, you’re the queen!”
“Yes...” Alicia was in a complex mental state of guilt mixed with schadenfreude.
At any rate, this was game, set, and match. Humanity had suffered its first defeat. The Villainess fell to the God of Games. His frightening craftiness deserved a special mention. Beginning over two decades ago, he’d selected Isabella as his target and instigated her attendant Alicia’s inferiority complex with careful preparations. He’d done all that just for a chance to watch his opponent suffer. It was truly the work of a devil, a horrible man who lived by feasting on the suffering of others.
“Heh heh heh! It’s time for you to be buried in darkness, Queen,” Adek said as he reached for Alicia’s discarded card.
Isabella interrupted him. “I’m sorry, but you seem to be mistaken about this game’s result.”
“What?” Adek and Alicia said in unison as they turned toward Isabella.
“I will be picking up that card. The one whose turn is the closest after the one who discarded it gets priority, no?” Isabella said. She revealed two of her cards: the nine and ten of spades.
“Th-That’s impossible!” Adek jumped up from his chair when he saw Isabella’s cards.
“But...that can’t be. You were supposed to be waiting for the three of spades.” The disbelief was plainly written on Alicia’s face too.
Isabella ignored the bewildered duo and picked up Alicia’s card. She combined the jack with her nine and ten to place a meld on the table, then discarded her last card.
“How did you know that I’d betrayed you, Mistress Isabella?” Alicia asked Isabella, her voice quavering.
“I said it earlier, didn’t I? I don’t trust anyone.”
Alicia couldn’t believe her ears.
“Trusting people means you stop thinking and put your mind at ease. Of course, if you want to live peacefully, that’s a necessity. Lovers, friends, family, retainers...if you keep suspecting each and every one of them, you won’t be able to live sanely.”
“I see now. So I couldn’t be any of those roles for you.” Perhaps it was strange for a traitor to think like that, but Alicia considered herself Isabella’s close friend and confidant.
“You’re mistaken.” Isabella shook her head. “I simply have no intention of leading a sane life. That day, I swore never to trust anyone ever again.”
A terrifying decision. Isabella was declaring that she had no need for peace of mind or serenity and would spend the rest of her life in a long night of suspicion and subterfuge. For ordinary people, her worldview would be an unbearable hell.
“Still, I’d never doubt someone more than necessary. I simply observe the nature of those before me—nothing more, nothing less. My read on you was, ‘If Alicia betrays me, she’ll keep acting as my loyal subject up until the final, decisive moment.’ I’m glad it turned out to be correct.”
Alicia had no reply.
Isabella then discarded her final card and went out. “Since you tried to pick up this jack earlier, you must have a pair of jacks in hand, correct? That means a minimum loss of 20 points. You lose,” Isabella told Adek.
“This is absurd!” In response, Adek slammed the table. “This is completely and utterly absurd! It can’t be happening!”
Adek’s expression had transformed into the opposite of the delighted and casual one he’d had since making his appearance in the castle. His face was warped by an ugly grimace as he scratched at his head in frustration.
“This is all backward! Unthinkable! I had the one-sided advantage! I was in a situation where defeat was virtually impossible! How did things end up like this?! This is all wrong, there must be some kind of mistake!”
“Everything you just said is true, shenmo,” Isabella told Adek. “This battle wasn’t one I could hope to win by fighting you head-on. Not only is luck on your side, you’re also peerless in gaming ability. As the cherry on top, you had a massive advantage in points. Therefore, I had to make this into a contest where your skill wasn’t the deciding factor.”
Suppose there was an enemy before you that you couldn’t defeat with force. How would you achieve victory? Lead the fight in a direction where the enemy couldn’t use their true strength.
“My win condition for this game was making you want to win through some kind of scheme. Delivering a massive direct hit early on was imperative to my success. As a result, you put the contingencies you’d prepared into motion. Even though you would’ve had a significantly high chance of winning by relying on your luck and gameplay, you decided to aim for a guaranteed victory. I predicted you’d do that and used it against you. That was how I managed to overcome the odds. Quite literally, I tore your godsent luck apart. Knowing you’d use Alicia to betray me was easy enough to guess, given your personalities.”
Isabella stood up and turned her back on Adek. “The sour, the sweet, and the bitter betrayals—I’m here now because I drank deeply of all of them. Even though you’re the better player, I’m better acquainted with the foolishness of people.”
“Isabellaaaaaaaaaaa!!!” As Adek roared in rage, the monster behind him started moving. “Eep!” He tried to make a run for it, but it quickly grabbed him and began tearing into the remainder of his body.
“N-No, please, help...” In the past ten thousand years, Adek had savored the terror of all kinds of people as they disappeared from this world. Now it was time to taste his own.
Isabella walked away from the table without sparing a moment to look back. “I have no interest in watching individuals suffer in agony as they meet their end. Goodbye, shenmo.”
“Graaaaaaaaaaargh!!!” Bite by bite, the monster eventually devoured Adek’s head. His screams were silenced forever as he vanished into the void.
Once he was gone for good, Isabella, Alicia, and the soldiers were released from the world he’d trapped them in for his game. Instantly, they reappeared inside Isabella’s luxuriously decorated room.
“I’m sweaty. Fetch me a towel,” Isabella ordered one of the soldiers, who hurried over to a shelf in the room. He brought her a refined towel to wipe her brow. “In any case, I really managed that by the skin of my teeth. You were the most troublesome opponent I’ve faced by far,” she said to the now-departed Adek.
“Mistress Isabella...” Alicia was captured by the guards while the past few minutes played over and over in her mind.
✦ ✦ ✦
This was unavoidable, Alicia thought as the soldiers pressed her down into the carpet. It was the obvious outcome for a traitor who’d backstabbed Isabella, the Fourth Kingdom, and humanity as a whole.
Isabella drew a guard’s sword and walked up to Alicia. The gesture made it clear that there would be no trial for Alicia; she’d be executed on the spot. Isabella grabbed Alicia’s long hair and pulled her head up.
As Alicia looked up at Isabella’s face, she once again noticed how beautiful her mistress had remained despite the passage of time.
I really, really wanted to win against her, she thought.
Isabella swung the sword down without mercy. Alicia’s head hit the floor.
“Huh?”
While still attached to her body.
“This is your punishment: from now on, you’re forbidden from growing out the long hair you were so proud of past shoulder-length,” Isabella said. Then, she returned the sword to its owner and turned away.
“But why? I betrayed you.”
“Yes, you certainly betrayed and tried to kill me—once. But that means you were loyal to me every other opportunity,” Isabella said while looking back at Alicia. “That’s still somewhat preferable to what everyone else has done. Keep working for me in the future. Relax. Even if you decide to betray me again, I will find a way to use it for my own benefit.”
Alicia could only stare at Isabella’s queenlike visage as she spoke. I really am no match for her, she thought.
There was something Alicia had felt ever since meeting Isabella: their ranks as humans were somehow different. Despite Alicia’s social awkwardness leading to her being bullied, she was still good-looking, from a prestigious family, and talented. It had felt so unfair to be surpassed by Isabella at every turn.
It wasn’t until Isabella let her live that Alicia felt like she could understand the true gap in ability between the two of them.
“As you command. I will continue working at your behest, my mistress.” Alicia lowered her head and once again pledged her undying loyalty to Isabella.