No Card Tricks, On My Honor
Mikhail smiled, the expression hovering somewhere between mockery and sincerity, as he spread a worn deck of cards across the table. “I won’t do any card tricks. I swear on my honor.”
He began shuffling with practiced ease. The cards whispered and flowed through his fingers like living things, merging back into a single neat stack. Josepina watched the display in silence.
“All right, the rules are simple. Closest to twenty-one without going over wins. Bust and you lose. Winner takes the bet.” Mikhail explained the rules in a lazy drawl. “I’m the dealer. I hit on sixteen or lower, stand on seventeen or higher. But if I have an ace and it’s a soft seventeen, I hit again.”
He set a clean sheet of paper and a pen in front of Josepina. A makeshift scoreboard. “Since this is during work hours, we won’t bet actual money. We’ll use points. Starting score is one hundred.”
“Understood, Your Highness.”
Josepina answered mechanically, picking up the pen. Her posture remained impeccably straight. The game began.
First hand: Josepina hit on fourteen and busted at twenty-four. Minus ten points.
Second hand: She stood on twelve, but Mikhail made twenty and she lost again. Minus ten.
The third hand ended the same way. Minus ten. She didn’t frown, didn’t sigh. She simply recorded her score on the paper with mechanical precision, like a machine logging data.
Then, starting with the fourth hand, the tide began to shift.
“Hit,” Josepina said curtly. Mikhail dealt her a card. Her total reached nineteen.
“Stand.”
Mikhail’s hand sat at eighteen. Josepina’s first victory. Plus ten points.
After that, something strange happened. Josepina began winning in rapid succession. She kept hitting perfect twenty-ones by the skin of her teeth, or Mikhail would bust. The pattern repeated.
“Well, well. Not bad at all,” Mikhail remarked, eyes sparkling with interest. He was losing, yet he didn’t look the least bit annoyed. If anything, he looked like a child who had discovered a fascinating new toy.
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a natural talent for this?”
“I do not.” Josepina shook her head. Her voice remained dry. “Card games are ultimately about probability. If you remember the cards that have already appeared and calculate the expected value of the remaining ones, winning isn’t that difficult.”
“Wow, way to suck the fun out of it.”
“However.” Josepina set down her pen and looked Mikhail straight in the eye. “Isn’t this business dangerous? If someone like me—who can do basic calculations—can see through it so easily, then professional gamblers…”
“Ah, so that’s what you were worried about?” Mikhail clapped his hands together. He rose from his seat and walked over to a cabinet on one side of the office. With a clatter, he retrieved a small wooden box. Inside were five more decks of cards with the exact same pattern.
“How about this, then?”
Mikhail dumped all six decks onto the table. Then, with sweeping arm movements, he began mixing the massive pile of cards together. The motion was childish and playful, like a kid building a sandcastle.
Shhhrrrrk—!
The sound of hundreds of cards tumbling over one another filled the room. For the first time, Josepina’s brow furrowed—very faintly.
“That certainly makes the calculations far more complicated.”
“Right? And just playing normally would be boring.” Mikhail grinned mischievously. “I’ll pay you cash equal to the points you win. Sound good? Free money.”
Josepina was silent for a moment. Then she simply nodded.
Mikhail sat back down, smiling with satisfaction. “All right, round two—begin!”
The game resumed. Perhaps because real money was now on the line, Josepina became noticeably more cautious. But remembering hundreds of cards was impossible. Her win rate dropped sharply.
She was becoming absorbed in the game. The mechanical demeanor from earlier had vanished. Each time she received a card, her blue eyes sharpened with focus. Whenever her score fell, she unconsciously bit her lip.
Mikhail didn’t miss a single change. He cheered inwardly, waiting for the decisive moment.
And then it came.
“It’s too pathetic watching you lose all the time, so I’ll add some special rules,” Mikhail said, adopting the serene expression of a saint on a cathedral statue. “From now on, a natural blackjack pays one and a half times the bet. We’ll also allow splitting and doubling down.”
He added several rules that favored the player. “How about it? More fun now, right?”
It was exactly as he said. Josepina’s win rate began climbing again. Each time her score rose, the corners of her mouth would twitch upward in an almost invisible micro-expression before settling again.
But something was off. Her win rate had clearly improved, yet her score refused to climb significantly. It hovered in place or slowly bled away.
Before long, Josepina was completely immersed. Her once-rigid posture had collapsed; she was leaning forward over the table.
“Haa…”
The moment her score dipped back into the negatives, a sharp voice burst from her lips.
“Are you not using some kind of trick?”
