Don't Bet If You're Not Sure!
"Don't bet if you're not sure!"
Another peaceful afternoon in the lady's room.
"One... twooo... three."
For the first time in a while, the lady and I sat at the table, bathed in the warm afternoon sunlight as we focused on counting the pay she'd received from Malik for academy work. Her lips curved upward with every coin that filled her empty money pouch.
"Hee hee hee...!"
"Lady, that laugh sounds just like a tax-dodging noble."
"It's money I don't have to pay taxes on...!"
"That sounded way too much like the villainess."
"It's fine, 'cause I am the villainess."
The lady wore a satisfied smile as she diligently counted the coins.
"Hee hee... chocolate, one hundred pieces."
I corrected her warped sense of value as she grinned and fiddled with the platinum coins.
"Lady."
"Hm?"
"Don't underestimate platinum coins."
"Why?"
"Just for a measly hundred chocolates?"
I snorted at the mention of a hundred chocolates and held up one platinum coin from the table, displaying it in my open palm right in front of her eyes like some ASMR YouTuber from my past life. With full confidence, I declared loudly,
"Give or take a little exaggeration, this'll buy you a thousand."
"Hiiieeeek!"
At the word "thousand," the lady dropped the platinum coin from her hand. It rolled across the floor with a clattering sound, and her eyes followed it, wide and spinning.
"A thousand?!"
"Not quite a thousand, but definitely over a hundred."
Her eyes began to tremble even more as the value of that single coin skyrocketed from a hundred to a thousand in her mind. Letting out an exaggerated "Ooooh..." she said,
"If I stick a thousand eyes on a bear doll, can I make one of these?"
"No."
"Ten thousand?"
"Hmm... probably not that either?"
Realizing it was an amount far beyond her side hustle, she snorted loudly and glared at the platinum coin as if trying to bore a hole through it.
"Ooooh...."
She was having a staring contest with the first emperor depicted on the coin.
"Ooooh..."
Money really is the best. The lady was locked in a staring contest, apparently judging whether it truly measured up to a thousand chocolates. She bit into the uncooperative platinum coin with an "ang" and nodded, a pleased smile spreading across her face.
Or rather, a sly, sinister smile.
With a grin that a thief might flash, she started sneaking glances at me.
"Ricaaaardo..."
"Yes."
"You know..."
She dragged out the end of her sentence, averting her eyes while blatantly eyeing the platinum coin in the corner of the table, her fingers inching toward it like sneaky tentacles. I smiled as I watched.
You're being way too obvious.
The lady, who looked down on slum kids like me whose job had once been begging, had no idea. I watched her little crime unfold with a fond smile.
—Sneak.
She glanced at me again and opened her mouth.
"How many gold coins does it take to turn into white ones?"
"A hundred."
"Ooh..."
"If you gather a hundred, they turn white?"
Before I knew it, her treasure pouch was heading straight for my hard-earned blood money—my paycheck. As the lady, who never even paid wages, reached out like some Arsène Lupin, I smiled gently and replied,
"That's right. Work your butt off to gather a hundred, and you can exchange them for white gold coins."
"I've only ever used white ones, so I wouldn't know."
"That's definitely a villainess worldview."
"But, Lady."
"Hm?"
"Do I look like a seaweed head to you?"
"Squid leg?"
"No."
I grinned and grabbed her wrist. She jolted in surprise, her shoulders twitching. Mindful not to leave marks on her small, delicate wrist, I gently placed it on the table while gazing into her trembling eyes. My hand had brushed her treasure pouch in the process, but I pretended not to notice, preserving the lady's pride.
Absolutely not because I was embarrassed.
Staring at her clenched fist on the table, she said,
"N-no, it's not!"
"I haven't even said anything yet."
"Th-that's..."
Her endearing act of staring out the window and playing dumb confirmed it for me. Sure, my line sounded like something a movie actor said to lure someone into gambling in my past life, but whatever. That guy got his arm chopped off; I had no plans to lose mine.
I cleared the table with a cruel smile.
"You've got a white bottle cap in your money pouch, don't you, Lady?"
Something caught on her rummaging hand, and I smiled as I watched. Clink. She dropped the foreign object onto the table, where it rolled to a natural stop right in front of her.
A white bottle cap.
Her eyes began to shake violently.
"Right?"
"Don't make up stories! You must've seen wrong, Ricardo!"
"Ehehe... we'd have to open your hand to know for sure."
"Hiiieeeek!"
The lady was terrible at lying. Staring out the window when she lied. Her eyebrows twitching. After thirteen years as her butler, there was no way I wouldn't know. Her face might as well have had "I'm lying" written across it in bold letters. With full conviction, I said,
"I'll bet everything on the table and a 130-gold bath bomb that you have a platinum coin in your hand."
