Heavenly Pavilion -3
The game continued.
One round was defined as each of the four men shuffling the tiles once. Through five full rounds, the three of them kept losing nothing more than the base ante to Ho Cheon-an. Heukjeo, unable to endure it any longer, tried forcing a confrontation once—only to lose an extra five nyang of gold for his trouble.
Five rounds.
The three men at the table, along with dozens of professional gamblers disguised as waiters or ordinary patrons in the outer seats, all stared wide-eyed as Ho Cheon-an shuffled the Golpae. Not a single one of them could fathom his method.
They could only watch him sweep the base stakes every single hand and wait for their next chance.
Now and then someone would poke a face into the pot with three nyang, or five—yet the only result was more gold stacking up in front of Ho Cheon-an.
Another five rounds passed and the tiles were replaced. These were pre-memorized sets, yet it made no difference. By the time Ho Cheon-an’s turn to shuffle arrived, a single pass of his hands produced a deck that only he understood; the other three remained completely blind.
No matter how many times they watched, they could not decipher his technique.
When the fifteenth round came around, Hakjeo squeezed his eyes shut and gave the signal.
“We’re changing the tiles.”
An attendant brought in a fresh set that had already been prepared. Tiny marks—scratches, splits, glue seams—had been placed on the key tiles so that only their own side could read them. Ho Cheon-an turned the tiles over this way and that, clearly aware of the tampering, then merely smiled as if the whole thing were amusing.
Even so, Cheongseo sharpened his focus. These marked tiles had been saved for a critical moment, but there was no choice left. Facing an opponent who felt unbeatable even at full strength, hoarding a trump card was the worst possible decision.
“Let’s see how long you can keep smiling!”
Heukjeo bared his fighting spirit; Hakjeo and Cheongseo, watching him, steeled themselves as well.
The three exchanged glances. Fine—there was one of him and three of them. Just as Heukjeo had woken them with raw will, they would each bring their own strengths to bear and crush him under pressure.
The rounds kept turning.
Ho Cheon-an clicked his tongue as though the table had gone cold. The three kept burying the marked key tiles at the bottom, floating only the revealed ones to the top and feeding him nothing but low hands, denying him any opening.
The man who had been scooping the base ante every round and banking three nyang of profit per hand finally hit a wall.
“Dead.”
When a low hand was obviously sitting in his grip, even Ho Cheon-an had no choice but to fold.
The relentless builder of a golden tower was trapped in a sluggish current.
A stalemate where neither side took real losses or gains. Because both still held uncertain elements, the only action left was the occasional three- or five-nyang probe meant to rattle the other; the flow of the table itself never shifted. Ho Cheon-an tried aggressively floating the bottom tiles to break the deadlock, yet the three simply folded and defended.
The chance will come.
Forget a reversal—they had burned their trump just to reach even. Ho Cheon-an’s emotions remained unreadable, yet the three gamblers grew certain that the more thoroughly he controlled his face, the more restless he must be feeling. A man driven onto the defensive would hide his feelings all the more carefully.
If we keep blocking the key tiles… the chance will definitely come.
Somewhere in the middle of that grind, an opening was bound to appear.
And so, holding their breath through hand after hand, the moment finally arrived.
Hakjeo looked down at his tiles. An unmarked thirty-one had fallen into his hand, completing a formidable combination.
Thirty-one. And a thirty-three?
He studied Ho Cheon-an’s tiles—no, the entire board. Then he clenched his resolve with everything he had.
It’s here.
At last the reversing current they had waited for had arrived. Mixed among Ho Cheon-an’s tiles was one marked thirty. Even after subtracting every tile already revealed and calculating every remaining possibility in the unknown zone, the only way a thirty could beat a sixty-four was the combination of thirty and fifteen—seventy-five points.
And the very top tile of the undrawn stack was that fifteen. The scar on the lower edge of its reverse side announced the fact.
The chance to seize the initiative had finally come!
Hakjeo’s mind spun even faster.
The unmarked thirty-one has never appeared on the board once.
From Ho Cheon-an’s perspective, both of Hakjeo’s tiles were complete unknowns. Half the deck had been revealed across the many rounds already played, so there were clues for inference—but inference alone could never produce certainty.
The timing was perfect for a big swing as well.
The previous two hands had ended quietly with no probes; this was exactly the moment when someone ought to use uncertainty to rattle the table.
If he stepped in pretending to probe, ballooned the pot, and dragged it into a pure battle of nerves, he could take a fortune!
“Three nyang of gold.”
“Fine. Three.”
“I’m in for three.”
Heukjeo and Cheongseo still had not grasped the situation. They would know the thirty-three from its mark, but they had no idea that the uncertain thirty-one Ho Cheon-an himself had shuffled now sat in Hakjeo’s hand.
“Five.”
Ho Cheon-an raised. Hakjeo felt certain the man’s hand was quite high—at least the high twenties, perhaps even a thirty-two.
A thirty paired with a high twenty—or a thirty-two—would give him every reason to play with confidence. Sixty-two points was strong enough to shove without a second thought.
Hakjeo glanced at Ho Cheon-an with eyes trembling from tension, then drew a deep breath.
“Ten.”