Her shoulders trembled with indignation. She had finally realized she was being toyed with.
She’s got quite the competitive spirit.
“Besides, how can you keep changing the rules of a game like this!”
“Those rules? Every single one of them favored the player.”
Josepina had nothing to say. She closed her mouth. Mikhail calmly set his cards down.
“And I told you I wouldn’t do any card tricks. I kept my promise. I even swore on the imperial family’s ‘honor.’ Want to try committing lèse-majesté?”
Josepina couldn’t say a word. He wasn’t wrong.
“The casino I’m going to build is nothing like those back-alley gambling dens run by thugs.”
“I will never use crude tricks like sleight of hand. Twisting the rules just enough is more than sufficient.”
Mikhail leaned back deeply in his chair, wearing a thoroughly satisfied smile.
“We sell dreams, hope, and fantasy. We make our dear customers happily, willingly throw down their money—and then cleanly take it from them.”
He chuckled. “Even after seeing this, are you still anxious about the business?”
Instead of answering, Josepina pressed her lips into a firm line. Her expression was complicated—frustrated, resentful, or perhaps enlightened.
“And from what I can see,” Mikhail continued, resting his chin on his hand and gazing at her with open amusement, “you, Josepina, are smart and highly competitive. The exact type who gets completely ruined by gambling. So never gamble. Ever.”
Josepina realized her hand, still holding the cards, was trembling faintly. She clenched it into a fist. The sting of her nails digging into her palm somehow calmed the boiling rage inside her.
She was furious. Never in her life had she been toyed with like this. She had been looked down on and pushed aside countless times for being lowborn, young, and a woman. But this was different. This was humiliation.
Her cheeks burned.
“I…” Josepina barely managed to squeeze out the words. Her voice was cold and cracked. “I was lacking. It was presumptuous of me, Your Highness.”
“Well, it happens. Still, it was fun, wasn’t it? I enjoyed it quite a bit.”
His voice was endlessly languid, like a man who had finished his entertainment and was perfectly sated.
“…Yes. It was enjoyable.” Josepina ground her teeth as she answered.
Enjoyable my ass.
“Then it worked out. Since I won.” Mikhail giggled. “Wait, I’m the dealer—does winning or losing even apply? Anyway, clean up those cards scattered everywhere. It’s better than going back to the office and staring at documents, right?”
Mikhail picked up a butter cookie from the plate beside him and popped it into his mouth. It crunched cheerfully.
Josepina said nothing. She simply lowered her head and began silently gathering the scattered cards one by one.
One card. Then another. Every time her fingertips touched the cold paper, a whirlwind of thoughts swirled through her mind.
Good-for-nothing. Drunkard. Irredeemable trash…
That was the reputation of Mikhail she had heard back in the capital. Her fellow bureaucrats had openly sneered at this development project, saying, “His Highness the Degenerate Grand Duke is throwing another tantrum.”
But.
She had watched the liquor named “Mikhail” sweep across the empire. She had seen a single drink upend the entire social scene, even driving two noblewomen to their deaths. Could a mere degenerate really accomplish something like that?
Josepina picked up the final card.
It was a gamble.
Her decision to bet everything and volunteer for this abandoned land—the Far East Maritime Province—had been the greatest gamble of her life. Promotion. Power. She had wagered her entire existence on it.
She stood, holding the neatly stacked deck of cards, and approached Mikhail.
The anger and humiliation had cooled. In their place was a different emotion.
Satisfaction. The satisfaction of having won the gamble of a lifetime.
“Everything is organized, Your Highness.”
“Good work.”
Mikhail kept his eyes closed and simply held out his hand. Josepina placed the deck in his palm.
That was when it happened.
“Oh, right.” Mikhail cracked one eye open. He picked up another cookie from the plate beside him. “Do you like sweets?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He simply dropped the cookie into her empty palm.
“Consider it a bonus.”
“…Thank you.”
Josepina stared silently at the treat in her hand. The sweet aroma of butter tickled her nose. She bowed her head in respect and turned to leave the office.
Creak—
Her hand paused on the doorknob. Without turning around, she spoke softly.
“Contrary to what Your Highness said…”
There was a faint trace of laughter in her voice.
“It seems I do have some talent for gambling.”
She paused, then added, “Of course, I won’t be doing it anymore.”
“…Huh?”
Mikhail, who had been lounging on the sofa, lifted his head with a puzzled expression. Only then did Josepina slowly turn around.
A very faint, mysterious smile played on her lips.
It was the smile of a victor.
She gave one last light bow and left the office without hesitation.