"Eeeek..."
She clenched her fist tighter and glared at me. Her panicked, quivering eyes made me smile involuntarily, but...
"Then I'll bet a week's worth of chocolate!"
"That's my money."
"Eeeek! Lend it to me!"
"Sure."
Her feisty retort made my heart skip just a little.
Did I bet too big...?
No. I could tell from her face. Sure, she'd lost focus for a moment on the jiggling treasure pouch, but I couldn't back down over something so trivial. And as her butler, concerned for her health, I couldn't let her quit.
"A week's too short."
"It's not!"
"Make it two weeks."
"No way!"
"Scared?"
"Eeeek! No!"
That one word, designed to provoke anyone, made her clench her fist and accept the bet. Now that the conditions were set for me to see her slim face, I began to pry open her trembling fist along with her eyes.
"Thump-a-thump. Thump-a-thump."
Humming a little tune, I started from her pinky, unfolding her tightly gripped fist.
"Let's see it, then?"
I smiled at the coin in her grasp. As always, brimming with the confidence of victory, I was about to tease her when—
"Oh? It's a gold coin?"
An unexpected friend greeted me. The lady beamed brightly at me.
Her eyes sparkling with a dopamine rush, she gazed at the gold coin in her palm. I stared at the same spot with the look of a man who'd lost the world.
"No... this shouldn't be here."
She smiled and said, pulling a chocolate from her treasure pouch with the cool, haughty air of a movie protagonist,
"Dummy. Ricardo's an idiot."
Watching her munch on the chocolate, I thought,
When the hell did she swipe it...?
I'd definitely seen her take it. No way...!
A swordmaster-in-training's eyes couldn't be fooled that easily.
But then I recalled the one moment I'd lost focus.
—Eeeek! Don't!
That was it.
The instant my eyes had been drawn to the jiggling treasure pouch—she'd swapped it. Admittedly, it was a view no red-blooded man could ignore.
I had to admit the blunder. As if affirming my words, she swept the piled platinum coins toward her, and between the squished treasure pouch, a glinting white coin peeked out.
As expected.
A villainess is a villainess, after all. I nodded in defeat, then grabbed her hand with a smile.
"We still have one spot left to check."
"Hic...!"
"Treasure pouch."
"I-I won!"
She froze mid-hiccup, and I gave a chilling smile.
"Are you sure?"
"Eeeek! Gomtangi!"
—Gom!
"Bite!"
—Gom...
She propped her chin on the recumbent Gomtangi and yelled,
"You damn dog!"
"He's a bear, not a dog."
"You called him a dog last time, Ricardo!"
"He's too big to call a dog now."
"Eeeek!"
A tickling hand made a platinum coin tumble from her treasure pouch, and she laughed awkwardly.
"Wanna trade for one chocolate?"
"Three days' limit."
"Eeeek! I won!"
"That's cheating!"
"No, it's not!"
It was a laugh-filled day. Of course,
"Take it if you can!"
Thanks to the lady's stubborn insistence on stuffing one platinum coin into her treasure pouch and taking it, there was an unexpected expense.
Still,
"...I lose."
It was a fun day.
*
Evening arrived after our cutthroat bet. Olivia rummaged through her treasure pouch under the moonlight.
"Hmnya."
Chocolate came out. Gold coins. Candy she'd been saving.
Her fingers caught on something, and she smiled brightly, pulling out a white platinum coin into the moonlight.
"Whoa...!"
A whopping thousand chocolates' worth. The nostalgia of holding a platinum coin—one she'd once spent freely—was fresh and new.
Because it had been so long, and because it was hers.
"Hee hee..."
This money was precious to Olivia. Not because it could buy a thousand chocolates, but because it was hard-earned by Ricardo.
It was Ricardo's money, but if she saved it up bit by bit, maybe she could pay back some of his back wages later. Clutching the coin dearly, she thought.
"Adding this makes it 1,120 gold...!"
What should she do with it? She loved snacks, but she wasn't a pig who only ate chocolate. She wanted to buy a gift for her ever-present butler.
He'd earned a lot of money, after all. One gift should be fine... right?
"Ricardo's got a weak body, so maybe some medicine?"
She didn't have to hide anymore, so maybe something to hide in the closet? But she'd done that once—would he get tired of it? As she pondered,
—Whiiiish~
A chilling wind that sounded like ghosts made her pull the blanket over her head and squeeze her eyes shut.
"Hieek!"
Looks like she'd have to sleep with Ricardo tonight.
"Ricaaaardo!"
And then.
—Ding.
Darkness fell once more.