“…I’m out.”
“Dead.”
Heukjeo’s and Cheongseo’s hands were fully readable from Ho Cheon-an’s seat; both folded without regret.
Ho Cheon-an looked at Hakjeo. Hakjeo kept his gaze locked on the center of the table and waited for the man’s next words.
“Fif—teen.”
“…Twenty.”
Ho Cheon-an’s eyes deepened. The entire gambling house held its breath. Even Yu Gyeong and Sama Gyeong-hwi swallowed hard.
The watershed.
Would Hakjeo, Heukjeo, and Cheongseo finally land a blow on Ho Cheon-an—or would he simply crush their carefully prepared masterstroke and keep dominating the table?
Whoever won this hand would completely reverse the momentum; that much was obvious.
“Thirty.”
“Forty.”
“Fifty.”
At Ho Cheon-an’s declaration of fifty gold pieces, Hakjeo tore his eyes from the board. Heukjeo and Cheongseo were staring at him with taut faces. Ho Cheon-an was staring at him as well. For a single instant—an almost invisible flicker—Hakjeo saw Ho Cheon-an’s pupils waver.
Hakjeo pushed forward a gold ingot worth fifty nyang.
“A hundred!”
The air on the second basement floor of the Heavenly Pavilion froze. If Ho Cheon-an called this raise, the five nyang already put in by Heukjeo and Cheongseo would bring the total pot to two hundred ten nyang of pure gold.
Moreover, whichever of them lost this hand would suffer a catastrophic blow to the spirit.
“Fine.”
Ho Cheon-an added his own gold ingot.
“We’re settled, then?”
“We are.”
No take-backs. With the betting fully closed, Hakjeo laid down his tiles with trembling hands.
“Sixty-four! A high hand!”
Gasps rose from the surrounding crowd. Hakjeo twisted the corner of his mouth upward and fixed his eyes on Ho Cheon-an. The man’s face still showed no emotion, yet Hakjeo was certain. Ho Cheon-an was human like himself, and a human always left a crack. That momentary flicker just before the final raise had not been an illusion.
Someone swallowed dryly while staring at Ho Cheon-an. His hand began to descend. Every person in the house unconsciously craned their necks forward. Even Emperor Yu Gyeong and Eastern Depot Director Sama Gyeong-hwi did the same.
Click.
With a soft sound, Ho Cheon-an’s tiles settled—a thirty and…
“Fifteen! Seventy-five points!”
“Ahh…!”
It was the fifteen.
“Impossible!”
Hakjeo shot to his feet and flipped the remaining tiles. That one had definitely been the fifteen—how could the fifteen be in Ho Cheon-an’s hand…?
He turned the tiles over—and the strength left his legs. He collapsed back into his seat.
The tile with the identical scratch in the identical place was a twenty-three. The two gamblers who had been startled by Hakjeo’s sudden outburst also went wide-eyed. The Golpae they too had believed was a fifteen had, once flipped, revealed itself as a twenty-three.
How had he known that a scratch on the lower edge meant a fifteen? And when had he carved an identical mark? How had he known Hakjeo held a high hand? Had he been acting the entire time even while holding the strongest possible combination of thirty and fifteen?
No—more fundamentally—
When… from where…
From what moment, from what place, had they been seen through and toyed with?
Hakjeo felt a distant, floating sensation—something like the haze just before blacking out after drinking too much, or the half-awake detachment of early morning when the world and the self seem far apart.
“My turn, then.”
Ho Cheon-an stacked the gold ingots at his own seat, casually restored the tiles Hakjeo had flipped, and began to shuffle.
Tap. Tap.
Hakjeo took in the distant panorama of the gambling table. Gold ingots were piled neatly beside Ho Cheon-an. And Ho Cheon-an was shuffling the Golpae.
With a faintly bored gaze and perfectly even, honest hand movements that looked as if no trickery of any kind were involved.
Watching that sight, a hollow laugh slipped out. Honest, even-tempo hand movements? After the thrashing they had just taken, that was still how it looked to the eye.
Hakjeo burst into laughter.
At a gambling table one must never show one’s true feelings. A performed expression could be anything, but the real heart must stay hidden. Expose a genuine face even once to sharp-eyed professionals and you handed them the key to reading every false face thereafter.
But what did that matter now?
When you were being completely played, what use was face control?
Tap. Tap. Tap.
With the steady rhythm of Ho Cheon-an shuffling the tiles, Hakjeo felt himself plummeting into an abyss.
They had prepared their finest technique for three full days, launched their decisive strike at the perfect moment—and been crushed without mercy.
If only Ho Cheon-an had thrown his head back and laughed while hugging the gold, the humiliation might have been easier to bear. Instead he simply moved on to the next hand with no particular emotion, as if he had merely swept a small fry off the board, as if he had kicked a pebble out of the road—having just taken a hundred and ten nyang of gold. He felt like a being from another world.
We can’t… win.
Hakjeo’s heart dyed itself pitch black.
Neither Hakjeo, Cheongseo, nor Heukjeo ever managed a rebound.
By the time the hour came for him to return to the Imperial Palace, Ho Cheon-an had banked three hundred nyang of gold in profit for the day.