Mardock Scramble полностью

The shuffle for the next game started, and as it did the man stood up and collected the hat and coat that he had checked.

“Not a good game for me, was it?” he asked the dealer.

“Some days you need to pay the price in order to make sure your luck flows smoothly on other days,” the dealer replied, his face serious.

The monocled man nodded. Then he left.

03

The talk at the table during the next shuffle was solely focused around the cause of the monocled man’s defeat. The Doctor set the ball rolling, and the woman asked the dealer his opinion. The dealer wouldn’t budge from his stated view that it was a necessary and inevitable price all gamblers had to pay once in a while, whereas the old man said that it was because he had become too heated, too passionate, so much so that his luck had deserted him.

–His defeat was inevitable.

Oeufcoque summed it up the best and the most succinctly.

–He got too caught up in his own cards, hitting too much, doubling down on high bets, too impressed by the idea of getting that magical twenty-one. Bound by these severe handicaps he was no more than a sitting duck in the dealer’s sights. In particular, he was far too attached to his small cards.

–Small cards?

–Whatever way you break down the odds, the small cards—cards with a face value of six and below—are advantageous to the dealer. In this case, our dealer kept on using the word “attack” in order to delude the man into drawing more and more of them.

The man in question was now nowhere to be seen. He was like the very cards that he had played, disappearing without a trace moments after a hand was declared bust. But he wasn’t the sort who was likely to run off and lick his wounds, reflecting on what went wrong and learning a valuable lesson. No. More likely, he was the sort who’d be back sooner rather than later, like a dog to its own vomit, aiming for that glorious victory that remained just out of reach even as he plunged headfirst into bankruptcy.

Such was the bittersweet lingering memory of the world of pleasure. Balot found it difficult to feel too sorry for him, though. The man still had something of a future, and he was always going to wake up tomorrow feeling fine regardless of what the outcome at the table had been. In stark contrast to Balot, who needed the win. The thing that concerned her was not the fact that the man had lost. It was the fact that he had been made to lose.

The spectacular victory that the man had been aiming for had never really existed. All that had happened was the man had had the sweet scent of victory wafted under his nose, leading him ever farther down the road to ruin. He’d even been allowed to taste victory, briefly, but temporarily—the dealer had made sure of that. It was part of the dealer’s act, part of the web of illusion that the casino sold, wrapped up in such pretty little boxes.

How to cut your way through that tangled web of lies? Without a proper plan, based on logic and a sound foundation, all was folly. The desire to win—all this gave you was a step up on the stairway that led to the harsh reality of ignominious defeat. Just like the Mardock, the Stairway to Heaven, that statue that epitomized all that was ambitious and dangerous about the city.

As Balot was thinking about all this, Oeufcoque’s next words floated up on her hand.

–Looks like I won our first game.

Oeufcoque seemed as casual as ever, which made Balot want to dig her heels in.

–Well, I’m going to win the next one.

–Let’s start it right now, then. The woman or the old man—who’s going to leave the table first?

–The woman, definitely.

–I’ll choose the old man.

–Because I went for the lady?

–No. I was always going to choose the old man. Definitely.

Balot couldn’t help but be surprised. How on earth was the old man, clearly an accomplished player and with the results to prove it, going to be hounded out before the fat lady who spent money like a drunken sailor?